The Bottom End of the Learning Curve

In Which the

DWARVEN BATTLE MEDIC

Comes to the

STARTLING AND EMBARRASSING REALIZATION 

That he has Been Playing his Class

LIKE A TOTAL NUBCAKE.

Mists of Pandaria has introduced a lot of changes to all the classes, as is normal with any expansion. When Cataclysm launched I spent hours obsessively scouring each PTR patch note and news release for any change. So I had a pretty clear idea of how the rather fundamental changes to the game, and healing in particular, would play out. 

Come Mists and I did none of that. In fact, since it's launch I've spent far more time in my Protection Levelling/Questing/Pull-Twenty-Mobs-And-Mow-Them-Down spec than I have healing.

So the past few weeks have been spent not only in a frenzied effort to raise my gear level from its former barely-enough-for-LFR level to something that wouldn't completely embarrass me in a normal mode Throne of Thunder 10-Man, but it's also been a steep learning curve to fully understand my class again.

Big things like Talents I had a pretty decent grasp on, at least in the broad strokes, but in reading up on them in the excellent Bossypally Talent Guide I realized that some of my choices were less than optimal. Particularly Hand of Purity, which had been transformed from middling to awesome since the beginning of the expansion, a talent that I had never really considered before that I now consider an essential tool.

I also didn't fully appreciate the effect that normalizing Mana would have on Paladins. In all previous expansions, Intellect was a Paladin's no-brainer, don't-even-think-of-gemming-anything-else-dumbass, best Stat. Not so for Mists. Now the once lamented Spirit is a Holy Paladin's best friend, to the point that the once useless Blue Gems are pretty much all I need now. That was a head-scratcher when I first read about it, let me tell you, and it went against two expansions worth of common sense.

Similarly, Mastery is now such a viable gearing strategy that Ask Mr. Robot considers it the default way to build a Holy Paladin, relegating a Haste-heavy build to the status of the Ugly Cousin that ain't quite right in the head.

I admit, I took the lazy route this expansion: at the start of Mists I didn't do much in the way of homework on my class, and just kept gearing and gemming and playing the same way I had in Cataclysm.

But there's nothing like a Raid Boss to quickly show a person just how bad the lazy way is.


FEET WET IN THE THRONE OF THUNDER

Staring a progression boss in the face for the first time
in a long time. Please ignore the skeletons.

I have officially been a Raider again for three weeks now. My new guild Acquired Taste is full of excellent people who were more than willing to help me get geared up, as well as hand-hold me as I learned the new fights. Their help, as well as some getting some long-awaited good loot-luck in LFR, has seen my iLVL rise from 476 to 501 in three short weeks, still on limited play-time. I'm managing to keep up with the other healers, despite my still-inferior gear.

But lordy, it's been a challenge. Walking on to a raid team that had three bosses on farm that I had never before encountered or even studied, being expected to contribute in a meaninful way and not hold the raid back, all while sporting several blues and one or two PVP gear pieces. Not to mention that this is a brand new guild for me and I'm still in my probation period, so if I don't impress I run the risk of losing not just my raid spot but potentially my new guild as well. But hey, no pressure, right?

In the end I think I've done pretty well. The first week we downed Tortos for the first time, and we followed it up with a last pull of the night, three-people-left-standing Megaera kill the week after. Our third week saw Ji-Kun fall, with the Battle Medic on nest-healing duties.


FEELIN' GROOVY

It's felt great to be back raiding again. The people I'm with are great, the Throne of Thunder raid is excellent and it's nice to finally be caught up with the game again and to feel like I've got things under control.

What? Patch 5.3 dropped today? It's got a whole bunch of new stuff to figure out, two new epic questlines and dozens more dailies to do?

Son of a bitch.

The Long Road Back

In Which the

DWARVEN BATTLE MEDIC

Attempts to Reconcile

CERTAIN LAMENTABLE EVENTS 

and Makes a 

FATEFUL DECISION.

For reasons that I cannot quite understand, this expansion hasn't really caught my imagination. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of really great things about this expansion; I'm really impressed with the levelling experience, for example, and the visuals are spectacular—probably the best that WoW has ever done. Mists of Pandaria has humour, great stories and a lot of things to do. But it just hasn't captured me: I like Pandaria, but I'm not really excited about Pandaria. And I don't know why.

Actually, I think I can make a guess. I think it has something to do with the fact that I have no goal to achieve this expansion.

Once I hit 90 I simply felt lost. Run a few heroics, get some decent gear, start running LFR. Once that was done, then what? Dailies? To what end? What is the point of gearing up a character if not to raid? It becomes rather like a girl dressing up in her best ballgown, twirling in front of her mirror night after night because she knows she's never going to get the chance to go to the dance.

At the risk of beating the same old dead horse and paraphrasing real-life Forsaken zombie James Carville, "IT'S THE RAIDING, STUPID".

Since January when some tumultuous real-life changes hit the Battle Medic household, I have essentially been taking a sabbatical from my Paladin. I've spent very little time playing WoW since then, and the vast majority of it has been on various different Alts on various different servers. Alt levelling, low level PVP, dipping my foot in the dark side of Horde levelling. Basically anything other than logging onto my main.

THE LOW POINT

So imagine my surprise when I finally do log in only to discover that my guild has transferred servers. And they went Horde as well. Double whammy.

It was a surprise, to say the least. The letter that is automatically sent from Blizzard is a terse slap in the face as far as notifications go. In fairness to the guild, I wasn't around so it's certainly not their fault that I didn't know—the website had plenty of info and I'm sure it was discussed at length in Mumble. So I don't blame them and wish them all the best on Mal'Ganis as damned, dirty Hordies.

But it did leave me feeling rather abandoned and alone. And it got me wondering whether or not I still enjoy this game enough to be paying my fifteen bucks a month for the privilege.

Blues just ain't gonna cut it anymore.

As it turns out, fuck yeah! I do.

Time to get back to work and start gearing in preparation for raiding. I'm way behind and I've got a long way to go, but damn, I'm looking forward to the challenge. I've just joined up with a new guild that has a late-night raid team that should work around the Dwarfling's schedule, and importantly, seem like fun people to be around. A fresh start, so to speak.

