Saturday, March 28, 2009
A quick share
Seeing as how quite a few have been doubting my concerns for Druid tanking in Ulduar, here it is from Tun of Ensidia. My concerns do differ from his, although the lack of cooldowns was always an issue I was aware of it wasn't my primary concern. Figured I'd share the bad news incase someone still happened to read it.
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10 comments:
Ah I see thanks for the explanation. It makes a ton of sense to me why you're going to switch toons. I have vehemently disagreed with you in the past, but I knew there was more to why you had this opinion than objectivity :P
You know, when I was hunting for an uber guild to join, I spoke with an ex-premonition feral, who thought bears were currently the #4tank in game. This was in Jan 2009, when Blizzard, many players & many other bears thought we were too OP. At the same time, he was bored and depressed with the game for other reasons, including general burnout. He had terrible hardware that ground to a halt constantly, meaning he was of little use in trash pulls, and couldnt be used on bosses. Thus it became clear that his premonition-qualified analysis of bears had next to nothing to do with bears, and was just a reflection of his own little set of circumstances.
"Ensidias bear" was mocked to pieces on the forums, apart from a few stalwart defenders like your good self. I dont know what to think, but, like our premonition bear, I suspect his comments reflect him, more than the game.
There was once a bear called surabear, who wrote a blog called the rambling bear. In more recent times, he wrote about how ferals sucked. I was very influenced at the time since I was a new bear, and he was an "authority". A while later he admitted he'd been suffering from clinical depression for many years... and suddenly it all made sense. *Thats* why I felt so depressed after reading his blog. I told him that was ridiculous, and he should have kept his mouth shut about bears - which didnt go down to well. "Dont come to my blog if you dont like it" blah blah blah.
Good luck in your future blogging and gaming. I hope you find enjoyment.
Tun has been doing exceptionally well as feral DPS posting numbers over 6k with Ensidia in their 25man clears today. As far as I can tell he's in very good spirits, although he himself describes himself as "more of a bear than a kitty" in his new blog on Ensidias site.
It's hard to tell right now how bears are going to turn out, I'm gravitating more in the direction of thinking the problems will be threat and cooldowns, same as Tun originally stated. My own role seems to be taking a turn towards tank healing as a disc priest now, so I hope I'll be able to keep tabs on what tanks are "easiest to keep up" from that vantagepoint.
Coolio well good for Tun. Yeah, we have one pretty nooby seeming feral dps druid, who last night on XT was between 1 & 4 in total damage. I dont know if that reflects badly on our mages & locks, or reflects great our druid.
I'm not saying Tun was depressed per say; I'm just saying there are tons of reasons that "top" players are very unobjective. You've got to remember this is a video game culture; the rules that apply to adult life, professionalism, norms of societal conduct etc etc (well, I'm an adult, so this is a culture I'm a part of) definitely do not apply to the best guilds in the world, who apparently have devoted their entire lives to playing warcraft.
Have fun priesting it up! Again, I dont expect you to be objective about it. I've met healers with pretty much every variety of "I prefer to heal .... tank" under the sun. Its clear that, object as people can be, there's no consensus. Again, from my adult world perspective, that is *exactly* what I would expect.
Well, it may be hard to tell how bears are turning out, but so far, I'm the best choice for pretty much every progression encounter in Ulduar, because of my higher EH. So I'd say we're turning out pretty well Hey! but that's just my guild. Also, our longest tank player is a warrior, and we wouldnt want him to feel left out. But no doubt when we start on Ignis, we're gonna see a lot more instagibbing with a warrior than a bear. I'm having a real problem finding the "problems with bears" myself.
Oh personal note: are you actually from finland? Did you know scandinaveans typically suffer from negativity + depression more than many other nations of the world? Suicicde rates are very high etc. You get to know a lot of them, and you find they are morbidly depressed people. I mean really, its a problem. Even though they have some of the best living conditions in the world.
Yeah I'm actually from Finland, Southernmost parts of it, and I'm a pretty happy-go-lucky type of guy.
