[X] My Assistant

[StealthSigma]

For the most part, at least since WotLK. Most will kill you with one shot abilities were limited to bosses and were used on the target with the highest or second highest threat. Which means that unless something got seriously fucked up, DPS shouldn't have to worry about it. Threat used to be an issue up through early WotLK but towards the end of WotLK they made threat generation trivial unless you were a moron. Those types of events in normal play are almost always a tank/healer concern. I say almost always because I'm quite sure Bliz wouldn't do a douchebag move such as requiring a retribution paladin to bubble to avoid this mechanic or cause a party wipe.

Also worth noting, moron tanks can be common, just not at raiding levels. My experience as a Lv80 Tankadin near the end of WotLK was that I could drop into a Heroic dungeon with a good healer and out DPS/damage 2-3 of the DPS we got paired with depending on factors. If I played at about 75% of my heroic 10/25 ICC aptitude it would be me out damaging about 2.5 of the DPS we got. If I was playing at 100% of my raiding level I would out damage about 2.9 of the DPS.

PUGgers are bad. Mkay?

[Lionhearted]

Prot paladins at that time had pretty mean AoE and given that every single mob in those dungeons was undead it only amplified the issue. Now fresh 80s would most likely have an average ilvl of 200-219, comparing to 264 and 277. So you outgeared them to a ludicrous amount aswell.
Get off your high horse already, attitudes like that is the reason I don't PuG often, not people trying to do the instance for what it was intended for: Gearing up.

[StealthSigma]

Prot paladins at that time had pretty mean AoE and given that every single mob in those dungeons was undead it only amplified the issue. Now fresh 80s would most likely have an average ilvl of 200-219, comparing to 264 and 277. So you outgeared them to a ludicrous amount aswell.
Get off your high horse already, attitudes like that is the reason I don't PuG often, not people trying to do the instance for what it was intended for: Gearing up.

Undead had no impact. This was simply CS, HoR, SotR, and HS and none of those had a special benefit against undead. I wouldn't bother with consecration, since it's a huge mana hog and holy word (IIRC that's the aoe one) had a CD long enough that I wouldn't bother with it in heroics, because quite simply you had very little GCD and CD space to splice them in with the other abilities. With HoR randomly choosing two nearby targets Tankadins would only reliably generate threat against a single target and the purpose of HoR and HS was simply to outthreat the passive threat generated by healers or DPS against non-targets. The AoE tankadins were back when consecration was spammable.

PUGgers are idiots in general and this is betrayed by their behavior. If heroics are supposed to be training exercises for raiding then they were failing miserably.

#1 - DPS targeting multiple targets. As I've already explained, tankadins could only reliably keep high threat on one target at a time. If DPS was splitting targets, someone was going to die. Splitting threat targets as a tankadin would put risk to the DPS that were actually following kill orders and cause more dangerous foes to remain alive longer. I can't count the number of times I've explained marking kill order and watched DPS ignore it and die. I always tell the healers to ignore DPS that ignore the kill order if they feel like they can't handle it.
#2 - Pointless enchantments. +Int on retadins
#3 - Pointless socketed gems. Blue or yellow gems on retadins. Yellow gems on Death Knights.
#4 - Performance well below what their gear level would justify. Prime example. Randomly getting two DPS of the same class/spec with comparable gear and seeing one of those two double the DPS/damage of the other.

It is a culmination of all these facts that makes me say PUGgers are bad. The culmination of these facts and evidence does nothing but show that the player doesn't understand the class, doesn't care to understand their class, doesn't understand the roll they've chosen, or don't want to understand the roll they've chosen. Two of them can be corrected but I'll be damned if I'm going to attempt to teach someone who doesn't understand their class (especially if I can't teach by example) in the course of 20 minutes when I'm never going to see them again.

[Lionhearted]

I wouldn't bother with consecration, since it's a huge mana hog and holy word wrath (IIRC that's the aoe one) had a CD long enough that I wouldn't bother with it

Consecration could be talented for reduced mana cost, something that admittedly a lot of raiding tanks wouldn't do. Regardless its cost was irrelevant as you would regain enough mana to use it enough simply with judgement of the... just (I think the prot one is) and divine plea. Holy wrath was a very powerful threat ability despite it's 45 second cooldown simply because of the fact that it bypassed the AoE cap.

because quite simply you had very little GCD and CD space to splice them in with the other abilities. .

I find this very hard to believe given that your main abilities had have a 3 sec (mutually exclusive) cooldown, SotR 6 or 12 and AS 24. What exactly were you doing if you didn't use HW or consecration?

