World Of Warcraft

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Getting Tanking Groove Back

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This is admittedly a post that I am not entirely certain how to get started. I’ve been thinking about it for a bit and yesterday’s blog post was a bit of a filler while I sorted out my thoughts further. It is my Birthday today and as a result, I am getting around much more slowly than usual. I did go get bonus donuts though so that was tasty. When I started this blog back in 2009 its original purpose was to be a “World of Warcraft Warrior Tanking Blog” patterned off of another idol of mine who was doing something similar with her experiences as the main tank for a raid. I was the main tank from Burning Crusade through Cataclysm, at which point I hopped off that bandwagon and had to sort of reinvent the concept of this blog. Basically tanking is in my DNA and I have done a heck of a lot of it over the years.

Something happened though during Shadowbringers that sort of broke me. I am not sure how or why it happened, but I stopped being willing to queue for random groups with strangers. I would still be willing to tank for my friends, but those groups became fewer and further apart. Instead, I started spending most of my time on a DPS alt, because it didn’t really require anything of me to join a group and blend in. I am not sure if it was my lack of willingness to take responsibility for the success or failure of a group, or that the community as a whole was feeling less friendly than it did previously. Whatever the case I developed a mental block against tanking that held for roughly five years. When Endwalker launched I exclusively did that content with the Trust system and tanked zero dungeons for random people.

I honestly think I probably would have stayed in this “stuck” state indefinitely were it not for my recent foray into Pandaria Remix. It was a temporary environment with extremely low stakes and to get anything started… you either had to hope someone accepted you into their party finder group or in my case… just start your own. It quickly became just the status quo that I was forming groups on the regular, at first just for the world bosses, and then later for the normal mode raids that did not have dungeon finder support. I got so comfortable building groups that it sort of whittled away at that mental block to the point where I felt ready to do more. I think the magic of Pandaria Remix is that it is a 90-day experiment and no matter how bad things go… everything you are doing is just temporary which makes the player base considerably more forgiving about everything.

Even then when I came back to Final Fantasy XIV for the purpose of catching up to the pre-Dawntrail content… I stuck with a DPS character. This was in part because somewhere along the line I had stopped gearing Paladin which was my Endwalker main job. All the while though… there was a not-so-subtle itch in the back of my skull telling me that I really wanted to try tanking again. I set my mind to finishing out the story and then my goal was to siphon off resources to the point where I could build up a decent set of gear for tanking purposes. That plan didn’t exactly carry forth as intended.

When Final Fantasy XIV A Realm Reborn first launched, I went all in on Warrior and it was my main job up until Endwalker. I loved EVERYTHING about the job… except Overpower which last I knew was a frontal cone attack that you had to carefully time in order to make sure you clipped everything in front of you. A lot of the appeal of Paladin was that I could have a much more chill experience hitting everything around me in a big circle. However, as much as I love the concept of Sword and Board, there was just something much more enjoyable about hitting things with a big axe. Essentially I got the itch to level my Warrior and then noticed that at some point when I was not looking Overpower was changed to function almost exactly like the Paladin AOE. This set a plan in motion to level up and gear my Warrior so that I could switch to it as my main in Dawntrail.

However, at this point, I was not actually tanking much of anything. For the first few levels, I was running a daily Frontline and then doing the Hippo Endwalker dailies to get essentially one easy level each reset. However when I got to level 88… I started to get impatient and started queuing for what I thought of as some of the low-hanging fruit like Mainstory Roulette. It went pretty smoothly and felt pretty great… which built up my confidence to start queueing for Leveling, and eventually the Mid-level roulette, and so on. When I survived the embarrassment of forgetting to throw my stance on… trying to turn it on while pulling… accidentally dragging it off my bar… and then wiping the group… I figured I could handle anything. Truth be told… easing back into tanking has felt good. It has felt like I am exercising a skill that I had forgotten about and put away in the closet for some reason.

