Unbearably HoT

Penwiper, from Twisting Nether, recently sent me this e-mail:

Dear Runy,

I’d like to start out by saying I really enjoy reading your blog and the great articles that I can get here from time to time. I found out about your website from Phae’s site and the recent blogcast.

I wanted to get your opinion on the current state of Feral tanking and its uniqueness: a fairly coherent and clear post was written on the Beta forums (http://blue.mmo-champion.com/2/9956326946-snarfsnarf-speaks-help-save-feral-tanking.html) and the author made a list of points that the feral druid is not unique anymore and furthermore, brings less to the table than a warrior.

Being more of a pessimist and also having seen the ongoing continuous lessening of our talents and abilities during the last couple of weeks, I wholeheartedly agree with this studied criticism of Blizzard’s seeming determination to bring feral tank players to their metaphorical knees.

Do you think that there will be a further development of our abilities, which Ghostcrawler had mentioned that have not yet fully been looked at or should we grit our teeth and start looking at primarily the restoration or balance trees?

Sincerely,

Penwiper

Firstly, thanks for the compliment and I’m wholeheartedly glad that you enjoy reading my site (and occasionally get something out of it). Secondly, I apologize for how long it’s taken me to get back to you, but I just realized that my site’s e-mail account wasn’t properly forwarding (and thus I’m now backlogged in spam and various other commentary). 

Obviously, the tank homogenization controversy is something I’ve followed very closely and have detailed in the past. I find Snarfsnarf’s miniature dissertation a little grating and difficult to read, but it is essentially correct—while simultaneously disregarding the fact that playing a Protection Warrior in BC was a chore, and that Protection Paladins have been scrambling for appropriate gear and dying for main tankadin viability. 

I believe that Blizzard has made a series of misassumptions:

1. That Druids wanted to competitively DPS or MT.
2. That Druids were not capable of MTing nearly all content. 
3. That by making tanks the same they would encourage raid groups to take them based on ability rather than class.

Players pick their class (and race, in many cases) for specific reasons: appearance, racials, talents, spells, potential raidspot—whatever. I, for example, chose a Druid partially because I thought it was cool to change into things, but also because I knew that it meant I could perform a variety of roles. Ghostcrawler’s “master of none” statement is wildly incorrect—we are the masters of versatility, able to occupy multiple roles in one raid group. I absolutely loved the fact that I could off tank, main tank, and offer reasonable melee DPS when necessary. If I had wanted to be The Best at melee DPS, I would have rolled a Rogue or a DPS Warrior (and indeed, I have). 

Blizzard also seems to think that Druids were incapable of tanking certain content based on class restrictions. Is this true? Sort of. Certain encounters do tend to rely on abilities that Paladins and Warriors have (i.e. Shield Block, Shield Bash, some sort of Fear Break, etc.), but using a Druid to tank them doesn’t make them impossible—just more challenging. I’m reasonably certain that Druids have MT’d every boss in the game, including Illidan (by utilizing a Warrior Intervene rotation). Blizzard wants to eliminate those “challenges” in WotLK, and seeks to level the metaphorical playing field. This isn’t bad, just disappointing.

Finally, I still think that class will make raid groups pick up one tank over another—and perhaps not for the best reasons. With the new “dual spec” functionality, wouldn’t it be great to take a tank with you who could turn around and double as either: a healer, melee DPS, caster DPS? Paladins are the only other tanks who have a similar hybrid functionality that will be available in a few keystrokes. In my mind, this still relegates Paladins and Druids (and Death Knights) to OT positions. 

So yes, by improving Warriors in such a way that Protection is an incredibly desirable and potentiallymore fun talent spec (without a caster/healer offspec), I do believe that good Warriors will still be in incredibly high demand. That being said, remember that the recent Druid nerfs came as a result of Level 80 Druids being ridiculously kickass tanks—so much so that no one else could compare. Sounds pretty good to me. The changes, thus, have just been to normalize our abilities and put us more in line with the rest of the tanks—although whether this means we’re now below the line remains to be seen.

I cannot, however, believe that Blizzard would refuse to make changes if a distinct gap exists between Druids and the rest of the tanks at level 80 once Wrath goes live. They have made a strident, documented commitment to equalizing capabilities, and going back on that now doesn’t seem a likely path. Additionally, while I am frustrated with the course that Feral Druids are being pushed along, it’s important to remember that Blizzard’s developers are not looking to bring “us to our metaphorical knees.” 