Look for more from Battle Medic in the very near future. I'm certain I'm going to have a lot to talk about.

The Joy of Lowbies

"It strikes! one, two,
Three, four, five, six. Enough, enough, dear watch,
Thy pulse hath beat enough. Now sleep and rest;
Would thou could'st make the time to do so too;
I'll wind thee up no more." - Ben Jonson The Staple of News


As I mentioned in my last post, I don't have much in the way of free, unimpeded time to dedicate to WoW these days.

The only raid boss that I attempt these days;
believe me, this is a fight with a lot of movement.

I'm sad to say that such an odd, irregular and easily interrupted schedule is not one that is conducive to raiding. Over the past couple of months or so my level 85s have withered due to neglect. My regular raiding has completely ground to a halt after going 8/8 on two toons with no heroic bosses down at all.

With only an hour or so of available time in an evening, running dungeons or LFR seem like an exhausting, implacable mountain to climb and not worth the effort. Doing daily quests gets very boring very quickly. Maximum level PVP is new and scary and intriguing, but would require a fair bit of effort to get the gear that would allow me to survive for more than the brief moment between when an enemy sees me and when he decides that I should be dead.

So what's a Dwarf to do?


THE JOY OF LOWBIES

I am an Altaholic, but not in the usual way. I am in a guild with several people who I would consider the norm for extreme cases of Altaholism: They tend to create an alt and focus intently on it until it reaches max level before giving a new one any real attention. Consequently, they have a lot of max level characters and characters that are well on their way there.

I am a little different. I have dozens of low level characters of every race and every class scattered around 10 or 12 different servers. Not including the Death Knights (only one of which I've ever gotten out of the starting zone; he's level 62), only a couple of these characters are above level 25. My highest level Horde character ever just dinged 18. Seriously.

I really enjoy low level characters and low level questing. There is something very compelling about boiling a class down to its very essence and seeing it naked and helpless in its infancy. In those initial levels each class is very similar: Uncomplicated, pure, and a joy to play. To see which skills are learned and when, and to discover how to use each new skill and see the way a class gradually becomes more complex is very intriguing.

I'm not really clear as to why, but I seem to hit a brick wall between level 14 and level 20. In the mid-teens the class will have taken shape and while many important and class defining abilities are yet to come, the fundamental structure of how the class is played is evident. For me, at least, this is when the experiment to test my attitude towards a class feels as if it's run its course.

As well, it's at that point that a character is out of the starting zones and into the next areas (Barrens, Westfall, etc). These zones are larger and more involved than the starting zones and feel more general and less specific to the character. This is when my mindset changes from, "This is a fun toy to play with," to "Oh gawd, I have how many freakin' levels to go?!?". Taking a character through these zones begins to firmly cement the notion in my head that I'm committing to the grind to get the character up to max level; a long and daunting process, especially for someone who levels as slowly as I do. Therefore, any character that makes it past that barrier and hits 20 is one that—in my head, at least—has been selected to survive and make the slow journey to level cap.

I have really only levelled a couple of different characters past this breaking point. My first character, a hunter, got to level 48 before he was abandoned and left to rot as I switched servers. My Warrior, Priest and Paladin all got to max level in Wrath, and two of them have gone onto 85. Thallie, my Shaman and current raiding main (the cobwebs on her are, at least, fresh) was the first character I created when Cataclysm launched and is the only one that I have managed to take to max level since then. So many more have failed this litmus test and remain unlevelled and unloved.

It seems that the decision to go past the level 20 barrier is a significant one for me. It is a mental commitment to that character; a commitment to learn and master the nuances of the class at the very highest levels. However, if the class, or the character's name or the server or anything else doesn't feel right, then that character is doomed to a shadowy half-life of neglect. Not to be deleted, but doomed to sit in the Inn at Sentinel Hill or at The Crossroads with pitiful white or grey gear, never to be the hero that they could be due to the capriciousness of my whimsy.

So having said all that, with a fervent desire to play but with limited play time in which to do it, I have been spending a lot of time with my low level Alts lately. Some have pushed past the elusive and mysterious Level 20 and have become, at least in my mind, actual characters, whilst some are still merely interesting toys to experiment with. It's been a lot of fun, and I've been indulging myself by seeing areas of the game and doing activities that I've never done before. It's as good a way as any to ride out the end of this expansion, at least until the raid healing bug bites me again.

What's Up, Dwarf?

"Why, I feel all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean, like butter that has been scraped over too much bread." - Bilbo Baggins, Fellowship of the Ring

It's been a while since I've posted anything substantial and I thought it time to catch you all up on what I've been up to lately. I have never been one to do the more personal posts, but I'm getting sick at seeing this blog wither and die like a spring flower in the harsh bitterness of an approaching winter. Cheerful metaphors aside, I need to get some things out of my head and onto the blog. I apologize in advance for the distressing lack of WoW content in this post.

"Omnomnomnom"
The face of pure destruction has never
looked so danged cute.

It feels like life is getting more and more hectic everyday around the Fannon stead. The Dwarfling is a very robust 9 months now, in perfect health and fully mobile; she's crawling and scuttling around like a famished Zoidberg going after a discarded hamburger. Nothing is safe from her wrath, and a rapid and frantic baby-proofing of our house is taking place at all hours of the day as she finds new and wonderful things to get her hands on to destroy.

I'm realizing that this parenting thing is a marathon that I have not trained for; my stamina is not nearly buffed enough to keep up with a rambunctious child. And it's only going to get worse as she realizes her legs are not merely for kicking the dogs when they get too close. Once she's walking, I'm doomed.

I know all the other parents out there are reading this with a bemused, knowing smirk on their face, and a feeling of pity mixed with a certain smug satisfaction that the hell that they went through is indeed universal.

Still, she's a treasure. The best part of my day is seeing her face light up when I get home from work. Nothing in this world beats a child that's happy to see you; I look forward to it all day.

