This comes out of a discussion I had with Cassie yesterday.

After my WoW Insider article on Threat came out, she read it, as she always does, to be supportive and let me know when I mispelled words or used the wrong phraseology. (I kid! I kid! Love you honey!)

So she read it, and then emailed me at work to let me know that she liked it, and that, even though she doesn’t raid, she understood most of what I was talking about and almost 75% of it made sense.

Which, for me, is a lot.

But it got me to thinking, because I know a lot of folks use the phrase ‘theorycrafter’ to describe what they do. SuraBear calls himself one right on his front page. And it’s a title that is well deserved.

Blizzard rarely, if ever, shares what math they are using internally to do things. Like, almost never. Their revelation of some of the math behind the new skills they announced for the Burning Crusade over a year ago was a marked departure for them.

So a new breed of adventurous investigator was born. A new kind of detective for a new kind of crime; those who test results in game using Combat Logs and repeatable situations to determine on their own the theory behind the math that Blizzard uses, and then share those theories with the rest of us.

Without the Adventurous Theorycrafter, our lives in game would be hell. Even now, people cling to old ideas that what loot drops from a boss is determined by arcane conjunctions of effects, such as what class the raid leader is when the first person zones into the instance, or what classes make up the raid, or other even more esoteric concepts.

I keep waiting for someone to tell me that his Black Swashbucklers’ Shirt is what made the Warrior Tier 4 Helm drop from Prince Malchazaar.

Anyway, the theorycrafters are awesome, and deserve the legends they carve out for themselves.

Me, I don’t think of what I do as theorycrafting. I don’t start off with a clean slate. I research the work of others first. I make assumptions. I hunt out countervailing arguments. I try to see what the thought amongst others is first, and then I lay out things to do in game to test, for myself, whether what I am being told matches what I myself see in game. That ain’t theorycrafting, it’s at best verification.

The special sauce I bring to my approach on these things isn’t a special love of math. I have to use it at work, but that doesn’t mean I want it in my home. Icky maths!

My approach comes from a life long love of playing pen and paper role playing games, and moving around frequently. Often, you are thrown together with new people in the service, and while there are certainly going to be two or three gamers, there will always be two or three folks that have ‘always wanted to play, but never knew anyone that did to get started’.

And it would fall on me, repeatedly, to take a vastly complicated rule system that I knew by heart, and break it down in such a way that I could get the rules across as a cohesive whole that could be comprehended and remembered after about one hour of explanation.

And that is all that I’m doing, except this system I don’t know by heart. So I’m going to a dozen different locations, I’m gathering tons of different opinions, I’m putting it all together to get an idea of how things are supposed to work, and then I go test things out in game. And then I try to write it up as one cohesive little article bringing it all together.

So the actual work is done by theorycrafters. I feel like I am contributing somewhat, in bringing a lot of different published theories and facts together into one place and giving it my testing and then my interpretation. But the hard work has been done before by others, and as has been said by those smarter than I…

I stand on the shoulders of giants.

Felkan and Rhoelyn brought up some great points and questions in the post comments yesterday, and as I started writing a 5 paragraph long reply, I realized the discussion deserved it’s own post. Also, it made me aware that somehow, I’ve never read Rambling Bear before, and I don’t understand why. 

SuraBear, what the heck? I asked for blogs to check out, I know I did, and I carefully visited and read every blog mentioned. I swear you never beat me over the head with your greatness. Your blog kicks ass. If anyone else hasn’t been reading Rambling Bear, get your butts over there now. You don’t have to look far, SuraBear is on my sidebar now where he belongs. Just, what a great blog.

The comments I’m talking about are discussing my old post from October 17th of last year about Bear Tanking Multiple targets, and comparing some of my results at that time with the analysis of SuraBear.

The whole timing of this is fascinating, because I’m revisiting that old article and updating it for Wow Insider, and applying my own opinions of Bear Tanking as they’ve grown and changed since I originally wrote that piece.

