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Shifting Perspectives: Why effective health needs to die, part 2
Every week, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, we examine the issue of effective health in more depth. We've discussed in the previous column why effective health is important; here, we're going to discuss why it's not as important as you might think if you had nothing beyond the collective opinion of the Tanking forum to go on. While this has something to do with the mob mentality of the forums themselves, it has more to do with how the concept of effective health isn't usually placed in context. Tank death on hard modes is quickly attributed to EH discrepancies, with rather less discussion on encounter mechanics, inappropriate gear, or that great but frequently unacknowledged bugaboo -- player error. It is for this that I say effective health needs to die. What is effective health? I neglected to put some hard numbers on this in the last article, but calculating base effective health is actually pretty simple. It's your health as modified by the damage you'll take after armor contribution (AC), or Health / (1 - AC%). A 50,000 health tank with 25% armor contribution has 66,666.67 effective health (50,000 / 0.75). A 50,000 health tank with 50% armor contribution has 100,000 effective health (50,000 / 0.5). A 50,000 health tank with 75% armor contribution (the maximum functional AC) has 200,000 effective health (50,000 / .25).
Shifting Perspectives: Why effective health needs to die, part 1
Every week (usually), Shifting Perspectives examines issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, we brace ourselves for the howling pack of tanks likely to descend upon us, but -- as we have previously observed -- we are used to staying at the top of someone's hate list. If you've tanked at all over the course of Wrath, you've probably become familiar with the phrase "effective health." It's a concept that's cropped up with increasing frequency on the tanking forums, and not necessarily in a good way. If you knew nothing of the idea beyond how players tend to use it, you'd be forgiven for thinking that "effective health" is the only metric by which all tanks are measured, and proof that Blizzard either can't (or won't) balance the game. There are very real differences between the tanking classes when it comes to average EH, and this has resulted in some angry discussion when the term is thrown around by players who either don't really understand what it means, or don't know that it was meant to be used in context. Consequently, "effective health" as used on the tanking forums has become an endlessly parroted phrase that's not only starting to lose all meaning, but is also guaranteed to derail a thread once it makes its inevitable appearance. When I say that effective health needs to die, I don't mean that the concept itself is intrinsically wrong. It's not. But the twisted version of it so frequently used to bludgeon players over class differences is getting more ridiculous by the day, and it prevents or distorts more reasonable commentary on things that are much more likely to kill tanks on hard-mode content.
The best of WoW.com: October 20-27, 2009
It's a great time to be a WoW player -- Hallow's End is in the air, patch 3.3 is being tested, and the Cataclysm expansion is slowly revealing its secrets to us. Heck, Eliza Dushku is playing World of Warcraft, why aren't you? After the break, ten of the most popular stories from Joystiq's Azeroth-obsessed sister site, WoW.com. If you haven't ever visited the biggest MMO around yet, now might be the time to finally take the leap.
[1.Local]: PUGgin' for money and emblems for free
Reader comments -- ahh, yes, the juicy goodness following a meaty post. [1.Local] ducks past the swinging doors to see what readers have been chatting about in the back room over the past week. ElderDruid doesn't think we'll be working too hard for our gold and our emblems in 3.3. ElderDruid: Look at them yo-yo's, that's the way you do it You PUG for money on the 3.3 That ain't workin', that's the way you do it PUGgin for money and emblems for free Now that's just profit, that's the way you do it Let me tell you, them guys ain't dumb Gonna keep subscribers with the epic carrot Keep 'em till the launch of Cataclysm. I want my ... I want my ... I want my emblems free ...