Really, being tired from chasing a kid around isn't really the major stress source in my life at this moment. That honour definitely goes to my job. If you are a reader of my Twitter account you've no doubt read my many vitriolic tweets threatening to walk out. Well, dear reader, I am still in the same job I have been for the past two years. I haven't made a move yet because the hours are really quite cushy, but there isn't a day that goes by where I don't want to punch all the things, jump in a rather expensive vehicle and drive it through a plate-glass window. I'd love to just rage quit, but knowing that the Dwarfling is depending on me for everything she has means I can't be hasty when it comes to the major source of income in the family.

I bring all this up on Battle Medic because all this real life stress is affecting how I perceive this game. Frankly, I think it's clear that I've been going through a rather serious bout of depression for the past couple of months which has been negatively colouring my attitude and sucking the fun out of most everything in my life. I feel deflated and helpless when I log into WoW and look at the character screen these days - knowing that no matter what I try to do I will likely get interrupted by family matters and be unable to finish. I don't think I've done anything on my main other than raid in over a month because I just don't have the time. It's a terrible feeling and it has turned my stress-relief activity into an actual source of stress. I hate that.

Normally when I write something like this I try to broaden the topic a bit to make it less about me and a little more universal. But in this case I can't. I can't tell you how I'm going to work myself out of the funk that I'm in, nor can I offer any advice if you're going through something similar. I don't have any answers this time.

But what I can tell you is what I've been up to, trying to keep myself distracted.


WHAT'S UP WITH THE BLOG, DWARF?
(Are you still posting about WoW, or what?)

I'm not going to deny that I have been feeling very lackluster about posting Battle Medic these days. This post took me more than two weeks to finally finish, and I'm still not really happy with it. Looking at the blank post-entry page gives me the same feeling as when I'm looking at the character selection screen; a deep sigh and an immobilizing sense of panic.

The invent of the IntPiPoMo challenge that I have been tackling has been relatively lackluster in terms of generating traffic to the blog, but if it has accomplished nothing else it has got me posting again. It's been nice to be able to talk about something that I'm passionate about that is related to the game but not necessarily about the game - if that makes any sort of sense at all. It's been nice to get back into my image archives and show my faithful Battle Medic readers some of the other images that I work on and to talk a little about how I make them.


WHAT'S UP IN WARCRAFT, DWARF?

I have still been playing WoW over the past while, even though I haven't really been posting or Tweeting about it. I have a lot of posts in the works with my thoughts and reactions to the upcoming 4.3 patch and the new expansion which will hopefully be insightful even if they aren't exactly timely. Raiding is proceeding well enough, and I'm starting to get the itch to take my recently 85 Resto Shaman into the Firelands now that her gear is approaching acceptable levels. Not that I have time to raid with another character, mind you.

What I have been doing with my playing time is to work on some side projects.


The Deadman's Challenge

I started Vrykerion and Pysnister's Ironman Challenge as well, creating a soon-to-be-dead Orc named Grykthar. I plan to post more about this in a bit, but my spin on it makes it a perma-death challenge. So no items other than white and grey, no heirlooms, no dungeons, no nothing - and when the character dies he's dead for good.

I don't think that Grykthar will ever survive to be max level - in fact I fully expect to be writing many tales of woe and misery as I kill off character after character in ever more gruesome and entertaining ways. Look for a detailed introduction to Grykthar and my Deadman's Challenge coming soon.


Gnome Clone

Lillifleur the Gnome Clone
Fear our spiky and flirty Hair-dos!

More recently I have joined the Gnome Clone Army of [ Punt This ] with my lovely little clone mage Lillifleur. If you haven't heard of this before, it's a project started by Alas; the goal of which is to create an army of Gnome twinks, all with the same look, "uniform" and similar names, that will run roughshod over the Level 24 Battlegrounds. The idea has exploded on Twitter, and the Glorious Clone Army has surpassed 100 members, none of which are more than three feet tall.

Personally, I've been having a blast with my little clone. Levelling as a mage is fun and I think I may become addicted to blowing stuff up. She's an absolute beast and has already reached level 20 - by far my highest mage to date. Not only that, but the Clone Army is filled with scores of intelligent, witty and fun people, mostly culled from Twitter. Guild chatter is fun and lively, and I have been enjoying the levelling process.

Given my current state of mind, this project couldn't have come at a better time. I've tried starting other lowbie characters (my Druid is still languishing at level 24), but the prospect of levelling a character to 85 is a very daunting thought when time is an enemy. Getting a character to a "Level Cap" of 24, on the other hand, is simple, quick and painless. I'm excited to log in and play my little clone and I'm looking forward to getting her into some Battlegrounds and burning some Horde faces. I can't say that I have been excited about much of anything lately, so this feeling is a nice change of pace.

The highlight so far happened last night: A spontaneous flash mob of Gnome Clones descended on the unsuspecting denizens of Stormwind and entertained the bewildered spectators with Gnomish dancing and formation marching accompanied with loud and vociferous proclamations of gnomish supremacy. It was probably the most fun I've ever had in game, to tell the truth. By the end we had about 20 Lilli's precision marching from the Dwarven district to the Cheese Shop by the main gates, followed by a large crowd of very curious and fun-loving converts to the gnomish cause.

The Gnome Clone Army invades Stormwind to start a Dance Party

Quite a sight to see.


WHAT'S UP, DWARF?

Hopefully, my spirits. It's funny, but since I started writing this post several weeks ago, I have hit lows and highs - my mood has been quite variable and unpredictable - but I'm feeling a little better these days. Work has been less than completely awful the past few weeks, and the constant stream of house-guests, events and other time-sinks that have been eating away at my soul are done at least for the near term. And last night I actually managed to force a little alone time where I could just sit back and enjoy myself. It was nice and desperately needed.

With any luck your favourite Battle Medic will be back in good spirits and posting more soon. Thank you all for your patience, and perseverance to actually read through this rather whiny post. Writing it seems to have helped; I hope it wasn't too painful to read. But at least you've got a bit more insight as to what I've been going through personally the past while.

Shannox Down - Identifying the Problem

A lot of people read my whining about Shannox in my last post and offered a lot of great tips on getting through the fight. Thank you everyone for your advice and comments.

Dead.

However, frustrated with our lack of success in Firelands, Mountain Top put together an off-night raid last night to take another crack at Shannox before the weekly reset. Sadly, both myself and our regular Death Knight Tank were unable to attend due to family issues.