As a Feral Druid blogger, I am naturally biased to my particular class and spec—but I try to keep some measure of perspective. We are losing our traditional niche and sharing some token abilities that previously colored our advantage, but we need to take a serious look at what we’re gaining. We need to rise to the occasion and make sure that our tanking skill outclasses everyone else. We need to stop bemoaning our losses and pick up that Mantle of Versatility, acknowledging that our new “niche” may include dependable tanking and switching specs at the drop of a hat. Maybe Warriors really will be the cat’s pajamas in terms of tanking—but can they take off their shield, turn around, DPS, heal, and do all of those things well? 

I sincerely doubt it. 

Make some Bank space and prepare to whore gear. 

 

 

I haven’t always raided on a druid. I mostly have. There was, however, a brief span of time soon after Burning Crusade’s release in which Awen’s guild leader decided we didn’t need a Feral Druid—we needed more Warriors. You know, those losers who stand around with cool weapons and shields. This, of course, necessitated that I bring my Fury specced Level 52 alt up to raiding standards in about a week and a half’s time and somehow become a tanking champion in less than that (that process, of course, was how I met Lycentia, and that is another story altogether). Obviously, I’ve since picked my Druid back up with a certain sort of zeal and never looked back. Until now.

I think raiders like Kalon, who have played every tanking class in the game, would agree that part of the fun in tanking on different characters is that they’re each inherently different. We all know that Warriors have primarily occupied the Main Tank role, that Paladins are the Kings and Queens of AOE tanking, and that Druids are pretty much the sexiest beasts to hit the scene. We all have our niches. Despite the obvious differences—Rage v. Mana, Giant Bear v. Corpsesled—each class has abilities that function with similar purposes. “Similar” is really the key word there: close enough to get the job done, but different enough that each has a class specific perk. Want examples? Sure!

How do tanks address issues where aggro has been transferred to a ranged player (whether by pulling or inadvertent proximity)? While certain stupidities warrant standing by and letting a retard or two die, there are reasonably quick ways in which tanks can get their shiny asses over to the errant mob in question:

Warrior
Intervene
Has an 8-25 yard range and enables the Warrior to “run at high speed towards a party member, intercepting the next melee or ranged attack made against them” and has a 30 second cooldown. 10 Rage.

Paladin
Righteous Defense
Has a 40 yard range and enables the Paladin to “come to the defense of a friendly target, commanding up to 3 enemies attacking the target to attack the Paladin instead” and has a 15 second cooldown. 4% of base mana.

Druid
Feral Charge
Has an 8-25 yard range and “causes you to charge an enemy, immobilizing and interrupting any spell being cast for 4 seconds” and has a 15 second cooldown. 5 Rage.

While Paladins clearly have the easiest job here—LOL I PUSH THIS BUTTON AND MONSTERS RUN OVER—each ability allows the tank to gain control over enemies at range to varying degrees of effectiveness. The Paladin and Warrior variations immediately remove a friendly player from harm, and Feral Charge gets you over there, potentially interrupts, and then requires a little finagling. Tanks might grumble a little about who has what, but ultimately, I think that most are fairly happy with what they’ve got. They chose their class, afterall.

Fast forward to Wrath of the Lich King. Blizzard seeks to homogenize the tanking classes, level the playing field, and make sure that no one chooses a tank based on their class rather than their ability (which begs the question of why you’d roll one over another, but that’s another story). Druids clamored for a Last Stand ability because they essentially had no oh-shit buttons to push save trinkets and the woefully poor Frenzied Regeneration ability. They got it in the form of Berserk, and Blizzard tossed in the ability to use potions and items in animal forms. Great, right? At first glance, that starts putting us on even footing with the other tanks. But what did Warriors get?

Warbringer
A 41 point talent in the Protection tree that allows Charge to be used in combat, and in any stance. It’s basically Feral Charge—except it doesn’t cost Rage, it generates Rage. Warriors have thus gained an ability to increase their mobility outside the 30 second Intervene cooldown.

Enraged Regeneration
A level 75 Fury spell, Enraged Regeneration costs 15 Rage, operates on a 3 minute cooldown, and regenerates 30% of your total health over 10 seconds. The ability requires an Enrage effect, consumes all Enrage effects, and prevents any from affecting you for the full duration. Activate Bloodrage and win. Sound a little familiar? I thought so.

Improved Thunder Clap
This base Warrior ability “blasts nearby enemies increasing the time between their attacks by 10% for 30 seconds and doing 300 damage to them. Damage increased by attack power. This abilities causes additional threat and will affect up to four targets,” and can be augmented with 3/3 Improved Thunder Clap, which “reduces the cost of your Thunder Clap ability by 4 Rage points and increase the damage by 100% and the slowing effect by an additional 10%.”

I firmly believe that TC will become a staple damage ability for Warriors in much the same way that Swipe and Consecration work for Druids and Paladins respectively. We Druids were tickled by the idea of Infected Wounds, and here comes an improvement to the original that makes ours look pretty pitiful. Compare to the level 77 Swipe and Level 80 Consecration.