At this point I think I am on my fourth day of doing all of the roulettes as a tank… or at least everything but Trial and Alliance Raid. It isn’t so much that I don’t think I can do those… but more that I am not sure I want the hassle of tanking those yet. I’ve started splitting time with Dark Knight and Warrior as I am trying to level up that job… with the ultimate goal of getting all of my tanks to 90 so that I can jettison all of that old tanking gear. I’m honestly having a freaking blast and I feel more alive in Final Fantasy XIV than I have in years. It is like I had forgotten at some point along the way, just how freaking fun the dungeons are in this game and how well-designed they are. Do I remember every mechanic perfectly? Absolutely not. However, I am remembering most of them enough to limp my way through the fights while also racking up a lot of commendations along the way. Comms feel good.

I’ve managed to get my tanking gear up to a decent enough level for starting the next expansion and I will keep picking up the rare tomestone gear as I move forward. I did buy a shiny crafted Axe because I did not want to deal with the nonsense of getting a similar axe and then trying to augment it. Once the expansion goes live I will be spending my Poetics on getting maxed out level 80 and 90 sets for various roles so that I can level those in a chill manner. Generally speaking that max raid tier is good enough to get you all the way through the next expansion. My goal is to get really merciless with what I actually hold onto gear wise, because I am tired of having my vaults stuffed full of random trash. I’ve also been having quite a bit of luck buying loot boxes with Grand Company Seals.

I guess my next goal is to reclaim my raid leader heritage and get comfortable forming Squads with my mostly unused Catmander tag. Baby steps I know… but I think the dam that burst with me getting comfortable tanking for strangers may also sweep downstream and eventually batter down the dam that that was placed there to stop me from leading larger groups. Also, appreciate Thumper the baby Siege Turtle because he is precious. Anyways… I am now looking forward to Dawntrail more than I have previously because I actually want to try and progress through the raid tiers and extreme fights while they are current. I am trying really hard to apply the lessons learned during Pandaria Remix to playing more serious games… because at the end of the day… the opinion of strangers does not matter in the least. However, it does seem a bit like some of the toxicity I was seeing in the FFXIV community when it had a mass influx of WoW players… has potentially died down as well.

I hope you have a most wonderful day. I am going to be cleaning my office… which is probably not the most exciting birthday activity but I put together a new cabinet and I need to migrate stuff into it.

Actually Rubicante

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Good Morning Folks! Yesterday I did something that I did not think I would actually manage to do… and that is get back into the Final Fantasy XIV Main Story quest. I’ve been saying for months that I left off at Rubicante but in truth apparently, I had played far enough to get right up to the Barbariccia fight. Look all of the vaguely Italian archfiend names from Final Fantasy IV have always flowed together in my head. When I last played the game I was apparently sitting at the Trial fight, so yesterday the very first thing that I did was dive into that. I feel like it is Pandaria Remix that is to thank for breaking my mental block against grouping with other human beings.

I’m actually somewhat into the storyline at this point. I did in fact play through to the point where I just finished fighting Rubicante and have plans to do some nonsense. The other thing that I did not expect is that I am now really invested in the character of Zero. I feel like I had just been very much locked in ARPG gameplay mode and coming back for Pandaria Remix has flipped a switch in my brain so that I am once again in “MMORPG Enjoyer” mode. I had been bouncing pretty freaking hard on anything that was not Guild Wars 2, which sort of sits in a happy medium between the ARPG and MMORPG genres. I figure that I will without a doubt catch up on the story before the Dawntrail head start begins at the end of the month. I am now actually finally in the mood for it I think.

Speaking of Pandaria Remix, I’ve now dinged level 70 on my Tauren Paladin over on Drenden. I’ve tanked a few world bosses at this point but have not gone so far as to tank any of the raids. I feel pretty weak at only having around 500k hitpoints. I still have a number of gear slots that I have not upgraded to the maximum dropped item level and in theory, I should probably do some more questing in order to get some more raw stats on my cloak. I really feel like blizzard screwed up on the cloak because they should have made the stats account-wide. It would have felt significantly better to play alts if everything you played was contributing to the same nonsense stat bomb.

I’ve also created a Viera Hunter over on Eonar that I am now starting to level. I named the default Cobra pet that you get “Smooples” but I think I am going to have to venture forth into the Isle of Giants and tame me some cool Dinosaurs soon. I’ve not had much desire to grind out bronze for the purpose of gearing, but I am enjoying leveling alts which in itself creates a large stockpile of bronze. At this point I am pretty close to buying most of the mounts, and then will start handpicking my way through the cosmetic gear sets that I want to collect. The only thing that I do not really care about in the least are the toys. Toys are one of those things that I completely forget exists in the game 99.9% of the time. However, I did see one that I would love to have so I need to figure out where it comes from… essentially it was a portable ocean allowing you to fish from anywhere.

