The Huntress Raleena
I’m sure everyone remembers their first, magical steps into Azeroth. Fresh with the glow of rolling your first character and now-well, now what? I suppose that yellow exclamation mark might mean something… So, a few minutes later, you’re killing boars or something and you’re forever hooked, right? Right!?
Not everyone. The first MMORPG I played was Guild Wars. I love the look (and that there is no subscription fee) but the lack of depth to the game ended up killing it for me. Enter World of Warcraft. I had been playing the Warcraft games since the first one. I was familiar with the world and the high quality of Blizzard games, but I wasn’t too keen on a subscription based game. Because S. wanted to, I picked up a trial disc and installed it.
From the very beginning I was drawn to the night elves, even in Warcraft III, so, naturally, I rolled a Night Elf and chose druid. Entered the world of Shadowglen and WTF!?! Since when did Disney buy out Blizzard? I was… less than thrilled. After about ten minutes, I stop, turn to S. and say, “Go ahead and play if you want. This isn’t my kind of game at all.”
So, I don’t know, I go read a book or play something on my Xbox and later look over to see what she’s doing. Northshire Abbey is not quite so Disney as Shadowglen. And she’s not killing boars, but bandits! Perhaps I was a bit too quick to judge after all. I didn’t want to play that druid again, oh that was terrible!, but something else. Hmmm… if the rest of the world isn’t soo terribly cartoony, I can probably get through the first few levels as a Night Elf… what’s this hunter class all about? Okay, pets… dual wielding… let’s give it a shot! (Unintentional and unfunny pun, ignore it)
Another opening cinematic and Raleena is standing in the middle of Shadowglen and sent to kill boars and cats. I was mildly annoyed to find out I didn’t get a pet until level 10 (not that that takes long). While I tried a few of the beast mastery talents out, I was always interested in the Survival tree. Leveling with a mage, neither of us knowing much about the game, or agro, or kiting, or trapping, or sheeping, etc., having the melee survivability was quite nice. And Wyvern Sting was just a heck of a lot of fun.
I did the raid thing for a while (“/yell Tranquilizing Shot HIT! Next shot…”), but got a little bored with it. Did some alt leveling, switched to a shadow priest, did some more alt leveling, BC hit, switched to a shaman, did some more… you get the idea. Raleena has dinged 70, and I’ve been slowly working on clearing quests. I’ve got a white theme going (white hair, swift frostsaber, snowy griffon) that means I’m leveling a level 60 frostsaber stalker now. She is called Yuki, which is Japanese for Snow according to Wikimedia. I think I might get one of the winterfall owls because they’re white, too.
Gear is a constant issue. I’m specced Survival even though I don’t have the gear to make it really, really awesome in groups (only 530 agility). My personal DPS is not at all shabby (about 450 +pet), but it isn’t ready for much more than easy heroics or Karazhan. I’m not sure 
how much I’m going to be able to improve that. I’d finish out leatherworking and make the BoP set, but it is not survival gear (and is not pretty). Given the difficulties in winning AV I’ve found post-2.4, I won’t be getting much PVP gear on any of my characters. I’m certainly open to suggestions-good gear that looks good, no clown suits!
More so than any of my other characters, I’ve made gear choices for Raleena with a strong aesthetic influence, even sacrificing DPS for it (though not in raids). My favorite gear, pre-bc, 
was the Black Dragonscale set which I couple with the Ancient bone bow-wicked looking, wicked. I haven’t found much since that is awesome. I quite like the look of Lohn’Goran, but it isn’t a great bow past level 70 instances. If I’m remembering correctly, the red Dragonstalker set is shaman mail (at the very least, the shoulders are) which is sad, because that would be pretty awesome as well. Dragonstalker’s in black would be OMG TEH AWESOME but doesn’t exist. /pout
Despite the annoyance of having to level pets, playing a hunter is a whole lot of fun. Chain trapping, wyvern stinging, feigning death, scattershot (oh! how I love scattershot). I don’t recall which blogger said it, but someone said Survival spec hunters were about removing the ability of your enemies to follow their plans in battle. It’s a good spec if you enjoy the feeling of Schadenfreude. I like it because it is intricate: there are many, many tools to use, and weighing them out in the immediacy of combat is enjoyable. I also find a long run of a shot-rotation to be almost meditative, it is so easy to get into the zone where the twang of the bow becomes an instinctive trigger to a click or a button press and without paying any attention, things are dead. If I ever get to the point Lushere is done in Karazhan, I think Raleena might be choice number two. I’m very reluctant to do much grouping with my shadowpriest, which I suppose I can talk about when I introduce Serasong later on. Karazhan is a good raid for someone who brings MQoSRDPS (hat tip to BRK on that), and I can’t imagine I’d have a problem doing that (at the Kara level, at any rate).
