TBC and the New Group Responsibility Dynamic

[Bolty]

Boy, this game sure has evolved, hasn't it?

What, what am I talking about? Well, it's about groups, raids, and the dynamic of the roles involved. I'm discussing how Blizzard's approach to the game has changed over time and how it's altered the pressure of groups and raids in World of Warcraft. It's something that's subtle and has gradually altered the way people play this game since its release.

Let's look back through the hourglass of time, shall we?

2005: the first full year of World of Warcraft. Encounter designs were based on a standard MMO principle. You have your tank. You have your healer. And you have the people whose job it is to kill what's attacking your tank. While having mixed group makeups does help things, group makeup is still your basic "get tank, get healer, get 3 DPS." Since DPS characters make farming and PvP fun, it leads to all the "LF1M Tank" and "LF1M Healer" calls that we've all come to know as a staple of general/LFG chat.

The one unconditional fact of this early game was that if your tank or healer sucked, you were going to be in for a rough time. These were the two pivotal roles in the group. The tank, being the focal point of the group/raid, controlled the pace of play, kept aggro as best they could, and was the main determinant of success. The healer, being the one responsible for the health of the group/raid, would also have a substantial impact on how aggressive the group could be and how long the group could last in an encounter.

Upper Blackrock Spire. The first true raid instance. But the rules there remained almost the same. Get a tank (or two), get some healers, and fill in the rest with pretty much anything. Your tanks and healers made or broke you as a party. If a DPS'er stunk, it would take longer to kill things or cause the DPS'er to die from pulling aggro. If a tank or healer sucked, you weren't going to get far.

Molten Core. Need I say more? The instance so many DPS'ers complained about, and for good reason. Common jokes about DPS'ers "spamming one button" most of the time or Hunters who would afk and eat lunch during some boss fights abounded. While Blizzard put in a number of gimmicks to give certain classes key roles during encounters (Hunters on Magmadar, Mages on Majordomo Executus), in the end it was still an extension of the "find your tanks, find your healers, and fill in the rest." DPS'ers felt marginalized. Why go all-out, why go crazy getting the tip-top gear, enchants, consumables, etc, when all it means is that a fight runs an extra 20 seconds without that little extra contribution from you?

Even tanks weren't fully immune from this. When one of my raid guild's tanks mentioned once that he went AFK tanking Garr with autoattack because he could get away with it, I laughed. But it got me to thinking of how, as a healer, I could *never* do that. I can't go afk and auto-heal, I can't zone-out and relax, or people die and the raid wipes. This is one of the reasons why many healers would burn out. DPS'ers would burn out from boredom, healers would burn out for the opposite reason - no chance to get a break.

In short, a gigantic chunk of the responsibility for the success of *any* group back then fell on the shoulders of the tank and the healer. DPS'ers had much less incentive to push themselves. Yes, the extra 20 seconds on a raid boss might have led to a wipe one time or another, but there's little to no accountability for it; you're just one DPS'er amongst two dozen. When someone dies, however, the common response is "ZOMG WHERE WUS TEH HAELZ?" When the tank positions a boss wrong, it's "HAHA NUB TANK."

Time passes...

Mods like DamageMeters start coming out. Now there's a little more in the accountability department. If DPS'er X is doing three times as much damage as DPS'er Y, well, how come? Maybe Ragnaros would have died before the second submerge, eh? Then again, maybe not. But even still, tanking and healing are the pressure roles, with key duties of DPS'ers mostly being about moving out of AoE damage effects and avoiding taking unnecessary damage (Ragnaros).

Complaints rise to Blizzard. Not every DPS player wants to be "just one in a crowd," and requests are made to have more accountability, even if it's just as a gimmick-style thing, like Tranquilizing Shot. "Okay," says Blizzard, and they start to put more such things in their newer raid encounters.

With the release of BWL, Blizzard starts to give DPS players more responsibility and more accountability. Early on, it's still mostly in the gimmick realm. Suppression Room, anyone? Rogues wanted something to do; now they got it. The cries of "uh, GET THE TRAP already, Rogues!" are heard in raids where they've never been heard before.

Blizzard throws around curveballs and forces DPS'ers to think about aggro more. Broodlord Lashlayer punks many a Hunter who just wasn't serious about Feign Death before, and they learn fast. Firemaw teaches them that no, it's really not always the healers' fault when you die, lern2bandage.

Still, the pressure here is so humongously on the tanks, it's not even funny. Razorgore and Vaelastraz the Corrupt are fights that so hinge on skilled tanks that they can make or break a guild. While DPS'ers have more responsibilities, the tanks' job got even harder. In fact, the entirety of BWL puts so much pressure on tanks to perform well that it's a little over the top compared to the pressure put on any other role.