While there are precious few new Paladin abilities that even remotely resemble current Druid abilities, Paladins have picked up a familiar spell:

Shield of Righteousness
A Holy spell, Shield of Righteousness is learned at level 75 and “slams the target with your shield, causing Holy damage equal to 240% of your block value. This spell causes a high amount of threat.” Not only can Paladins chuck their shield ala Captain America, they can now punch people in the face with it. Warriors might recognize this as a spell damage based Shield Slam.

I haven’t even taken Death Knights into consideration here, and the above abilities are just a sampling. What’s your point, Runy? While on the surface many of these spells seem like welcome additions to any tank’s arsenal, I’m left wondering what modicum of uniqueness we’ll be left with. I stare at my outdated Warrior and wonder why I’m trying to play my Druid in the expansion when my Warrior will be given my Druid’s tools—and then some. I carefully examine the Paladin Protection tree and marvel at the solid base of talents to choose from, and find myself mentally transforming my Holy Paladin into a tank. I’m not excited about any of the Druid changes anymore, and I think it’s because some of them feel so familiar.

In a move that will likely bore raiders to tears and appease the raving masses, Blizzard seeks to make tanking more accessible by increasing damage dealt and handing each class a similar skillset (with Druids currently holding the short end of the branch…er…stick). How difficult will it be when we can all push the EZ buttons and win? Will tanking really require any sort of acumen anymore? Are Druids going to be the biggest challenge? I wonder. Think about applying Blizzard’s approach to sex: everyone gets the same moves and you’ve got to choose the best one when they’re all doing the same thing. Do you really want the Wham-Bam-Thank-You-Ma’am-One-Trick-Pony every day? It sure gets the job done, right? Does that make it good?

Streamlining doesn’t always make things better; sometimes it’s just “efficient.”

At the risk of raining doom and gloom before the clouds even start gathering, I’d like to vocalize some concern about the apparent “direction” Blizzard is trying to go with feral druids.

Unless you’re living under a rock, you’ve probably read the downpour of blue-posts about both the direction of tanking in general and, in particular, the role of bear tanks in Wrath of the Lich King. Although I’ve seen every flavor of tank (save the ever-changing Death Knight) function in an MT capacity at some point during my raiding career, Blizzard wants to take it a step further and allow all tanks to be “Main Tanks.” Tanking, apparently, isn’t “fun” or at least requires a lot more work than they meant it to (if the blue posts can be trusted), and clearly streamlining the entire process will make Azeroth a better place.

Almost as a point of pride, Blizzard has also announced that Cat Form melee DPS will now be a considerable beast to contend with—but we hybrids are going to have to make a choice between being a better cat or a better bear. We’re not quite at the point of having four talent trees, but if the extra abilities and talents Ghostcrawler has promised come into play, we’re really getting close.

At the risk of sounding like I know more about my class than Blizzard does, the developers seem to be forgetting that we furries do not have parry or blocking capabilities and have thus far glossed over the fact that WotLK currently sees us tanking and DPSing in rogue gear.  Maybe that’s not so bad for DPS, although I worry about items with “crit rating” rather than straight up AGI. Blue-poster Ghostcrawler has repeatedly stated that all the tanking stats we lose (you know, the bread & butter DEF, RES, STA, and heavy AC) will be made up for through additional talents and abilities—but as I look through the latest WotLK talent calculator, I’m at a loss. “Soon,” they promise. “Just not yet. Come on, guys, we’ve got until like, October at least.”

And we wait with bated breath. Before you scoff at my bias, consider the amount of time that a player like me has invested in both my class and the game: a substantial hobby and monetary investment precipitates a certain amount of expectation. Maybe I’m out-of-tune with the feral community, but I’m not sure I follow the desire to be either a main tank or a viable melee DPS class—the point of being a feral druid is that you have tanking and DPS functionality simultaneously. Am I wrong? I consider that my role, and I consider myself to have been very successful in both regards. I wouldn’t expect a kitten to do more DPS than a similarly geared rogue or fury warrior or any other pure DPS class, but we offer group (and supposedly in the future, raid-wide) buffs and the opportunity to slot an awesome off-tank and a moderate DPSer in one position. A two-for-one deal, so to speak.

Druids are the Kings and Queens of flexibility. I’d argue that being an excellent druid demands the knowledge and quick-thinking to excel: you’re at once a synonym for a warrior and a rogue, and I’m sure many feral druids have also, at one time or another, taken up healing as a means to an end. All classes have their idiosyncrasies, but druids have always been fickle beasts—and I’m not sure Blizzard has ever really known what to do with us. Watering down our “quirks” to solve a so-called tanking problem seems to be an inadvertent slap-in-the-face as to why we chose to play the class in the first place—or at least why I chose to play.

