Desperately seeking Ghostcrawler.

I'm not sure about all of you guys, but I personally loved the recent blog from Ghostcrawler regarding the 4.2 changes to class balance. While some of the change reasons are a bit questionable, the very fact that the Lead Systems Designer is willing to discuss these reasons is a huge step in the right direction. The developer Q&A series, though well intended, ended up becoming something of a laughing stock because of both the format and the work that went into it. The tanking one was a very sloppy, ill-informed and infuriating piece of work, but proved to be the proverbial straw that broke the back of patience.

Additionally, the stated intention to continue these balancing explanations for future patches is something I find really, really positive; I hope everyone feels the same way and I hope the community can take the intention into account when judging these posts and be supportive of the format.

Despite being positive about these plans, I do still wonder why it came to this. Looking around the forums, most of the blue posts are either gags or attempts to squash threads that are living on the wild side of the "rules". Particularly in Europe, Vaneras must have the rule-breaking quote on a macro. It's quite disheartening, really. While I can accept that the community is so poisonous in some examples that it needs more managing than ever, their actual contribution to worthwhile debates is possibly at an all time low.

It's not that they don't try. They're just in a position where they can't win, no matter what they do. Any insert of light-heartedness is scowled upon for "making fun of my serious problem". And even when they do address a serious issue, they get pilloried for attending to the wrong issue. It's little wonder they're becoming more insular as time passes, only willing to step in when things are getting out of hand. There just seemed to be a decent "feel" when Ghostcrawler posted, as it was understood that he dealt with issues that saw good discussion and he didn't mindlessly recite what he'd been told or what the latest parse proved. He engaged the community as part tester, part theorycrafter, part player and he did so in a pretty fair fashion, all things considered.

Unfortunately, when Ghostcrawler left the forums, he left behind blue posters who were (with all due respect) nobodies. Without the executive authority to enact change in any meaningful way, people like Bashiok or Zarhym were essentially relegated to middle men between the community and the development team. With Mr. Street around, they fed from him and were confident of the development stance when engaging with frequently irate players. There was always something current to refer to and their own views and assertions would be backed up by what Ghostcrawler himself said. Now, it's a case of checking and double-checking that what they're saying is acceptable and palatable to a development team who'll end up having to defend it.

In short, the absence of Ghostcrawler left a hole that the other blues couldn't fill and the community has felt the pain of his absence ever since.

That direct link to developer thinking is something that no amount of Q&A can replace because speaking to Ghostcrawler gave you the opportunity to question the party line. And despite what many claim, there are an absolute myriad of examples where exactly this has happened; he's started with a point of view, and well-reasoned debate saw him change it on many occasions. This really helped the community to focus on issues properly because it was worth arguing with the person who could enact the change you wanted. Now... No matter what you ask, a middle man is going to forward (and probably filter) your question/concern/complaint and you'll get the response via that same middle man.

The only problem is that these balance posts have the same "last word" problem. The dialogue can't happen when it ends up one sided. And while I totally champion the plan to continue them as a thoroughly worthwhile exercise, I just get the feeling they're going to end up leaving us all flat because they're almost, but not quite, what we really want.

Return to your forums, oh crab of calamity; all is forgiven.

Zellviren Revisited.

It's no secret I've been down on my class recently. My berth as a skilled Protection warrior was never in question, but it started to weigh on me that playing a class designed to be weaker (by developers happy with that) was less fun than it used to be. Prior to this, it wasn't so bad - I remained ahead of my other guild tanks in Wrath of the Lich King by virtue of being a better player, something that provides a rather obstinate comfort that ironically suits the class if you think about it. My current tanking partner, Vexien, is easily as good a player as I am, however, so the differences started to show up. Outside of gimmick fights or off-tanking duty, death knights, druids and (particularly) paladins are technically better raid tanks than warriors.

Was I really looking at yet another expansion where I had to be better geared and a better player, just to keep up?

In any event, I broke with convention and posted my concerns on a forum that is rife with trolling, bickering, petty elitism and stupidity; the WoW Europe community forums. And despite my writing being a clear case of "baddie inspired QQ", the relatively tiny amount of negative responses my post saw was actually a stronger indicator that something is up than anything else. I totally appreciate the comments on my own blog, particularly the ones that highlighted where I'd misunderstood something or omitted it in my comparisons. But ultimately, the fact that even those who spend their time waiting on a chance to post asinine level 1 insults didn't do so, was the unofficial confirmation that my worries weren't a case of me playing poorly.

It was time to play Arms.