The Triangle
There is always discussion, perhaps even controversy, about class abilities in World of Warcraft, especially in regards to the "hybrid" classes. The common argument goes something along the lines of "Class X can only do A, so class Y, who can do A, B, or C should be nowhere near as good at A as X." Substitute any relevant "pure" class for X and any hybrid for Y. Argument ad Mad Lib (I shall have to ask a friend of mine who is a PhD candidate in philosophy to write a paper on that).
At first glance, the argument is kind of true, isn’t it? If, say, a druid can tank or heal or dps, shouldn’t a warrior be a better tank? I wish I could argue against that, but, I can’t. If a druid could tank or heal or dps, they probably should not be as good at tanking as a warrior. However, that isn’t the case.
The concept of a hybrid class is a class that can fill multiple roles, though is not as effective in those roles as the base class. World of Warcraft does not have hybrids, it has "role-switchers." Though I don’t recall the source for that term, it is much more appropriate than hybrid. With the rather limited exception of Feral druids doing melee dps and tanking with enormously similar specs, the remainder of the "hybrid" classes have to spec almost completely into one tree to be effective in that role. A cookie-cutter enhancement shaman, well-geared, is going to put out mammoth melee dps and buff the raid nicely with Unleashed Rage. However, they can’t just start healing in the middle of combat and do well. At best, they can serve as a stopgap or pick up a tad bit of slack. The definition the spec gives, coupled with the definition and divide of gear limits the ability to cross the role line.
Some roles will have easier times: moonkin druids are going to be wearing spell damage and healing gear and have decent mana pools if they need to heal, as would elemental shaman. Shadow priests probably won’t because they would sell greater heal for a 10% better scaling Mind Flay (or maybe that’s just me) and focus on Shadow Damage to get better return on I-Level (but shadow priests are crazy anyway), again showing how deeply the gear divide separates roles. Could a shadow priest or a boomkin put on healing gear and bust out the hps? You bet (and I dare you to ask a shadow priest to do that). But they could not do it while in combat. They may not need a full respec to pass in that role, but they would need a complete gear switch.
Given this, this focus on one role at a time, shouldn’t a role-switcher be able to fill the role as well as a dedicated class? After all, for the length of that encounter, they are dedicated to that role with very limited ability to step outside of it. Well, yes and no. Clearly, classes that can fill multiple roles need some check to give room for the focused classes to exist. No need for rogues if feral druids can kitty dps just as well, after all.
I think this focus solely on numbers loses sight of the real method of comparing. People generally compare on the triangle: tank - dps - heal. The total area of each classes triangle should be roughly equal. A Rogue should be much further extended toward DPS than, say, a paladin: rogues only DPS, paladins do all of them. But how should that rogue compare to a dps-spec paladin who has little stamina gear, virtually no +healing, and has a two-hander of doom? Why should the rogue get to be that far ahead of the paladin in that case.? Said paladin has traded abilities of breadth for depth.
I suggest we add a fourth axis to the triangle: we must consider the amount of options the class/spec has as the height of a solid figure and compare the total volume to come to a better method of weighing classes. DPS Paladins have very few options in doing DPS, rogues have lots of options with haste effects, bleed effects, etc. What the Paladin has options in is in survivability with greater armor and Divine Shield, the rogue has better dodge and Vanish. Overall (and this is hasty and unquantified) the volume of the ability polyhedral is roughly similar between the two. Warriors are the tanks with the most options, though not the best in every given area. Skillsets may differ favoring some classes for some encounters, but the "pure" class is going to have more options to fill their role than any role-switcher would.
Those options may or may not be useful all the time. Vanish is still a nice trick to have up the rogue-sleeve. Last Stand is one of those really nice abilities of the warrior that gives them more options than Paladin or Druid tanks. Ice Block > the destruction of the universe (old and inside joke). Priests have more options for healing: group heal, HoT, large single-target heal, binding heal, prayer of frisbee… a resto shaman has fast small heal, slow big heal, chain heal. When you need chain heal, the Shaman may well serve you better than the priest, but the priest will have more flexibility as a healer over all.
Edit: It seemed a bit of clarification might be in order.