I'll say this much about hardcore gamers having myself played with some of the people who've been amongst the best in the world in this game and in others(I used to know some of the officers and the guild leaders of Massive, know The Legacy, who just nabbed the world 3rd on Yogg), their way to approach the game is quite different to what you seem to think. They approach everything in the game with a very analytical, logical mindset, they are goal-orientated and they are very skilled at working individually and as a group. It may seem extreme the level of commitment they put in at the start of these new encounters, but whilst most guilds keep raiding on and off for the rest of the week, Ensidia and the likes are now finished. Their next raiding day is next Wednesday, that's 2 days of extreme commitment, and then 5 days of hanging out with friends, gf's, working etc. Yes, next week they will be back, and they'll keep putting in long hours getting world firsts, but within a week or two, they are down to raiding once a week, maybe twice, for maybe 4h per day. Farm mode. More casual than most so called casual guilds. If they are the least bit like my old m8s, they spend the very least time they can on the game outside of their raiding. Just something worth keeping in mind about those hardcores ;)
Actually thats a great point, I'm sure thats true. Interestingly enough, it probably also implies they dont know alot about classes. if they play so little most of the time, but then a lot, and very intensely for a small amount of the time when there's new content, that indeed means they are more casual than casual guilds, in terms of time played. If they have great, fulfilling lives outside of wow, and they spend as little time as possible outside of raids, that would also mean they care less, and spend a lot less time, worrying about the nitty gritty of what class is best for what now that such-and-such patch has hit. It would explain why "top" protection warriors have shitty specs. They dont care, because the intensity of focus they bring to their raiding, and the committment to teamwork, leads to their world firsts. Cool! Good for them. And so its fine to distrust their opinions re class balance, because they actually dont care. They get the world first, then go about their non-wow business.
So surely it's right that we all poke fun at "ensidia's bear"-? He doesnt know squat about druids --- but he knows an awful lot about how to get a world first. Two very different competencies.
Anyway, i'll stop bugging you! Good luck with the healing and with the blog.
It doesn't work quite like that. Part of being able to come in and 1shot bosses is that you do your research beforehand. Tun is quite active on IRC in #eu-druids and is often at hand to discuss druid class issues. Also, those weird specs you sometimes see on top end Warriors are dependent on what their purpose is, as warriors have always had different specs for different jobs and different content.
You need to be aware that Ensidia ran through Ulduar normal mode in around 12h+ played, something I doubt even the best casual guild can replicate, even if they string it out over days and take the time to think over their strategies in between raids. You can't do that without a very very comprehensive understanding of the game in ALL it's facets.
12 hours isnt that impressive when I suppose they structured their entire raiding time during the ptr around *getting on the ptr* to learn strats before anyone else.
If your guild wants server & world firsts, you have to build that into your guild charter. At the exclusion of other facets of wow life. Being super skilled & paying attention & learning boss encounters quickly is really why most raids succeed or fail. Our failures in Ulduar atm have nothing to do with ppls specs or gear: they're simply because people are slow learners and get stuck in ruts. Nothing to do with gear or spec. That's why I suspect world first guilds like Ensidia are similar: they optimize around keeping scrubs out of the raid - because that's all that matters.
Crappier players are always looking for excuses in their gear, the RNG luck or whatever.... anything, other than their own lousy performance. If that doesnt sound way too familiar to you, you must be playing a different game (or you yourself are one of these crappy players who's always looking for excuses elsewhere lol!!! jk jk)
It's not just about staying alive though, there's a lot of people who can stay alive, but as they do so their attention goes fully into that, meaning their personal DPS drops a lot on mobile encounters. Sometimes this is due to some classes suffering pretty badly from mobility issues, but quite often it's also simply the player not having the skill to get the most out of their gear, spec and class in that situation. That's how some guilds beat hard modes with enrage timers meant for Ulduar lvl loot whilst other guilds struggle to make the enrage timer on normal mode, and yet because of the ease of entry level raiding in WotLK, we're all running around in almost the same gear. I can also exemplify it as such, we kicked out a holy priest today who was slightly better geared than me. Problem was, because I know my spec better than him, I was able to put out twice as much HPS as him while staying mobile. That's not just me being non-scrub, that's me crunching the numbers and finding a optimal spec for the job I need to do(the one I presented in the post about holy priests).
Lol, just reread the thread. Do you realize you're UTTERLY unarguable with? I mean utterly. Its pretty fascinating from a psychological perspective: just shifting & morphing around to get "one up" on the other person. Never mind the argument or maintaining a "rational" thread. The only thing that matters is being right. I'd hate to be in your guild. Is everyone else a wannabe ensidia player too?
I don't see any inconsistency in my arguments, if anything the other party is constantly changing their objections and therefore I'm responding to different arguments with. That's sort of how debating works though, you try to avoid logical inconsistency whilst presenting evolving arguments for your point of view.
What you call "utterly unarguable" is just a basic comprehension of debating. And as far as psychology goes, that may be a nice term to throw out there, but it really does require some backing up. Theory, observations, conclusions. You know, scientific method and such.
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