Just curious what everyone thinks about it now. Sort of inspired by a post on the general wow forums. The idea is that less and less people actually try to do PuGs. I used to love going on PuGs (with either a Warrior or Priest) since mostly the people were nice. Sure some wipes maybe but nothing major and good fun. Meeting new people is great.
When I PuG nowdays with my priest I notice that many tanks plain suck. That wasn't the case before the expansion. Furthermore; since the expansion other players asking me to join PuGs usually ask if my priest is Holy while previously it was just assumed I'd be fine to heal anything; and if asking anything it was if I wanted to heal or not. Never actually asking for Spec. Now I don't think its really a problem to heal any normal instance in the game with a Shadow priest or Feral druid; and probably some Heroics/Karazhan as well, given a little more gear, but thats another matter.
For my Warrior I took a break lasting around 2 months at the expansion so was behind the level curve a bit. But the difference compared to before was pretty significant. People actually whisper and ask if I am proitection, before asking me if I want to tank. When telling them that I am Arms specced sometimes people don't ask if I still want to tank; well since there is a shortage of tanks they usually ask after a bit anyway; but I can't recall a single time before the expansion where someone asked about spec. Not even when I was fairly fresh as a level 60 and asked to OT/MT Molten Core or Zul'Gurub a few times.
Now as a warrior I know that all the regular instances, most heroics, are fine to tank without beeing protection. Karazhan is for the most part fine also but maybe 15 points in protection needed for later bosses. Now I don't mean that Protection wouldn't help (with more threat = more dps); just that its perfectly doable without. Sure there is no question that the MT for a raid guild should be fully protection specced; and perhaps its needed for the 25 man instances. So one could perhaps say that the warrior class is mostly fine as it is. But thats only half the truth.
The real serious issue I have noticed since the expansion is that many warriors don't seem to have any faith at all in their ability to go as tank to instances without beeing protection. Warriors I knew before the expansion that had no issues just stopped totally now. Still go for guild groups sometimes; but often try as DPS, or othervise just do grind quests and tank world mobs at most for quests. Seems more warriors than before go for Battle grounds for gear over instance drops as well.
Result of this appears to be a pretty massive lack of tanks for PuGs; and even a problem with guild groups really. It does have a negative impact on my ability to PuG as a priest. I used to like to PuG; and frankly miss it. Of course I can PuG with my warrior but currently outgear the normal (non-heroic) instances so much that its not very fun. Which brings me to Heroics with a non-protection warrior.
Sure its for the most part fine to do Heroics also without beeing Protection; but kind of harse. And compared to the normal instances Protection really starts to offer a serious advantage here. Not so much because the monsters hit hard since there are gear that gives Arms/Fury warriors more than enough avoidance and armor; but since DPS people also have much better gear threat is suddenly a serious issue; as a result there are even fewer warriors available for doing Heroics. Sure for me personally its mostly fine to do the easier Heroics (Slavepens, Underbog, Shadowlabyrinth) but it gets a bit stressful to try the harder ones (like Arcatraz or Shattred Halls). Issue beeing threat generation and keeping mobs under control; rather than taking too much damage.
I realise its probably expected, by the designers, that Warriors do go Protection at some point after reaching level 70; but for better or worse it doesn't appear to have happened. Instead there are lots of warriors doing battle grounds, or quests, while people are waiting for tanks to instances. Of course Paladin tanks and Druid tanks are fine also but doesn't seem to be lots of those available either.
Not sure what to do about it. Since partly for warriors I belive the lack of people willing to tank is a skill issue. Its perfectly possible to tank as Arms/Fury but sunder spam isn't enough anymore. If beeing Protection its perfectly possible to suck still since Shield Slam is so much threat in one move; but beeing protection is booring (opinon but appears shared by many). Buffing warrior threat in general (Sunder, Revenge, etc) might not be the best of ideas since that would make Protectoin warriors more powerful also and they simply don't need any threat buffs. My impression is the Feral Druids or Paladins really don't need any help with Threat either so adding more ways for other classes might not be great either.