I’d like to take a look at a thread that the Ghostcrawler (a new voice in blue posting) started in order to outline Blizzard’s plans for tanking. I find him wildly out of touch with the WoW community I have been a part of and can’t help wondering if he’s ever raided past Kara, or, for that matter, played a tank.

1) Our goal in Lich King is for all 4 tanking classes to be viable.

2) We would like for tanking to be a little more fun. I’m going to leave this vague on purpose, but it is definitely a concern.

All four tanking classes are already viable, dear, and tanking is enormously fun. Any class or spec can become stressful (um, healing, hello?) in a competitive raiding environment, especially when you’re trying to aggressively hold aggro against balls-out DPS. The frustration lies within the fact that many people don’t bother understanding threat mechanics and that most tanks’ threat generating abilities don’t scale nearly as well as DPS can. Brutallus is a perfect example of an environment where DPS needs to push itself to the limit to kill him within the six minute enrage timer but end up being limited by the amount of threat their tanks can generate. The best tank in the world might not be able to hold aggro when competing against a group of careless, Shadow Bolt spamming Warlocks. This isn’t a tank issue; it’s a damage scaling issue.

3) In 5-player instances, most warriors, druids, paladins and death knights should be effective tanks. The healing specs may have a harder time than the dps specs. Arms wariors, Fury warriors, Ret paladins, Ferals and most DKs should do fine.

4) In 5-player heroics, the expectation is that the tank has a heavy investment in tanking talents and appropriate gear. Arms warriors might have trouble tanking a heroic unless they overgear the instance.

It rather goes without saying that to be a successful tank, you need to spec for it. Tell us something we don’t know. Here, however, he also suggests that various off-specs should also be able to tank in regular five-man instances, which has me wondering why the casual player would spec for tanking at all. We continually see the difficulty of the game being scaled back for players who don’t seem to want to invest any time or effort in learning mechanics, and now this. To be fair, any decently geared individual could already run through five-mans without a true tank, and oftentimes, without a true healer. I’ve healed a normal Arcatraz run feral specced without difficulty, Lycentia’s hunter has tanked Ramparts with just a pet, and we’ve gone through a myriad array of similar arrangements such as these with minimal effort—but we also knew what we were doing.

6) This is a shift in philosophy for us. Previously, we sometimes tried to steer Ferals as being better off tanks than main tanks. We also expected specific classes to appear in the raid. Our new assumption is that you might have any of the 4 tanking classes as a tank. We are trying to achieve as much parity as we can among the 4 tanks without making them too similar. If nearly all guilds want the same class as their MT, we’ve failed.

7) This is a big one: the game isn’t finished. We aren’t spending too much effort yet to make sure mitigation, threat and tools are similar across the 4 classes at level 80 in blue or purple gear. Likewise, your talent trees and core abilities aren’t finished. Tanking (and PvP) need to have a lot of other pieces of the game in place before we can really get the numbers right. It’s fine (useful even) to point out when you feel a particular ability, talent, class or build is too good or not good enough. But please don’t infer the work in progress as a reflection of our intent. If we end up changing our minds or if things don’t work out, it will be posted here.

Unless all tanking classes are “normalized”, so to speak, there will always be a “best” tank for a specific fight. Superior mitigation? Check out the druids. High spell damage? Bring out a Death Knight. Multiple mobs? Try a paladin. You get the picture. Druids have arguably main-tanked every fight in the game thus far (including Illidan, I might add, using an Intervene rotation), and we’re supposed “off-tanks”. Merging roles with other classes does make us more or less the same. Death Knights and Druids don’t have shields, and that’s a pretty fundamental difference from Paladins and Warriors. If the necessity for using a shield in a raid environment is lessened to compensate for Druids and Death Knights, then why use one altogether? Players roll a specific class to be able to fill a certain niche—don’t take that away.

Q u o t e:

“Why aren’t there tanking leather pieces?”

I’m not quite able to wrap my brain around this, especially since you’re trying to make us as good as any other tank. Why wouldn’t you give us access to the tools to do it?

We *will* give you the tools to do it. We just might not give you those tools the same way another class gets them. There are no two-handed tanking weapons, yet I suspect 50% or more of DKs will use two-handed weapons. Neither DKs nor druids have shields. Druids need defense less than other tanks because they can achieve crit immunity. We can do something similar for your damage reduction (bake it into bear form, or put it in a talent are two obvious choices). Now, when you get your leather though, we are assuming you gem and enchant it as a tank would.

