WoW's not what it used to be

The Wrath of the Litch King expansion has allowed players to become increasingly lazy in their game play. Perhaps I am too reminiscent of how WoW used to be, and am reluctant to embrace the new direction that Blizzard has chosen to take the game. Let me elaborate for a few moments on just a few of the aspects where this has taken place.

Dual Talent Specialization:

Now that characters can specialize in tanking / dps / healing at a whim, it seems that people think that they are qualified to tank or heal just because they paid the 1,000 gold to put talent points in that area. Now, don't get me wrong... this is a huge step forward from how things used to be. I remember back in the day -- when you couldn't find a tank, a ret pally would have to do. Or when you couldn't find a real healer, a shadow priest or a balance druid would have to suffice. Either that or pay the gold to re-spec every time you're needed to perform another task. That works when you're running Deadmines or Scarlet Monastary... but not when you're in heroic Trial of the Champion.

For those that know how to play both specs, this is a great advantage. But recently, it has come to my attention that having the ability to dual spec causes a great deal of trouble. Back in WoW Original, people specced tank or heal because they liked it and were good at it. You really had to want to do it because you only got one spec. Since they played it all the time, they really knew how to use all of their spells and abilities. Having instant, free respecs make it too easy for the idiots to say they can perform a group role, but really have no idea what they're doing.

Achievements:

I'm sure you've seen trade chat in Dalaran, as I have:

<2 Trade> [JoeTheTank] LFM 25-Ony pst achievement!

I understand wanting people who have run the instance before. The idea is that since they've been successful with some group before, they most likely can do it again. It's always rough taking people who have no idea what they're doing. However, the achievement system has been a lateral-copout for some. In essence, players these days want nothing to do with actually acknowledging that there's a real person on the other end. They don't want to have to teach anyone the fights.

Gear Dependancy:

I'm not referring to GearScore here, although you may see it as somewhat related.

When The Burning Crusade came out, level 60 raiders threw away hard earned Tier gear to Outland greens. There was such a drastic change in the scale of gear that the instances required you to have a certain level of gear to enable you to take on a any given instance. This was generally because most of the player base was not equiped with raid gear, and would not be able to withstand the strength of the new bosses, nor have their mana last the length of the fight.

However, this mindset continued. Players interpreted this disperity in gear to mean that they could not complete an instance without being geared to the teeth. Once adequately geared, players continued to promote the attitude that gearing should be one's primary focus. It is the only evidence other players have of how good you are.

The truth is that, if you're good at playing your character, you can defeat bosses and quests much higher than your character level. (Remember, however, that there are diminishing returns on damage dealt as the difference in level between you and your opponent increases.) In order to defeat something higher than you, you may need to use a bit of trickery, strategy, or skill -- if you will.

Now, the trend has become that as a player's level and gear increases, they quit using the aforementioned trickery, strategy, and skill. Since they have more hp, mana, and armor, they can defeat their enemy without needing skill. They have become apathetic in their play-style insomuch that they actually have become worse players. Eventually, they forget how to actually play altogether. Soon, everyone plays as if they were a warlock: , , , . When the time come that they end up in a group with "undergeared" players, they no longer know how to play at all, and the group fails miserably; not due to the undergeared player, but rather due to the apathetic player.

Knowledge of the Fights:

I am amazed at how much of a difference is made when people know the fights. As I mentioned previously, this should not preclude those who have never been before from attempting an instance. Only one person in the group really needs to know how the fight goes, because he can then explain it to the others. Don't assume people know the fights. Often people won't admit to not knowing the fights because they don't want to be kicked from the group by the leader who has no patience to explain the fight.

However, experience is the best teacher. You can explain a fight till you're blue in the face sometimes, but until a person experiences it, they may not quite understand. But the second attempt will usually be much better.

There are a plethora of instance guides out there that will tell you exactly what to do to take down a boss. Go and read them. Watch videos of how others have done it. This demonstrates personal responsibility... something which has been lost during the WoW era.

Really, you need to know what that Spellbinder's abilities are. Is he going to run over and 2-shot the priest, or is he going to knock everyone off the ledge into the lake of molten lava? Could the mage simply polymorph him, or should the tank back up against the wall? When you know the fights, the groups succeed so much more easily.

The Advent of the Pally Tank

I played a holy paladin for a long time. Eventually they nerfed the paladin and I decided that I didn't like to play him that much anymore. I rolled a priest and respecced the paladin retribution. This was great for a long time -- until the advent of the pally tank.

Around the time when Karazhan was the rage, they re-buffed the paladin, and gave him some real talents so that he could viably tank. It was perfect for Kara because everything inside was undead. The paladin walked in and simply AOE'd everything. He could easily hold aggro on an overwhelmingly large group of mobs. In fact, he got mana back from being healed! The paladin could indeffinately tank until his healer ran out of mana.

While I thought this was fabulous at the time, I had no idea what it was doing to the player base. Suddenly, when other tanks couldn't hold agro on 15 guys at once, it was the tank's fault... or when the tank died from pulling too many, it was the healer's fault. Additionally, the pally tank's consecrate AOE to hold that many guys caused a large problem for CC. No longer could mages polymorph, rogues sap, druids hibernate, or priests shackle. Since the pally AOE would break all crowd control, they simply decided not to use CC anymore at all. The tank took them all, and everyone DPSed to their heart's content without a thought to threat.

However, this tought everyone a lot of bad habbits. Instead of playing with skill, everyone just tried to hash out the most damage they possibly could. They forgot how to pull with some smarts. They quit using half of the spells in their spellbooks. They forgot to watch their threat on Omen. They forgot to watch where they're standing. They forgot how to play.

Death Knight Starting Level

I rolled a DK when they first came out, and loved playing one solo. They had much better starting gear than all the other outland lowbies that you could easily gank anyone you pleased. And starting at level 55 wasn't bad either. Then I only had to go 25 levels to 80. Unfortunately, since players didn't level their DK's up gradually, they really didn't learn how to play their character. As you level up slowly from level 1, getting a new spell was a big deal... and you used it as often as you could because it was new and cool. By the time you were 80, you knew what all your spells did and when to use them.

I hate death knights. Just so my opnion is clear.

They offer nothing to the group in terms of buffs or auras. As DPS, they are (in my opnion) a rogue who wears plate.

Even moreso, I hate death knights that pretend to tank. They, in essence, use the AOE theory to tank - which works for the paladin. However, DK's don't wear a shield. This fact alone makes them much more like the druid tank than the paladin. I raided for a long time in TBC - all the way up to the Black Temple. Our main tank was a druid and he was quite good. However, through discussions with him, I learned that since druid tanks do not wear a shield, they lose the bonus that paladin and warrior tanks get from block. Druids depend on agility to dodge a large percentage of the damaging attacks. This, combined with a massive amount of stamina for when they do get hit.

Death knights do not wear a shield, which means they really need to have about 25% more hp than do warrior or paladin tanks. If a warrior tank has 30k hp, this means that the DK tank should have 37.5k hp in order to do the same job.