Of course if the game continues to evolve and Warrior threat, except Shield Slam, is static and really don't scale much with gear; then as gear improves for DPS it would become harder and harder to keep up as Arms/Fury and eventually only Protection viable.
Though the same could really happen with healers. Suppose its possible to get enough +heal and mana regen to sustain 4k heals every 2.5 seconds without any real mana issues. Thats alot of heal threat also. Healer beeing able to put out that much kind of needs a tank to take as much damage or the content is too easy. But for how long can healer gear improve before even heal threat is hard to keep up with for Arms/Fury warriors without any scaling threat moves. As the game progress is it either going to be more and more warriors speccing protection; or the rest of the people having a harder and harder time finding a viable tank? Obviously don't mean raids since finding protection warriors for raids aren't likely ever to be a problem. I'd respec for a 25 man if needed; but don't really find it fair, or fun, to respec for the rest of the game.
Obviously if this is how Blizzard wants the game to be then its fine. If its not what they wanted they how come they haven't addressed any yet? Not sure if anyone remmeber but at one time during Beta Shield Slam was changed to scale based on attack power and not block value (well the tooltip anyway). I was kind of hoping that was a start to bringing the threat output of the warrior talent trees closer together. But since that didn't happen I have been waiting for a change to the 31 point talents in the other trees.
Would be something like adding a static bonus threat to Mortal Strike/Bloodthirst; and possibly making Mortal strike threat scale someway while in Defensive stance. Not sure how since it makes sense that Shield SLam scale with Block value but isn't likely to make sense that Mortal strike threat scales with a defensive stat. . Possibly a more elegant solution to remove a fair bit of the threat from shield slam and let Revenge threat/damage scale with block value instead.
I do remember that Blizzard stated that Arms/Fury warrior threat output was looked at in comparison with Feral druids. But that was before Swipe was nerfed and Thunderclap added to defensive stance. So possibly Blizzard feels its fine as it is now.
Note: its not really a whine post since I do fine as a Arms Warrior personally. Not MT'ing raids, or even doing 25 mans after Gruul, and can do the Heroics I want and OT/MT Kara sometimes. For my priest I have some issues with finding good PuGs that lower my enjoyment of the game a bit but guild groups are fine. If anything its more of a concern that guild groups, or people on my friends list, constantly wait for tanks, while I really want to quest or do battle grounds. Also a genuin intresst to find out where all the warrior tanks have gone since the expansion? Used to be loads. Not where aren't as many...
Would be something like adding a static bonus threat to Mortal Strike/Bloodthirst; and possibly making Mortal strike threat scale someway while in Defensive stance. Not sure how since it makes sense that Shield SLam scale with Block value but isn't likely to make sense that Mortal strike threat scales with a defensive stat. . Possibly a more elegant solution to remove a fair bit of the threat from shield slam and let Revenge threat/damage scale with block value instead.
Adding more threat to Mortal Strike / Bloodthirst would be very, very detrimental to DPS Warriors.
Dungeons really are much harder in the expansion, particularly boss fights. The rewards of PvP are much, much greater. My guess would be that tons of MS warriors who loved to PvP used to PuG with your priest so they could get gear upgrades for PvPing. Now they don't need to do so.
Second - newsflash here, but there are crappy players in every class.
Yes indeed but that doesn't stop said crappy rogue/hunter/mage's from trying to join groups; and even complete the instances successfully; while it appears to have stopped quite a few warrior tanks (and maybe to a lesser extent healers) from even trying with instance groups; at least PuG'ing instances which is a shame really.
It's not worth the time, effort or repair bill to pug it. If I can't get a guild group I just don't bother.
This seems a bit ignorant to me. I can't speak for your specific server, but on my server there are quite a few guilds (at least 10 or 11) that i respect and would have no problems grouping with for content like this.
It seems to me, its important to have your pulse on your server community to know whether or not it would be worth your time.