This whole promise for talent changes and new abilities has become the blue poster stump speech: we hear an awful lot, but we don’t see any policy changes. I would much prefer to keep my role as offtank and off DPS and gain a few talents that strengthen it instead of trying to rewrite the tank books. Druids need less defense? Does he understand how crit immunity is attained? By taking 3/3 Survival of the Fittest, we only need 415 DEF to reach crit immunity, or a combination of RES and DEF, as I outlined in a previous post—but we still need it. There isn’t any magical talent or gem or ability that auto-grants us crit immunity, as Ghostcrawler seems to imply. It seems that we’ll be farming for PVP yet again to pick up the RES necessary to tank—or gemming for DEF, which seems to be Blizzard’s line of thinking. Forget STA and AGI, kids! OH WAIT, how could I forget? Is RES even functioning outside of BG’s anymore? That’s a serious problem.

Q u o t e:

It seems that every time you refer to druid tanking all you say is “big healthpool”. Do you realize that in live, well geared warriors and paladins already come fairly close to our pools? Currently druids rely on health, capped (or near) armor, and very high dodge. Your comments lead me to believe that you are looking at us in a very one-dimensional way. I assure you that no healer wants to deal with a tank that is just a pile of hitpoints with no real mitigation/avoidance to speak of.

I totally get this. Druids won’t be popular tanks if everyone knows them as the OOM tank. When I say “big health pool” I’m not talking about 30% more than a warrior, and I’m not even sure that’s the route we’ll go. But since the “big health” idea generates a lot of discussion, I’ll walk you through our thought process.

Druids are going to have a harder time hitting the armor cap in Lich King largely because there is no leather tanking gear, and virtually no bonus armor at all (except on a few pieces like rings and necks). Now we can’t just make druids do without armor, or they won’t compete with other tanks. We can’t just bake the armor into Dire Bear Form though, or we risk making resto druids even better in PvP. So when I have mentioned big health pools, that is partially because we’re trying to solve the problem where druids need armor but can’t get it. Big health is a way to do with less armor, but it’s not a total fix for the situation, it definitely has drawbacks, and it doesn’t mean 30% more health and 30% less armor. If I had to guess, all of the tanks will end up having pretty similar endgame stats, minus obvious things like block.

Keep in mind how good a well-geared druid tank would be in live if we hadn’t added Sunwell Radiance. It is surprisingly easy to make bears too good or not good enough. We have to tread carefully.

But we haven’t changed the design of wanting bears to be able to MT. And that doesn’t mean technically they can MT but all the healers complain and as soon as the warrior logs on, you eagerly swap him back in. MT means MT.

Here, Ghostcrawler addresses the classic problem of confusing PVE with PVP and not really knowing what he’s talking about in terms of druids in general. We’re going to nerf your PVE tanking abilities because we’re afraid that Restoration druids are going to be so leet! They already are, congratulations. If readers will recall, our T6 feral armor was actually nerfed because of PVP concerns (STA reduction). If PVE versus PVP concerns are this big of a deal, why not make gear that can only be worn in an arena environment, and vice versa? It’d certainly eliminate the Glaive wearing Rogues issue. I read his response and hear: we’ve made a huge mistake in changing this and have no idea how we’re effectively fixing this.

For the record, my druid and Lycentia’s warrior have incredibly similar health pools—I just have more armor and more avoidance. He, of course, has the ability to Block and Parry (and Dodge, naturally) and also has (as a Human) high expertise and a considerable amount of +hit. Hmm. Sounds like a decent trade-off to me already. Even without Sunwell Radiance, I would argue that warriors might still be the superior tanks, especially since they have more stats built into their gear and don’t have to worry about losing crit immunity by screwing around with their gems. Avoidance is a fabulous stat (sweet, no one can hit me!), but if you’re not getting hit, you’re not generating rage, which of course means you aren’t generating as much threat. It’s unreliable. One wrong roll of the RNG and you can be destroyed. Not being in the beta I can only speculate, but I recommend that feral druids with T6 armor keep their paws on it; we may need to continue using it until Blizzard takes its head out of its collective ass.

I could dissect the entire thread (having also played a warrior and a paladin), but it’s not necessary to illustrate the obvious concerns. Druids are flexible OTs, MTs, and reliable DPSers, and reslotting their role fundamentally changes the class and, I’d argue, eliminates what made us so desirable. We already have considerable difficulty gaining the stats we need at high levels (as illustrated in previous articles), and stripping us of our basics (like AC) is ludicrous.