Fortunately for me, there are another two players in our raid group who could take up the mantle; a Fury warrior and a Feral, who both easily have the gear for tanking the opening encounters in 4.2. Whenever I play offspec Arms, I'm always competitive on damage because I really enjoy the spec and find that I'm pretty good at it. Plus, there are a few encounters that actually favour Arms quite nicely despite it not being so good on the "Patchwerk" simulations.

Then of course you come across the tuning adjustments planned in 4.2 and you realise playing Arms isn't going to be so hot, after all. A whopping set of nerfs essentially relegate Arms to rock bottom of the DPS charts, while both Feral Combat and Retribution (the other melee in my raid group) are seeing deserved buffs to haul them up a bit. All things considered, I'm not going to be so competitive because I'm outgeared by players who are as good as I am and playing specs that are simply going to be more powerful.

Great. Back to the drawing board.

It's at this point in the tale, dear readers, when your humble author is at his lowest ebb. Fed up playing second fiddle through no fault of his own and unable to turn to the other crumbs of comfort on offer, he became very similar to poor Bruce Wayne after his mansion was burned down by the League of Shadows. With no Alfred in sight, was it time to just jump to PvP, grind honour and leave the raiding game behind until warriors were hauled up a bit? Was it time to leave the glorifying destruction of bosses to those luckier on the character selection screen?

Was it time to ditch the class that was the most fun to play in the game by a mile?

Fasten your seatbelts, ladies and gentlemen, return your chairs to their upright positions and read that again:

Was it time to ditch the class that was the most fun to play in the game by a mile?

That's why I play this game. It's not to be competitive in all things, it's not to be the greatest tank the world has ever seen and it's not to flip-flop between one thing and another while hoping I'll be FotM soon. I play this game because I enjoy it, and I play a warrior because it's the absolute pinnacle of game design.

How did Veneretio put it again...?

"Easy to pick up, hard to master, fun to play".

I love raiding. I love raiding with my guild mates. I love raiding with my guild mates as a tank. I love raiding with my guild mates as a Protection warrior. Damn it, I love showing everyone why Protection warriors are in raids when all else points to their exclusion. Enter Zellviren.


After some gear soul-searching, some gear-swapping, some reforge-changing, some gem-altering and a couple of slaps to save myself from the whiny bitch I'd become, it was time to do what I do best; play the game's most sophisticated class to the highest of my ability. I found that with a few gear changes I could factor in some threat stats, while still managing to actually increase my combined parry, dodge and block. I also found that I was STILL struggling to pick the right talent spec after sorting my gear, yet another indication that I have so many good options. There's no doubt that other tanks are just the watered down copies of what warriors are - kind of like the fourth version of Michael Keaton in Multiplicity.

Sure, they might look shiny. But underneath, they're just the same wannabe wimps with some bells and whistles thrown on to entertain the children.

My talent tree was starting to fill up nicely, now. I again realised the elegance of Blood and Thunder; I smiled at the stubbornness of Hold the Line; I positively beamed at the wonder that is Warbringer; I coursed with the desperation of a Last Stand; I yelled at the defiance of Concussion Blow and Shockwave; my ears pricked at the sound of my Drums of War. And perhaps most tellingly, I groaned at the omission of Vigilance, Impending Victory, Safeguard, Piercing Howl and Deep Wounds.

I'm not ashamed to admit this was like waking up from a dream. While my gearing and talent choices might look restrictive, they're a kaleidoscope of colour compared to the blandness offered by other classes. And while paladins, death knights and bears can sneer about doing many things better than I can, I can laugh at the fact that I can still do everything they can, while there are things I can do that they simply cannot ever do, at any stage, or under any circumstances.

Class balance should always be aimed at. Respective of my reawakening, there is never a reason why one class should be better than another. If the tanking Q&A wasn't so worryingly clueless, it would have been funny (Innervate as good as Divine Guardian? What, really?). But at the end of the day, what you enjoy most is easily what should remain at the heart of why you play the game or the class that you do.

True, warriors are a bit behind - but that won't be forever. And we all know being "fine" doesn't mean "competitive". But when push comes to shove, I play a class that can transform an encounter by virtue of its adaptability. And in addition to that, I play a class that will ever remain popular due to it being more fun (ish) than sharing a sleeping bag with that school teacher you fancied.

Don't ditch your warriors, tanking or otherwise.

They're still the original, and best.

Threat frustrations.

I must admit, my self-assurance wobbled a bit the other night in Baradin Hold. After my usual Commanding Shout, Shield Block, Heroic Throw, Charge, Shield Slam and Heroic Strike, I was ready to settle into showing this PuG just how awesome a tank I was - despite the fact Heroic Strike missed.

