brootis
Member
I did not write this, got it off of the WoW forums but it's useful.
So as many of you are hitting 85 and venturing into heroics full speed, I am sure you are realizing that heroics are no longer the face roll lolfest that they were in the previous expansion. I myself thought that once the initial push to learn the encounters was over, the only major change one would have to adapt to is the direction in which they roll their face on the keyboard. This statement is turning out to be less and less true as each heroic experience is defined tightly by the make-up and cohesion of the group and the situational moments that naturally occur due to the unpredictable format of current dungeon design.
As a long time player, I can lay a claim to the experience that I have seen and done much of the game, from many different toons and while fulfilling many different roles. Throughout this long expanse, I have always come back to being a tank, so do not be surprised if I seem to write largely from a tank’s perspective. I played a Warrior tank in most of Vanilla, switching to a Druid healer near the end. In BC, I played…well…everything…I raided on a Warrior Tank/DPS, Druid Healer, Lock, Priest Healer, Mage. In Wrath I almost exclusively raided on a Death Knight except for some short breaks healing on a Priest and now in Cataclysm I will most likely stick to my DK.
While the first look perception may be that heroics are now more reminiscent of Vanilla WoW dungeons, I tend to hold the view that they are actually a combination of a Vanilla dungeon and a Burning Crusade Heroic. You still have to carefully plan out your actions as you progress through the instance but gone are the Heroic Shattered Halls days when you had to have two mages, a rogue and a paladin tank to succeed. The major change that players are going to see is not a change of play style or change in the handling of encounters but rather a change of perception. In a very cataclysmic (lol) way, the way you perceived heroics in the past is now drastically altered and must be adapted to the new model. Here is a list of suggestions that I came up with to help you make the transition from Easy mode to Slightly-Less-Easy-But-Still-Doable-Albeit-Somewhat-Stressful-and-Irritating mode.
I. Delete Your Damage Meters – I cannot stress this enough. The damage that you as a DPS player bring is no longer your defining quality with which you sell yourself to a group. Being able to do massive DPS is cool but being able to do good DPS WHILE maintaining control of the adds assigned to you is the truly commendable quality to work on. Your DPS does not matter if there are 3-4 adds wailing on the tank, who in turn dies in a few seconds and then your group wipes.
So what does this mean? This means making sacrifices. Warlocks may have to sacrifice their pet damage in favor of a succubus. Mages may have to break their [1 1 1 1 2] rotation to maintain control of a sheep. Re-trapping takes priority over that 30k shot you were about to unleash Legolas.
Not every DPS class offers the same in terms of CC. That means that everyone must have complete awareness of the abilities of their class and when they are or are not viable. The classes whose CC is not viable for the situation must be the ones to work extra hard to pick up the slack. This is not new to the best players. The cream of the crop is blowing through content at a wild fire pace. It is the rest of us that need to re-learn what we do, how we do it and, more importantly, how to do it better.
II. Your Healer Can Not Heal You – This is a bit of a strange one. In the Wrath model, your healer had the ability to cushion you from the crap you missed. Whether you got hit by fire, walked through the void zone, broke a CC, the mana pools healers had and the reflexes they developed allowed them to save you. Healers still have the reflexes but they no longer have the mana.
If you tunnel vision on a generic on-the-ground boss mechanic that hurts you and the healer has to quickly react to keep you alive, their mana pool takes a hit that is difficult to sustain at the expansion entry gear levels, even for the best healers. Where in Wrath if you died to an easily avoidable mechanic the healer simply did not heal you, in Cataclysm if you are dying to an easily avoidable mechanic the healer simply cannot afford to heal you.
The term that fits this new model the best is “unforgiving”. If you make a mistake, the game will not let it slide. You can complain about numerous things but the simple answer remains. Don’t make stupid mistakes. This ties in well with the previous point. Your situational awareness is now a higher prized selling point than the pure numbers you can bring to the table.
III. Open Your Spell Book – Each class has some form of defensive abilities that have lain unused since pretty much BC. It is time to dust those skills off and use them. It is your job to mitigate as much of the incoming damage as possible and only rely on the healer afterwards.
I remember watching a LK raid video from a Frost DPS Death Knight Perspective and the guy only had one action bar with 5-6 skills on it and those were the only skills he used the whole time. I remember thinking, “Why doesn’t he have Icebound Fortitude (Defensive Cooldown – 2 min.) on his bars?” That mentality does not fly for Cataclysm. Sure, that Runic Power for the IBF could go towards a massive Frost Strike crit but it is irresponsible from a group mentality perspective to willingly take more damage in exchange for doing more damage when you can easily mitigate some of what is coming to you.