Admittedly, I wouldn’t be as worried (though still frustrated) about the prospective changes if WotLK still seemed as distant as Northrend. Unfortunately, yes, you heard me correctly, unfortunately, WotLK seems to be approaching much quicker than we realized. If we look at the old timeline for BC’s release, we saw content approximately one month after the cinematic release. Are they accelerating their timeline to put out (unpolished) content to compete with WAR? Well, we’ve seen the frosty cinematic, and now we’ve received news of a pre-WotLK content patch. While this not only bones raiders, it also assumes that Blizzard has “come up” with something to “fix” the tanking situation—and if Ghostcrawler is truly the mouthpiece of the developers, we’re in a World of Trouble.

Siha, from Banana Shoulders, most recently wrote a post detailing her pre-WotLK achievement goals. Sure, I’ve done that (mentally). I’ve also been busily piling gold into the Dread Lobster bank, farming honor, assembling trade goods, and deciding which toons will form the best leveling pairs. Additionally, I’ve been working toward leveling the unfinished alts on the sidebar, maxing their tradeskills, and making sure they each at least have some sort of decent weapon to plow into WotLK with. So what haven’t I done? 

I have never played a deeply Balance-specced druid. As someone who constantly touts the versatility of druids and frequently states that a knowledgeable druid is one who can play any spec successfully, I never took Balance seriously. To be fair, I’m not sure Blizzard ever did either. Pre-Burning Crusade, moonkin were even stranger beasts to see in a competitive raiding environment than cats or bears, and up until recently, I hadn’t had the pleasure of playing with a boomkin that didn’t completely blow. So rather than forking over another 50 gold, turning in my unused T6 tokens and picking up yet another gearset for Runyarusco (that I pointedly have zero bank space for), I rerolled an alt—

Hordeside, on Mal’ganis, a PVP realm. What better way to reexperience the class than to do it some place completely new, where I have absolutely zero gold, and there are level 70 welfare Alliance bitches camping your corpse when you try to quest? Yeah, that’s what I thought. Awesome. Mal’ganis is a somewhat unique realm in that the apparent ratio of Horde to Alliance is 3 to 1, and is also home to raiding giants such as Elitist Jerks, Juggernaut II, and the ever infamous (and not quite so raiding giant) Goon Squad. Despite the udder ridiculousness of playing a cow and a few Alliance lamers, Mal’ganis has been a fantastic experience thus far. I have played on a number of PVE realms in my time, and never felt quite as connected to the WoW “community” as I have in the past week. Do the Horde possess some sort of crazy voodoo magic?

 

PVE versus PVP

Nothing brings people together like a quest to defeat a common foe. An astounding number of geared 70’s will miraculously show up to save your furry ass when the Alliance decides to corpse camp a low level zone, and General and Local Defense channels are frequently populated with conversations about finding and eliminating them. Total strangers feel compelled to offer buffs and warnings—DUDE THERE ARE LEIK A MILION ALLIANCE IN THE YETI CAVE—as they pass by, and there are seldom few (even at low levels) who wouldn’t stop to help you out if it looked like you were having trouble. This kind of environment seems to breed conscientious, (mostly) quick-thinking players, and it’s been a pleasure joining that (and lolz to all the same-level Alliance folks who thought it’d be a good idea to take on a boomkin and a warlock). 

 

Level of Play

No matter where you go, you’ll always run into a surprising number of total retards. This is inescapable, and many of them will be blood elves (come on, people, look at your racials! You can make almost an entire raid full of orcs!). On the whole, however, most of my fellow Horde have been decent, competent players who can manage to type grammatically correct sentences. They are polite, they are helpful, and usually, wildly funny. Stupidity on a whole seems condemned as soon as it surfaces, the PVP environment means you learn what to do the hard way (or reroll elsewhere), and there’s an appreciation for people with cutting wit and pro-button mashing skills. From the super cool Level 70 fully S3 mage who offered to run Lycentia and I through SM Cathedral multiple times (as long as he could put his lowbie warlock on follow):

 

“hey guys,FYI, i suck at mage. no, seriously, but I’ve done cath like 30 times so i’m good at it. i have to AOE, and then i’m super oom lol”

 

Trade Chat

Trade chat is amazing. It’s always been ridiculous and predictable (i.e. Murlocs/Chuck Norris/Anal [Insert Class Skill Here]) on every realm I’ve ever played on, but trade chat in Mal’ganis has reached new heights of awesome. I attribute much of this to Goon Squad and Goon Squad’s fervent haters, and I can only hope that the usual antics don’t ever grate on me. It’s sort of like, I hope I never reach the “maturity” point where fart jokes aren’t funny. To be fair, I suppose I can understand why kiting Varedis to Shattrath would be annoying, especially after he wiped out the entire Aldor Bank population, but the accompanying “ILLIDAN IS IN SHATT, NO, SERIOUSLY, ILLIDAN. IS. IN. SHATT” conversation (and the following commentary) prompted more than a few lulz. 