Razorgore? Orb controlling (often done by a tank due to aggro reasons) and kiting. Vael? Aggro control and tank rotation, quick reflexes when having aggro. Suppression room? Controlling the pace, watching the traps, not moving too slow or too fast. Lashlayer? Climbing the aggro chart, proper positioning. Firemaw? Wing Buffets and proper taunting. Ebonroc? Lern2taunt. Flamegor? Ok, easymode, a freebie. A guild's success through all of these depended almost entirely on 4 or 5 people to get their tanking done right, get geared up, have good reflexes, etc.

Then it all starts to change.

Chromaggus is the start of the new dynamic. While the tanks (if Time Lapse) and healers (ZOMG Decurse/Cleanse/Dispel) continue to have their usual pressure roles, the DPS'ers can't just sleep through a fight. Hunters have their usual Tranq Shot gimmick. DPS'ers not paying attention will get fried from Chromaggus' "random" effects and need to run and hide at the proper times.

But that's all just a warmup to Nefarian. Nefarian is possibly the first true DPS check of the game. I classify a fight as a DPS check like so: "given best-possible-in-game tanking, and best-possible-in-game healing, can a fight be won with terrible DPS players?" The answer on Nefarian is, finally, no.

As Drakonids pour out of the gates, the DPS'ers must annihilate them quickly and efficiently. Yes, tanks and healers are going their usual berserk trying to get everything corralled and keep everyone alive, but the real onus is on the DPS. If the Drakonids don't die fast enough, you lose; you fall behind and the situation just gets more and more out of hand. Nefarian himself won't appear until you've defeated 20 Drakonids of each color, and then you have to clean up whatever's left. A raid simply won't survive if kill rate does not stay roughly equal to spawn rate.

Blizzard's learning. Raids are more exciting when there's more involvement from everyone, not just tanks and healers. Guilds that have kinda glided along without much pressure being put on their DPS'ers wind up struggling a bit.

Next up, Ahn'Qiraj. Blizzard finally gets it right. Here's where it all starts becoming about the DPS.

Trash: hey, WAKE UP! Mobs that have to die before their mana pools fill up. Anubisaths that have random abilities, many of which will obliterate DPS'ers who don't pay attention while they die to AoE effects, spell reflects, or thorns damage.

Then we face Skeram. If Skeram's clones aren't killed fast, you're toast. DPS must be organized, focused, and intense.

Next up, the bug family. DPS has a number of critical roles here, the most crucial being stopping Yauj from healing herself or her family. It's a chaotic fight, for sure.

Battleguard Sartura is a real "heads up" call for all DPS'ers. GET OUT OF THE WAY is the mantra, and a serious test of melee survivability. Healers can only do so much. Add to that an enrage timer that Blizzard put in to say "no, you can't do this one if half of your DPS can't learn to get away from Sartura and her adds." People who continually die in this encounter because they're not aware enough of their surroundings hurt the raid.

Fankriss the Unyielding: DPS'ers must be aware when a worm add appears and switch to it, or it'll wipe you fast.

Princess Huhuran: gear check! A boss where, once enraged, *every second* that it remains alive significantly increases the odds your raid will wipe. While tanks/melee go all out to gear up in nature resistance, there is only so much healers can do in this fight to delay the inevitable. If your raid cannot output enough DPS to kill her past 30% in about 45 seconds, you lose.

Emps trash: here's trash - TRASH - that requires *every* member of the raid, not just the tanks and healers, to learn, pay attention to, and respond to random abilities. I know in my raids, the healers started making bets of which raid members would die to explosions because they weren't paying attention. :)

Twin Emperors: The DPS has 15 minutes to kill the Emperors or you lose. They must also deal with a steady stream of adds and have situational awareness of exploding bugs and blizzards. Compare this to the bosses of Molten Core, and you can see what a quantum leap it is in terms of what is required from your DPS players to win. While the tanks and healers remain in pressure roles, the DPS'ers are now "invited to the party" and have just as much responsibility and pressure for success.

C'Thun: I didn't get to run late-Naxxramus bosses, but in my mind little holds a candle to this fight, possibily the best-designed encounter ever. Every. Single. Last. Raid. Member. Must. Execute. Properly. This is why there were guilds that could get halfway through Naxxramus but couldn't beat C'Thun; ultimately, your raid is only as good as its weakest link in this fight. Anyone dying in phase 1 damages the raid because the DPS/tanking/healing is vitally necessary later on; if one side of the raid collapses due to Dark Glare or other effects, the deaths cascade elsewhere since you need 100% coverage.

