Greedy Goblin

Sunday, February 19, 2012

Once upon a time it was a shame to damage below the tank

Once upon a time it was a shame to damage below the tank. Then we got WotLK "heroics" and we got used to damage dealers below the tank. Now we are happy if we see a random above the tank. Blizzard thinks it's OK and practically banned votekicks. They probably thought it can't get any worse.


Of course I was a healer. And #3 on damage. Actually, how can someone be possibly so bad? Also we had an AFK leech who was not reported. I wish someone in Blizzard sees this screenshot and ask "is this what I want to build"?

But more importantly, I wish I knew why these things play? We are not talking about bridge fighting, griefing or even blocking mailboxes anymore. What is the fun in being totally worthless, having absolutely no clue of what he is doing, being totally out of control of the outcome of the encounter he is in?

And finally we all must answer a question: "do I really want to spend my free time together with these things?"

PS: Lujzi was spamming mana burn, that's why she is low. The enemy couldn't kill us as they weren't much better. We lost after I noticed this nonsense and called to stop healing, otherwise we could keep this disaster running for lot longer.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

well three people seem to be newly joined unless i missed something so there's part of your problem.

Cenira said...

Is this screenshot after the whole battle?

I can't believe it, as I did the 300.000 damage achievement at 70 in WSG as prot pala. Not now, when it was implemented during TBC.

Still though, a tank should only out-dps someone if there is a huge gap in gear. In LFD you can find many players that just got the required level to join. Otherwise it's a rotation issue.

Dzonatan said...

The anwser is something you probably know but hate to say it aloud because its to painful to hear.

Because they pay and they want to be awesome like everyone else who is succesful.

Blizzard created a "perfect" environment where everyone can feel good about themselves. After all... they strived to create a game "for everyone".

Anonymous said...

I think the main issue with PvP BGs is that coordination is required even more than PvE, but for some reason many players are there with an "every man for himself" attitude.

In PvE you have to coordinate at least a bit, or at least conform to some unspoken mutual agreement. Failure to do so is punished with a wipe, which is crystal clear and universally agreed to be very bad in the easy instanced and LFR.

In PvP there is no such thing as a wipe. Dying happens. Losing the BG happens. "Failing" (which is different than simply losing) is harder to figure out if you don't know what you're doing.

Aurele said...

This is exactly the reason I stopped playing. There's no challenge anymore. Blizzard shot themselves in the foot by doing this, hopefuly on purpose (I have yet to understand why).

Casares said...

"do I really want to spend my free time together with these things?"

I'd really like to hear your answer to your own question. Or in other words: why do you still join random bgs/lfg/lfr?

I have lost count on all the articles you have written about the exact same thing: how much the people in rbg/lfg/lfr suck and how much Blizzard fails by allowing (or even supporting) all those M&S behaviour.

And I have written this before: crying about what kind of people you are encounting while using the tools that are exactly catering to the M&S seems non-goblinish to me (to say the least). You have the tools available to avoid those M&S (guild, premade groups or raids) - and yet you want somebody else (Blizzard) to fix it for you.

Isn't that exactly what you blaim the slackers for? Wanting something but not wiling to put the necessary effort in to get it?

---

To get this straight: I find Blizzard's policy here really bad. Vote-kick immunity seems like a bad joke and yet it is real. This still leaves the question why you bother with that crap and write article over article about the same topic.

Gevlon said...

@Casares: we queued as a premade but got separated into 2 bgs.

Anonymous said...

The only reason Blizzard let useless morons play is because they want their money. People on Welfare have a lot of time to waste: so they'll shut themselves in WoW and buy anything thrown at them. Fail in real life, succeed in your virtual one...

Lame.

Anonymous said...

You only get this CD if you kicked too many people (from that specific character).

The vote kick CD is due to people abusing the feature as was seen in countless posts before the CD was introduced in start of Cata.

Having seen it abused, and having abused it myself in both LFD and LFR it could get pretty ridiculous. Especially if you were able to queue with 5+ people in LFR, you could initiate vote kick on anyone you want. Anyone. And being able to initiate vote kick nearly equals kick since most of the time people press yes.

Fawr said...

This is PvP?

Were the low damage people defending sensible spots and not just trying to up their damage numbers?

Context is important, particually for PvP.

Kimmo said...

Absolutely horrendous players weren't all that rare. The reason players commonly place below tank is just because the potential tank DPS is higher relative to potential of damage dealers (and I remember tanks out-DPSing damage dealers even in vanilla/TBC). It's just that even the good players often lacked required knowledge and tools to understand that they are indeed playing with irredeemably bad players.