Looking at the "triangle"of roles, you basically have this-
If you consider the warrior class, which has lots of tanking ability and some dps ability, you have a triangle filled in something like this-
And rogue and priest would be more or less these (respectively):
The people who feel hybrid classes are overpowered, would suggest druids, for example, look a bit like this:
But, more realistically, before gear and spec are taken into account, it’s more this:
My argument is to suggest that, yes, druids can have that full triangle, but only when considering the total abilities of the class without regard to the limitations of spec and gear. If you could be 61/61/61 and wear gear that had all stats and +defense and +crit and +heal and +spell damage, sure, that would make the druid a hybrid. But for any given encounter, the druid’s triangle is limited to something similar to that of the pure class whose role they are filling. A lot of people seem to feel that allowing a role-switching class (because they can only fill one role at a time) to be nearly as good as a pure class unfairly limits the pure class because they can’t do anything else.
And I can’t inherently argue against that. That’s why I think the triangle is too limited a way to consider class balance. Kitty or Boomkin druids may well be able to dps at the same level as a rogue, but they have far fewer options to do it with. Cat druids get two viable finishing moves, and Ferocious Bite is not that good if Rip has the time to tick and the target is bleedable. Moonkin cast arcane of nature damage spells, severely limiting their ability to do damage if those schools are off the table. Rogues can vary their abilities to the situation, focusing on haste effects (slice and dice) or bleed damage (which skill escapes me) and has options for getting out of combat that a druid lacks (vanish).
My point is not whether classes are balanced, but to give a better method for doing those comparisons. When all of the factors are weighed, rogues look much more like this:
Their options for dpsing give them more abilities in that area than a dps druid would have. Their options in each area are fewer, but it balances out due to their options in other arenas: tanking and healing. Their abilities come up in their ability to switch roles, however sub-optimally. Correspondingly, a dps druid’s would look more like this:
I’m not suggesting these graphs are accurate, merely conceptual. I’m not trying, here, to determine the relative abilities of classes or specs, but lay a groundwork for how that can be done. It came out of hearing too many people saying "Oh, my spec sucks because I can’t do" something that some other class can, without being cognizant of their abilities that serve as balancing factors. No, not every class/spec/role will be filled equally, and individual encounters and gear levels will affect things greatly. I just though, that instead of living in my head, this concept should be shared and discussed.
Fill in the
While I was writing the previous post, Matticus posted a… question:
Now that my plug has finished, here’s a “finish the sentence” question I want to post to everyone.
Raiding is like…
To me, raiding is like dating. When it’s new and exciting you’re on cloud nine, and when it’s rough you have to decide (and it’s an anxiety filled decision) whether you need to break up and move on, or if there are problems that can be solved and the future will be even better.
Killing Time
Another lengthy post and not enough no pretty pictures. TLDR: /whine, as a raid group we need to clean up our act, /whine. But scroll through and check out the links.
That’s what raiding has more or less come to mean for me. And I don’t mean killing in the sense of filling time before something important, but, rather, making it deadified and useless. Last night was our Kara run, started 45 minutes late (as usual) and ran an hour late (as usual). Perhaps I’m just crazy, but we have start times and end times for a reason: so that people know how to fit the raid into their schedule. For some people that really matters, and I’m one of them!
We also started the raid invites and had four tanks and no healers. Kara needs two tanks. We had four. I have to admit curiosity on how we ended up with four. the KaraT2 MT was on, as expected, the KaraT2 OT (supposedly me) on, the prot paladin who OTs when she shows up was on, and an arena-spec DPS warrior had respecced prot and was on. WTF?! We have so many tanks already, why would you give up a pretty guaranteed DPS spot (as one of two dps warriors) to join the tank corps which, at a quick count, is over 10 people!
I switched to my resto shaman and healed through Maiden, then swapped to my shadow priest to DPS/shackle the skeletons before Opera, then stayed in because the Resto Shaman that we picked up was freakin’ awesome and was solo healing just fine. Got Big Bad Wolf, I died immediately (hint: pulling while someone is still buffing and they get turned into Red Riding Hood = splatted spriest), then a mage died pretty quickly, too. The six people still not disconnected and alive finished it out and we disenchanted two epics, yay!
At a quick personal rundown, the only character I have any real interest in endgame got 0/16000 Violet Eye rep needed for exalted, 0/10 badges for the Waistguard of the Great Beast (I think that’s right), Edgewalker Longboots didn’t drop anyway. My shaman, resto for the moment, got the Bracers of the White Stag (a solid upgrade for her healing set) and 7 badges that will be unused, and my Shadow Priest got two badges that will be unused. This is worth my time, right?