As a sidenote, it pales in comparison to the spamfest that was Prot warrior back then... queing cleaves with a 1.6 weapon while maintaining the rest of your rotation and tabbing through all targets? *shudder*

#1 - DPS targeting multiple targets. As I've already explained, tankadins could only reliably keep high threat on one target at a time. If DPS was splitting targets, someone was going to die.

I'm sorry but that's simply not true.
• Paladins had two taunts on different short cooldowns
• They had among the best sustained AoE threat among any tanks, in large part because of consecration and HW (that also stunned undead)
• They have a ranged multi-target silence on fairly short cd that generates a huge amount of threat
• They could pop HoP on a dps to instantly clear their threat and had hand of salvation

Keeping AoE threat as a paladin was mind numbingly easy

#3 - Pointless socketed gems. Blue or yellow gems on retadins. Yellow gems on Death Knights.

Sorry to break it to you but that's the proper way of doing it in MoP (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

PUGers are bad. The culmination of these facts and evidence does nothing but show that the player doesn't understand the class, doesn't care to understand their class, doesn't understand the role they've chosen, or don't want to understand the role they've chosen.

Oh most certainly a lot of people aren't up to the ideal, but you also have to bear in mind that are some people out there with a genuine interest to improve. A lot of those people don't know that these online resources exist, but if you give them time and talk like a decent human being to them they will happily take your advice or check out the resources you point them to.
Why? you may ask.
Because there is a lot of loud obnoxious people out there and helping out the people that wants to listen, makes it less likely that they either a) becomes disheartened by the loud ones and quit or b) becomes loud and obnoxious themselves.
We build the community that we want to see and we do that by welcoming, not alienating.

I'll be damned if I'm going to attempt to teach someone who doesn't understand their class

Teach? No, tolerate and possibly point them in the right direction.
The end result is what's important here would you rather spend 15 minutes with twats or 25 minutes with decent people?

[_Pax._]

[...] it's not your thing [...]

... haven't I said exactly and precisely this, several times now?

What part of that are you not getting??

[StealthSigma]

Consecration could be talented for reduced mana cost, something that admittedly a lot of raiding tanks wouldn't do. Regardless its cost was irrelevant as you would regain enough mana to use it enough simply with judgement of the... just (I think the prot one is) and divine plea. Holy wrath was a very powerful threat ability despite it's 45 second cooldown simply because of the fact that it bypassed the AoE cap.

Consecration was not worth the talent points. Never was. Tankadin talents were all chosen on how much threat they provide and mana cost reductions provide very little threat increase.

Prior to the consecration mana cost increase 9696 was the rotation which put SotR/HoR on 6 and Judgment/Holy Shield/Consecration on 9.

After consecration's mana increase, avenger's shield and crusader strike were tossed in the rotation to replace of it.

Judgement of Wisdom was just 2% mana restored and based on how tankadin gearing went Spiritual Attunement does not provide a lot of mana. I do distinctly remember being mana starved while tanking because I wasn't taking enough damage.

I'm sorry but that's simply not true.
• Paladins had two taunts on different short cooldowns

There's no reason for a DPS to focus fire targets outside the kill order and taunting loose mobs doesn't help if the DPS continues to focus on the mob that he pulled threat on. The proper course of action for any tank in this situation is to let the DPS die and grab the mob if it is still loose after the DPS dies. Competent DPS are aware of this and don't do stupid shit. The kill order is established for a reason. Usually because certain mobs hit the tank harder/lighter or the mobs are a far more dangerous threat to the group as a whole. Ignoring the kill order is another level of stupid behavior.

• They had among the best sustained AoE threat among any tanks, in large part because of consecration and HW (that also stunned undead)

At one point. Which caused them to always be consistently relegated to offtank in raids. Blizzard fixed this by upping their single target threat gen and lowering their AoE gen.

• They have a ranged multi-target silence on fairly short cd that generates a huge amount of threat

The only silence I recall paladins having was arcane torrent for blood elf paladins. This is either a new ability or you're thinking of something else. The only CC abilities that paladins had were Exorcism (stun vs undead/demons), Holy Wrath (stun vs undead/demons), Arcane Torrent (BE only grants silence in a small AoE), Hammer of Justice (short duration stun).

• They could pop HoP on a dps to instantly clear their threat and had hand of salvation

HoP didn't clear threat. It made them immune to physical damage and unable to physically attack or move. Hunters and casters are still quite able to cast when they get it which means it doesn't really reduce their threat.

