The Most Important Role Of All

OK, so Gordon ignited a spark under our collective blogging butts which turned into a raging wildfire over the past week with his guest post. The first time I read it something bothered me, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. And to be honest, I thought of it as just another post expounding on the idea that tanks and healers have the most difficult roles and sort of let it slide.

Then the proverbial manure hit the fan! Blogger after blogger had their own say on the topic although the topic has about run its course. Some responses were quite harsh and some were mild, but I think the general feeling is that Gordon is in the wrong.

I know Gordon was only trying to start an interesting conversation, but after reading SlikRX’s post (which I completely agree with btw) it finally dawned on me why Gordon’s comments bothered me.

Tanks and healers are the most important classes for any group. Tanks set the pace of the group, the flow of experience and man the vanguard as they lead the team into battle. Healers mend the broken bones of their companions and keep the tanks a live – without the healers there could be no tanks and there could be no group. These are the two most important classes that exist in any MMORPG. But the DPS? They’re just meat in the room.

This is Gordon’s opening statement. This set the tone of the post. This is why I have a problem with it.

Tanks and healers are the most important classes for any group.

This statement bothers me. To top it off it’s the very first sentence. But before I go on as to why it bothers me let’s look at why Gordon believes it so.

Tanks set the pace of the group…as they lead the team into battle.

I think we can agree this is a pretty important thing to have. But it isn’t tanks that should set the pace,it’s the Raid Leader. Ironically, it just so happens that a good majority of raid leaders are tanks. I firmly believe that tanks and healers are raid leaders and guild leaders because the personalities of those attracted to tanking and healing are more often than not the personalities of leaders. I’ve not personally run into a raiding guild led by a pure dps player that didn’t fail within two months. I have to believe they exist, but I haven’t personally run into one.

Healers mend the broken bones of their companions and keep the tanks a live – without the healers there could be no tanks and there could be no group.

A very true statement. Healers have an extremely important role and I think we can all agree with that. Because of the way the game is set up, there really wouldn’t be a group without the healers.

But the DPS? They’re just meat in the room.

Manure incoming! DUCK!!!

This is the statement that I think really got everyone’s goat and for good reason. He just said that dps doesn’t matter. If this statement were really true, then I want to see an ICC10 raid with 4 tanks and 6 healers. Now I’ll bet there is perhaps a group out there that could figure it out, but I’ll bet 95% of us couldn’t make that work.

Perhaps he meant that DPS are a dime-a-dozen, which is a pretty prevalent sentiment. But the bottom line is he obviously believes that they are less important.

Tanks And Healers Are The Most Important

BULLCOOKIES!!!

We spend a lot of time with our online avatars. We invest a lot of energy, emotion, and pride into them. It becomes very easy to look down on the other guy. It’s human nature to point the finger. It’s human nature to want to feel important. And this is where the whole game falls apart for me.

Why do so many people believe that they’re any more important to the game than any other? What happened to teamwork? Are we all star athletes such that WE individually are the team and the others don’t matter?

It’s a concept that I have a harder and harder time understanding as I get older.

EVERY single player in your group is important. EVERY single player in your guild is important. EVERY single role has worth.

As a healer, I guarantee you that if the DPS doesn’t avoid fire/aggro/baddies, then they will eventually die as I make choices to save others and/or run out of mana. As a healer, I guarantee that if DPS dies and/or overall dps is lower, then I will not be able to heal through the enrage. As a healer, solid DPS players are just as important to me as solid tanks and healers.

NO ONE is more important. It’s the team that counts.

Gearing Up

Oh last night I went into ICC10 for the second time. Yeah last week was bad. Didn’t even get saved because we didn’t kill bosses. A second group went Thursday. Well I went to help the 2nd group last night and killed my first boss. Oh. Yeah it was Saurfang. Talk about doing this instance backwards…

Hey, remember I had a druid I leveled to 80? Yeah I almost forgot too. She got neglected once she hit 80. I tried to gear her up by buying crafted items and trying a heroic or two, but that didn’t go very far. I burned out around that time so there she sat with a WoWHeroes score of 1700 or so. That’s pretty much ilvl 200s with 2 ilvl187 blues and 2 lower greens.

Well, 3.3 hit on December 8th and on Friday the 11th I tried my first random heroic.  Well I didn’t have a lot of time that night so it was only the one, but it was fun. So on Saturday I started farming. With a little luck, really quick runs, and on two weekends I geared my healer to 2638. For you GearScore nuts, that’s just a few points shy of 5000. I replaced every item except for one trinket. Darkmoon Card: Illusion. I need to find something else. I also have a cloth belt and boots, but haven’t been able to find anything better yet. Braid of Salt and Fire and Prelate’s Snowshoes.