They one-shot Shannox and killed Beth'tilac as well for good measure. Grats, Mountain Top!

The difference, as it turns out, was changing tanks. The Protection Warrior that replaced our regular DK tank was able to block a great deal of the incoming damage that was insta-gibbing our DK, which made the healing in the last phase a lot smoother and easier to deal with.

Also dead.

Don't get me wrong, our DK is a great tank and there is no one I would rather heal when the going gets tough, but reading the Blood DK forums over on Elitist Jerks confirms that a lot of DK tanks are having problems coping with the damage spikes in this encounter. The self-healing that the Blood spec uses to tank is seemingly less effective during intense, burst damage than the reliable mitigation from blocks that a Paladin or Warrior can expect.

It's no excuse, and it doesn't really change anything for next week when our Death Knight will be back getting beat on by Shannox. We'll still need to figure out a way to prevent him from dying.

But the bastard and his dogs are dead, and that makes me a happy Paladin.

Next up: Admiral McSpinnypants

 
   

On Timing: The 4.1 Keybind Action Change

Have you ever had something that you do all the time suddenly feel completely uncomfortable and unfamiliar? Like when you write a word that you've written a thousand times before but then look at it and find no connection between the specific arrangement of letters and the meaning, as if you've never seen the word before? It's an odd feeling.

Something like that happened to me after the 4.1 patch.

One of the less heralded features that Blizzard included in 4.1 was a change to the way key presses work. In the past, when you pushed a key down the ability that is bound to that key would not activate until you released the key. Or put more simply, the ability activated when the key was going up as opposed to down.

Blizzard added an option to change this behaviour in the form of a check-box in the Interface>Combat part of the main menu. Having this box checked would change the action of the key press to activate when the key is pressed, rather than released. Blizzard also set this option to ON by default.

For many, this was a welcome and long overdue change. Add-ons have existed for a long time to provide this kind of functionality, and many people have been using them for years. In theory it should save a split-second every time you activate an ability. It's kind of a mystery as to why they did it the other way in the first place, really.

MOMMY, MY BUTTONS DON'T FEEL RIGHT

I swear that I tried to give this change an honest try. I can completely see the advantages of the new key action, and before the patch I was very excited about this change. I figured that it would make healing much more natural and responsive and in the long run would make me a better healer.

However, something happened that I did not expect. Every time I tried to heal things just didn't work right. My timing had been completely thrown off by the change. I would press the button too early and get a That Ability Isn't Ready Yet error and my spell wouldn't cast, forcing me to press the button again and waste precious time. Or I would press the button and it would cast on the wrong target because I had selected the target I wanted a fraction of a second after hitting the button. My timing was off so much that everything felt completely foreign and I was having a really hard time healing.

That split second made a huge difference.

I ended up having to spend more time looking at my Stuf cast bar (which shows latency) so that I could time the button presses just right, which meant spending less time looking at the giant globs of green goo that the boss was using to try to kill me. My fingers just didn't want to cooperate, and were fighting years of muscle memory in trying to learn the new timing.

I tried for a week or so to get used to to it, but I ended up having to turn it off. Once I did everything felt alright again and the natural flow of my healing rhythm returned.

I guess the moral of this little story is that any little change can be a big change. Given more time I probably could have got used to it, or I could have switched to Clique or Mouseover Macros to solve to problem. But the simplest solution was to just turn it off.

Did anyone else have any problems adjusting to the change, or am I just weird?
 
 

Call to Arms, A Rebuttal

Blizzard announced yesterday a new tweak to the Looking for Dungeon system to help alleviate the long dungeon queue times that are experienced by many.

The idea is simple enough: Incentivise the least represented role to encourage players of that role to queue up for dungeons more often by offering perks and a chance for rare in-game items.

From Blizzard's post:

"Call to Arms is meant to lower wait times by offering additional rewards for queuing as the currently least represented role. To be eligible for the additional rewards you must solo queue for a random level-85 Heroic in the role that is currently being Called to Arms, and complete the dungeon by killing the final boss. Every time you hit these requirements (there is no daily limit) you'll receive a goodie bag that will contain some gold, a chance at a rare gem, a chance at a flask/elixir (determined by spec), a good chance of receiving a non-combat pet (including cross faction pets), and a very rare chance at receiving a mount. The pets offered come from a wide variety of sources, and include companions like the Razzashi Hatchling, Cockatiel, and Tiny Sporebat, but the mounts are those specifically only available through dungeons (not raids), like the Reins of the Raven Lord from Sethekk Halls, Swift White Hawkstrider from Magister's Terrace, and Deathcharger's Reins from Stratholme."

This is aimed primarily at Tanks, since 99% of the time they are the least represented role and the queue time bottleneck, but occasionally healers will benefit from this as well.  The benefit to Damage Dealing players is, if this system works as intended, drastically reduced queue times and a better, less frustrating experience with the Dungeon Finder.

I'm not going to go into the details of this new idea as I think it's been covered really well by others. Psynister has a great post up that dissects the advantages and potential problems with this new system extremely well, and from a DPSers perspective.

However, I do want to offer my own opinion on some of the issues that have been raised.

First off, this is a great first step into alleviating the Dungeon Queue problem, but it's not a long-term solution. If the fundamental problem with the LFD system is the lack of tanks, then the solution must be to encourage people to roll and play tanks. Having this added perk is nice, but it does nothing to change how the role plays or to encourage more people to do it.

Secondly, since the Damage Dealers are the ones suffering for the long delays, it makes sense to reward them as well. I suggest a scaling buff tied to the Queue time so that for each 15 minutes spent waiting in the queue, that person would receive a 5% buff to all rewards generated up to a maximum of 20%. Experience, gold and Justice/Valor points received would all be boosted.  Perhaps anyone with the maximum 20% buff would also get a chance at the rare drops that are now being dangled in front of the tanks. Adding this incentive would hopefully increase the patience of DPSers because they would be acknowledged and rewarded for enduring a wait time longer than the other roles.

Of course, doing this means that the only role getting screwed over would be the healers.  C'est la vie.