As far as Lacerate vs Swipe, my take on the issue comes down to the difference between a main target and your maintenance targets.

When you are tanking, as I mentioned yesterday in my WI article about Threat, you have two goals;

• Build up a large pile of Threat on your main target, to allow the DPS to blast away without pulling aggro from you with their Direct Threat.
• Slam any other mobs nearby with enough Threat generation to keep them from attacking anybody creating Global Threat, such as the cherished healers.

So to that end, it comes down to how many mobs you are tanking, and the environment in which you are tanking them.

I have always personally advocated using a macro such as Lacerate on Mouseover, because it allows me to choose my main target and spam Mangle on him, while using Lacerates to surgically pick and choose where they will land on the maintenance targets.

In most raid situations, I find myself fighting no more than two mobs in close quarters right next to CC. And there is always CC, whether it’s a Shackle or an Ice Trap. So I have trained myself so my natural tendency is to Lacerate, not Swipe, unless I know I am not going to have to worry about breaking CC.

SuraBear mentioned in his great article on tab-targeting that, in situations where he would normally not Swipe because of CC, he prefers to move his own positioning around so he can Swipe safely rather than switch to Lacerate.

And I’m here to tell you that is a perfectly fine thing to do when you can. I do it myself, often, because I do love Swipe. When I can safely position myself to use it, I do, always.

But I plan on the positioning ahead of time. I make my pull, and I back away and even turn and backwaddle around a corner and position myself so the CC will be drawn away from where I am, whenever possible. This prevents my having to reposition myself later.

There are two reasons why I try not to reposition myself to use Swipe instead. First, quite often like I said I am in tight quarters, and while I’m screwing around moving I’m not micromanaging my Threat output. The second reason is, I hate to move once melee DPS has positioned themselves properly.

As tanks, we are only one part of the team. The melee DPS, to maximise their own abilities, and to prevent their attacks being Parried or Blocked, move behind the target. If I am moving around a lot, they have to reposition too. And that reduces their effectiveness.

I have personally played with bear tanks as offtanks that hop around while tanking worse than a frog, and I watch in disbelief as the Rogue constantly tries to stay behind the mob, and while hes doing that he ain’t attacking right.

To be fair, I think part of the problem may be that it can be hard to see what’s going on around you, that big bear butt gets in the way, but that is why I move my viewpoint around instead of physically moving my character.

But seriously, I agree that Swipe is the most effective tool we have for maintaining aggro on multiple mobs. I believe that my old article says that, too. If not, it damn well should. I like having Lacerate on Mouseover as a tool to add boosts of threat to specific targets, especially when the real world situation is too tight for Swipe due to Crowd Control.

But I’ll be honest, there are plenty of times I say “Screw it” and intentionally break CC with Swipe and grab the broken mob, to build up threat on it and not have to worry about when the Ice Trapped mob may break trap and run away, since I’m too lazy to chase it into the casters… and I don’t need to remind you that keeping mobs out of the casters is a good thing. 

SuraBear mentioned something I haven’t ever implemented before, which is creating a Swipe on Mouseover macro. I did think about it, but I was too lazy to figure out what to shuffle to force the room on my bars. It’s a great idea, when suddenly taking on large groups, to be able to mouseover a group to your left and Swipe, and then a  group to your right and Swipe.

I’ve personally done it by changing my targeting, which is damn inefficient and dangerous. I’ll try, somehow, to find the room on my bar and practise with it. Sigh.

Anyway, I think I’ve said my piece on this.

Swipe = awesome, but has dangers around CC, and while you can move to avoid CC, that makes melee DPS readjust, and in close quarters may be difficult to entirely avoid CC anyway. but it is damn good and a critical ability.

Lacerate = pretty darn good, and has no risk of unintended consequences.

I have intentionally not mentioned using Swipe on single targets instead of Lacerate, because I have not yet, this week, worked on the math for what AP value Swipe cause more individual Threat. When I do, you can be sure I’ll talk about it more.