The Messy Breakup

Winter Wonderland

Over the night we got another dusting of snow, and as a result I had to once again dig my jeep out before coming to work.  Firstly… Cold is not one of those things that Belghasts do best… especially a 70 lb lighter Belghast.  This morning as I was getting ready the weatherman said something to the effect that it has been over 150 hours since we had been above freezing.  As I was clearing my vehicle it was 20* outside with a wind chill of significantly less.  I realize this is nothing like the –27* that my Canadian friends have been experiencing this week, but still…  it is in the realm of “effing cold”.  I have been wearing a fleece jacket and then a big winter coat on top of that.

All of the car clearing caused me to get up and around significantly later than I had planned, and as a result I am getting this started significantly later.  Supposedly we will experience some melt this afternoon as temperatures finally go above freezing.  Thursday is supposed to be in the 40s… which seriously feels like short and t-shirt weather as compared to this.  There is no way I could actually survive in a Winter climate.  The irony is… as much as I dislike snow in real life, I tend to love zones that have a winter theme in games.  I love Winterspring, Icecrown and Storm Peaks.  I feel like I would enjoy snow if it were not for that whole cold thing.

The Messy Breakup

The other day I talked about how I may have been wrong to avoid the looking for group tool and pugging in general.  From 71 to 80 I had a really great run of 26 dungeons without much issue at all.  It was a clean and efficient way to level.  However upon entering the Cataclysm dungeon queue system that all changed.  The first group I got was Blackrock Caverns.  Everyone seemed to know what they were doing, and was more than geared enough for the content.  As a result it went quickly and smoothly and I thought that maybe just maybe my luck would hold until I was able to level into the Pandaria content.  This however was not the case, or at least not the case for very long.

My next queue was Throne of the Tides, and within moments of stepping through the doors we began a horrific wipe fest that ended with most of the party rage quitting after the tank failed miserably at the first boss encounter.  As a rogue I ended up tanking most of the adds, and was able to pop cooldowns and all that wonderful stuff to at least down both of the casters.  However the tank just seemed to lack the hitpoints and avoidance/mitigation to survive in the instance.  It was not until the third, fourth and fifth bad queue of Throne of the Tides that I started to notice a pattern.  They were all wearing the 1-80 Heirloom gear.

Public Service Announcement

2013-12-10 07_30_58-Item Comparison Tool - World of Warcraft

Simply put… the heirloom gear that caps out at level 80 is simply not viable for tanking the cataclysm instances.  The problem is that Heirloom gear is itemized for the previous expansion.  At 80 it is itemized like it is a low ilevel Wrath of the Lich King blue, which is significantly worse than the lowest ilevel Cataclysm green.  Essentially the quested gear you get early on will be better than anything but epic gear from Wrath, and even then on most of my characters I was changing put purples for greens left and right, especially for tanking where the stamina matters so much.  The above image shows the Polished Breastplate of Valor as compared to Hardened Obsidium Breastplate.

Taking away the fact that the Valor breastplate contains zero tanking stats, it has 391 less armor and 100 less stamina than a Cataclysm tanking green.  The tanks that I see rolling into the level 80 dungeons wearing full heirloom gear simply do not have enough hit points to survive the level of damage that is being dealt by the encounters.  That is even with getting out of all the things they are supposed to be getting out of.  Essentially if you are reading this blog and leveling an up and coming tank, please god do not queue as a tank until you have switched out your level 80 heirloom gear with green quest gear at a minimum.  Granted I am generally more diligent than the average player, and I did not queue at all for ANY dungeons until I had swapped my heirlooms out for quested items. 

Gear Changing

To be truthful I logged in my leatherworker and crafted a full set of gear, and logged in my smith and made two blue axes…  but that is probably going above and beyond what anyone should be expected to do.  However in each expansion, that first zone gives you a complete set of gear including weapons and trinkets within the first few quests.  Over the course of the evening you can go from relatively crappy gear to greens that are better than most of the raid content gear from the previous expansion.  You can maybe limp by as a dps, but especially as a tank, the Cataclysm content is brutal on anyone who has not shifted out their entire set of items. 

I seriously doubt that any of the offending tanks I ran into will actually read my blog, but here is hoping that maybe I catch a few people who simply did not realize that heirlooms are not itemized as the new expansion until you ding 61/71/81/86 etc.  This is the problem with the “mudflation” that has set into blizzards system, there is always a massive jump in stats between expansions, and in the case of Wrath to Cataclysm… it is simply not sustainable for dungeon running.  Hopefully in the post “Item Squish” world the change between expansions will not be nearly as traumatic to the player base.  I am hoping once I managed to get to the next tier of dungeons this problem will for the most part go away, and I can once again return to leveling through instances.  However in the meantime… I am questing my way through Hyjal for what feels like the billionth time.

4 thoughts on “The Messy Breakup”

  1. I love Winterspring, too! I never get tired of being there.

    For leveling, dungeons do a lot of good, and I know I ought to do them to speed things up, but I love questing. I think it’s just because I’m feeling anti-social sometimes but also because I find it annoying in the lower level dungeons when the groups refuse to follow role requirements, like letting the tank actually tank. And then, of course, there are the tanks you describe that just can’t handle the encounters.

  2. Did you need some gear to pop up your ilvl? I forget which toon you’ve got there, but you do know a bunch of us will make you some to get you goin and make you less squishy. Though…that doesn’t help the squishy tanks. When I was leveling my rogue, I got all the gear to bridge the ilvl gap, but once I hit 85 there were hardly anyone going through the Cata dungeons. And omcrunch, I was at the point where if I saw another hozen I was gonna lose my everloving mind. So I ended up questing on her to the Shrine. I still have yet to see any of the Cata dungeons.

  3. The iLvl jump has been a bone of contention in the community since the launch of TBC. The Knights of Mercy were discussing gear last night in TSW. Mogsy and Pagan seemed to think they hadn’t played a game where gear is more important. I think that TSW makes you more conscious of your gear because of the fine tuning from fight to fight, but it pales in comparison to WoW’s gear ladder.

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