Lastly, one of the largest concerns that I've heard, especially from healers, is that this change is going to encourage more Plate DPS to try their hand at Tanking in gear that is unsuitable for the role, which means we are about to be innundated with a whole wave of LOLTanks in DPS gear that are completely unprepared for what actually needs to be done as a tank, but will get the extra rewards as the rest of the group stuggles to carry him through the dungeon.

This is certainly a possibility, and I'm sure there will be instances of it, but I don't think it will be any worse that it is now - DPSers are already queuing as Tanks for the instant queue.  Preventing that is what the Votekick function is for.


ENCOURAGING THE BADS, BUT ALSO SOME GOODERS

However, what if this change encourages a Death Knight or a Paladin DPS to try tanking for the first time and he likes it?  That's Blizzard's hope and the only way that the Queue situation can be improved long term.

It has never been easier than it is now to try a role that you've never done before. With Dual Specs being so cheap as to be inconsequential, and between the Auction House, Justice and Valor points and quest rewards and dungeon drops it's possible now to gear up for a different role without ever having to run a dungeon as that spec.  This is a mixed blessing, obviously, since at some point our fledgling Tank is going to have to bite the bullet, enter the queue and actually tank a dungeon. But there is no excuse for ever tanking without the proper tools and gear.


THE PRESSURE ON A NEW TANK

I have done some tanking in my time. I have a level 80 warrior that went through the Lich King expansion as Protection - even tanking some raids. I enjoy tanking, but the pressure that is put on a tank, particularly a new one, is pretty extreme. A new tank is expected to know which mobs need to die first, where to position them and when to interrupt them. They are expected to know where to go and what to do.

A new tank, especially one that is just dipping his foot into the role as a secondary spec, isn't necessarily going to have all the tools that he needs for the job. He's not going to be as quick to pick up stray adds; he may not even have a threat meter installed or know that he should, for that matter. He's likely going to make mistakes that will wipe the group.

And odds are he's going to get told off, insulted, belittled, called a bad, kicked from the group or simply ignored as a "noob".  It's happened to me before, and is frustrating as hell. Simply put, learning how to tank is not fun.


IT'S UP TO US

There is only one sure-fire, long term solution to the tank shortage: Tanking needs to be more fun. Blizzard can do their part, but certainly some of the reason that many tanks will only run with a guild group, or have given up Tanking altogether is because of how Tanks are treated by the other players.

It's up to us to solve the long-term Tank shortage by making life just a little bit more pleasant for them. Offer to help or coach a new tank that looks like he's struggling. Offer up a "Great tanking" kudo more often. Pay attention to the DPS order and CC targets. Or even do something simple like ask the tank what he wants from his raid markers, or offer to put them up for him - especially if the tank is a new one.


PROVING THE POINT

It's been a long time since I tanked - not since Wrath. But to prove that this change might just make things a little better after all, I am going to pick up my shield again and bash some heads with it.

I have three different characters that can start tanking right away:  Thosif, my Paladin is dual-specced Protection and I have been collecting gear for a while now (as of this moment he has a weird collection of tanking and DPSing gear, which means I'm going to have to spend some money to fill in the holes); Krupel, my Warrior who is level 80 and hasn't been into the Cataclysm zones yet; and my level 33 Paladin on Azuremyst, who is levelling as Protection but has yet to step into a dungeon.

If I, a dedicated Battle Medic, am tempted to give Tanking another try because of this, perhaps I'm not alone and this change will make a difference. Even if it doesn't, it's a step in the right direction. And if absolutely nothing else, it just proves that Blizzard does get it - they do understand what the players are going through and what the problems are, and that they're working on it - whether the community agrees with their choices or not.


TOO LONG, DIDN'T READ

To sum up:  Looking for Dungeon: Call to Arms is a good idea, but only time will tell if it's enough.

Coping with Limited Play-Time and Lofty Goals

If you have been following me on Twitter, you may know that my wife and I are expecting our first little Dwarven Battle Baby pretty much any minute. I have taken to calling her the Dwarfling, and she represents an upcoming shift in my personal priorities. Apparently my new priorities in life are going to revolve around poop for a long while, and an 'Epic Wipe' is going to have an entirely different meaning than it does now.

A newborn Dwarfling is a wonderful thing that is, aside from poop, full of endless possibilities and uncertainties. The one thing that is absolutely certain is that my WoW playing time is going to be far more constrained than it is now, assuming Mrs. Fannon lets me anywhere near the computer in the first place.

However, even given the limitations on my free time, I still have very lofty goals when it comes to WoW. I still want to continue raiding with my guild and stay on track for getting all the current raid content down before the first major patch. I still haven't abandoned my priestly namesake who needs to be leveled and geared yet. Not to mention the Druid and Shaman that are withering from lack of attention (I can hear them now; the level 18 Shaman is saying in her weirdly sexy dwarfish brogue, "C'mon, lemme heal somethin'", and the level 6 Druid is saying, "Please get me out of these clown clothes already").

And I want to continue writing for and growing this blog, since I have enjoyed writing about WoW as much as I enjoy playing it.

So then, you may ask, what is my strategy to do both? I have been giving this some thought over the past few weeks, and since a lot of people have jobs and children and spouses and all sorts of different things that restrict their playing time, I thought it might be helpful to share my thoughts with everyone.


PRIORITIES FIRST, PLEASE

Firstly, it's important to set priorities. I realize that WoW is just a game, and as such, necessarily needs to take a backseat to what's happening in the real world. If the Dwarfling is crying, poopy or having any of the issues that babies are prone to, my raid team is just going to have to wait until she's taken care of. The bosses aren't going anywhere, and will be there when I'm done.


GETTING THE BOSS ON BOARD

I should mention at this point that despite my best efforts, my Wife does not play WoW. I've tried, believe me, but she just doesn't have any interest in the game.

If you have a spouse, it's important to get them on your side. WoW has a reputation as a nortorious relationship killer, and while that certainly can be true, it's no worse than any other time or money consuming interest that you don't share with your spouse. If I spent all my time out at a bowling alley instead of playing WoW, that could present just as much of a problem. It's important to talk to your spouse and let them know how much you enjoy WoW and what it does for you (relaxation, stress-relief, escape, etc). If they know that it is important to you, it is far more likely that they will give you the time that you need.