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Cooldowns
Every week Matthew Rossi slaves in his kitchen over a hot stove, primarily because he needs something to nosh on while composing The Care and Feeding of Warriors, WoW.com's column about warriors. Also, he's chained to the stove. No no, don't ask, it's a long story. Cooldowns. Those abilities that provide a sizable benefit to a character when used, but cannot simply be used over and over again due to a time-based limitation on their use. As far as I know, every class has a few. For warriors, being a two role hybrid, cooldowns can be further broken up into tanking and DPS related, with some overlap (the famous and oft-neglected Retaliation comes to mind as a cooldown that can be used in either role to some extent).and it's often the most basic and yet most easily overlooked aspect of warrior gameplay. While for a DPS, cooldowns are useful and even can be said to be required for top performance, for a tanking warrior's cooldowns only grow in importance the more cutting edge the content becomes. Wrath of the Lich King stands out, a year or so into its development cycle, as having shifted tanking away from a process of gearing to either survive or completely avoid big spiky damage in the form of critical hits/crushing blows to a process of gearing to survive big spiky damage through stamina and, more often, cooldown usage. Whether it be Gormok the Impaler's Impale, Onyxia's combination of Wing Buffet, Cleave and Fire Breath, or Mimiron's Plasma Blast, you as a tank will often be called to do anything in your power to make healing you through massive amounts of damage easier. Sometimes, it won't be enough. So let's talk about cooldowns.
Shifting Perspectives: The disappearance of the bear
Every week (usually), Shifting Perspectives examines issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, confused bears everywhere ask themselves, "Why is no one playing us if we're so awesome?"I've had an article on this subject percolating for a while. Why people play what they do is a question that endlessly fascinates me, and Nick Yee made a business out of examining the various factors that influenced people's class and role choices in games. Unfortunately, with only fan site numbers to go on, it's sometimes tough to figure out exactly what's happening with demographic shifts ingame. For a while now we've had the sense that, while Feral has lost population since Wrath hit, it's bears in particular who've been hit hardest, and as I've written previously, they've all but vanished from my own server. Because most Armory data sites don't distinguish between bear and cat specs, I never figured out whether all the stories I heard about a shrinking bear population were an accurate gloss on what was going on.Sometimes, though, Blizzard cuts through the confusion and bluntly states that a class or spec just isn't being played that much. Witness, if you will, the gradual extinction of the bear.So Xariks on the Tanking forum poses the question; why are bears so underplayed? Any well-designed spec that's a PvE or PvP powerhouse and the frequent target of nerf demands has historically resulted in a huge influx of players (e.g. rogues for most of classic WoW and warlocks in Burning Crusade, among others). In Feral, we have before us a spec that had a 50% share of the druid population in BC and, in the transition to Wrath, received considerable buffs to many of its historic weak spots, the removal of prejudicial encounter mechanics, the addition of another weapon option, and the tanking community's hatred for its highest effective health on average. Yet they've been singled out for especial commentary for being, per Ghostcrawler, an "unpopular spec" in modern raids. Druids, tanks, and developers all want to know -- what gives?
A macro for stacking parry or dodge
I haven't played a tank in a while, so I haven't had to mess with stats at endgame for a long time. Though my paladin is slowly getting there, so this little macro over at Honor's Code might come in handy. Parry and dodge are very similar abilities -- both of them help you to completely avoid damage from bosses as a tank. But they do have a very few important differences (Parry speeds up your next attack swing, and is affected by diminishing returns at higher levels of the stat), so when you're gearing up at endgame, you want to make sure to balance them out in the right way.
Breakfast Topic: Back to where you once belonged
I always knew this day would come.I was a tank all through Burning Crusade. A proper tank, no less, none of that arms specced but tanking anyway nonsense you could get away with in the original raid game. I was prot spec and I liked it! Sure, our AoE threat was ludicrously bad. Sure, I had to spam Devastate and HS so much that I grew a nasty cyst on my wrist. Sure, I kept having to deal with DPS players who had never tanked a day in their lives giving me tanking advice in the middle of a fight. To say I got stressed out would be an understatement. To say I ran screaming to a guild I'd been in back in the old days of WoW to take up a DPS spec and get as far away from tanking as I could would be accurate.