It is your responsibility to play as defensively as possible. A living DPS does more damage than a dead one. It is your duty to make the healer’s job as easy as possible. So before you even click the “Join Queue” button, scour your spell book and find skills that you haven’t thought you needed to use before. Think of creative ways to use them. Practice and do it better each time.
IV. Tanks, Learn Your Cooldowns – There is a difference between short cooldowns and your “Oh S%@# skills. You as a tank have to gauge your healer and learn how to use your cooldowns so that you are reducing the healing load as much as possible. For me, Icebound Fortitude is the only cooldown that I keep for safety purposes if things go sideways. My skills that have a cooldown anywhere between 30 seconds and 1 minute (Rune Tap, Vampiric Blood, Rune Weapon and Anti-Magic Shell), I pretty much keep on cooldown. I bounce them off of each other to where I have something active pretty much 100% through a fight, heavily reducing the damage load I am taking and therefore extending the healer’s effective mana.
Tanks, just like every other role, have to evolve to where they are taking their game aptitude to a whole new level. In Wrath we could do most instances without ever having to touch a cooldown. Here you not only have to use them but you have to use them smartly. Get started early.
V. Lower Your Expectations – In Wrath, heroics were a boring tedium of badge grinding until one could gear up enough for whatever raid was the most current. In Cataclysm it is different. You may not think of it that way but heroics ARE the beginning of end-game raiding in Cataclysm. They are no longer a by-way but are rather an achievement that is almost on par with the early tier of raids. You are not in a 5-man dungeon grind. You are in a 5-man hard more raid. Wrath Entitlement has created the expectation that heroics will be handed to you. The Cataclysm model is here to break that.
Overall, Cataclysm is the biggest single change in the overall model of the game that those of us who have been here since day 1 have seen yet. The change from Vanilla – BC – Wrath was somewhat linear and gradual. This is all new and happened in just a couple of days. Mora change is no doubt coming. Healing will likely get retuned. Either output will be increased or cost will be decreased. However the overall model is here to stay. You will once again have to know the ins and outs of your class in order to perform well in a PvE environment that had become far too keyboard face smash in the first place.
The top 1% of players will always be the top 1% of players and will always conquer everything. However for the everyday player, PvE is a mix of heroics and raids that needs to strike a difficult balance between challenge and reward. Cataclysm has once again thrown that balance in contention. It is up to you as players to work to your best ability to do the best you can while providing constructive feedback on how to improve this ever present balance. Good luck with your heroic adventures!
Now back to wiping in [insert dungeon here]…
So as many of you are hitting 85 and venturing into heroics full speed, I am sure you are realizing that heroics are no longer the face roll lolfest that they were in the previous expansion. I myself thought that once the initial push to learn the encounters was over, the only major change one would have to adapt to is the direction in which they roll their face on the keyboard. This statement is turning out to be less and less true as each heroic experience is defined tightly by the make-up and cohesion of the group and the situational moments that naturally occur due to the unpredictable format of current dungeon design.
As a long time player, I can lay a claim to the experience that I have seen and done much of the game, from many different toons and while fulfilling many different roles. Throughout this long expanse, I have always come back to being a tank, so do not be surprised if I seem to write largely from a tank’s perspective. I played a Warrior tank in most of Vanilla, switching to a Druid healer near the end. In BC, I played…well…everything…I raided on a Warrior Tank/DPS, Druid Healer, Lock, Priest Healer, Mage. In Wrath I almost exclusively raided on a Death Knight except for some short breaks healing on a Priest and now in Cataclysm I will most likely stick to my DK.
While the first look perception may be that heroics are now more reminiscent of Vanilla WoW dungeons, I tend to hold the view that they are actually a combination of a Vanilla dungeon and a Burning Crusade Heroic. You still have to carefully plan out your actions as you progress through the instance but gone are the Heroic Shattered Halls days when you had to have two mages, a rogue and a paladin tank to succeed. The major change that players are going to see is not a change of play style or change in the handling of encounters but rather a change of perception. In a very cataclysmic (lol) way, the way you perceived heroics in the past is now drastically altered and must be adapted to the new model. Here is a list of suggestions that I came up with to help you make the transition from Easy mode to Slightly-Less-Easy-But-Still-Doable-Albeit-Somewhat-Stressful-and-Irritating mode.
I. Delete Your Damage Meters – I cannot stress this enough. The damage that you as a DPS player bring is no longer your defining quality with which you sell yourself to a group. Being able to do massive DPS is cool but being able to do good DPS WHILE maintaining control of the adds assigned to you is the truly commendable quality to work on. Your DPS does not matter if there are 3-4 adds wailing on the tank, who in turn dies in a few seconds and then your group wipes.
So what does this mean? This means making sacrifices. Warlocks may have to sacrifice their pet damage in favor of a succubus. Mages may have to break their [1 1 1 1 2] rotation to maintain control of a sheep. Re-trapping takes priority over that 30k shot you were about to unleash Legolas.
