Please Allow Me to Introduce Myself

A bit of introduction to my current toons is in order.  As I've said, I don't have a main, nor do I see a need to identify a main with my playstyle.  If I were raiding or trying to max out a particular character that would be one thing, but I really enjoy characters at different levels, even more so now that you can gain experience with battlegrounds or level using the LFG tool introduced in patch 3.3.

Nyeth, Level 27 Night Elf Druid -- Nyeth is my youngest character, but not my first Druid.  I had a max level druid in BC, but he's currently abandoned on another server.  I picked him up at level 20 again to use in the LFG tool so I could visit some of the classic dungeons at the appropriate level.  He's currently spec'd with feral talents, but I use him as a healer in groups.  I will shortly probably adjust this to pick up some balance talents which would facilitate healing better, but I don't think the resto tree provides a lot until you get to around level 36, so I've stayed away from it, even though healing is his role.  Feral provides me utility in battlegrounds and makes things easy when filling time with quests.

Zuuhl, Level 60 Troll Priest --  What a class/race combination.  I love the priest class but hate leveling casters, priests especially.  I think it's the sound wands make.   Priests don't have generic CC or any long range spells that slow down movements like mages do.  If whatever you're fighting has resistance to shadow magic it's rough.  It gets easier as you gain levels, but is just painful early on.

I started Zuuhl for a little break from the alliance side, and to give leveling through battlegrounds a shot.  It has been a lot of fun.  A healer in a battleground can really change the balance, and priests are pretty good at flag running in WSG, and in Arathi Basin mind control at the lumber mill is so much fun.  Zuuhl would be dual spec, but as he's my only horde character he is very poor.  I didn't feel like dual gathering with him, so I didn't even try to make money.  He's a tailor/herbalist and while he's got his flying mount he needs to earn a bit more before I can buy the dual spec.

I'm probably going to level him up to 80 horde side then faction transfer him over to alliance.  I'm thinking gnome priest in cataclysm.

Radwen, Level 80 Draenei Shaman -- Radwen is the namesake of my first character I leveled past 20, he was a Tauren Shaman.  I love the different aspects of the shaman class, it's one of the most enjoyable classes for me to play.  He is currently spec'd as elemental and resto. He's basically a fresh 80, other than some crafted gear he's in quest rewards.  I leveled him the old fashioned way, by questing.

I'm thinking of pulling him out to do some dungeons using the LFG tool.  I've only healed in battlegrounds with him, but am pretty comfortable with the riptide/LHW/LHW single target rotation.  We will see how it goes, it could be an epic fail, but have found that I'm pretty capable at healing, I haven't had a complaint yet with any other character, so it's time to try out shaman healing a bit.

Aselvar, Level 80 Dwarf Hunter -- Aselvar is my first alliance character.  He has been shelved for a while, because I lost interest in him after getting him to 80, grinding Hodir rep on him and searching for spirit beasts which I can never find.  He's done a handful of heroics, and at some point I think I'll dust him off, but right now I'm in more of a healing mood than a pew-pew mood.  I love him for the occasion when I need to farm something, and he's my only high level cook, so he's kinda in a support role.

Blogging is hard.

I started the previous post on Saturday, and was interrupted during it by a myriad of real life situations.  I finally had the chance to finish it and post it in no-where near the state I had hoped this morning.

I have a lot of respect for people who manage to post daily, semi-daily or multiple times a day.  My goal is 3-4 posts a week, if I can do that, it's a success in my book.  It's a lot of work to get your thoughts out of your head and down in a post when you've got all kinds of things going on around you.

Know Your Role!

The new LFG tool is pretty awesome.  It's opened up content that had been lost to most players for years.  While leveling up when was the last time you did BFD or RFK with a level appropriate group?  2006, 2007?  Many players who are newer to the game probably haven't run any or many dungeons until they got either to max level or close.

But there might be a problem.  I think WoW has become more and more of a solo game as time goes on, and quite a few players are joining their first groups.  For a lot of us, the concept of Tank, DPS and Healer roles is more than clear, but I'm not sure everyone has a grasp on what they should be doing in each of the roles.

Listen, at level 20 no-one should be expected to be an expert in their class, have the absolute most effective distribution of their handful of talent points or be awesomely geared.  Heck, I'm a mid 20's healy feral druid at the moment.  I do fine in dungeons because I know what I should and should not do.  Would this work well in heroics? I would not recommend it. 

But if you queue for a role, I do expect you to know the basics of what you should be doing.  So I will bestow my vast knowledge of the game upon you now.  Listen, and take heart, for I now blog.