The new summer-themed mounts and cosmetics are up on the tender store… and I am honestly not sure how I feel about them. Firstly I am throwing some side eye at this mount because it feels pretty much exactly like my memories of a mount that was available in Wildstar. I am weirdly against Fantasy characters wearing “real world” gear. Like Guild Wars 2 and Final Fantasy XIV have a bunch of non-adventurer citywear and it sort of bugs me anytime I encounter someone wearing it. The other day I saw a Charr in a T-shirt and Cargo shorts and it sort of broke my brain. I don’t talk about it much because I don’t want to harsh anyone else’s fun… but I sort of hate the Fortniteification of World of Warcraft at times. I get that the Korean P2W MMORPGs did it first… but Fortnite was really the game that popularized in the West the “anything goes” style of cramming everything into a single game. Side note that is the preview on the Tender store… I did not buy the mount and likely will never buy it. It just is not my vibe.

Now that my brain seems to have had its switch flipped… I also want to get back into Guild Wars 2 and finish out the Secrets of the Obscure content. I’ve not unlocked Inner Nayos but I think I am getting pretty close to doing so. Hopefully, your week is amazing. We have a bunch of thunderstorms over the next few days but hopefully, they will not produce “twisty weather”.

Siege and Throne Down

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It is no longer morning… and honestly, I have no clue why I have struggled to get blog posts out for the last few days. Whatever the case I had a bit of a lucky streak last night. After being largely unable to get a spot in either a Siege of Orgrimmar or Throne of Thunder raid for the last few evenings, I managed to knock both out in relatively short order. I am not sure if getting some jewelry pieces knocked out and bumping up my gear by a single level made my item level look more appealing… or if I just happened to luck into a more open-minded group. In both cases thought I joined when there were very few party members and maybe have just lucked into strong teams. Siege went pretty much flawlessly and I was surprised by just how fast the entire run went.

Throne of Thunder felt a bit more challenging, namely, we struggled a bit with Dark Animus. This was mostly due to the fact that it was VERY hard not to kill everything at the same time and in doing so blow the entire raid up. We had to each choose a robot and solo it… until we finally got it down to a few robots and finally merged them into the big one. Damage never seemed to be an issue, but I did feel sorry a bit for the healers who had to keep up with us. Going through all of this has made me realize that Pandaria really did have a number of very solid raids in it. I think the only reason why it was ever remembered less than favorably is because of how long it was between Siege releasing and Warlords finally coming out.

At this point, I have every slot unlocked for all of my alts going forward, and I think I might be calling it good for this character. I can’t really see myself pouring the bronze into upgrading every slot, so it is likely that I will pop in each day, kill the world bosses, and do the daily quests. I’m already powerful enough to pretty much do anything I might want to do in the open world, but also feel like now is a good place to start tapering down my playtime on this character at least. Blizzard has come out and said that they do not plan on reducing the amount of gold required to upgrade characters all the way to the maximum, and I can’t see myself being willing to grind the 600k Bronze or so that are required to upgrade everything.

I’ve shifted focus over to my Drenden Tauren Paladin character and have been shocked at just how fast I am pushing through the levels. After finishing up Jade Foreset I am basically sitting at level 53. I can see finishing out the leveling process and then maybe doing dailies on two sets of characters to pick up the rest of the cosmetic gear that I want. At this point I have bought three pages worth of mounts and have a few more of those to pick up, and then I will start snagging gearsets that interest me.

I think the part that has been most interesting is all of the random groups I have gotten in, and how I am way more comfortable listing my own groups. I would love this newfound focus to carry over into other games, because I would absolutely love to start using my commander tag a bit more in Guild Wars 2. Weirdly I feel way more confident in leading things in World of Warcraft, because of the scope of what is needed is so much more clearly defined. I still think group gameplay in Guild Wars 2 is a confusing mess, and I am uncertain I will ever truly grasp organized play in that game. At a minimum I would love to be comfortable doing strikes and fractals and getting them started on my own, rather than waiting for that Unicorn of a group to form itself.