Phat Loot Phriday: Frostforged Ringhelm
We haven't done a piece of armor in a little while (it's been mostly weapons lately), so here's a cool helm from the updated Onyxia with an interesting historical twist.Name: Frostforged Ringhelm (Wowhead, Thottbot)Type: Epic Plate HeadArmor: 1925Attributes: +83 Strength, +154 Stamina +10 Frost resistance, +10 Shadow resistance. These are on here because this is the updated version of the Tier 2 helm for death knights. %Gallery-33600%
Drama Mamas: Dealing
Dodge the drama and become that player everyone wants in their group with the Drama Mamas. Lisa Poisso and Robin Torres are real-life mamas and experienced WoW players -- and just as we don't want our precious babies to be the ones kicking and wailing on the floor of checkout lane next to the candy, neither do we want you to become known as That Guy on your server. We're taking your questions at DramaMamas (at) WoW (dot) com.This week's drama includes a guild leader who needs to deal with her most negative guildie. We also have a PuG leader who needs to deal with a DPSer who taunts. Let's not deal with any more of this introduction.The Negative Guy Dear Drama Mamas: I am an older Guild Leader of a great guild. I have a recent guildie that is completely draining me. He is a complete 'Eeyore' . He came to my guild as a friend of my mom's from another server.
3 Point makes a real-life Tankard o' Terror
3 Point Entertainment (makers of the official World of Warcraft steins) has released a brand new stein, modeled after the epic Brewfest mug the Tankard o' Terror. As you can see above, this beauty of a brewholder is much different from the other mugs -- it's made to look exactly like the ingame item, even though that means it's more angled than curved and a little bit primitive-looking. It's also a huge piece of stoneware, standing over nine inches tall and weighing four pounds. I don't know that you'd ever want to drink anything out of it, but I guess, fittingly for a tanking tankard, if you hit someone over the head with it, they'd feel it.Alex will be able to tell us what that's like, as he's already got one ordered. This mug is also much cheaper than the other mugs -- it's only $39.99 (as if "only" was a fitting adjective for a purchase like this), which means that 3 Point has probably heard your complaining here in our comments sections and decided to offer up a lower price point option. I won't be going for this one, but the idea of replicating Azerothian cookery in real-life is intriguing. I might buy a Cookie's Tenderizer if I had the chance.
The Light and How to Swing It: Tanking the Northrend Beasts
With the Light as his strength, Gregg Reece of The Light and How To Swing It faces down the demons of the Burning Legion, the undead of the Scourge, and helps out with the Argent Ren Faire up in Icecrown on the weekends. This week, he takes a look at tanking the fantastic and terrible beasts that the Argent Crusade has collected for their Trial of the Crusader event.The Argent Crusade has assembled a number of trials for champions, crusaders, and grand crusaders alike to fight through as they decide what forces they will take in their assault against Icecrown Citadel itself. Today, we'll take a look at the first of the events in Trial of the Crusader which is the Northrend Beasts encounter. They've assembled Magnataur, Jormungars, and Yeti (Oh My!) to test the mettle of those wishing to compete. We'll take a look at tanking each of these beasts after the break.
Ghostcrawler on balancing and the community reaction
One of the most, if not the most, contentious issues in all of WoW is the near constant balancing act of the systems design team. These are the guys responsible for virtually every class ability and talent nerf, and their herald, Ghostcrawler, is oftentimes the sacrificial messenger which all the hate and vileness of the internet is spewed forth onto.But it's all good, because he's also the leader of the systems design team and leaders often have to place themselves front and center to take the worst of the damage. And the WoW community can do a lot of damage.Recently it was discussed how and why the community reacts to class changes, in particular nerfs, and why Blizzard does what it does when it comes to them. While most of this information is not new, it is interesting to see how clearly the message has developed since Ghostcrawler began posting on the Wrath beta forums over a year ago.After the break we'll take a look at what Blizzard has to say on class balancing and the community's reaction. We'll also pick apart a few statements and look at alternative ways which can accomplish the same goals.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Some Thoughts About Tanking
This week The Care and Feeding of Warriors has some thoughts on tanking as it currently exists in the game. While these are general thoughts, we will of course make an effort to approach them from a warrior standpoint. Because that's kind of the whole point of the column.I make no pretense of being a raid tank nowadays: I mostly DPS in raids, and only switch to tank when we're down one for whatever reason (real life issues, connection problems) or a fight demands more than three tanks (Auriaya, sometimes Mimiron if cooldowns are a concern, psuedo-tanking the Faction Champions, adds on Anub'arak). Most of the tanking I do, I do in 5 mans and 10 mans where we just go with whoever is on. (I also do a fair amount of tanking on my DK alt, including 10 mans and 25 man PuG raids, but this is a Warrior column, not a "holy heck my DK is ridiculously OP" column.) However, recent discussions about tanking here at the WoW.com orbital defense platform HQ, combined with a recent very interesting thread on the forums with lots of Ghostcrawler input, have me thinking about where tanking is, and where it's going.One of the things I see in tanking presently is that the general tendency inherited from Legacy content is at an all time high: tanking is currently two entirely separate games, one at the 5 man level and another at the raid level, and that tendency is exacerbating as raiding itself splits into 10 and 25 man (and their respective hard modes). At present, the 10 man raid experience is in fact undergoing a series of shifts that moves it away from the 5 man but also away from 25 man, simply due to the amount of responsibility that can and must be shared in each kind of raiding. In short (too freaking late, Rossi, too freaking late) 10 man raiding cannot afford the luxury of 25 man raiding's potential of tanking if it actually wants to kill anything.