Has there ever been any talk of adding threat from dodging, blocking, and parrying? I'm sure that would make the monsters angry if you kept dodging and shit.
This would solve some of the rage issues that I've seen brought up in other threads. I don't know those issues firsthand because I don't really tank with my (65) warrior anymore either. So I'm one of the people the OP is talking about.
I think the reasons are:
1) I don't outgear 5 man zones anymore.
2) People don't ask me that often.
3) Dungeons have more multi-mob pulls, starting right away with HFR. This requires a certain amount of cooperation from your party (focus fire, precision AOE if any) if you want to live. In pickup groups this is sometimes not present. I've seen more ditching of parties (across all my characters) in the expansion that I used to see before. Maybe I just had a blessed experience with PUG in the old world. Now I'm seeing the horror that I had simply heard retold in the past. People in the party go on and on about "I hope he drops my pants (sic)" and then have to go when it doesn't happen.
Originally Posted by madsushi
The East Coast is just a relic of the past, like England.
Yes indeed but that doesn't stop said crappy rogue/hunter/mage's from trying to join groups; and even complete the instances successfully; while it appears to have stopped quite a few warrior tanks (and maybe to a lesser extent healers) from even trying with instance groups; at least PuG'ing instances which is a shame really.
It's because, imo, with a good healer and/or tank dps isn't extremely important for trash pulls/most bosses. I don't have many problems joining pugs on my alt druid, he's feral (pretty much the best pre-raids tanking gear, crappy cat gear) but with decent healing gear (1.2k healing, 120 mana regen in combat). Most of the time in pugs I actually preffer healing; as a priest or druid you have the means to control threat a bit and as long as dps + tank just holds all mobs you could redirect some threat via lifebloom/PoM. Tanking isn't bad either but with a bad group it's hard work, they peel off mobs, running after most gets other mobs on healer etc, but I got the hang of it.
On the other hand, on my lock, much better geared, I simply run away from anything that doesn't involve people I know, I've been through some runs that were pure pain and there was nothing I could do.
In friend/guild groups, when things go wrong I know that the rest of the players will try to kite, short term CC, quite a lot of fun stuff to prevent a wipe, chaos but slightly guided, and they usually succeed, because they simply have more experience reacting weirdly to the unexpected . Most of the time in a bad PuG, when a pull goes wrong, it's just split dps, no gouges, no traps/kiting, no stuns, no attempts to take out of the fight stuff that isn't controlled properly.
And true, depending on your build, gear and group composition you may or may not be able to heal or tank even the normal instances. And pugs are the least friendly to opposite specs. That why I took the uninterruption, lower cast time and mana regen from resto on my druid. With split dps a non-prot warrior will have trouble, a shadow priest that's not rading will, most of the time, not have Meditation and most of the time people will just lack proper gear and imo spec is a lot more defining of capability to perform than it used to be pre-TBC, gear can make up for the lack of spec but not as much as before.
This seems a bit ignorant to me. I can't speak for your specific server, but on my server there are quite a few guilds (at least 10 or 11) that i respect and would have no problems grouping with for content like this.
It seems to me, its important to have your pulse on your server community to know whether or not it would be worth your time.
Grouping with people from well known guilds is not pug'ing, at least not for me, because you know those people, and you know they can play.
Call me arrogant or whatever, but why would i play with an unkonwn unguilded player? Given i'd only do heroics in the first place and i don't wanna go there to waste time.
Also keep in mind the good tanks are prolly booked by their guild, so you're more likely to get unskilled ones in pugs.
the spec thing has todo with difficulty and warrior scaling. If you want to have some fun, take a fury or arms spec warrior without defiance and a resto druid as only healer (if you have a pallie don't give the druid salv).... go see what happens on packs with 4 or more mobs that aren't cc'able.