To make this something other than just whining, I have to categorize problems and offer constructive suggestions for improving, yeah? Okay:
- Raid time: starting nearly an hour late is wasteful of everyone’s time. If the time or the night doesn’t work, which is consistently the case, we need to change that. If the run needs to be nine to midnight, change it so I’m not jumping in front of Karazhan no one is standing around while they could be doing something useful.
- Raid leadership: the team needs a Raid Leader, recently it has shuffled around a bit. A position of responsibility and little reward, I admit, but someone needs to be in charge, needs to be getting the right group composition, one person doing invites, etc. My personal experience finds the MT to be good for that role, as they are generally the person most responsible for the pulling and pacing, anyway, though it need not be. Our MT doesn’t seem to want the job and doesn’t talk
on vent, so I don’t think he would be best. But someone, and someone knowledgeable about Karazhan needs to do it. I would, but I’m an asshole and no one would like it. - Raid composition: Four tanks does not work. Four physical tanks is used for a couple of fights in 25 man content, right? Not Karazhan. Zero healers is a bad, bad thing. On balance, we need to recruit healers and some of our tanks need to be told “no.” Most of them have other level 70 alts and could do the run on another class. If we feel it necessary to have this many tanks and have them all active as raiders, we need to rotate through them (OT-MT-dps/alt-dps/alt) so that
no one tank is always relegated to an alt or a role they are not interested in. This is where the raid and guild leadership needs to think about priorities. If we have teams that are mean to be working
as teams, the rosters need to be consistent. Consistent groups mean better groups. Playing tank roulette is not going to further progression. - Gear: We don’t have any gear requirements at all. This has meantsome people who are very undergeared have been coming to Kara, and, ok,this isn’t always a big deal, but some of these people don’t seem to bedoing much to improve their gear level but in Karazhan. This is disrespectful. Most of the guild has spent their time in level 70instances and battlegrounds and heroics to get the gear they need to be competitive in their role. For people to be joining the raid and not be doing that… disrespectful. Slower runs, more durability loss,more wipes. The guild hasn’t been big on organizing gearing runs, but the LFG tool is in WoW for a reason-use it. Gear issues lead us to:
- Loot: Basically we do a loot council kind of system. Whoever gets the best upgrade out of an item gets it as, in theory, this buffs the raid the most. There are some issues with this. The people who
spend a ton of time working on their own to get solid gear are going to have better gear than those who don’t, and therefore got smaller upgrades from drops, if they even get upgrades and often then do not get the drops they are looking for. I don’t inherently favor DKP (I really like suicide kings), but the system we have does not work and penalizes the better geared player. Loot council could work if there really was a “team” of ten people who were all progressing though
this content at the same level and it was theorycrafted out, but “Well, it’s more of an upgrade for” without serious looking at specs and gear sets and gearing the core of the raid fails. To quote a quote (via the Pugnacious Priest: “and to quote someone else’s blog ( no idea whose, sorry) If the item was that much of an upgrade for them that it took priority over everyone else, then they didn’t belong there”
Back to the personal level, I’m at the point where I don’t think it’s worth it. For a whole bunch of reasons, I’m not having a good time in these raids. Except when I’m tanking. I’d really like to be main tanking, but it seems my tanking skills are unregarded by my guild mates and I end up DPSing while crittable tanks
(a pairing that should not exist in raid content) are on the mobs. SuraBear wrote a good piece about this, though it sounds like his guild wants him to tank (/target SuraBear /bow) but I think he really summarizes the issue for feral tanks well: “Now, don’t misread this. I can do DPS. I can do pretty good DPS, as a matter of fact. I just dont particularly WANT to.”
So, I’m not sure if I even plan on logging on for night two. I have to take Lushere on the off chance the T4 gloves drop and on the off chance that I get them. And on the off chance that the few other things I want might drop. Hanging out on Ralendra and leveling and begging to join the Sidhe Devils sounds like a whole lot more fun, though. i r conflicted.
Introduction-Ralendra
This is Ralendra, and you can tell from the snazzy green (cloth) dress, a druid. I rolled a druid for the Gnarled Ironwood Pauldrons or Pauldrons of Tribal Fury, either is fine, I just really like the look. Correspondingly, I haven’t decided if it’s to be (eventually) resto or boomkin. So, hello server Kael’thas, you have my permission to tremble in fear or engage in mocking laughter as you please.