 

Durids must halp each other lol!

Especially boomkin. Nothing beats randomly running into another monstrosity and having him immediately drop all questing to start dancing with you—especially since I happened to do it at the same time. 

 

But beyond that, I was reminded of how painful it is to level a druid to level 20, and then how ridiculously mana intensive it is to sustain caster DPS until about level 40. Couple the quick RAF leveling with having no gold, lagging professions and terrible gear? It’s been a little difficult and has required selling nearly everything that makes its way into my inventory and specifically taking time away from leveling to farm ore and herbs, but it’s provided a much more worthwhile experience than just having my 70 druid drop 200 gold in the mailbox for another alt. A few random observations:

 

• Crit is fabulous. Moonkin aura + destruction warlock? Hahahahaha.
• The term “panzerkin” has a lot more meaning; I hold aggro better than a lot of supposed low level tanks. Why do I end up tanking on all of my toons?
• Tauren moonkin look particularly awful.
• Moonkin threat generation is strange to me, and I’m remembering that I may need to pick up Subtlety later on. 

 

I don’t anticipate adding a large amount of moonkin analysis to this blog, especially since it’s largely been done already, but the possibility of it occasionally popping up exists. Mal’ganis is an incredibly communicative and active realm, and I encourage anyone who hasn’t played in a PVP environment to try it out. You know, just somewhere else where the server queues aren’t 300 people deep. 

 

 

This post is the only shared topic from the Blog Azeroth forums that I’ve replied to thus far, and if you’d like to look at the original post, you can go right here. I also understand that there was some confusion regarding the costs I outlined previously, and as such, I have edited the post to more accurately/clearly (I hope) reflect what exactly you’re paying for if you’re trying to milk every single bonus out of the Refer-A-Friend promo. Additionally, if you have other RAF questions, please see the Blizzard site. 

So you’re facing the pre Wrath of the Lich King doldrums. You’re sick of raiding, picked up all the gear you possibly could, destroyed (or were destroyed in) arenas, farmed an unspeakably huge amount of gold—what’s left to do? You could certainly start farming reputation for achievements or go back and play through all the quests you’ve never done, but why not try another toon? There are great benefits—like expanding your class knowledge or being able to pick up another profitable profession—but going from 1 to 60 is such a bore. 

Fortunately, getting the toon you’ve always wanted is only a few mouse-clicks away! Zoom through the first few levels where XP is painfully easy to acquire, and then skip all the boring run arounds. Why pay for a leveling service when it’s costly, an inefficient use of time, and could very well earn you the ban-hammer? Blizzard has the answer, and it’s 100% safe and effective!

Buy a second account!

You heard me. While this isn’t what Blizzard supposedly endorses, how many people could you refer who aren’t already playing? Believe me, if my friends aren’t playing now, they won’t ever be—and I’m sure I’m not the only person in that situation. So if you’re a diehard with disposable income (in the age of high energy prices, poor health insurance and rising food costs), or maybe you just don’t spend a wad of cash on hookers and blow every weekend, paying for two months on another account can effectively get you XP bonuses, summons, thirty “free” levels on your main account and the coveted Zhevra mount. 

This is great! For just a few months’ payment, you can totally abuse Blizzard’s leveling system and give the metaphorical finger (zooming by on your many-striped mount) to everyone else who couldn’t do it. At first, even I considered it—why not take advantage of an exploit when you see it?—and came up with this particular scheme: 

1. I send a Refer-a-Friend notice to one of Lycentia’s alternate e-mail addresses. He repeats the procedure with one of my alternate e-mail addresses.
2. We both purchase two months of play time on our “new” accounts (using a shiny 60 day gamecard); this also earns each of our main accounts a free month of play, essentially meaning we’re making three (instead of four) payments. 
3. Lycentia and I roll toons on Scarlet Crusade to play with Phaelia and co. and coerce her into giving us bags and stuff, all while enjoying triple XP gains from mobs and quests and the ability to summon one another around Azeroth. 
4. Once we hit 60 on the RAF (Refer-a-Friend) accounts, we blithely gift our Horde lowbies on Mal’ganis from our main accounts with 30 free levels (home to Elitist Jerks, Serious Casual and the new and improved Juggernaut II). Oh, and enjoy our zhevras on our mains. 

Unfortunately, multiple aspects of our plan don’t quite work: at first glance, Blizzard seems to have a few principles Firstly, the toons we roll on our RAF accounts need to be on the same realm and of the same faction of the toons we want to gift levels to on our main accounts. For example: if I rolled an RAF Alliance toon on Scarlet Crusade, I could only gift levels to a toon from Runy’s account on Scarlet Crusade. No cross-realm cross-faction bullshit. Bummer. 