It was a blast! The random tool has got me playing again! Call it what you will, but it worked…at least for now. I’m still upset about the entire gear pollution thing. Although I think they’ve done a better job this time as I’m geared in T9 equivalents and it’ll take a really long time to gear up into T10 unlike the fiasco that was ToC. So I guess my priest is next, then my paladin, and my shaman.

Oh and did I mention that she now outgears my main raiding toon, the shaman?

Yeah…two weekends…what gear pollution?! F*$#!!!

Old Wives’ Tales

Several months ago I heard an amazing tale that obviously couldn’t be true. Apparently there were once raids that had lots and lots of mini-bosses that rarely, if ever, dropped loot other than cloth and gold. These mini-bosses were often referred to as trash. The story was so fantastic that it obviously couldn’t be true. It was an old wives’ tale.

I’m here to tell you that this particular old wives’ tale is real!!!

We went into Icecrown last night as 25s. The first boss kicked our asses, but there was trash! Literally mobs that fought us before we got to the boss! And the instance had rooms! THAT’S ROOMS AS IN PLURAL!!!

I haven’t had this much fun raiding since Naxx was brand new…again. And WTF?! I have to actually fly from a graveyard to the instance? You mean it takes a little time? I’m not right outside?!

Real raiding. Damn I’ve missed it! 🙂

We Did It!

We finally did it! We downed Anub’arak on regular 25! Oh and I made out like a bandit.

Loot rules were one item, one weapon, and one trophy per raid. As usual I was the only shaman, so I generally make out like a bandit anyway. 🙂 Ironic considering I’m the guy that cares the least about gear. (Or is that I do care, but I know I’ll get it eventually anyway so I don’t care? Hmmm.) But I did win a caster ring as my item and the trophy off the same boss. So I was done. Then the next boss drops 3 mail items, the leggings I’d already had and discarded for something better. The bracers(?) I ended up giving to a hunter because apparently he wasn’t paying attention and I was the only offspec roll. Maybe if he’d switch to adds like he’s supposed to he’d be better at paying attention. 😛 And the other item I can’t remember what it was, but I think I got it.

Sad thing is we should have done this weeks ago. What did it? We went back to our old tanks for adds. I’m sorry if it offends our newer tanks, but it really boiled down to add control especially the little buggers. Zoja was able to slow them and keep them occupied long enough to allow dps to down them before they killed people. In fact, he was doing such a good job that I don’t think I even got hit by one. I’ve usually had 8-9 stacks on me before… Healing through those stacks on everyone is a bitch! I know we’ve got to be one of the last guilds to finally do it, but whatever we finally did it!

We struggled a little bit, wiped once on Beasts, wiped twice on Anub, and had a little drama as tension increased. I know we’re all a bunch of well-educated, knowledgeable people always wanting to help others who don’t know any better, but there are three things to remember in a raid:

1) If you’re a pug, keep the advice to yourself. You might know better, but you’re the “guest” so keep your trap shut and don’t offend your hosts! There’s only one exception to this found in #2;

2) If the raid seems to have lost direction and appears to need help OR if they ask for advice, then “make a suggestion”. Yes, I said “make a suggestion”. That does NOT mean say, “We shouldn’t have used Heroism/Bloodlust during the 2nd phase. That was a mistake.” It DOES mean say, “Hey might I make a suggestion?” And if they say no, KEEP YOUR DAMN TRAP SHUT!!! And;

3) You may feel that mistakes were made, but remember unless you’re the Raid Leader those mistakes aren’t yours to make. I strongly believe that there are no mistakes made by raid leaders when leading a raid. So calling for Heroism during the 2nd phase because the RL is not sure we’ll make it to 3rd phase without it isn’t a mistake. It was a choice. If it had worked, we would have been praising the RL for making the right choice because we would have failed otherwise. But since it didn’t you called it a mistake. Oh noes! What a terrible one too! Especially considering your Exhaustion debuff lasts through death…oh wait no it doesn’t! /sigh

The funny thing about last night was it infused a new spirit of raiding in me. Something I’ve struggled with for months now. We made progress. I made progress. Abandoning Ulduar was not progress…hell I still have only stepped into Uld25 once.

But either way I had fun last night and am glad it was a 25 because I would have attempted to wiggle my way out of it if it had been a 10. Call of Duty has a strong siren call. 😛

Anyway, gratz to BoO members for finally making more progress! 😀