One Feral Charge, Mangle and Maul later, and I wasn't tanking at all.

I quickly consulted the ever trusty combat log, expecting an uncommon (but possible) occurrence of both that Mangle and Maul critically striking but, alas, that's not what happened. All those two attacks did was hit their target, and it was enough for a bear in significantly worse gear than me to reduce my proudly constructed warrior to a 2nd rate threat generator.

I'm not kidding when I tell you it stung.

The backdrop here is that I play with a death knight when tanking raids. It's long since been established that, all things equal, a DK will generate more threat than a warrior on both single targets and multiple ones. I also totally understand that my love for Revenge encourages me to use it far more than I need to, and that my use of Inner Rage (or general lack of) is far from strong. I'm also rubbish at remembering Rend despite the presence of a Feral in our raids, and I don't spec into Deep Wounds because I like the utility of other talents. In short, I'm totally aware that my threat output isn't as high as it could be. Of course I'd also heard the whispers that warriors were sub-par in the threat stakes but, as usual, I decided this wasn't worth serious consideration until it started to bother me.

Well, now it bothers me. Is warrior threat so astonishingly poor that a worse geared druid will pull off by default? Is this another case of having to pay the fiddler for the extra utility a warrior brings? Have Blizzard gone overboard with nerfs to Protection warriors? Am I personally just doing it horribly wrong?

I think this boils down to three issues that I need to address:

Burst threat, class balance and sustained threat.

Burst threat is an easy thing to identify problems with, and not something I'm generally that worried about. If it's burst threat I want, I'll do exactly what I did in the pull erstwhile described, but slot Concussion Blow in on my 3rd GCD (after Shield Slam and Devastate). If I'm being pulled off under those circumstances, assuming the attacks land, then I can't be held accountable for it and it's a balancing problem.

Balance is a bigger concern for me right now. Since 4.0, warriors have seen three significant changes to their threat generation mechanics and all play their part.

1) First of all, the great Heroic Strike nerf hit Protection warriors very hard - particularly if, like me, you were a fan of Revenge. This nerf was nowhere near made up for in the Devastate buff we got as a trade, as I was using Heroic Strike FAR more than I was using Devastate and it was contributing far more damage. I'm not 100% sure how much damage and threat I lost as a result of this, but we're talking about one Hell of a lot.

2) The removal of the additional threat component from Shield Slam has contributed. I simply assumed that the threat from Shield Slam must have been overpowered, hence the 100% nerf we got to the additional threat it generated. If its damage was fine but its threat was out of kilter, then it's fair enough to remove the threat. I also read that the warrior reliance on Shield Slam was a bit too heavy, thus spreading the load seemed sensible.

Those two combined make up for a substantial threat loss that I assumed was being made up for elsewhere. Warriors were not out-performing their tanking counterparts in either threat or DPS, certainly not significantly, so a flat nerf of such dizzying magnitude would have been unquestionably brutal. But looking back outside of the Devastate buff, it does appear to be exactly what happened. This brings me onto my third point.

3) The face of Inner Rage changed completely. From consuming more rage per ability to simply lowering the cooldown on our rage dumps, the developers basically admitted that the ability itself was practically useless in its original form and needed updating. So bad was the idea all told, however, they even threw it into the doldrums of the levelling experience, while replacing its Cataclysm plateau with an entirely new ability.

Here's where my eyes narrow and I focus on the issue.

In reality, the nerf to Heroic Strike hasn't shaken out as a nerf at all - what's actually happened is a cut to the damage of each swing, but an increase in the frequency of them. The damage buff to Devastate roughly equates with the threat nerf to Shield Slam if we want to really simplify it, so I'm left at the end of this napkin musing with a blood-boiling question:

Is warrior sustained threat now balanced around a mechanic that the developers vowed to get rid of?

I cannot comment on the overall output regarding comparable values of tank threat. I can't say for certain if warriors are indeed bottom of the pile all things equal, just as I can't comment on the real time impact of any threat nerfs the other tanks have seen. But if the developers really think it's acceptable for my spec to be relegated to something they admitted was a deplorable chore, then it calls for a pretty immediate explanation from them and might give a clue as to why the "Ask the Devs - Tanking" answers are taking so long.

This, of course, is a reactionary thought flow that is laced with frustration. It could be way off mark, the whole problem could be my playstyle/spec and it's much ado about nothing. But I simply cannot reconcile the problems I've been having recently with what's going on between chair and screen, so I'd really appreciate some input as to what is going on with my spec. Please, just put it to me if I'm being stupid here.