My wife and I have discussed my WoW time at great length and various volume levels during the years that I have been playing. I still don't think she quite understands how or why I enjoy the game so much, or how much of a stress release it can be (the stress of an entire nights worth of wipes, notwithstanding). But, after all this discussions and arguments, and I think we have reached a point of mutual understanding: She knows that she has precedence, but allows me my stress relief as well. Well, at least until the dishes need to be done or something.

Communication is key. If you don't talk to your family about this game and why it's important, it will always be an irritant if they feel that it's getting in the way of their time with you. Share it, talk about it, even if they don't play try to involve them in it to some degree. I tell my wife about all my raids, and even through her utter disinterest she listens. She doesn't care, and thinks that killing Internet Dragons is silly, but the fact that I want her to be a part of it means something to her. It's just like telling her how work went, except with shiny purples at the end.


SCHEDULING FOR DUMMIES

I have found the best way to ease the tensions between my wife and my WoW is to set aside specific times of the week for play time. The rest of the time is spent with her, either relaxing and enjoying each other's company, or doing household tasks that seem endless. The arrival of the Dwarfling means that there are a lot more things to do, so scheduling play time becomes even more important.

As of right now, I have two raid nights a week scheduled and essentially an hour of play time per night. It's never set in stone, of course, since Life Comes First, but it's at a point where I have regular play times set aside and the stress and arguments have been drastically reduced. I get the feeling that there will be some renegotiation when the dirty diapers start piling up, but if she knows that my game time on Sundays and Mondays always ends at 9 o'clock, then she can plan things around that. It's all about being respectful to your family and their needs, as well as taking care of your own.


MAKING THE MOST OF THE TIME YOU'VE GOT

How many game sessions have you spent sitting in Stormwind or Dalaran or wherever, just standing in front of the bank, not really sure what to do? I know it happens to me all the time. Sometimes I'm not sure whether I want to hit a heroic, farm some ore, play an alt or whatever, and I just end up idling in the city and commenting in guild chat at how idiotic trade chat is.

As anyone with limited availability will attest, this is an atrocious waste of your precious game time.

When you have a limited time budget, it's ideal to have a plan on what you want to do before you sit down and log in. By setting a goal or at least an activity you will be able to waste less time doing nothing. Frankly, I'm horrible at this, but it's something that I need to get better at. And quickly, too.

My plan is to focus on one thing per evening. I don't really have time every day to do all my dailies, run my daily heroic, farm the ore I need for Jewelcrafting and at the same time level three alts. To be time efficient, I am going to focus on one of these tasks each play session, with the highest priority going to the daily heroic in order to stockpile the valor points I need to gear up. When I only have an hour or so, or at a time when I could be pulled away at any moment, I'll focus on the other things.

The nice thing about leveling alts through questing is that you can stop and log out at any moment without inconveniencing anyone else like you would in a raid or heroic. This makes alts ideal for people with limited play time. If your goal is like mine and you want to be progression raiding however you need to be careful of this, as alts are a notorious time-sink and can take your focus away from your raiding characters. But it's a great way to sneak some play time in when you only have a few minutes to play.


QUEST REWARDS

World of Warcraft is a hobby. As something I enjoy it becomes a bit of an escape from the trials and grinds of the real world. As such, it's a great incentive to use to movtivate yourself to get unpleasant things done so you can have more time having fun in Azeroth. It's also a bargaining chip that you can use to negotiate play time with your significant other, if needed.

When I sit down to spend some time on my computer playing, the last thing that I want to do is to have to stop in the middle of something and go and take out the trash, or pick up the dog crap in the backyard, mow the grass or whatever. The interruptions make getting anything done, both in Azeroth and the real world much harder and much more frustrating. There is nothing worse that telling your raid leader that you need to go and empty the dishwasher and nobody is really going to mind 15 minutes of their flask time ticking away for no reason, will they? Raid leaders know a lot of very colourful four-letter words, and they save them for moments like that.

So, using WoW as a reward for getting your jobs done is a great way to maximize the chances of uninterrupted game time. Baby is asleep, diapers are thrown away and wife is all happy? Great, time for a little WoW. Had a particularly stressful day at work and need some PVP pwnage to make you feel better? Mow the lawn first and then go kill those rogues and warlocks.

I find there is nothing worse than having a task of some kind that needs to be done looming over my head when I sit down to play. It's far better to get things done before playing, and not after. This is also something I need to get better at.


CAN THIS ACTUALLY WORK?

I think so. I think it's possible to still have enough play time to do what I want to do in WoW and still be a great father and husband to my family. They key is to set realistic expectations for yourself, and to be mindful of your family and their needs and most importantly, place them first. If it's your job or other activities that are restricting your time, rewarding yourself for getting everything else done is an excellent way to ensure that you have some uninterrupted and guilt-free play time.

Remember, WoW is a recreational activity. It's really no different than a bowling league, or a chess club or anything else. If you want to play, then set aside some regular, scheduled time and do so.

This Week in Raiding: Progression Road Kill

This Week in Raiding is a (hopefully) weekly feature discussing the raiding encounters that my guild tackled this week, the lessons learned from them, as well as any news or thoughts on raiding in general.

PROGRESSION ROAD KILL

In the past several weeks, Shadowgarde has been doing very well when it comes to progression, especially given some of the restrictions that are inherent to a casual raiding guild.  Even with a lack of healers and a raid composition that is never the same twice, we have managed to down bosses consistently and haven't regressed on any of the encounters that we have downed previously.

This week was our first look at three new encounters that completely kicked our ass.  And I don't mean 20% wipes or Oh-My-God-We-Almost-Had-Him-If-Only-That-Guy-Hadn't-Had-His-Head-Up-His-Ass type of wipes.  No, we're talking the 20-Seconds-Into-The-Fight-Holy-Fuck-What-Just-Happened wipe.

GOOD NEWS FIRST

There was some good news this week.  Our Sunday/Monday raid group went into BWD and took down the three bosses that we've killed so far with little trouble.  Magmaw was one-shot perfectly, Omnitron was taken down quickly with only a couple of wipes, and Maloriak was defeated for the second time after about an hour or so of working on it.  After a couple of attempts on Halfus we wrapped up our first raid night with very high spirits, as it was significant progress given that we hadn't managed to get all three bosses down in one night previously.