Keeping AoE threat as a paladin was mind numbingly easy

As long as DPS aren't being stupid and focus firing mobs not targets by the tank. Keeping AoE threat on multiple mobs that are being focus fired by DPS is not mind numbingly easy.

Sorry to break it to you but that's the proper way of doing it in MoP (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Whether or not that is the proper way to do it in Mists of Pandaria has no bearing on whether that is the proper way to do it in WotLK and just because the game is in a different expansion and things are done differently does not mean that idiots will magically cease to be idiots. They'll just be idiots in new and inventive ways.

Oh most certainly a lot of people aren't up to the ideal, but you also have to bear in mind that are some people out there with a genuine interest to improve. A lot of those people don't know that these online resources exist, but if you give them time and talk like a decent human being to them they will happily take your advice or check out the resources you point them to.

Oh, I used to try to do that, but after so many times of saying.

"Hey, your socketed gems are wrong for you build." only to receive the response "Lol, relax, it's just a game have fun." doesn't breed tolerance.

The end result is what's important here would you rather spend 15 minutes with twats or 25 minutes with decent people?

15 minutes with twats. It's spending less of my time grinding in the absolute grind fest that is WoW.

--

... haven't I said exactly and precisely this, several times now?

What part of that are you not getting??

Pax, you probably would have gotten along well enough in my guild. As long as you didn't manage to make yourself into the humor punching bag. We were, using Lion's terminology, a bunch of twats and only really cared if you performed well and didn't hold us up.

True story, we managed to kill every boss but Lich King on Heroic 25 man using a PUG group. We did have a filter though, we used a Gold bid system to acquire gear and interestingly enough people with a lot of gold tend to not be idiot players.

[Lionhearted]

@Pax That you can't know that unless you give it a shot (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
Sorry if I seem pushy or inconsiderate, Im not trying to make light of social anxiety...

[_Pax._]

PUGgers are idiots in general [...]

... and there's a significant part of why raiding, and even Dungeons at all, are not my thing.

#3 - Pointless socketed gems. Blue or yellow gems on retadins. Yellow gems on Death Knights.

... what's so wrong with stacking Haste on a DK? Haste makes Runes regenerate faster, which in turn can keep their attack chain rolling longer and faster. And for Unholy DKs, haste also benefits their Ghoul's DPS contribution.

#4 - Performance well below what their gear level would justify. Prime example. Randomly getting two DPS of the same class/spec with comparable gear and seeing one of those two double the DPS/damage of the other.

Because god forbid one of them is new to group play, and hasn't learned the different player-skillset to improve in that situation, yet.

[_Pax._]

That you can't know that unless you give it a shot (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I have.

If I hadn't, then yes, I wouldn't know. And I'd've said as much.

[_Pax._]

Pax, you probably would have gotten along well enough in my guild.

That's not the impression I'm getting here. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

[StealthSigma]

That's not the impression I'm getting here. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

Most of us have/had anti-social or social anxiety issues and consequently were a bunch of, as Lion would say, Twats who were united by an intense dislike of the incompetent.

[Lionhearted]

Judgement of Wisdom was just 2% mana restored and based on how tankadin gearing went Spiritual Attunement does not provide a lot of mana. I do distinctly remember being mana starved while tanking because I wasn't taking enough damage.

ohhh yeah before they changed it to mana regen when you judge. Although I think they did that in Wrath.

The proper course of action for any tank in this situation is to let the DPS die and grab the mob if it is still loose after the DPS dies. Competent DPS are aware of this and don't do stupid shit. The kill order is established for a reason.

Nah just for tanks with a bloated sense of self importance, you got taunts for a reason and WotLK heroics wasn't exactly rocket surgery (yes that's on purpose)

This is either a new ability or you're thinking of something else. The only CC abilities that paladins had were Exorcism (stun vs undead/demons), Holy Wrath (stun vs undead/demons), Arcane Torrent (BE only grants silence in a small AoE), Hammer of Justice (short duration stun).

Avenger's shield

HoP didn't clear threat. It made them immune to physical damage and unable to physically attack or move. Hunters and casters are still quite able to cast when they get it which means it doesn't really reduce their threat.

The only classes without thread cds are melee

"Hey, your socketed gems are wrong for you build."

Never tell someone they're wrong if you want them to listen to what you have to say. It wotks better highlighting what they could be doing better or how they can improve.

15 minutes with twats. It's spending less of my time grinding in the absolute grind fest that is WoW.

I wouldn't do heroics if I didn't get some enjoyment out of it period. Life is to short to spend on doing stuff you don't enjoy.