BlizzCon 2009: The Future of Tanking
We tanks are apparently living in interesting times. Whether you're a Druid, Paladin, DK or Warrior tank, how you do your job is in for some serious changes. Itemization is about to take some serious twists and turns in Cataclysm, and stats we've come to depend upon simply won't exist anymore. What does this all mean for those of us who generally go about our game 'lives' keeping the ire of our enemies focused on us and away from the more fragile sorts?With Attack Power on gear gone, and classes more directly gaining AP from stats (which to be fair is pretty much how most tanks do things now) and even more importantly, with Defense gone and all tanks gaining their critical strike removal from talents as Druids do now, we could very well be looking at the end of tanking gear entirely. It's possible, perhaps even likely that in Cataclysm your DK, Warrior or Paladin tank will wear the same gear (perhaps switching in a shield in the case of warriors/paladins) to tank as he or she does to DPS. For an idea of what this might look at, we can consult the current itemization of Druids with the Survival of the Fittest talent.
Why am I suddenly so popular?
Right now I have two level 80 tank/DPS hybrid toons in epic gear. Now, when I leveled my Warrior to 80, and for the first few months, it seemed like everyone and his or her mother was a tank. There were Druid tanks everywhere, every Paladin and DK was a tank, and of course there were plenty of Warrior tanks to be had. There were so many tanks, in fact, that I figured that after my months of service to my BC guild, I could take a vacation and be DPS for a while on my Warrior. Sure, it ended up requiring me to learn a whole new set of skills, but I got to be the Titan's Grip DPS Warrior I'd longed to be ever since I saw my wife romper stomp her way through Diablo II. Fast forward a few months. Ulduar is more or less on farm, the new Argent Tournament raid and five man are in effect, and I've leveled and geared out a DK for both DPS and tanking. Based on my experience as a Warrior I wasn't expecting to have many opportunities to tank. Instead, not only is the DK in crazy demand for tanking, I'm constantly being asked to tank on the Warrior as well! Since I like tanking, it's not a major concern, but what confuses me is, where did all those Warrior, Druid, DK and Paladin tanks from launch go?
EVE Evolved: Top five EVE Online apps
Back in 2004, a friend introduced me to a relatively new space MMO called EVE Online, where the markets were run by the players and there were undiscovered frontiers to chart. A short time after, I became obsessed with pre-calculating everything in the game. I thought that if the game server can calculate everything we do, I must be able to replicate the process and come up with some interesting results. I wasn't alone, many other pilots had previously created simple spreadsheets and web-databases of EVE's items. Rather than the game's developers hoarding the information required for such an undertaking, they took an unusual stance and released large portions of their main database for player-study. Websites began popping up listing information from the data dumps and it wasn't long before the first pioneering apps came about in the form of handy spreadsheets and interactive web-pages, my own fairly popular tanking spreadsheet among them. In this article, I look at how player-developed apps came about in EVE and give details on my top five EVE apps. Once you've tried these programs, you won't know how you lived without them.
Which class gets invited as what?