All of this return to Pandaria has made me realize how far I have fallen. I used to be the person who was comfortable enough in crafting my own groups that I wrote a guide on doing so. Now I just hate the thought of taking responsibility over others in a video game. I miss being that guy though who was willing to take on that mantle. Mostly because I miss having groups available on demand rather than waiting around for them to form. I need to work on that, and I need to get over my performance anxiety. I would ultimately be a happier person if I did so.

The Mixed Bag of Group Finder

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Good Morning Folks! I had a very weird evening in Pandara Remix. I’ve basically reached the place where I have only a handful of vectors to scale up my character. I could pour copious amounts of bronze into upgrades… but I would FAR rather have a fat stack of mounts than buy temporary power in a game mode that has a shelf life of 80 more days. This means that in order for me to fill out my character I am going to need to knock out some achievements. One requires me to do all of the Raids on Normal Mode… which admittedly feels like a bad call from Blizzard on this one. The other steps of this progress are governed by “Finder” tools, but this step requires you to wade knee-deep into the scary realm of the Group Finder.

Weirdly however this was for the most part smooth as heck for the first bit of my evening. I ran through Mogu’shan Vaults, Terrace of the Eternal Spring, and Heart of Fear and it was an extremely delightful proposition. The groups assembled quickly and the only time I took a death was a some point during Terrace where I pulled aggro on one of the trash mobs that a tank had not picked up yet. This success story however ground to a halt as soon as I started shopping for a group for Throne of Thunder or Siege of Orgrimmar. This is where the tropes I had feared were starting to come out… where group leaders were asking for unrealistic gear scores or were “full on DPS” and were looking for a “pumper” or “frogger” for their last slot. I could have shifted over and tanked but honestly, I don’t remember half of these fights anymore.

I spent about an hour applying for groups, joining groups that never went anywhere because they had no tanks or healers… and generally just flailing around in hopelessness. The only thing I can think is that my luck was so smooth in those first few groups because it was extremely early in the evening. The Sweaty McTryhards of the world had not woken up from their slumber and all that were available were us casual scrubs who go to bed at 9 pm. So tonight I am going to set my goal to attempt to get in a Throne or Siege group first thing and MAYBE get my way through both of them if I am lucky.

I know one of the things that currently makes my character look bad is that I don’t have my Rings or Necklace. Admittedly I need all of the raids to get the damned necklace but given that I did not start on day one and I am not as far along in this curve as some players… it does not really seem to matter. So when I could not get the raids rolling I decided to take a step back and chip away at my heroic dungeons. This is the point where I realized how much I have missed this. Heroic Dungeons were always super fun and something that you could smash mindlessly for fun and profit. I’ve missed this game mode being relevant. Mythics came along and largely destroyed any purpose for running Heroics but also made them a bit too sweaty to be truly enjoyable in mass quantities. I get that in their hunt for more competitive game modes they can attempt to monetize into an esport… Mythics made sense… but I still miss heroic smashy fun.

My goal tonight is to knock out the last two dungeons that I need and then start chipping away at the fat stack of scenarios that I need for that ring. Currently, I have only run two of these on Heroic mode and there are so many freaking Scenarios. This is honestly a game mode that I would love to see make a return because it allowed for something similar feeling to a Heroic Dungeon… but that had little to no mechanical requirements. It also served as a way to allow them to pour more story bits into the game which is always good. I feel like World Quest Chains probably replaced these, but does anyone pay attention to the story bits attempting to be told through those? Probably not. Anyways my focus right now is on completing out the missing gear slots, because this will also help any alts that I decide to run up during the event.

The last bit for today is that I am legitimately contemplating changing mains for War Within. Hume Belghast has had a good run and I still like the character quite a bit… but Dark Iron Dwarves. Dark Irons have been something that I have loved since Vanilla World of Warcraft and Blackrock Depths in its original weird twisting form is probably my favorite dungeon. I loved that there was this entire Dark Iron City down there and I loved knowing my way around it. I also kind of love that they have a racial teleport around the world via Mole Machine. I am just having way more fun with this character than I expected given it was only ever intended to be something throwaway for the event.

Anyways! I hope you are having a wonderful week. Are you playing Pandaria Remix or PMIX as I have taken to mentally calling it? What are you playing? Drop me a line below.