... what's so wrong with stacking Haste on a DK? Haste makes Runes regenerate faster, which in turn can keep their attack chain rolling longer and faster. And for Unholy DKs, haste also benefits their Ghoul's DPS contribution.

Historically Str have been so much stronger then the other stats that you always wanted to gem pure str or str+another stat.

[KarmaInferno]

As a sidenote, it pales in comparison to the spamfest that was Prot warrior back then... queing cleaves with a 1.6 weapon while maintaining the rest of your rotation and tabbing through all targets? *shudder*

Played a raid-capable Prot warrior all the way from Vanilla up to the beginning of WotLK.

Oh my god my fingers.

The only thing worse was bard tune twisting back in EQ.




-k

[Halinn]

I stopped playing around the time WotLK came out, but I used to love playing my shadowpriest with protadins in TBC. They were pretty much the only tanks I couldn't pull the mobs from, and they loved the mana I provided.

[_Pax._]

Most of us have/had anti-social or social anxiety issues and consequently were a bunch of, as Lion would say, Twats who were united by an intense dislike of the incompetent.

Yes, and that "intense dislike" would almost certainly clash with my general inclination of tolerating the foibles of the less-competent-but-at-least-trying.

Not saying you're bad people. Just ... I'm not "hardcore", I'm very solidly casual where it comes to video games, especially MMOs. So it seems improbable that I would fit in with your guild for very long, if at all.

[_Pax._]

Historically Str have been so much stronger then the other stats that you always wanted to gem pure str or str+another stat.

Enough stronger to justify a /kick, if you didn't? That, of course, being my point RE: gem colors for DKs.

[Lionhearted]

Yes, and that "intense dislike" would almost certainly clash with my general inclination of tolerating the foibles of the less-competent-but-at-least-trying.

Not saying you're bad people. Just ... I'm not "hardcore", I'm very solidly casual where it comes to video games, especially MMOs. So it seems improbable that I would fit in with your guild for very long, if at all.

Heh, for the longest time we've refered to ourselves as "casually hardcore". We somehow always managed to clear everything despite not having the optimal raid composition or the best players.
If someone screw up initially, we support him and we move in to help him improve. What have this gained us? Really nice atmosphere and fiercely loyal members. We're not a group of employed raiders, this is not a job. We're a group of really tight-knit friends that take our friendships outside of the game and enjoy playing together.
It takes a lot of work to maintain a guild like that but me and the other officers keep putting our heart and soul into it. It's worth it.

Enough stronger to justify a /kick, if you didn't? That, of course, being my point RE: gem colors for DKs.

Depends on the group you were in, in a heroic I would point it out and explain why it is better, I know some would try and vote kick. But if you votekick a lot you need to get everyone to agree or the kick will fail.
In a raiding scenario we would make sure you knew this ahead of time and give you the means to sort it out. Afterall math is math and having the best numbers going into something is beneficial.

[StealthSigma]

Enough stronger to justify a /kick, if you didn't? That, of course, being my point RE: gem colors for DKs.

As a rule of thumb, each class/role combination will have a single stat that they stack with gems. For the plate wearing melee, it was strength. That would mean that any non-red gem should have +str on it and the non-red gems are almost exclusively going to be limited to orange or purple gems in order to satisfy meta-gem requirements. There would be exceptions for certain gems that you could only socket one of and provided more overall dps than a straight +str gem, but those were the exceptions.

--

Heh, for the longest time we've refered to ourselves as "casually hardcore". We somehow always managed to clear everything despite not having the optimal raid composition or the best players.
If someone screw up initially, we support him and we move in to help him improve. What have this gained us? Really nice atmosphere and fiercely loyal members. We're not a group of employed raiders, this is not a job. We're a group of really tight-knit friends that take our friendships outside of the game and enjoy playing together.
It takes a lot of work to maintain a guild like that but me and the other officers keep putting our heart and soul into it. It's worth it.

We call ourselves casually hardcore. We never raided more than 1 or 2 nights a week and we never used a static roster. We were also good at discerning between self-learners and the unmotivated fairly quickly. That's why we did gold bid 25 mans in WotLK. Recruitment.