HALFUS

The trouble started with Halfus and the lovely drake combination that was up last week:  Nether, Storm and Slate.  Everything that I have read on this fight says that this is the worst possible threesome, and it's a hellish way to get your first look at this encounter.  What with the stacking healing debuff, the increased attack speed and Shadow Nova knocking everyone back and interrupting everything, most of our attempts didn't get very far before people started dying.  We tried it twice this past week, with two different raid groups and didn't really get very far.  At least people have now seen the fight and have an idea what to expect.  I'm hoping that with this little bit of experience and a slightly easier drake combination that we'll make some headway this week.  

I am honestly a little astonished that this boss is considered an "entry level" raid boss on par with Magmaw.  He hits freaking hard.

CHIMAERON

Walking in to this encounter on Monday evening was a bit of a shock, honestly.  I figured that we'd keep working on Halfus, so I was quite unprepared for this fight.  And as a healer, this fight is a complete and utter shock the first time you try it.  

If you haven't seen this fight before, it has a really interesting and unique mechanic.  The raid gets an buff that prevents them from being one-shot as long as they are about 10,000 health.  This is very good, since the boss will periodically hit the raid for 280,000 damage.  As long as everyone is above this level the raid is fine and it's the healer's job to get them back to 10k but no further, which puts a unique twist on healing.  Small, fast heals and mana efficiency seem to be whats needed here, and any heal that goes out while someone is over 10k health is utterly wasted.  It really made me take a long, hard look at my healing spell choices.

At the same time the Tanks are going to be taking a huge amount of damage and need to be topped off.  They have the same buff preventing them from being one shot as long as they're over 10k health, but often they will be struck with a double attack that can kill them if their health is too low.

And of course the buff will periodically disappear and everyone needs to rock their biggest AOE heals to keep up with the damage.  This fight seems to be designed to really test the healers mana management skills.

Our attempts on this boss ended badly.  We had two Holy Paladins and a Holy Priest, which didn't seem to be a very good combination for this fight.  My heals seemed to be coming in too slow to help keep the raid up, and the tanks seemed to need everything we could throw at them to keep alive.  By the end we had one Paladin on the tanks, the Priest on the raid and I was bouncing in between them, which seemed to work better.  It looks that we need a lot of work on this fight yet.

BE VEWY VEWY QUIET, WE'RE WIPING ON ATRAMEDES

After about an hour of solid futility with Chimaeron, we decided to take a look at Atramedes.  The trash packs of Dark Iron Dwarf Spirits in his room caused us a great deal of trouble, particularly the group on the left.  Chain Lightning is nasty, and make a mental note that these guys don't reset and have no leash.  During one rather unique wipe we ended up accidentally kiting them back up the elevator to the entrance where they immediately attacked anyone who zoned into the instance.  I was laughing my ass off, even as I did my second corpse run of the pull.

At this point in the night, we had pretty much chaulked this night up to a learning experience anyway, so our attempts on Atramedes only lasted for about half an hour.  We did get a good sense of the fight mechanics, and it looks like he will be the next boss that we tackle.

I love the mechanics that this fight brings to the table.  The sound bar and the gongs are very cool.  And the visual effects of his special abilities are unique and beautiful.  I am looking forward to working on this fight; it looks like a lot of fun.


THE LESSON:  PREPARATION IS KEY

This raid week really showed me the benefits of preparation.  We were prepared and ready to tackle Magmaw, Omnitron and Maloriak and we got them down quickly and efficiently.  We struggled on the bosses that we weren't prepared for, even though the Raid Leaders knew the strategy and communicated it to the raid.  Obvious as it may seem, reading up on the bosses beforehand and watching videos on the fight makes a world of difference.  As well, during progression, Raid Leaders need to communicate which bosses will be tackled next so that the raid can have an adequate chance to prepare themselves.  Surprises in a raid setting will lead to wipes, repair bills and drama.  Do everything you can to minimize them. 

UPDATE 4.Feb.2011

Last night our Tuesday/Thursday raid group went into Bastion of Twilight to continue working on Halfus.  Due to the lack of healers that I've talked about before it took them a long time to get the raid together, and had a couple of alts subbing in the healing spots.  I listened in on Ventrilo and our healer channel and it seemed like they were making some good progress.  With about an hour left in the raid, I was asked to sub in for one of the healer alts.  It caused a little drama with my wife, but I agreed.

The fight went so much better than last week.  I was assigned the tanks and we started making some real progress towards the fight, but were still wiping pretty consistently before the drakes were down.  On our very last attempt, however, we had a really good one going; the tanks were up, my mana was good (I had tunnel vision bad enough that I have NO idea how the other healers were managing) and the drakes went down.  It's amazing how much easier this fight gets once the drakes start falling.

With literally one second left until the enrage timer, Halfus fell.  It felt good.

On Magmaw and Pre-Raid Jitters

As I mentioned in my last post, Shadowgarde took on Magmaw in our first official guild raid.  We spent a solid hour and a half working on him over 7 or 8 attempts, but we finally got him down.  It was quite the thrilling finish as well:  Our tank died at 13% to a Mangle so we had to either kill Magmaw while he was chained, or else it would more than likely be a wipe.  Everyone stepped up the DPS, and even the healers started throwing all they had at the boss.  Magmaw died just at the last instant and we had our kill.

We did a single tank strategy on this fight, which put the pressure squarely on the healers to keep the tank alive.  Our healing team was myself, another Paladin and a Holy Priest.  For the most part, we were able to keep the team alive long enough to hit the enrage timer.  The strategy also called for the healers to stack with the Melee, which kept it much simpler and really allowed us to focus on the job of healing, and not dodging Pillars of Flame and those awful Lava Maggots.

I took my own advice and had a guildie craft the Elementium Stormshield for me before the raid began.  It felt very good to be fighting with a shield again, as opposed to a book.  I'm not sure how much of a difference it made, but it certainly gave me a tiny bit more confidence having a shiny purple equipped.

All in all, my pre-raid jitters were completely unfounded.  I think I did just fine. 