For example, I recall this kind of thing happening at Burning Crusade. I was in a somewhat decent guild and we were doing Morogrim Tidewalker (with intended gear level). I believe two healers were assigned to main tank, I was assigned to heal raid. The pull happened without trouble, and since there wasn't any raid damage to heal initially (and I wasn't constrained by mana), I started healing the main tank. However, I soon noticed the tank was taking much more damage than he should have, and preventing MT from dying obviously became my number one priority regardless of my assignments. After about 30 seconds after pull, the main tank finally died. Raid leader checked the logs and it turned out that during last 15 seconds of the logs, ALL healing the MT had received had come from me, earth shield or renew. Not a SINGLE direct heal from ANY healer other than me.

I didn't understand what that was all about back then, but now that I'm more knowledgeable, I believe I know (this wasn't the only situation like this, mind you): the other healers played 100% reactionary. If the tank didn't miss more health than their one healing spell could heal, they didn't cast it. Since I recognized the lack of tank healing instantly (without incoming heals shown, even), the tank simply didn't go below that threshold until a sudden burst of damage caused him to die. I'm also pretty confident that you couldn't get away with such abysmal performance in modern normal mode raids (let alone heroics, which are the equivalent of TBC 25-mans). Conversely, my guild was eventually able to defeat Morogrim (and all the other bosses in SSC/TK except for Kael'Thas and Vashj, which I did in another guild later on).

I also remember shadow destruction warlocks doing 30-50% more damage than others with equivalent gear (and the rotation had ONE BUTTON), players failing even the simplest "dance" mechanics (flame wreath, anyone? I'd say "don't move" is simpler to execute than an encounter like Firefighter or Heroic Ragnaros) and so forth.

Anonymous said...

So... Damage is EVERYTHING in a BG? So if the rogue was protecting a flag the whole BG and does no damage he is bad? Hard to derive if you're a good or bad player in a BG just from Damage done, its a poor way to tell actually.

Anonymous said...

If you are losing really badly, I'd dare to say that "protection flag" makes you bad. If you can't get the enemy flag, you are losing group fights and so forth, the loss is inevitable if you don't take risks, such as leaving your own flag completely undefended.

Also, while I haven't played in rated battlegrounds at all, to my knowledge the optimal strategy is to move in an organized group with no defense and then intercepting the EFC instead in a group battle. While the "organized" part isn't obviously going to happen in a PuG, the basic logic behind the strategy still remains: all the defense you have also reduces your chances of getting the enemy flag. If you lose the fight at your base (or even worse: you are just CCd and the enemy runs with flag without a fight), your efforts were in fact useless. Conversely, if you are working on the offensive or at mid-field, this increases the chances of getting enemy flag, preventing enemies from getting to your base in the first place, and increasing your chances of winning group vs group fights (sometimes with flag-carriers on both sides).

"Optimal with perfect play" strategies aside, in my own experience the best personal strategy in PuGs is to focus on flags exclusively no matter what your teammates are doing or even if it seemed suicidal. When you go for enemy flag, there are several things that can happen:
1. You manage to ride to enemy base without being intercepted (this is actually quite common: quite few players realize what is required to stop a player running away from them on a mount). For the very least you are forcing one or more enemies to defend the flag room, preventing them from taking part in flag capturing or center dominance. If there's no defenders, you can just grab the flag and run.
2. An enemy intercepts you in the middle. You are binding one or more enemies in a pointless fight (for zero overall effect) and if you die, you spawn ready to intercept EFC if the flag gets captured.
3. Flag gets captured when you are still at the graveyard or nearby. You have a good view about where the EFC is going, and since you aren't in combat, you also have a good opportunity to call EFC location in battleground chat as well.
4. Enemy captures your flag while you are near their base. You are in a prime location to intercept the EFC and your whole team in roughly the same place (since no one is waiting for ress after unsuccessful defensive battle). The odds of winning the team fight and killing the EFC couldn't be better. If you lose the team fight with those odds, this proves that you had to take risks (if every one of you was defending instead, you would still have lost the fight in your flag room).


Continuing

Anonymous said...

Assuming you manage to get the enemy flag, there are several options:
1. You get intercepted very early on. Too bad, but that's a sign of enemy having the dominance in the center (you wouldn't have had any effect on that outcome if you were defending instead, and in that case your team is overall weaker, which would have forced you to take risks in the first place)
2. You manage to exit the tunnel and you hopefully meet with friendly players who are unable to avoid or disengage from fights in the middle and go for flag even though they are outnumbering the enemy 9 to 3. You usually get SOME protection at this point, or you might even be able to give the flag to a better suited FC.
3. Enemy flag carrier is already about to get to their base. By capturing the enemy flag, you prevent them from capping, which gives your team valuable time at killing the EFC.

And in my experience that works (I used to have roughly 70-75% win rates in WSG solo queues). It's not a "good" strategy assuming perfect play from both sides, but it takes advantage of incompetent players who are "pwning" in the middle. And once again, if there is no pwnage to be had, the absolute worst thing you could have done is defending: the enemy would have defeated you in your flag room just like they are defeating you in the middle.