So, looking back at Ahn'Qiraj, you can see that Blizzard figured it out. They made raiding fun and exciting for everyone involved, not just tanks and healers. No more standing in place and pressing one button over and over; you had to really work for it. :) Not only that, but there's fewer "gimmick" fights where one particular class has to do something completely right or you wipe; instead, there's a lot of group involvement.

Blizzard extended this in Naxxramus. While some bosses are easier than others (Instructor Razuvious, cough), there isn't a single fight in there that has a DPS'er standing in place and "pew pew"ing. They need to learn boss abilities, respond accordingly, and make intelligent decisions. They can't blame a healer when they fail to run the Heigan dance properly. Dying due to bad awareness in Anub'Rekhan makes you kill other people too. If DPS'ers can't destroy Maexxna's Wall Wraps in time, the attrition rate builds and you wipe. I like that fight - it requires a DPS'er to act like a healer by "healing" (read: freeing) wall wrapped people quickly and gives them a little taste of what it's like to be a healer in a raid environment. Faerlina is a gigantic DPS check. And don't get me started on Patchwerk, where if you can't stand there and output 500 damage per second, you're literally wiping the raid.

However, all of these are RAID encounters. There's no comparison in the 5-player environment. If you wanted to run UBRS, BRD, Dire Maul, LBRS, Stratholme, Scholomance, etc, you could get by just about anything with a fantastic tank and healer and, well, 3 other people to fill in.

So what am I getting at?

World of Warcraft has changed. Blizzard has brought forth that raid dynamic into 5-player instancing with the Burning Crusade expansion. It's no longer about "need tank and healer," it's about "need tank, healer, and 3 DPS'ers who can kill things fast."

It starts as early as the Ramparts. You have a boss that plants a debuff on people causing huge damage to all those around them. Usually a problem for melee, if the melee DPS doesn't catch this happening in time, a healer isn't going to save them. (This gets a lot worse in heroic mode, but there's no need to go into that for the sake of this discussion.)

"But that's just an awareness check, not really a pure DPS check," you say, and you're right. Ramparts, Blood Furnace, Slave Pens, Underbog, they're all the more traditional instances where a solid tank and healer can get you through even the worst DPS makeups, and there are mostly awareness checks for DPS players.

Then Blizzard takes off the training wheels and things get more interesting. Mana Tombs? The Nexus-Prince end boss is a DPS check, plain and simple. You can have near-infinite tanking and near-infinite healing, but if your DPS can't kill the beacons he plants fast enough, you are eventually overwhelmed with adds that obliterate your healer (and then you). I bring this up because it happened to me in a run recently, where the healer (me) and the tank were grossly overgeared and overpowered for the instance (being level 70s with some raid gear), but the DPS was not. Everything was smooth as silk, if slow, until the end boss.

"Ok, that's just one boss." Nope. While that boss is a pure DPS check, many other bosses continue to require DPS'ers to really pay attention to what they're doing. How many of us have seen DPS'ers nuke themselves to death on Pandemonius' green shield? Or fail to get out of the way of Shirrak the Dead Watcher's fire bomb?

Want more DPS check examples? Okay. In the Shadow Labrynth, Grandmaster Vorpil is a pure DPS check. You could have the greatest tanking in the world and the greatest healing, but without good DPS you can't kill him. Using either the "kill the voidwalker adds" strategy or the "kite him away from voidwalker adds" strategy, if the DPS can't perform you simply cannot win. I healed a Vorpil encounter with low DPS for thirteen minutes. Thirteen minutes before I called it after Vorpil healed from 35% to 61% and I decided to just stop healing (yes, I was using mana potions, my regen isn't THAT good).

Setthek Halls. Darkweaver Syth. If the adds aren't nuked fast, you won't last. (Hey, that's a catchy phrase.) They'll eventually punk your healer or overwhelm your tank.

Tempest Keep! High Botanist Freywinn of The Botanica is a fight where if you take too long to kill his adds, he heals himself back up to full. You could literally fight him forever without enough DPS. Warp Splinter, at the end of the instance, is another absolute DPS check. With either trying to kill his add spawns before they heal him or just going full out on him alone, if you don't have the DPS you don't win. I've had a number of attempts on him that we'd reset after a few minutes because we were literally getting nowhere, with each add spawn healing him back up to 100%.

Pathaleon the Calculator in The Mechanar. Kill the adds fast or you won't last.
Harbinger Skyriss in The Alcatraz. Like Skeram, kill his clone fast or you will be overwhelmed.

But these are individual bosses. The crowning achievement for the absolute DPS check in normal 5-player instances is the Black Morass.