LESSONS

After the raid I took a look back at Recount to go through the numbers and analyze how I did and found a few things:

- I learned that you need to save your log quicker if you want to upload it to World of Logs.  Oops.

- Either Recount doesn't handle our Illuminated Healing Mastery properly (which is likely), or our mastery is completely and utterly broken.  According to Recount, in a 9 minute fight I had one single solitary shield that absorbed 2121 damage.  That simply cannot be right.  I wonder if I need to get an upgraded version.

- I gained back a total of 244000 mana.  Mainly from Seal of Insight as you’d expect, but I also got from Divine Plea, Glyph of Divinity, Corrupted Egg Shell and a Mana Potion.  Being able to recognize the slow damage period (which is fairly obvious in this fight) so you can slow your heals, hit Divine Plea and regenerate your mana is very key.  I managed to hit Divine Plea three times in that fight and my Corrupted Egg Shell at least twice.  Due to the healing reduction, I am reluctant to hit Divine Plea as often as I’d like, but I certainly can get better with using the Egg for mana regen.  It's a two minute cooldown, and I could have used it at least twice more.

The Innervate from the Druid and the Divine Hymn helped as well, of course.  Mana was my foremost concern for the entire fight, but I ended up managing it pretty well, I thought.  Blizzard wanted to make it matter, and they certainly have suceeded.

- Right now I do not have Lay on Hands glyphed to reduce the cooldown.  However, if Raid Boss fights are going to last this long, I'm definitely going to change that.  I could have used it twice in that fight, and it would have been extraordinarily useful a second time around.

- When you have a mechanic that requires everyone to bunch up, Holy Radiance is godly.  It ended up being my #2 heal after Beacon of Light.  I only remember popping it 5 or 6 times, but it ended up accounting for 16% of my overall healing.  Also, the Speed of Light boost saved my bacon in this fight three or four times when I was required to get out of the fire. 

- 53 Holy Shocks in a 9 minute fight seems a bit low.  Ideally, you could squeeze in 90, plus whatever Daybreak procs you get.  I need to improve on this.

- 21 Flash Heals and 9 Divine Lights.  I'm actually surprised that I managed to do with that few Divine Lights. 

- Only 16 Judgements.  Wow, it really felt like more.  If I was Judging on cooldown, I could have done 67, returning more than 150000 mana.  That’s a lot of mana left on the table and while you can't expect to perfectly judge every time it's available, I can definitely do better than this.

CONCLUSIONS

It is hard to draw any real conclusions from a single raiding night, but I think that I can say two things:  my healing style is not yet as efficient as I would like it to be, but I am ready to raid.

Bring on the bosses.

Second Lesson from Heroics: Hard Choices

As a healer, I take it personally when someone in my party has their health bar dip.  It’s my job, after all, to ensure that they survive so that they can do their thing.  With the new realities of healing and mana management there are limitations to what a healer can do to keep people alive.  This leads to the healer having to make some hard choices when prioritizing who gets what heal and when.

(As an aside, how has no one coined the term Mana-gement yet?  Mananagement, maybe?)

Balance

With very expensive yet weak heals relative to health pools, it has become normal for people to be at less than full health during an encounter.  Therefore, a healer needs to be mentally balancing three fundamental things constantly:

1) The Tank’s Health

2) The Healer’s Mana bar

3) The Party’s Health as a whole

Thinking of the party in these terms simplifies the scope of healing.  You don’t need to worry about 5 different health bars so much as you have to worry about three things:  Keep your tank at a survivable level of health, keep your mana bar up, and keep enough, preferably all of the party alive to finish the encounter. 

Striking the successful balance between these three important factors is at the heart of the Cataclysm healing paradigm.  Sacrificing any one of these elements generally means a wipe, while a properly balanced approach should be successful.  For example, if your tank is low on health but not in critical danger of dying, spamming large heals to top him up at the expense of your mana reserves means that you will not be able to last long enough to finish the encounter.  Likewise, keeping your mana high is pointless if everyone is dying on you.

Yes, this is normal.  Don't Panic.

The Needs of the Many…

A great example of this balancing act occurred last night during a Heroic Throne of the Tides run.  It was a partial guild run with myself, the Tank and a Shadow Priest in the group which was rounded out by a Mage and a Rogue that we found using the LFD tool.  It was a great group, actually, and the run went quite smoothly.  It’s amazing how much easier Lady Naz’jar is with proper crowd control.

However, during the Commander Ulthok encounter I ran into one of these hard decisions that really crystallized this whole balance idea in my mind.  If you have not done the encounter, Ulthok creates Dark Fissures on the ground that expand throughout the fight, similar to the Lich King’s Defile.  There is nothing that can be done about these, you simply need to avoid them and is the key mechanic with this fight.

One mistake that our tank made was that he allowed the first Fissure to be dropped in the centre of the room, which eventually seriously limited the space that we were able to safely occupy during the encounter.  After the first one, he tanked and kited the boss around the edge of the room properly and everything was proceeding fine.

However, about halfway into the fight, I notice one of our damage dealers standing in the middle of the room taking damage from the first Fissure and not moving out of it.  It was the Shadow Priest from our guild, who is a very good player, but it left me with a dilemma:  Do I heal him or not?  In Wrath it wouldn’t even have been a question; I would have spammed big heals on him and the boss would have been dead before it became an issue.  Not so, now.

I chose not to heal him.

That felt really, really wrong, but it was the right call.

In order to heal him, I would have had to start casting my fast, expensive Flash Heal just to keep up with the damage.  It would have saved him, at least for a while, but it also would have destroyed my mana reserves in very short order; jeopardizing the entire encounter and violating the principle of balance.  By recognizing that the Priest was beyond help unless he moved allowed me to focus on what I could save, and ultimately get the kill.

The Lesson

Cataclysm heroic dungeons (and I assume Cataclysm raids, even though I’m not there yet) force you to rethink who you are healing and with what spell.  Many people will tell you that as a healer, you must prioritize the tank and yourself and screw the damage dealers.  I feel this is a flawed strategy, as a party with no damage won’t kill much of anything.  You must strike the balance and keep all three parts of the party alive and functioning.  Sacrificing one-third of your damage to save the whole is one of the hard choices that you’re going to have to get used to making as a Cataclysm healer.