karthis
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Are DPS helper mods cheating?
Karthis at Of Teeth and Claws raises an interesting question concerning "helper" mods for DPS rotations -- should they be considered cheating? He observes that, whie they may be a godsend for classes and specs with more difficult rotations, many of them remove the need to think about anything other than following the mod's instructions on what skill to use and when. He writes, "If a chimpanzee was trained to press the key that corresponded to the skill that Face Mauler popped up, then it would put out insane DPS without understanding even the very basics of what it means to be a feral cat."**The issue leaves me somewhat torn. There's no way around the fact that Karthis is right; mods like these -- and they exist for several classes -- make it possible for players to do great, or at least acceptable, DPS without understanding the class and spec they play. They also have the side effect of encouraging tunnel vision on the mob/s rather than what's happening in the raid (and, as someone who plays a tank, I must admit I hate dealing with an utterly oblivious DPS). Nobody wants to see a lazy player rewarded with excellent DPS for no other reason than their ability to install a mod and then do what the mod tells them to do.
Cautiously cracking crowd control
In any fight where your group is fighting multiple mobs, you're going to want to have some version of crowd control. For those that play tanking classes the challenge comes not when the fight begins and the mobs are tied up with freezing traps or polymorph, it comes afterward, when the time comes to break said methods of control. As Karthis mentions in a recent post on Of Teeth and Claws, breaking crowd control successfully is more of an art form than you might think.First, there is the concept of threat. Each method of crowd control angers a monster to varying degrees. Add to this the other abilities a crowd controller might have used previous to controlling the mob -- a hunter plinking away at the mob a few times to get its attention, for example -- and the CC'ers threat is pretty darn high. The monster, once they are free, will have eyes (and claws) only for the group member that kept them tied down in the first place. It makes sense, honestly. I know if someone shackled me to the ground for a minute or so I would be pissed.
I hate rogues! No, rogues are awesome!
Mirshalak doesn't like rogues. He makes a long post telling us why, and then Karthis from Of Teeth and Claws posts this rebuttal. Then in an utterly shameful display, Mirshalak... concedes that Karthis has a point.Oh dear. Well, there goes any hope of name calling, hair pulling or other ungentlemanly behavior. (Or unladylike, I don't know the actual gender of the folks involved.) So, then, what can we actually take from all of this? Well, here are my own incredibly long winded 'point/counterpoint' thoughts. Well, to be completely fair and honest, I have had a lot of the same problems with rogues Mirshalak mentions. While I don't believe that the entire class is sociopathic or full of people who can't work with a group, I have several stories stored up from my time playing WoW of rogues who decided to wipe the group and vanish because they didn't get a drop they wanted (not that someone else did get it, just because the boss did not drop the item, mind you) or rogues deciding to try and train bosses over the hunter who has feigned death to hopefully use his jumper cables to res a few healers in order to help prevent a reset wipe.