Tanking and Healing are mere footnotes in this instance; it's all about the DPS. You must protect Medivh from harm by blowing away a steady stream of incoming mobs. If you fall behind, you have no chance. With pauses built in after the 6th time rift and the 12th time rift, you're given a small breather, but then it's right back to it. Without solid DPS, the instance is completely unwinnable, and it will have almost nothing to do with how good the tanking or healing is. This instance is the "is your DPS ready for Karazhan" testing ground. I love it, even though my role as healer is marginalized, because in a sense I have so little control over the outcome. You get that "boy, I hope they can keep up - here comes the next wave" feeling that I'm sure DPS'ers get all the time with "boy, here comes the boss, I hope the healer can keep the tank up."

Karazhan extends this, with a number of DPS-check bosses. It starts with two tank-n-spank bosses (Attumen and Maiden of Virtue), and then things start ramping up. Moroes has to die before the Garrottes (1k damage per tick for 5 minutes) start to stack up on your raid, making healing impossible. The Curator must die in 12 minutes or the berserk wipes you out. Aran's on par with C'Thun in terms of individual player responsibility and an extreme need for heavy DPS.

So, to wrap up:

World of Warcraft has changed. It's moved from a "need tank and healer" to "need tank, healer, and solid DPS" in order to be successful in groups and raids. This is a very good thing, and makes PvE more interesting all around. Responsibility for success and failure is spread around much more, lessening the relative importance of the tanking and healing roles. This may help alleviate burnout. After all, in the past, good tanks and healers were always in demand to run instances, long after they'd run them 100 times already. Well, you can't run Black Morass with your guild's best tank, your guild's best healer, and 3 underleveled, undergeared DPS'ers anymore. It's like a sign at an amusement park: "You must have this much DPS to enter."

Welcome to the Burning Crusade.

Thoughts?

-Bolty

[Kevin]

I love it personally.

And it's not that they've completely removed the pressure on tanks or healers as you mentioned. But to throw in an odd example, I did a Sethekk Halls run where I was tanking it with my pet. Sure the pet had 11K armor, 14% dodge, 5% parry, 5% block (which isn't horrible mit and avoidance for that instance) but it did only have 6K HP unbuffed and with the group we had (no priest) it was only at about 6700 HP buffed. The pet could hold 2 or 3 mobs but well the HP pool was small. You expect the tanks to be in the 9 - 11K buffed ranged by Sethekk Halls. We did make it through, there were a few wipes (one to trash even) and the last boss was the L65 warrior and the rogue playing fun games of taunt + shield wall and evasion tanking while everyone else was dead but it did show that even with good DPS (enh shaman, rogue, hunter, L65 DPS warrior, tree druid) that if your tank isn't up to snuff you'll suffer. And yeah we had pretty decent CC for that place with traps and saps and the warrior could off tank but he simply couldn't get enough aggro on the bosses for the DPS to do their job, hence the pet tanking. But I'm in a agreement.

There have been a few times in 5 mans where after the mage sheeps a mob we have them kite another, partly because the mage likes it, but partly because we figured that with the group make up we had that was the best strategy. That if that extra mob wasn't kited around that something would have broken down.


Black Morass is fun (I still like Shattered Halls the best of the Outland instances though just for feel). We went in there as a bunch of L67's after we had done Old Hillsbrad on night. Hunter, holy priest, shadow priest, feral druid, resto shaman. We didn't have the DPS at all. We also had no clue what the instance was about since we've all been wanting to run all the five mans cold (as in no one reads ahead on anything but the loot tables, don't know boss abilities don't know anything) and having a blast doing it. If someone else has been there before they pretend they haven't. We killed a bunch of the trash (way more than needed) and then someone got to close to Medivh and started it up. So we figured things out and did manage to get to the 4th rift before we wiped. We knew right away that even though we knew what was going on at that point that we didn't have enough DPS, not just because of the level we were at but that group composition wasn't really great for it.

I love rogues in that place too. We generally just say stay on the rift lord with the tank and maybe help clear up a spawn after. I love it as a hunter too. Depending on who else we have there I'm doing lots of things. When we did it with a pally, warrior, hunter, resto shaman, rogue the pally gathered up and tanked the spawns while I did the DPS to them. My cat was on the rift lord/boss most of the time the paladin grabbed the adds and I killed them. With the resto shaman, mage, hunter, holy priest, warrior that mage could pretty much deal with the adds. I would toss a multi shot on whelps or a sting and a shot or two on the solo adds but I was mostly burning the rift lord/boss down. If the mage was drinking/evocating I would trap or pet tank adds as needed. That group didn't have as much DPS as the first, but we had enough and we had enough control that it didn't matter. I've done it with a few other group compositions, but yeah the key is still the DPS has to be on the ball.