In actuality, taking advantage of all the bonuses is much more difficult (and costly!) than it seems when working with multiple people. Accounts must be linked in order to receive the party triple XP bonuses and summons. If I referred Lycentia and he referred me, our RAF accounts would be linked to each other’s main accounts, meaning we couldn’t level our RAF accounts together and take advantage of the bonuses. In fact, to get ALL (and end up with two 60s and a zhevra each) the mega-boner bonuses, we’d have to pull off something a little trickier:

Example: 

Lycentia RAF’s Runy’s alternate e-mail → Runy has a NEW ACCOUNT

Runy’s NEW ACCOUNT RAF’s Lycentia’s alternate e-mail → Lycentia has a NEW ACCOUNT

Lycentia’s new account is now linked to Runy’s new account, and both toons receive XP bonuses and summons. 

Lycentia’s New Account Gifts 30 Levels to Runy’s New Account

Runy’s New Account Gifts 30 Levels to Lycentia’s Main Account

What this means is that the middle RAF account (me, in this case) needs to have two toons on it. These toons will later need to be merged with the main account at a cost of $25.00 each. Lycentia’s main account will also have a zhevra, and my RAF account will receive a zhevra. I would also need to make sure that the second toon on Runy’s account is already at level 30 by the time it receives the gifted levels so that it would hit 60 instantly. Why not switch it around so that Lycentia has to do that bullshit? Well, he already has a level twenty-something rogue on Mal’ganis while my paladin is only level 7.

Essentially, we can go through all those hoops and ladders, level our super-speedy RAF toons on Mal’ganis, take up professions on them that would be highly profitable, gift our 30 levels and essentially have two very viable Horde toons to dick around with there—or even raid on, if that was what we wanted. And then what? Merge accounts and stop paying for both. 

Let’s do some math!

Runy’s Monetarial Expectations:

Runy’s Main Account (using month-to-month payments):

$14.95 + $14.95 = $29.90 for two months

Runy’s RAF Account:

$29.99 (Gamecard)

Runy’s Total:

$29.90 (Main Account)+$29.99 (RAF Account)+2($25.00 to merge accounts)+$40.00 (for Battlechest account upgrade)= $149.89

 

Lycentia’s Monetarial Expectations:

Lycentia’s Main Account (using month-to-month payments):

$14.95 + FREE MONTH (from RAF) = $14.95 for two months

Lycentia’s RAF Account (using a 60 day gamecard):

FREE MONTH (from RAF) + $29.99 = $29.99

Lycentia’s Total:

$14.95 (Main Account)+$29.99 (Gamecard from RAF Account)+$25.00 (to merge accounts)+$40.00 (for Battlchest account upgrade) = $109.94 for two quick new Level 60 toons. And a Zhevra. 

Remember, these costs reflect the fact that you need to upgrade trial accounts to regular accounts if you ever plan on merging them back onto your main account for full-time play. If you buy the WoW Battlechest, this costs $40.00, total (and also includes some useless strategy guides). $259.83 later, this would be a very profitable venture for Blizzard. Remember, this is only if Lycentia and I wanted to take FULL advantage of the whole procedure (two level 60’s each, all XP bonuses, and two zhevras): he could easily just use a Refer-a-Friend for me and I’d end up having to merge ONE toon and he’d get his two toons and a zhevra. Significantly less expensive—just the $109.94. Split that between two makeout partners, and it’s $54.97.

Remember—training and mounts still require gold, so if you’re gleefully gifting levels without taking any of that into consideration, you might be stuck with a rather ridiculous 60 in terribad gear with no cash. If this is really the route you want to go, consider taking non-competing gathering professions (Skinning, Mining, and Herbalism) and making a point of frequenting the AH with all your goodies—low level gems, mats, patterns, and cloth—and keep a bank alt parked some place helpful so that you don’t have to bring your questing toons back to a capital city.

The entire procedure leaves a bad taste in my mouth, akin to “earning” pets, mounts or items by paying for events such as Blizzcon or the WoW TCG, but the small portion of me that yearns to be ruthlessly efficient in my endeavors is considering it. I don’t necessarily think that Blizzard made the right decision in offering this cheap (not literally) dilemma to players, especially since much of the early-on critical class learning comes from the leveling process, but if you’re interested in having yet another 70, switching factions quickly, multi-boxing, leveling to play with a friend on another realm or, heaven forbid, actually referring a friend, you might as well reap the bonus benefits from the “program.” Regardless, it’s an awful lot of money for convenience—and a pony. 

For now, I imagine I’ll keep doing it the hard way—just how I like it—and wait for a beta key to miraculously appear in my mailbox.