Now tell me why you wouldn't spend the 50g to spec prot for a weekend to have it easymoded :P
The real serious issue I have noticed since the expansion is that many warriors don't seem to have any faith at all in their ability to go as tank to instances without beeing protection. Warriors I knew before the expansion that had no issues just stopped totally now. Still go for guild groups sometimes; but often try as DPS, or othervise just do grind quests and tank world mobs at most for quests. Seems more warriors than before go for Battle grounds for gear over instance drops as well.
If they tank pugs then they will have clearly been in bad pugs before and will want to do as much as they can to reduce their repair bills, that means speccing prot or just not doing pugs at all.
Personally, I wouldn't tank a pug if you paid me, if I can't get a guild group going then I will do some daily quests or farming or just logoff, there's nothing that says I have to spend all my time online in an instance.
I've mainly pugged my 2 chars to 70 since I started about a month later with TBC. The leveling part wasn't all that bad because I leveled my priest all the way to 70 when people were leveling their paladins, and those paladins were mainly good players from top guilds so they could either heal/tank/dmg with any spec. The only thing what annoyed me were bad mages, since I had played a mage since release and most of them couldn't properly croud control. Imo a good mage can really speed up a pug and that's what I try do with my mage.
Once I reached 70 a month later with my own mage pugging was terrible though. I pugged myself to revered with all factions but finding a decent tank was almost impossible, 3h botanica runs where I did over 60% of the damage and had 50% of the damage taken were no exception, most warrior tanks I grouped with were not able to tank multiple mobs, to assign targets, to keep aggro or to position a mob where it should be positioned.
Suggesting that non-prot warriors need tanking buffs strikes me as boldly missing the point. Try asking your holy paladins how their tanking gear is, and I think you'll find the discrepancy.
A few points:
- A surprisingly high percent of warriors are specced protection. This was showed from a armory pullout some time ago. I think it was around 55-65%.
- Some people dislike tanking with arms/fury spec. You won't see me PvP'ing with prot or tanking with arms
- I would never group for the higher level heroics with an off-specced tank. Not even with my guildies. I'd rather pay the respec cost. This goes for healers too.
- Heroics are quite hard compared to the old lvl60 instances. I've never PUG'ed in TBC before since I hate pugging. But having pushed people to attune for TK have left me with many horror stories from PUGs.
These are of course personal opinion but I think they're quite reasonable.
I have a very small guild, and a most of them aren't in any hurry to get keyed for the various heroics, so my only option is to PUG them. Surprisingly, my experience has been mostly very positive. I have yet to go into a heroic with a PUG and not be able to get it done. The worst that happens is that the group is slow (sometimes very slow). But I've also gotten into a few really great heroic PUGs (40 minute Mech/Slave Pens/Ramparts clears with no deaths) and filled my friends list with highly-skilled players in the process.
The /lfm tool combined with the armory can be great for finding out if a potential groupmate might be a disaster, too. If I'm looking for a couple more to fill out a heroic group, and there are a few people to choose from in /lfm (might be rare depending on the instance), I'll check them out on the armory before whispering them. If they have a garbage spec or garbage gear, they're probably a poor player. Note that I'm not talking about discriminating against people with sub-optimal PvE specs or people that are slightly undergeared, I'm referring to people who play the "1 talent point into as many talents as possible" game or wear gear with stats that are not meant for them.
Last edited by rbbrdckybk : 06/19/07 at 9:37 AM.
Reason: Typo
My guess would be that tons of MS warriors who loved to PvP used to PuG with your priest so they could get gear upgrades for PvPing. Now they don't need to do so.
This is how I feel and play. My main up to the AQ40 era was a warrior. Since then, my main has been a warlock where I raid SSC/TK. My warrior is my PvP character ever since they changed the honor system, it is much easier since then to gather gear through the honor system (arena system as well now) than to farm instances every day where a drop is not garanteed. Most of the fun with warriors comes after you've got the awesome gear. Since it's easier to collect DPS (PvP) gear, most warriors will go that route.
Originally Posted by Hoonboof
It's not worth the time, effort or repair bill to pug it. If I can't get a guild group I just don't bother.