So not only is DPS important, what job a DPS class plays can change up some too depending on the group make up. Without solid AoE doing damage to the tree spawns on Warp Splinter doesn't seem to be wise. If you have rogues and feral druids as your primary DPS (like a 2x feral druid, rogue, hunter, resto shammy group) taking those combo point dependent folks off the boss isn't worth the DPS they lose. The hunter can make sure that no adds get close enough to the healer to bug them, since changing targets between auto shots at range means you can target swap and not lose any DPS at all and maybe get a little trap AoE on them to cut some of the healing he gets. But if you have a couple of mages you set up so the adds all pretty much end on top of each other and the mage can increase their DPS by getting AoE damage on the adds. And not to throw a spoiler out, but Warp Splinter heals for the total amount of life left on the adds. So if the 6 trees all have 1 HP left he heals for 6 health. Strategies would change if he healed a set amount or a percentage of life depending on how many adds were standing when he healed (if he healed 10% per add if the add were alive at all you wouldn't want to leave 6 of them at 5 health, you would want to kill 5 of them and leave one of them at 30 health). But that is something else that I've really enjoyed. Since I try to get in with many different people in 5 mans no two runs are a like (at least not runs where you are all gear and level appropriate)


And I do agree with your assessment. I'm pretty sure that every boss in MC could be killed by 1 warrior and 39 healers with the possible exception of rags (I'm pretty sure that you can fear domo's adds making enough priests able to rotate those around). You'd have enough healing to just survive long enough for the tanks crappy DPS to kill the stuff. Maybe you up that to 2 tanks and 38 healers, but yeah, it was tank and spank with very little variation. The game was very tank and spank. However it wasn't all that way. It can be easy to forget some of them as well and many people never did them as they were designed to be done.

There are a couple of DPS checks I can think of old 5 mans but again you had to be gear and level appropriate for them to matter and most people never saw them that way since they would raid the instance and get the gear from it before they ever did the instances as a 5 man. The baron in strat dead, if you didn't kill the skelly adds fast enough the healing he got could do you in. Doing that fight without a mage or warlock was not easy. The divno-matic event in Zul-Farrak. Do that with a bunch of L44's in greens (not twinked out with crafts and BoE blues) a group like that you get folks EZ-thro dynamite to up the group DPS, the tank can't control all the adds and even with the NPC help you don't have enough DPS and the NPC's die (and while some of them can die if others die you can't complete the event). The guy in the room with all the graves was a DPS check with a way around it. If you clear all the graves first he only gets 2 adds no matter how slow you kill him. If you don't clear the graves he can get adds from every grave (or at least he used to be able to, they may have nerfed that out of the game).

Even the murloc event in Wailing Caverns was a DPS check if you didn't get the waves of spawns down fast enough the druid would die. But how many people went into WC in a 5 man at L17 - 19 like it's designed for? Van Cleef in the deadmines had DPS awarness checks. But again a good tank and healer could deal with the adds that spawned but again how often is the whole group in deadmines L17-20?

So there was some stuff like that in the game, but it was very easy to bypass, you could raid all the 5 man content and over gear (at least for the first year or so of the game), you could have folks that were levels above the content making it a lot easier. It's also hard to remember back to what scholo and strat were like before they were nerfed and before you did them with raid gear/pvp gear later on.


But yeah the game has evolved, and that is a very good thing. It should evolve. Designers should have more data and more base events to build on and tweak. Not everything is new. As mentioned even Van Cleef summons adds at predictable timing. And even Divno probably the best DPS check could be dealt with by a fantastic healer keeping the NPC's alive as well. It wasn't like Twin Emps or Huhu or Twin Emps trash or other things you described. It wasn't the DPS check that Vorpil or Warp Splinter are. Things have evolved. And while it was a "swarm" even like Black Morass it's not the same level of coordination as that. So some of the content that people are finding completely new is retread old content placed such that they can't just bypass how it was intended but even that is a good thing for me.

[Tuftears]

Sure the pet had 11K armor, 14% dodge, 5% parry, 5% block

Pets have parry and block?! NERF!

This message brought to you by the Secret Druid Tank Promotion Committee.



Seriously, yes, good DPS is much more important these days. But a new factor that's entered the picture is interrupts. There really weren't many places you needed to use interrupts, but now they're critical to such fights as Shade of Aran, and in Mechanar, if you don't interrupt the patrollers' Charged Fists attack, your melee DPS is going to be in for a lot of hurting, and your tank will take more damage too.

I'd say they're doing a good job of bringing out the importance of secondary functions as well.

[--Pete]

Hi,

Thoughts?

Fantastic posts, Bolty and Gnollguy. I'm still nowhere near far enough along to contribute to this discussion, but your lucid descriptions makes me *almost* feel like I have a glimmer of what's happening. A pair of fine posts in the best DSF/LL tradition. Thank you.

