Show Some Respect

Blessing of Kings had a post about how Gevlon was right, that people tend not to play to their full potential. In addition, there is a social contract preventing us from telling people what they did wrong and how they should play the game.

Let's take the situation of a comment from Kring.

"You did not touch the question why they have to be better players.  You don't play WoW to finish it, you play it to pass time, to have fun.  If just casting frost bolts and not reading EJ is fun to you, what's wrong with that? Why do they have to be better?  Why do you assume it's "helping them" if you send them to EJ (where they'll get an infraction)?"

10 Factors that Make a Fun Mage Encounter

Spinks at Welcome to Spinksville wrote an interesting post about 10 things that make a fun tanking encounter.  As a tank, I can say that I wholeheartedly agree with every one of those points.  Naxx was filled with a lot of great tanking encounters and most of them had at least one or two of the things he mentioned.  I figured it would only be fair, now that my mage is my main, that I give a list of 10 things that make a fun mage encounter.  Let's make this shit a meme!

Captain Procrastination

Things have been hectic lately. Between travel for work, work around the house, general laziness, and Army of Two: 40th day I haven't posted in a week! Promise it won't happen again (for at least a few more weeks!)

Last night was ICC-10 man with our secondary group. We're still having some issues with coordination on Festergut but we one shot all of the first wing, save a freak healer death on Marrowgar causing a wipe.  I did get a chance to mix the monotony or raiding up a bit.

Dungeon Finder Revisited

So I've been a bit bored as of late. Our guild has some issues with getting through ICC, and I must say, I'm not surprised. We never actually got past Yogg in 10 man Uld and didn't get any further than downing Cat-Lady once in 25. We're hung up on Festerface and Rottcrotch in 10s and we've successfully downed Marrowgar's trash in 25s.

I don't have the time to be a serious raider, and I just haven't been having much fun. I had done some leveling on my shaman in LFG and it's been fun, but there's just so many times I can do SM:Graveyard before punch my monitor in its stupid face.

Then I read this post at Righteous Defense. I was looking for a low level tanking class to play through dungeons, and thanks to his post I made a paladin.

We are not DPS

Alright, here comes a serious rant. It started when Gevlon was posting about a new business strategy of tanks charging for LFG. I don't think that's a bad idea at all - I would pay to get in a dungeon faster on my mage. My problem is that he assumes that more than half of all DPS, nay half of all players are fail DPS.

Screw that. Don't link those failures to us. Those people are bad, regardless of what they do. If you had no information on the game whatsoever and all your skills said "do x damage," you would assume your job is to do damage.

Analogy Time: You give a completely unskilled person a pot and some ingredients. Naturally, they interpret that thinking they want me to cook, even though they could also clean the pans or eat the food. Those are things that come along with cooking, but aren't obvious based on what they're given. The unskilled person makes some horrible food, and now the whole world is saying that more than half of the cooks are terrible. Sounds ridiculous, right?

Marks - Not Just for Tanks Anymore

I realize that not everyone has a tank. I used to do a lot of tanking back in BC (when it was hard) and I followed TankingTips.com religiously, as I wasn't hardcore enough for Tankspot.com (and it was blocked at work).

Due to this post Vene made a long time ago, I have always had my raid targets bound. Our raid leader caught on and always made me assist so I could quickly as well as marking on-the-fly. For about a year and a half, my number pad has been bound to marks.

And now, I can use them in every LFG I'm in. One of the most overlooked buffs (I consider it a buff) on the last patch is that in a five man group, everyone can mark. Let that set in for a little bit.

Got a tank who doesn't target the right adds first? Mark for him. Got DPS that go wild and can't assist? Mark skull and they should follow. You can even use it to mark yourself as a healer to let the tank know where you are at all times.

If you're having issues, take hold of the situation and run the marks. If you've bound them, you should be able to do it quickly without stalling the group. Mark before the pull, and people might actually attack the same targets!

In summary, don't complain about your LFG unless you've done absolutely everything in your power to fix the problems - and that includes marking regardless of your role.

Tanks, Healers, and DPS - An Analogy

This post is a response to the Matticus post as well as the FORBEARANCE post on the subject of whether Tanks and Healers should get more gear than DPS.

First off, I will say this. Tanks have always received more gear from raid content, at least up until Wrath. Getting the MT geared up fast was always the strategy, and when tier pieces dropped, they had first dibs on it. In new content, this would even happen when using DKP. I'm bringing this up before hand, as it fits my analogy.

Raiding is a Manufacturing Business.

Dominion - Best Game Ever

I know it's been a while since I last posted. The first reason is that I started posting articles for Alltern8.com, a multi-discipline gaming website. They've got areas on MMOs, Console, Table-Top, and LARP games. So far, I wrote an expanded review of Borderlands as well as a few LARP plot tips. If you're interested, check them out here.

The other reason is that I've been away from raiding for the most part. The reason for that?

Idea for an Addon: Gearwhore

Everyone's using gearscore to determine how viable a character is for various raids. I've even seen people looking for gearscore for heroics. While Gearscore is a completely acceptable, accurate, and infallible tool for determining competence, I've decided to make an addon that measures what really counts: how toons look.

I bring you... GEARWHORE

No Internet, No iPod

Happy New Years! 

I failed hard and forgot to bring my computer and my iPod Touch with me to my parents house.  This has made it very difficult for me to get a post in the last few days.  I wish there was more for me to write about, but at least I got to play a few board games.