I also feel this way. After playing the game for 3 years, PuGing is not all the fun it used to be anymore. It's much easier to get your DPS/PvP gear until the guild decides to run an instance I need. Most "old" warriors can't handle bad players anymore and will usually do solo gaming until their friends are available.
Pre-TBC we were able to dps tank. With the amount of damage mobs hitting for now thats become quite trivial. Heroics are just hard because pre-tbc this rule could be applied.
Good tank, semi decent healer and pug will make it.
Bad tank, excellent healer pug will wipe
non heroic any dps class could solo 1/2 mobs at once probably and get away with it, making up for a lousy tank. Heroic I don't wanna try solo-ing mobs in tailoring gear that 1shot me. Good dps cannot make up for bad tanks in heroics anymore making them extremely hard to pug.
This seems a bit ignorant to me. I can't speak for your specific server, but on my server there are quite a few guilds (at least 10 or 11) that i respect and would have no problems grouping with for content like this.
It seems to me, its important to have your pulse on your server community to know whether or not it would be worth your time.
People turn their brains halfway off in a PuG, even many good players in good guilds. When it's just some random 5man, with people you've never met and are likely to never meet again, whose quirks and habits you don't know, who you can't talk with on vent... people just don't try as hard.
I did a lot of pugs when I was levelling my mage, and fewer but still a decent number levelling my warrior. Some were fantastic, most were at least somewhat painful, and more than a few failed to clear. And that was in the old world where nearly every boss was simple tank'n'spank and trash pulls rarely exceeded 3-4 elites. In the new world where half the 5man bosses are more complex than old-world raid bosses, and trash pulls often come 5 or 6 at a time...
Levelling my warlock and priest, I just haven't bothered for the most part, because as my fellow Goon said above, it's just not worth it. There's always a chance it'll work out fine but I'd rather level another alt or grind cash than roll those particular dice.
To speak directly to the OP, I usually keep my warrior 35/5/21 and while that's fine for a guild group I would not take it into a pug. Threat generation with a spec like that isn't good enough to keep mobs off of 4 random idiots, 3 of whom are dpsing different targets and the last of whom has never even heard of healing aggro. I don't really think it's a problem with any class, just the content getting harder so that proper specs are needed to make up for people's natural incompetence.
I won't PUG heroics, I won't PUG dungeons. Either the group is formed by someone I know or I just don't do it. I had to form a huge list of quality people in my rush to 70 as the guild was in karazan while I was in Zangamarsh. That friends list is your lifeblood of who is good and who isn't. I draw on it HIGHLY.
I'll DPS a dungeon as a protection warrior if a paladin or a bear druid wants to tank it IF they have the right gear and spec for it. Trash isn't that bad with a consecrating paladin who it would take bringing down a mountain to peel mobs of them.
Random retards attempting to heal/dps mobs without the thought of aggro management or healing rotation cause my repair bill to go from 3 to 30G in one sitting.
I can only speak for myself, but when I'm dps specced I just say no to instances. Why? Because it just plain sucks to tank in dps spec, it's not enjoyable at all and feels frustrating more than anything else. It's exactly the same reason why I don't PvP or farm when I'm prot, it's simply not enjoyable.
I would really love it if Blizzard made prot grind and PvP viable, and dps tank viable, but I doubt they ever will. I just spec arms over the weekend to satisfy my PvP and farming needs. Even with a 100g cost for a dual respec, I earn way more cash from fri-sun than I would do if I prot farmed during the weekend, and my arms gear is terrible.
As for PUG's: I guess I am a lucky bloke. I PUG most heroics with great success, and I even pugged Trial of the Naaru: Mercy with one wipe and 2-3 caster deaths. That PUG did have some very well geared players from good guilds. But the group was formed with the LFG interface and "/1 LFM SH heroic", which definitely qualifies it as a PUG. I've had some really bad ones of course, but the majority of my PUG's are doing great.
As a warrior this type of thread makes my blood boil.