But if I'm seriously expected to be the tank that's routinely lowest on threat, while also being the most fragile, then it may finally be time to reroll to DPS. This has gone on since The Burning Crusade and "bezt tankz vanilla lol" is no longer a viable reason for it; nor is the spurious "utility" that is typically only of value in five-man dungeons.

If I'm the problem, I can work on it. If I'm not the problem, playing a class that's weaker by design is just not fun anymore.

Promoting community content.

An MMO, for the most part, is indelibly linked to the quality of its community. At a stage where complaints about WoW are constant, I find it most unfortunate that the community (now at its largest) is also at its most poisonous. One need only look over the official forums to see the miasma of bullying, rudeness, elitism and trolling that blights it. Despite these people (typically hiding behind level one alts), though, the community has always promoted groups that are more than willing to contribute their time, experience and expertise for their own personal enjoyment, but also for the benefit of others. Be it blogs, podcasts, videos, guides, theorycrafting or machinima, these people give a great deal of pleasure to a great many people.

But I'm beginning to wonder where they're going.

There is enough commentary about the WoW community and where it's headed, even some of my own from these very pages. But it does seem as if a lot of the people who make the game fun are departing for pastures new. From the blogosphere, some of my favourites are either dead or dying; you'll remember my post about Veneretio from TankingTips, and I've waxed lyrical about Kadomi more than once. That same quirky charm can be applied to Linedan too, another who's output has slowed to a crawl and, judging by his armoury, I can't be sure if he's even playing much anymore.

But other noteworthy departures are more universally worrying.

Most everyone who cares will now be aware that Kungen has quit the game. I recall a couple of posts going up on MMO-Champion and the official forums, all accompanied by bile and trolling. What most people don't realise is that players such as Kungen lead guilds that are effectively playtesters of the hardest content. They are making a huge contribution to our top end PvE play by getting there and ironing out the kinks. While other guilds are all up there now, Ensidia (and its past incarnations) has been doing it for far longer and Kungen has been at the helm.

Then we get to TotalBiscuit. You can watch the last Azeroth Daily episode to hear his explanation if you like, or weren't aware of him cancelling his subscription. Once more, we're talking about someone who made his name to many with his Cataclysm beta videos, but some of us have been listening to Blue Plz almost as long as we've been playing. A fun and engaging host, also with the Azeroth Daily show, he's another charismatic (though naturally disagreeable) loss to a community that perhaps needs these players more than ever.

Lastly, I should comment on TankSpot. It could just be me, but the quality of their video guides has plummeted since the launch of Cataclysm. Luckily, Kinaesthesia over at L2R has picked up the baton as far as guides go, but people like Aliena and Papapaint (despite being good players) simply lack the charisma to make their guides engaging and their entries have seen quality jettisoned for speed. Perhaps this is a more ironic development than I'm giving it credit for, but the increase in content quantity has saw the quality fall away.

Why this is happening is, really, another topic. What I'm asking is how we replace well thought-of community members who give up a lot of their free time to make the game more enjoyable for us. Let's not beat about the bush; WoW is more than just a game. The social ties that are created within it, as well as the multitude of activities that revolve around it, make it more than a game by default. I'm often found describing WoW as a hobby as I feel that's a more fitting title for it. Hobbyists want to create an atmosphere that benefits everyone, acutely understanding that what benefits the whole will benefit the individual. A game designed around the spurious notion of "community" should surely see the virtue in that. Perhaps the departure is due to the smaller requirement for a more encompassing community?

I suppose, essentially, I'm calling for my readers (as few as you might be) to be more supportive of the community as a whole. If you see a blog, podcast or video that you dislike, don't troll or insult the author; they may well be giving it their first go and just need some good advice and encouragement. Positive reinforcement is always a good way to promote people to get involved, as is constructive criticism on their content. Many times recently I've planned on creating a podcast or machinima, only to decide against it because I can't be bothered arguing with trolls about how good or bad it is.

Personally, I play on an RP server and this type of positivity is more commonplace than it is on, say, a PvP server. The creation of stories, videos and backgrounds for characters can easily form a nucleus of creativity that can extend to other activities around our hobby. This type of thing is a good vehicle for getting more high quality content that many, many people can enjoy. And I'm not talking about replacing those community heavyweights who are departing, as that's disingenuous to the whole point. What I'm getting at is the support for any project that contributes to the playing and aesthetic enjoyment of the WoW community.

How else can we contribute?