Not every DPS class offers the same in terms of CC. That means that everyone must have complete awareness of the abilities of their class and when they are or are not viable. The classes whose CC is not viable for the situation must be the ones to work extra hard to pick up the slack. This is not new to the best players. The cream of the crop is blowing through content at a wild fire pace. It is the rest of us that need to re-learn what we do, how we do it and, more importantly, how to do it better.
II. Your Healer Can Not Heal You – This is a bit of a strange one. In the Wrath model, your healer had the ability to cushion you from the crap you missed. Whether you got hit by fire, walked through the void zone, broke a CC, the mana pools healers had and the reflexes they developed allowed them to save you. Healers still have the reflexes but they no longer have the mana.
If you tunnel vision on a generic on-the-ground boss mechanic that hurts you and the healer has to quickly react to keep you alive, their mana pool takes a hit that is difficult to sustain at the expansion entry gear levels, even for the best healers. Where in Wrath if you died to an easily avoidable mechanic the healer simply did not heal you, in Cataclysm if you are dying to an easily avoidable mechanic the healer simply cannot afford to heal you.
The term that fits this new model the best is “unforgiving”. If you make a mistake, the game will not let it slide. You can complain about numerous things but the simple answer remains. Don’t make stupid mistakes. This ties in well with the previous point. Your situational awareness is now a higher prized selling point than the pure numbers you can bring to the table.
III. Open Your Spell Book – Each class has some form of defensive abilities that have lain unused since pretty much BC. It is time to dust those skills off and use them. It is your job to mitigate as much of the incoming damage as possible and only rely on the healer afterwards.
I remember watching a LK raid video from a Frost DPS Death Knight Perspective and the guy only had one action bar with 5-6 skills on it and those were the only skills he used the whole time. I remember thinking, “Why doesn’t he have Icebound Fortitude (Defensive Cooldown – 2 min.) on his bars?” That mentality does not fly for Cataclysm. Sure, that Runic Power for the IBF could go towards a massive Frost Strike crit but it is irresponsible from a group mentality perspective to willingly take more damage in exchange for doing more damage when you can easily mitigate some of what is coming to you.
It is your responsibility to play as defensively as possible. A living DPS does more damage than a dead one. It is your duty to make the healer’s job as easy as possible. So before you even click the “Join Queue” button, scour your spell book and find skills that you haven’t thought you needed to use before. Think of creative ways to use them. Practice and do it better each time.
IV. Tanks, Learn Your Cooldowns – There is a difference between short cooldowns and your “Oh S%@# skills. You as a tank have to gauge your healer and learn how to use your cooldowns so that you are reducing the healing load as much as possible. For me, Icebound Fortitude is the only cooldown that I keep for safety purposes if things go sideways. My skills that have a cooldown anywhere between 30 seconds and 1 minute (Rune Tap, Vampiric Blood, Rune Weapon and Anti-Magic Shell), I pretty much keep on cooldown. I bounce them off of each other to where I have something active pretty much 100% through a fight, heavily reducing the damage load I am taking and therefore extending the healer’s effective mana.
Tanks, just like every other role, have to evolve to where they are taking their game aptitude to a whole new level. In Wrath we could do most instances without ever having to touch a cooldown. Here you not only have to use them but you have to use them smartly. Get started early.
V. Lower Your Expectations – In Wrath, heroics were a boring tedium of badge grinding until one could gear up enough for whatever raid was the most current. In Cataclysm it is different. You may not think of it that way but heroics ARE the beginning of end-game raiding in Cataclysm. They are no longer a by-way but are rather an achievement that is almost on par with the early tier of raids. You are not in a 5-man dungeon grind. You are in a 5-man hard more raid. Wrath Entitlement has created the expectation that heroics will be handed to you. The Cataclysm model is here to break that.
Overall, Cataclysm is the biggest single change in the overall model of the game that those of us who have been here since day 1 have seen yet. The change from Vanilla – BC – Wrath was somewhat linear and gradual. This is all new and happened in just a couple of days. Mora change is no doubt coming. Healing will likely get retuned. Either output will be increased or cost will be decreased. However the overall model is here to stay. You will once again have to know the ins and outs of your class in order to perform well in a PvE environment that had become far too keyboard face smash in the first place.
The top 1% of players will always be the top 1% of players and will always conquer everything. However for the everyday player, PvE is a mix of heroics and raids that needs to strike a difficult balance between challenge and reward. Cataclysm has once again thrown that balance in contention. It is up to you as players to work to your best ability to do the best you can while providing constructive feedback on how to improve this ever present balance. Good luck with your heroic adventures!
Now back to wiping in [insert dungeon here]…