Link! Tank Shortage: Do You Believe? - The Rambling Bear
Even though The Rambling Bear probably gets tons upon tons more traffic than I do, I think this is worth sharing.
Tank Shortage: Do You Believe?
Today’s post isn’t really a blog post at all. I just got done with a forum post in the Prophecy boards discussing what seems to be a growing problem: the dreaded tanking shortage. I used to not believe there was a shortage, but since I started playing level 70 alts, I’ve gotten to see things from a different perspective. In fact, I think the existance of alts, itself, is perhaps the biggest contributor to the problem. . . but I’ll explain that later. So, here in its entirety, the seven reasons I see for the apparent tank shortage in Prophecy, on Steamwheedle Cartel, and I suspect in general.
11 points in shadow and $4.50 will buy a latte
to drink while you mind flay!
I had planned on putting the first 11 points into shadow to get mind flay, then going discipline, but I know that I can level faster if I go full shadow, so I’m going that route. Rylande as now 21 and getting started in Darkshore. Mind Blast, Mind Flay, Mind Flay, Wand repeat 100,000 times: 20-70 as a priest, in a nutshell. A small one, not like a walnut shell, or anything spacious like that. Maybe an almond shell. Maybe.
Temporarily smote, smited, w/e
Life has been keeping me a bit busy (acting responsibly sucks most of the time), but I have gotten Rylande to 18. I have real posts being written, but I need to get the pretty pictures for them, so hopefully by the end of the week I’ll have two or three for you. And I’m wondering if I should roll on Kael’thas and hang with BBB and CassieAnn… Once the semester ends, I really would have time to level characters on multiple servers.
Focus, determination, and ten freakin’ people
Logged onto Lushere last night for Stormseekers Team2 Karazhan raiding. I figured if a tank was needed, i’d go, otherwise there would be enough people I wouldn’t be needed anyway. It’s very disappointing on Fridays. We have quite a few people who claim to want to go to Kara, but when raid time comes up (8 P.M. EST, hasn’t changed) there are maybe five or so on.
We ended getting a full group at 8:45, and the plan is to cut the raid at 11. We took things a bit later than that. One shot Attumen, Moroes, Maiden. Wiped on trash because I pulled a stagehand and
got two performers as well. Had the group been prepared, I think we could have done it, but I wiped the raid. Unintentionally, I assure you. One-shot big bad wold, then headed to Curator. Two wipes at 12%-7%, one at 1% (someone said 6K health left, ouch) then we got him. I, feral tank, took Pauldrons of the Solace giver and we destroyed the T4 gloves for paladin/rogue/shaman. I am starting to hate that mechanical monstrosity. Got Nightbane down on try 2, and called the raid sometime around 12 or 12:30. Hopefully tonight we can get a group quicker and clear the rest of the bosses. I’ve never done Illhoof or Netherspite, and Illhoof has my damn staff!
Walked out of Kara:night one with the clothy shoulders and Stonebough Jerkin… my healing set is starting to look disturbingly purple. WTB loot I will use! I’m pretty sure the rest of them have at least one thing I want, so [fingers crossed].
For the Love of All that is Holy…
Or, at least, for the love of Elune… or, if I’m being honest, for the Hallowed Raiment and the Merciless Gladiator’s Investiture. Those are two of my favorite sets in the game, and pretty much useless to my level 70 shadowweave tailor shadowpriest. But they will be quite handy for a healy-priest. This is Rylande (an obvious homage to Tyrande) and her first days:
I don’t recall this being the outfit priests started in before, did it change? I like this one better (it has to have changed).
And I hardly get settled in Aldrassil before someone puts me to work. The job of a priestess is never done.
I spend a lot of time with glowy hands…
Killing pigs!
Then A nice priestess, Shanda, sends me a letter sigil:
I hope this sigil finds you well, Rylande. The spirits told me of your coming and I sent word immediately. I look forward to sharing my experiences with you, and helping guide you as you prepare to leave Teldrassil for more important matter.
With all that has happened in the last few years, there is much we can do to aid the other races of Azeroth. When you are ready, find me inside Aldrassil, on the second level.
-Shanda, Priest Trainer
She sends me to Dolanaar, where I help fight against the corruption of the Burning Legion by Healing Sentinel Shaya.
In return, I was gifted with the Moon Robes of Elune, to signify I have earned my place among the order of the Priestesses.
**********
While I wish it didn’t have to stop there, some of us don’t get to do fun things like smite boars, but have to go to an office and click mouse buttons all day.