--Pete

EDIT: I should learn to read the whole thread before replying :whistling:

[oldmandennis]

Wow, that's a lot of talking.

I don't really know, I've never had much of a problem with DPS on any of these instances. It might be because I'm a feral druid and put out substantially more damage then a warrior, but I've taken undergeared, underleveled, or 2xhealer groups into these places and not really worried about DPS. The only problem I've really had is kiting Vorpil is when the DPS all DIA(rain of )F.

Heroic really require your DPS to bring some skills, but its more on the CC/aggro control side of things then max DPS. At least in the few I've been in.

[Bevock]

Yes the game has really changed a lot. I’m only batting 25% on Black Morass because I always seemed to get invited to heal it with 3 people who “think” they can DPS. I can normally tell on the first rift or two if it is going to be a wipe. If the boss and adds can not be taken down in 60 seconds or less you are normally not going to make it.

I had the same think happen to me last week where we got stuck on Vorpil because the DPS was just too low.

My only complaint at this time is gear progression. The crafted rare armor and 70-72 instance drops seem just as good or better than most of the T4/5 and Karazhan items I have seen so far. I got some epic paladin socketed pants that with the blue gems in them will have 1 stamina more, @1 % more spell crit, less mana regen, a few more intelligence but the same net +heal at the end of all of that because of a bonus on my crafted set. I see the difficulty going up in the encounters but not the gear to do them without using flasks and elixirs. If lucky we get a necklace or ring that has 1 more stamina or intelligence than one we have currently but it has less mana regen or +heal. Don’t get me wrong some items like weapons are way better but too much of this seems like side steps to me. These items would be great if some how you got to 70 and never did any quests, 5 man instances or used crafted items but if so your going to be dragging your whole group down.

[TheDragoon]

The game is definitely a different one than it was when the end game was just getting started. You have got to give credit to Blizzard that it is learning as it goes. For a long time, most jobs were pretty boring. Tanking would be stationary, healing would be the same thing over and over and DPS would stand around beating on things in the same way each battle. Now, things are a lot more dynamic as people have to be able to do a wide variety of things rather than one thing very well. In addition, in the 5-mans you can get away with wildly varying group compositions because there are usually multiple ways to handle a given encounter. The only real requirement is that of some sort of tanking and some sort of healing, but now that each faction has Warriors, Paladins and Druids that can tank and Priests, Shamans, Druids and Paladins that can heal, that isn't as big a burden.

One interesting thing is that people have been able to see the game progress as they progress. Each new encounter has shown, to me, a continuous maturation process by the WoW developers. Things have been getting more complex and interesting as new things are added.

That said, there are still problems that need to be fixed. Consumables are still out of whack, the current TBC end-game is not as accessible to people just starting out as the classic WoW end-game was left (with ZG, AQ20, MC and Onyxia as intro instances that all somewhat overlapped versus a hardened progression of Karazhan -> Gruul -> etc via attunements and gear requirements), and the "hybrid" classes (Druid, Shaman, Paladin) still seem to be bouncing all over the map in terms of their design intentions rather than having any real design direction. But overall, things have gotten more fun, in my opinion, and hopefully when these problems get addressed, this game will continue to advance, getting better and better as it goes along.

[NiteFox]

And as a DPS class who has never raided anything more difficult than Zul'Farrak in Azeroth and one failed Ramparts run due to the most piss-poor tank anyone can imagine, after reading all this I can't help but feel frightened and worried and excited. Definately excited.

Makes me wish I had more time to invest in being in a raiding guild. Or any guild for that matter:)

[Watto44]

Good post.

Black Morass was the first time I ever felt guilty about not being optimally specced and geared for PvE with my mage. After several failed attempts, I had decided to wait until I improved my PvE gear before heading back. Of course, ten minutes after I decided that I got the whisper and the group smoked it.:)Having a felguard and a curse on the single adds made a world of difference to my ability to deal with the adds. (Trying to convince puggies that I was too squishy in my crappy PvE gear to affectively deal with the single adds on my own was quite frustrating.)

I'm really appreciating the greater variety of encouters over the old level 60 five and ten player instances.

[NuurAbSaal]

Very well put Bolty and GG.

