03-21-2007, 04:54 PM
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.
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.
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It's all just zeroes and ones and duct tape in the end.
It's all just zeroes and ones and duct tape in the end.