Tank:  The tank's job is to gather up mobs and hold them in place while the DPS burns them down.  In most groups the tank also chooses the next group to kill, the kill order within that group.  Your task is to keep mobs off the other players, because if the healer is wasting cooldowns and mana on others it makes it that much easier for you to die.  It is much more easier for a healer to keep a group alive if they are just focused on healing one player.

Be prepared to taunt mobs off other players.  Also be able to spread out your damage to multiple mobs in order to build up threat.  All tanking classes are given an AOE threat generation ability early on, make good use of it.

Healer:  Your job is to keep the others in the group alive, in this order of priority:  Yourself, the tank, DPS.  Why not the tank first?  If you're not healing the tank isn't going to last very long, and you've got the ability to res people.  Realistically once the tank goes down, the rest of the group is soon to follow, but sometimes you get lucky and end up being able to res your fallen comrades making the best out of a bad situation.

DPS are expendable.  If you've got excess mana throw a heal or two their way during the fight, but don't heal them at the expense of yourself or the tank.  You want to keep everyone alive, but if a lock keeps pulling aggro, and you need to focus on keeping the tank up he's going to have to go down.

Communicate when you need to drink.  It's often the tendency of non mana classes to forget we need a 30 second break every so often to mana up.  Make a macro that you can hit when you need to drink asking for a quick break.

Finally I recommend using a healing mod to help monitor things, and make your life a little easier.  VuhDo, Grid, and Healbot are all common options.  I use VuhDo personally, it allows me to use a combination of clicks and key modifiers to cast spells on party members by clicking their unit frame.  It also very nicely tracks HoT spells and when they expire, and highlights party members who have a dispel-able debuff.

DPS:  Your job is to make things die without taking aggro yourself.  Give the tank a bit of time to gain aggro before going full bore on the target.  You can use a threat mod such as Omen to help out with this. /focus the tank so you can see what he's currently targetting which can help a lot.  You can also make a macro which will target his target allowing you to quickly switch targets while in combat when you notice you're taking on more aggro than you're comfortable with.

It's not about topping the meters.  If you're constantly pulling aggro and the healer is having to expend mana keeping your squishy butt alive, no one really cares what type of numbers you're putting up.  Hold back a little if you need to.  If you or your pet has threat generation abilities, turn these off, please.  If you have threat mitigation abilities, use them when needed.

Unless agreed upon by the group, let the tank do the pulling.  Even if you always do the pulling with everyone else you run with, unless everyone is aware of this, and knows how to make it work you're going make the run tougher not easier.

Overall have fun, and try to treat the other players as people not pixels.  People will need to drop the group because something comes up for them, the LFG tool helps you find a new member in a few minutes usually. People will be new to their roles, and need a group to be forgiving as they learn.

The Mission Ramble

OK so what's this blog going to be about? 

Well, you aren't going to find much theorycrafting, BiS gear lists, or the latest on the newest raids or 5-mans.   You aren't going to find in depth information on ruling your auction house, or where to best spend your time farming this or that.  You won't get cutting edge information on everything that's going on in the PTR. So if that's what you're after there's plenty of other sources for that information.

Not to say some of that type of stuff won't get posted.  It will just be so incorrect or out of date it won't hold much relevance.

So that's not what it will be about.

It will be about is one player's experience in the game and in life.  Things that I find exciting about warcraft or other games, and things outside of virtual worlds I feel need sharing.  I want to talk about what is being done well in the game, and what I feel should be done better.  I will make ridiculous suggestions that if taken seriously will certainly be the Next Big Thing.

As the name of the blog implies I won't be focusing on a particular class.  I see too many great WoW bloggers get pigeon-holed into whatever class they started out with.  Readers vehemently turn on them when they dare write about another class they pick up.  I play a lot of classes.  I don't identify with a class as my main.  My dearest character is one that I leveled up when I first came to the game, but I don't see him as my main.  End-game just doesn't fit with my life so having a bunch of different characters at different levels of progression doesn't bother me.

We will likely occasionally foray into the world of sports.  I'm a football and baseball fan, and can't promise to keep those things out of here.  We'll talk about the newest toys I must have. I'm also pretty sure we'll talk about beer.  At the very least many posts will be influenced by beer.

All in all, I hope we have fun, and maybe learn some stuff.  One of the things that I learned from a few of my favorite WoW blogs was I wasn't the only 30+ guy with a 9-5 job and a family that enjoys the hell out of the game.  I know, it's either terribly narcissistic or ignorant to have thought that way, but rejoin the trade channel and hang out there for a bit, and I think you'll forgive me.

Welcome!

Welcome, er, no one.

If somehow someone is reading this, and going through the archives or something, this is the end. That's it, it's all that has been written here. There is no more. You can stop now, and have my apologies for wasting your time. Actually, come to think of it, you are the one that wasted your own time, you're welcome for the assistance.