Veritable Avarice, a new blog on moneymaking in WoW, took a break from financial discussion and looked at class representation in tank, DPS, and healing roles by filtering and comparing data available from WoW Popular. Spec population was then checked against class population data available from Warcraft Realm's census and three live realms. Data differences, according to VA, weren't statistically relevant, and he/she is pretty sure that the numbers are at least a ballpark representation of which class is most likely to be filling a particular role within a group. I play a Druid, so that's really what I feel comfortable commenting on here. While I can't speak to the ultimate accuracy of the numbers, I do a lot of pugging and have to admit that VA's data seems pretty close to what I've seen on my own server. The tank numbers are also consistent with a few things Ghostcrawler's mentioned recently concerning the overwhelming population advantage still held by Warrior tanks, although I wonder whether the Feral statistics are somewhat inflated here by the overlap between Bear and Cat specs. Feral tanks have all but vanished from 5-mans on my server, and it's not uncommon for me to get comments from healers that I'm the first Bear they've healed in months. Less surprising is the representation advantage held by Druid healers. Trees are insanely good in Ulduar, and between this, the rise of the Death Knight, and the de-suckaging of the Protection Warrior spec, that probably accounts for the gradual disappearance of the Bear. Also thought-provoking is just how few Druids hold a share of the DPS pie.I'd love to hear from members of other classes on the data and how closely it dovetails into their own experience. There's a quick note for Warrior players (or anyone interested in the DPS graph) past the cut, as there's a small mistake on the relevant graph.
The Queue: Dragon Slave!
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Allison Robert, erroneously described by Alex Ziebart as "universally adored" on this site (whisper the phrase "I hate Tauren cat form" in Turtlehead's direction and run) is your hostess today.Mmmm...my favorite kind of Queue, the kind with a tank question. Actually, there were two good tank questions from the previous Queue, but the one asked by Gatorforest is something I'd like to address in a separate article. Additionally, two of the questions you'll see here wound up requiring fairly involved answers, so there are a few more questions I'd like to take a crack at sometime later this weekend if I get the time.And because it's Friday:Charlie asks...How many Queue columns does it take for one to finally reach the front of the line?The readers or the writers? I don't know about the former, but for us, it depends on the outcome of the previous day's in-staff gladiatorial match. Much like Mary Sues in the now-classic Pirate Monkey comic, THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE. Actually, I'm just using this as an excuse to quote the following:Professor Flitwick: Wait, she said she's both Dumbledore's and Snape's daughter. How is that possible?Dumbledore: Ehh, remember that Christmas party where we all got really drunk?
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Where the Action is Not
The Care and Feeding of Warriors once more shuffles forth clad head to toe in clanking metal, devoid of holy light, harnessed death magic or any of that fancy stuff, to bash things about until they cough up shiny pixels. Matthew Rossi has been bashing things about for their loot since January of 2005. He'll be doing an analysis of the Warrior Q&A soon, he promises, please don't stab him with pitchforks.Honestly, I'd like to rant more about how Warrior DPS is still way too low in PvE. Especially since I keep seeing posts on the forums from the blues telling me classes with equal or better DPS are in fact too low. It's sort of maddening, really. But as much as I'd like to go on a written rampage about encounter design serving as an arbitrary limiter to warrior DPS in Ulduar, and how paradoxically my DPS is at its best on fights that are supposed to be hard mode fights (this week, for instance, my personal highest DPS numbers were recorded on XT - 002's Heartbreaker mode, where two Warriors including myself finally managed to break the top four and were ahead of the other hybrids) due to the mechanics of those fights actually allowing the warrior some uninterrupted DPS time.But unfortunately, a whole lot has been said about tanking this past week. So as maddening, vexing, downright baffling as I find the encounter design limitations of Warrior DPS in some cases (really, not much can irritate me like knowing my DPS time was broken up by big chunks of having to run away, run around, get out of the way of lightning or exploding seeds or any of the sixteen things Mimiron does that make me unhappy to be alive) that rant's going to have to stay confined to these opening paragraphs. (For a simulation of what I sound like during a raid, get four angry woodpeckers and have them attack your keyboard while you scream "Oh, COME ON" every few seconds and imagine you're the Gravity Bomb again.)So what happened with tanking this week, you ask? Well, more was said about block, about avoidance, and about tanking specced players as DPS and in PvP. So let's go over what was said.
