Call to Arms, is it a blunder that Blizzard will later have to take away or is a legitimate solution to the long ques experienced at the higher levels. In Wrath I only had one level 80 character throughout the most part of the expansion. The character was a paladin. I leveled the character as protection for the instant ques. When I leveled the paladin I had a friend that was already raiding with his paladin tank. So I didn't have to fail much to learn how to tank. I had an external resource to help me along the way. Now when cataclysm hit I wasn't comfortable tank the randoms off the bat so I leveled to 85 and geared up my retribution spec. Now I have a heroic dungeon geared ret spec and only a half geared Tank spec. For me the wasn't worth the extra responsibility of tanking randoms and I instead relied on guild mates or sat through the 45 minutes ques. With this new feature I would have more of an incentive to run the randoms as tank rather then dps. If more hybrid classes now use their tank spec rather then their dps spec then there will be more tanks then before. Conversely there will be a lot more tanks that aren't skilled or geared enough to run the random heroics in that role.
I can see both sides to the argument but I don't think we can make this off as a fail just yet. I feel that this could be a legitimate solution as long as we let it run its course for a little while upon release. I think that the problem with fail tanks will surface immediately upon release but will shortly correct itself when those tanks get a little bit better gear and more experience under their belts. I will stay optimistic about this change until it shows that it wont work. Until then i will run with my pally tank and reap the rewards while they last. Stay safe and have fun.
Hiya! I'm Edenvale from Anvilmar server. I too am a wowinsider junkie & am curious what Blizzard plans to do with the long que. I have been playing since 2007 and I remember what is was like trying to find a group without a RDF. It was, well, sometimes terrible but I think I liked it better. I got a reputation as being a great healer so getting into raids or 5 mans was not a problem at all, ever.
ReplyDeleteI think the anonymity of RDF allows players to feel more at home with their douche-baggie-ness, when you only played with other players from your server, you had to be good, a good person and a good player. Other group members would blackball you if you did any of the things players do now. I think the Call to Arms isn't going to change anything, a few tanks might start queing to get the loot but that honestly think the frustration of teaming up with dps that refuses to CC, healers that dps & tanks that well, dont tank will be too much. My opinion, as a healer, I don't plan on taking Blizzard up on their offer of extra loot. It's too frustrating. I've been called names, harrassed, I've been the dungeon guide & marked, given direction only to be ignored. I've had hunters put their misdirect onto ME the HEALER beacause I've asked them to trap and they refused.
My personal opinion, take away the server wide RDF and make it server ONLY. Before you get all puffy, it will be tough for awhile, long que and bad players but as the servers community starts to govern itself; those players will be weeded out. Besides, we have long que and bad players now, at least this way we know in a few weeks it will get better.
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I think the Call to Arms is a daring approach, but it might lead to something good -- to more people trying out tanking and finding that it isn't as dauntingly hard as it seems at first glance.
ReplyDeleteI still remember my first time trying out my paladin's prot spec; well, actually there were two first times, one on 70 where I quickly went back to healing. And one on 80 when I managed to stick with it (because I was able to gorup with friends who would excuse my mistakes). In the beginning tanking can be terribly overwhelming, if you haven't leveled your char in that spec. There are just so many buttons to press, and once the mobs hit other stuff than yourself you start panicking and forget all the things you read about how to tank. I was the same, I remember smashing my buttons like mad to make those stupid dragons attack ME, haha! But it was only a question of days until I started feeling comfortable in the role.
I think many people are to afraid to even try out tanking, but would enjoy it if they did! I don't fear a wave of horrible tanks -- because in WoW like in real life you always learn best by doing, and once people start queuing as tanks it's only a matter of time until most of them will figure out how to do it properly. So in the long run the Call to Arms system will reward us with a bunch of new tanks to make our queues pop.
But I'm an awful optimist. :D
Gamer i can see where you coming from and agree with you to an extent. There are alot of people i would even go as far as to say most people in RDF are taking advantage of the fact they are being held to no moral standards while in groups. I do agree that RDF would benefit in quality if it was server only. I dont know how this would work or wether it would create more problems then solve, but what if there were two options in the RDF. One for server wide only and the other for the current pool of people. So if you wanted a shorter que you could jump in the larger pool or you could wait a little longer and have a server only group. This again may be more problem then solution.
ReplyDeleteNairu I dont fear a wave of horrible tanks either but I do fear a wave of uncaring tanks that just want loot. I am trying to stay optimistic about the call to arms. I feel there is no real reason to try to find all the bad in a situation cause all that leads to is resentment toward the game and the ultimate lose of interest in playing it. I enjoy my time in WoW and would like to keep playing for a while. Anyway I think the Call to arms is at least Blizzard agnolaging that there is a problem with RDF and an attempt to fix it. Whether it was a success or not will be argued well into the release of 4.1 i feel.