Filtering
1. People with copious amounts of gold (in order to actually afford the bid prices in gold bid) that aren't in a raiding guild are either buying gold or competent enough in making gold. Competence in one area is indicative of competence in others.
2. Actual performance against non-guildies during the raid. We usually had guild members in about 10-12/25 positions with 2 guildies tanking, ~6-8 guildies DPSing, and 2-4 guildies healing. So being able to see gear/gems/enchants/spec we had a good estimate of what your performance should be. No expectation to be using the best rotation for the spec, but we had certain baselines we would expect. Failing to meet those baselines on multiple bosses would make you an undesirable candidate. We can always direct you to elitistjerks or other theorycrafting sites in order to learn about your class in order to raise your performance.
3. Attitude. Anyone who expressed annoyance with our attitude was not a good candidate. It would just cause friction and issues later.
4. Following the rules. We set out some very simple rules at the beginning of each GDKP run. You agreed to them or left because we never had a shortage of people with too much gold wanting to raid. Failing to abide by the rules would get you kicked from a GDKP and you forfeit any rights to the pot.
* You listen to what the raid leader or role leader tells you.
* You may go balls to the wall on your DPS but if you pulled a trash mob onto you, you will not be saved. Tanks would only taunt trash if the trash being loose posed a risk to the raid that could result in a trash wipe (mostly cleaving mobs).
* You are entirely responsible for yourself. All your deaths are you own responsibility. No raid member need go out of their way to save another member unless a boss fight would require otherwise and such fights would be indicated by the raid leader.

Fairly simple rules. Simple rules that carried us to 12/12 on Normal ICC25 and 11/12 of Heroic ICC25 pre 4.0 using non-guild members and got us some good quality members (with pointing at Elitistjerks) for Cataclysm.

[Lionhearted]

How's that working out for you now Sigma?

[StealthSigma]

How's that working out for you now Sigma?

Now? Almost none of us play WoW anymore. We play other games together (Battlefield 3, Guild Wars 2, Starcraft 2, Diablo III, EVE Online). We all got tired of the game and did not like how they changed raiding in Cataclysm. Would the method still work now? That's debatable with the far more dancy fights rather than stat based encounters that drove raids pre-cataclysm. You may disagree with our methods but there's no denying that our methods were effective.

Personally, I had a lot more fun raiding in WotLK than I did in Cataclysm, hence part of the reason I quit early on in Cata. With WotLK you know how much RDPS you need to drop a boss and after so many deaths you know to raid wipe because you can't be the enrage, or you can tell if you can even beat enrage timers. Cataclysm was funky with being dance heavy. It made the boss fights too unpredictable and made it far too easy to go late in the morning. Not the best thing when your raid covers all the US timezones and Singapore and your average raider age is ~25-26.

[Lionhearted]

Thinking of any particular fights when you say that?
Cataclysm had a pretty disappointing final tier but other then that it was fairly solid, I liked how it changed things up to put more responsibility on the DPS.

[StealthSigma]

Thinking of any particular fights when you say that?
Cataclysm had a pretty disappointing final tier but other then that it was fairly solid, I liked how it changed things up to put more responsibility on the DPS.

Not in particular, it was the shift in general. It made it exceedingly difficult to identify and correct (with certainty) problems and mistakes made by raid members. We all got sick of that shift very quickly and being on a US server where the majority of players primary language was Portuguese was getting on our nerves. We probably could have kept at Cataclysm quite a bit longer but I think there was just enough and the right combination of pressures that made it very easy for most of us to abandon WoW. Real life issues for the various members, employment, economic, family, death of one of our members at the young age of 25 due to crohn's disease (probably the single largest fracture)... was just enough to put the right fractures that made WoW an untenable game.

[Lionhearted]

Not in particular, it was the shift in general. It made it exceedingly difficult to identify and correct (with certainty) problems and mistakes made by raid members.

Can't say that we ever noticed that, then again we had a rocky start to cata and heroics wasn't really on the table until Firelands.

US server where the majority of players primary language was Portuguese was getting on our nerves.

This issue is even more pronounced on EU servers where pretty much no one speaks english as a first language, it's alleviated a bit by having German, Spanish, Russian, and French language servers, heck there's even an Portuguese server now. Regardless the language barrier is often an issue bearing in mind that the middle-east play on EU aswell.
Really wish they could make an Italian server, a lot of the time they have a really awful attitude against foreigners.

As for the rest...
My condolences, sometimes reality makes itself remembered in the most painful ways.

[StealthSigma]

Can't say that we ever noticed that, then again we had a rocky start to cata and heroics wasn't really on the table until Firelands.

My own personal irritation was that I didn't get a H-LK 10 man kill despite being reliably there for every one of our first heroic kills. It ended up being that our DPS simply couldn't get enough RDPS. With 2-5-3 it wasn't enough. Straining the healers on 2-6-2 wasn't enough. We needed to go 1-7-2 with a druid tank to do it.

[Lionhearted]

Heroic Lich king made boys into men, that is for sure. We focused on getting everyone their drakes and went after him in the pre-patch.