Having been Main Tank for my guild since we started Molten Core I can relate a lot to what you said about the progression of raid roles and the importance of DPS and coordinated effort by the DPS classes. Once we entered into the partnership with the guild which we raided together until AQ40 Skeram, we had nice progress in Molten Core, downing at least one new boss each week. Your description of the nature of MC fits perfectly with my experience. Tank'n'heal, little more. I was shocked to find my 5-man tanking abilities (which I had considered to be quite hawt) severely lacking after a couple of months of doing raid tanking only. In MC it's mostly about gear, there's little skill needed to tank and my multi-target tanking had deteriorated quite a bit. You can of course be a better tank by playing the warrior to the fullest of the classes abilities, but it really isn't needed in 90% of the fights. The AFK tanking of Garr made me chuckle:)

I felt the change of pace once we were in BWL. I pretty much controlled Razorgore for every attempt (and the following kills) and I was terrified the first time. We never got the kiting right (we are Horde, the only real faction, admit it), performance of people just wasn't what it should have been. Eventually we adopted a "Kill everything that ain't a Dragonkin" tactic that suited us better. We have always been a "nuke" raidgroup, downing bosses by sheer dmg output rather than by perfect coordination or a perfect raid balance. I always had mixed feelings about that approach, and it turned out we should have tried harder to get the most out of people later, but I'll come to that.

Vael gave us a lot of trouble, we were lacking fire resistance and gear in general, once we downed him after the summer break 2006 it was smooth sailing in BWL. The hardest part were the giant Dragonkin (whose name eludes me at the moment), the ones with the nasty de-aggro debuffs. It took some time and yelling to get people to do slow but steady dps on them to avoid pulling off a stunned or sleeped tank (Also I was the only one farming Free Action potions, grrr).

Chromaggus was the real first hurdle for us. We still took him down very fast, but you could tell who paid attention and who didn't and some harsh words were necessary. We killed Nefarian on the second day we tried, but mainly because the Battle Shout strategy still worked and phase one is a joke with it.

And yes, I certainly felt the enormous stress Bolty talks about. It's at the same time horrible and an incredible rush. W00t, I'm the key to this encounter, if I don't deliver, we are going to wipe. The horror!:D

As soon as Battle Shout aggro got tuned down, we were running into a wall at Nefarian. Everybody supposedly knew how it was supposed to happen, but we never got it right. I was tanking upwards of 8 Drakonids at my side and still some went for the healers, still we had damage on two or three Drakonids at a time. It was very frustrating to see a more or less successful raid groupturn out to be some excellent players mixed with people who could not or simply didn't try hard enough to pull off a complex strategy together.


And now The Burning Crusade:

I absolutely love it! The biggest improvement in my opinion is the reduced amount of time it takes to finish any given instance. No more endless clearing for a multitude of bosses. I also think that dungeon design and especially boss design has improved a lot, and I wholeheartedly agree with the statement that WoW has "evolved". Shadowlabs is one of my favourite instances, Ifind the second and third boss are a great test of the abilities of your group. The most fun I had in there was with a warlock, two hunters and a priest, we could crowd-control the trash to hell and back and had a blast. Hunter traps are also a very nice way to prevent you healer spending all of his mana during the mind control sequence of the second boss fight:)

We wiped three times in there, out of sheer nubness (at least once it was my fault:))
but was great to see how the group could, with decent coordination, totally take apart the instance.

I have mixed feelings about Black Morass. As Bolty said, this instance is all about damage output. Tanking is boring (apart from reflecting Pyroblasts back at the caster Rift Lords, möhöhö), and only the second and last boss are interesting for healing, I imagine. I'm pretty sure you can have a ball in there as a nuker, but some twists to make the tanks job a bit harder would be nice. In my opinon, of course:)

Well, this turned out to be rather long. To sum it all up:

/agree

:)

take care
Tarabulus

[bonemage]

I have mixed feelings about Black Morass. As Bolty said, this instance is all about damage output. Tanking is boring (apart from reflecting Pyroblasts back at the caster Rift Lords, möhöhö), and only the second and last boss are interesting for healing, I imagine.

I agree on Black Morass. I have found myself zoning out in there tanking a rift lord, where I'm just spamming Devastate after initial "lock down". The 2nd and 3rd bosses keep me on my toes (have to shed debuff/help healer keep me upright), but otherwise the place is a snooze. The only thing that keeps me awake in Black Morass for rift lords is a couple of our rogues, who can pull aggro off of me really late in the fight if I don't stay in full threat mode 90% of the time. Devastate snoozing and getting a rogue nearly munched is a bad way to wake up.

[Mavfin]

I agree on Black Morass. I have found myself zoning out in there tanking a rift lord, where I'm just spamming Devastate after initial "lock down". The 2nd and 3rd bosses keep me on my toes (have to shed debuff/help healer keep me upright), but otherwise the place is a snooze. The only thing that keeps me awake in Black Morass for rift lords is a couple of our rogues, who can pull aggro off of me really late in the fight if I don't stay in full threat mode 90% of the time. Devastate snoozing and getting a rogue nearly munched is a bad way to wake up.