Any player not wanting to group for an instance isn't "arrogant" or "rude". For many of us it's a simple cost vs benefit.
When people ask me to tank Non-Heroics that I need NOTHING out of the math works like this.
Costs:
# of expected deaths in a PuG: 2-3 (that's low end)
Cost per Death in repairs: 2-3G
cost of this run: 4-9 G AT LEAST
Benefit:
Other people I don't know get stuff they need.
Its not that I'm being a jerk, but I just don't see why my time should be taken so lightly.
When it comes to Heroics, the number of deaths in a PuG jumps MASSIVELY. They are just too hard to run with people you don't know or who aren't in respected guilds.
Just tanking in general can be a chore, however it's a core part of my class and I do love it. Generally I spec Prot when I want to run Heroics, and then I run about 8-10 Heroics for 2 days and spec back to my loldps Warrior self, but when I was saving up for a flying mount and getting nethers for my tier-2 Blacksmithing sword I had to run heroics as Arms.
General tips on helping your group succeed if you're NOT protection in a normal instance involve:
1) Tanking in DPS gear, generally I tank in arena gear for normal instances, there is no way I can hold aggro without defiance in full tank gear when a mob is hitting me for 300 damage. Putting on DPS gear allows you to hold aggro through damage, you don't need to run around with a 2-hander or DW, but putting on some armor with crit and AP with a shield means you'll hold threat and build rage through the damage you do, as opposed to reliying on the damage the mobs do to you for rage.
2) Stress the need to focus fire, most people have an easy-going mentality about normal instances. Mages/Warlocks will AE things down, Hunters will solo stuff with their pet like they do outside of instances, Rogues will gun-ho Blade-Furry and try to solo casters, alot of people just wanna feel important and powerful, this can create a nightmare for a tank. Stress the need of focus fire.
General tips on helping your group succeed if you're NOT protection in a heroic instance involve:
1) Bring a Paladin, Salving people helps make up for the fact you don't have defiance.
2) Bring a Rogue, yeah I said, it, a Rogue who provides stuns to mobs that are beating up on you mitigate a lot of damage over time, the mobs already hit for 1-2k damage, you're not rage starved, love the Rogue, he's your friend, and Imp Sap is trained now.
3) Maximize your CC, most heroics can be solo healed, aside from the Trials of the Narru and a few others, maxing CC is important, less strain on you to hold aggro on multiple mobs.
In BOTH cases, use the raid icons, raid icons are your friend, put a skull on something and tell people to focus on it, put a star on something and tell 1 class to CC it and then kill skull, let a Rogue solo a caster on X, people in general love having visual icons to tell them what to do and how to move, from pull to pull that person knows that icon(s) belongs to them and they know what they have to do.
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Suggesting that non-prot warriors need tanking buffs strikes me as boldly missing the point. Try asking your holy paladins how their tanking gear is, and I think you'll find the discrepancy.
I'm a bit wary of posting in this thread, but...
There is not a lot of room for non-prot warriors in heroics at lower gear levels. You lack buffs to DPS fast and hard enough, and you probably don't have a great set of tanking gear. With the right group, it can definitely work, but it's more of a challenge to find that balance. I wouldn't go so far as to call for buffs/nerfs, but I hope that it is a consideration down the line.
I heard it's better on launch servers, but I can only speak from experience of my low pop RP server. Just say NO to pugs, they'll take 4 times longer to clear a regular dungeon than a guild group the same dungeon on heroic and I'll lose at least 10g in repairs (and I'd have to be thankful that it's not worse).
On older servers you might have a pool of players from 15-25 guilds you can expect to use common sense and follow directions. On servers like mine you're really looking at 3-4 guilds and even then you know by name people who you'd want and who you wouldn't want.
06/19/07, 8:44 AM
. Most of the time in a bad PuG, when a pull goes wrong, it's just split dps, no gouges, no traps/kiting, no stuns, no attempts to take out of the fight stuff that isn't controlled properly.
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