However, that's part of what Bolty talked about. Not every instance is tank-centric anymore. There *are* instances that are snoozefests for tanks now, which is different from the old world. DPS has to be 'with it' in BM to succeed. From what you all are saying, as long as the tank isn't stupid, he'll be fine (for once), which is a far cry from other instances. Even the end fight of Ramparts requires a good tank to know when to grab the dragon and hold onto it. It speaks to the sad state of PuG tanking in that I've seen a total of only *5* tanks actually hold the dragon right. 1 pally, 2 druids, and 2 warriors. One of those warriors was me. Pretty sad, really. One run on my mage I had to go get my warrior and tank the fight myself so my guildie could get the quest completed (which my mage already had done). I just shake my head and realize why you don't see people pugging some places.

[Concillian]

The only thing that keeps me awake in Black Morass for rift lords is a couple of our rogues, who can pull aggro off of me really late in the fight if I don't stay in full threat mode 90% of the time. Devastate snoozing and getting a rogue nearly munched is a bad way to wake up.

Really?

I guess I don't feel so bad about losing aggro as often as I do then...

BM was not a snoozefest for me, because not having shield slam or devastate I have to concentrate pretty hard on keeping aggro in order to actually keep it off of some of the DPS going all out. That, and DPS is generally going to be a little lower without devastate.

[Kevin]

Really?

I guess I don't feel so bad about losing aggro as often as I do then...

BM was not a snoozefest for me, because not having shield slam or devastate I have to concentrate pretty hard on keeping aggro in order to actually keep it off of some of the DPS going all out. That, and DPS is generally going to be a little lower without devastate.

Yeah that is something that I have noticed. When tanking prot warriors do more DPS than arms/fury warriors. I don't have big sample sizes and I haven't done real close studies of it, but it seems to be that way. Of course when doing DPS, DPS spec warrior pull quite a bit ahead of prot warriors for DPS.

[Artega]

Really?

I guess I don't feel so bad about losing aggro as often as I do then...

BM was not a snoozefest for me, because not having shield slam or devastate I have to concentrate pretty hard on keeping aggro in order to actually keep it off of some of the DPS going all out. That, and DPS is generally going to be a little lower without devastate.

I don't use Devastate very often. I usually prefer to use Heroic Strike:)

[Warlock]

Yeah that is something that I have noticed. When tanking prot warriors do more DPS than arms/fury warriors. I don't have big sample sizes and I haven't done real close studies of it, but it seems to be that way. Of course when doing DPS, DPS spec warrior pull quite a bit ahead of prot warriors for DPS.

Yup. Just Shield Slam alone is good for tanking DPS (cheaper than the other specials and it hits harder than MS does with a 1H). Being the only spec with an instant, no cooldown attack doesn't hurt either.

Great thread and I agree with the main point as well - your whole group matters now.

[bonemage]

I don't use Devastate very often. I usually prefer to use Heroic Strike:)

Me too, but favoring one over the other is oversimplifying. Devastate is a GCD ability, and Heroic Strike is ONA (on next attack). So, you can use both, and at the same time essentially. I post this not for your sake, Artega, but for other classes trying to understand warriors, or for newer warriors.

[Concillian]

I don't use Devastate very often. I usually prefer to use Heroic Strike:)

I can't think of a situation where I'd rather use heroic strike instead of devastate.

GCD skills are better threat per rage than the on-next attack heroic strike. Mix in that a shaman is providing WF on a good number of our runsand devastate gives an extra chance to proc that for even more threat / damage and I really don't see using heroic strike in place of devastate... only in addition to when you have enough rage that you can't perform any more GCD skills and still need to dump it...

[NuurAbSaal]

I can't think of a situation where I'd rather use heroic strike instead of devastate.

GCD skills are better threat per rage than the on-next attack heroic strike. Mix in that a shaman is providing WF on a good number of our runsand devastate gives an extra chance to proc that for even more threat / damage and I really don't see using heroic strike in place of devastate... only in addition to when you have enough rage that you can't perform any more GCD skills and still need to dump it...

I have to agree here. Heroic Strike is great for dumping rage at, for example, raidbosses or that extra hard hitter that keeps your rage bar filled nicely. Devastate is a better sunder with damage. What's there not to love?

So basically: what he said.

take care
Tarabulus

[Watto44]

I just shake my head and realize why you don't see people pugging some places.

It's actually a really fun place to pug, as long as you accept the fact that you'll probably wipe on the second boss. (People forget to place their beacons or don't place them correctly.) The place feels really epic in a pug, where it's probably only interesting in a guild group. Also, explaining the concept of a DPS fight to someone for the first time is really fun. :shuriken: