Anyway, the simplest way I can think of changing the dynamic has already been tried by blizz. Unfortunately the cries from the community always ring out loud, often before release now that every kid and their pet rabbit can get into beta.

The answer is more loose mobs. Not necessarily more mobs, just CC’able loose mobs. At this point in time life could be grand for the “trapping classes”. The scourge are kinda dead, but still living and in a way possessed… Mmmm everyone’s cc would work.

The trick then is to give them a “heroic buff”, which allows them to ignore taunts for say 30-60 seconds.

Tank can’t control them – that’s up to the dps, at least initially.

Of course the cries of “I didn’t order PvP with my PvE” would ring out and unless Blizz grew a pair it would be nerfed before release.

CC was a natural, accepted, even loved part of TBC until the release of MgT.

Funny we cried for CC for 60 levels, got it for 10, were happy to see the end to it polluting our damage meters…. But now we have neither a challenge or a better gauge of ability beyond linked acheivements, recunt and NoobScore.
.-= Gnomeaggedon´s last blog ..Dear Healers, Do Your Freakin Job!!! =-.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I enjoy being able to use my tanky abilities outside of instances. I really don’t think this is viable, as I can’t drag a DPS with me every time I want to pull a few groups of mobs wihout dying at the first complication.

I agree with everything else, but I never though my DPS could stand a sneeze on recount compared to a decently geared party.

I am also the guy who bails on Gundrak and Oculus the random dungeon that I have just done 8 times cause it wants me to each time having to explain every fight 15 min logistics break sure why not. that being said me and my tank friend go out of our way to find fresh 80′s we are believers in helping people learn. I especially have a soft spot for under-geared tanks. Why well helping someone gear and giving them pointers is awesome. I put up with a lot from DPS and we discuss and judge everyone we play with on vent.

“The meat in the room” issue if you are annoying. When alting on my druid I can’t stand people who keep chatting in party and trying to explain the game to me and the other four guys its a vote to kick. Why because my heirloom gear and the similarly named guy in heirloom gear and the two random PuG fellows that are wearing gear crafted by an obvious alt name(I inspect everybody) don’t want to hear about how the disenchant button works or his loot rules that don’t matter.

What I would like to see is a tier of dungeons that is the hardcore level. I want it to give you prestige achievements. Bring in the need for CC and the longer duration to get through. Don’t buff the gear. Same gear drops. or tokens for gear with identical stats that you can pick the model on. All you get is the ability to say hey I am a good player and will help with guild progression.

I will continue to replace the meat in the room if they cause me not to enjoy the game.

I like to push my limits make big pulls and not hear whining. If you just DPS and don’t complain when we decide we can go with half or quarter mana. You CC when appropriate which is hard these days I agree consecrate down oh oh can’t sheep or trap or shackle(holy crap someone remembered priests used to shackle).

I have played with three fresh 80 where I loved them to death and I have replaced dps that is definitely some of the most geared DPS that just made me angry. The I taunt and don’t follow the kill order 80 is a vote to kick. DPS that thinks the skull is the tanks target even while wearing ToC gear is a vote to kick. If you are rude illiterate or annoying its a vote to kick. and when I run outta votes to kick I pull the tank and healer plug cause normally I own both. The vent rawr of laughter comes often and I have done so great heroics with the random grouper.

Blizzard gets more subscribers every time they make gear more accessible to everyone. Plus people who don’t or can’t raid complain loudest when they can’t gear again /cry.

You have some valid points but honestly blizzard made them into meat in the room when they could be replaced instantly. Emblems are gravy that just pile up theses days. I used to never run heroics because if it wasn’t with my guild it wasn’t worth my time because building a group was a pain and the self entitled I am a great DPS often decided that he would try to hold the group hostage. now he has no playing cards. I don’t have to look to replace him by the next boss. The random grouper will in about now.

The problem is pure difficulty design and the unwillingness to learn the dungeons and progress through the slowly.

Your opinions and ideas are good and you make several compelling arguments
Hands down when I am the meat in the room I know my place.

Tanks and healers run the world. (I would be interested in seeing an MMORPG that implemented you everybody is everything system.)

So to begin with, I think your point about tanks routinely doing more damage than the DPS is quite true and not a sign of good/badness. I pretty much stack Block (value and rating)/agi for heroics, combine that with the fact that I routinely pull three to four packs at once and use DPS trinkets my damage is on average like ~4.5 on my pally and ~4 on the druid. Not very many DPS can pull that without buffs. That being said I’ve had HEALERS yell at DPS for doing less damage than I do. Seriously? STFU and heal, I don’t care what your main’s DPS is (these asshats are usually like “ell oh ell I pull a 7k DPS” neglecting to mention that this is in a 25 man raid with every buff under the sun). To be honest, as a tank, sharing the benefits of my gear with some newly 80s to help them get some new gear makes me happy and gives me something to do in my free time. I do not think “meat in the room” (bloody brilliant expression by the way) equates to bad DPS, not in the least. That being said, I lose patience when people repeatedly do things like: have a pet with growl on, Bladestorm on the pull or throw a seed before I even get to the pack; but that was addressed in a previous blog post of yours!

Sorry about that and with all huge and possibly incoherent rants about people’s ridiculous behavior in 5 mans aside, I do yearn for the BC days in some regards and not in others. Do I want CC and the skill required to be considered “good” to come back? Yes and no. Do I want to wait for a group for hours because of the whole “Need mage for H MgT PST me please, tipping 100g” thing? No, bring the player and not the class, GC’s words and I like them. That being said it’d be very nice to see the return of some form of CC, just not class specific requirements. My alt in BC was a hunter, I really really miss trap kiting on moroes while trying to hold my own on the meters; in fact I quit my hunter in 3.0 as soon as I saw what the game had become. On another note I do not miss the one hour long five mans; I think my time in game is worth more than that. Remember how, even with a BT geared tank, pre-3.0 it would take like 45 minutes to clear Heroic Botanica? Sure it was 7 (or was it 6?) badges when it happened to be the daily, but it was incredibly painful and took a long time to complete.

That’s my take on this, I know some of you feel the same.

This realization struck me last night, during an all-guild random run. Our healer kept AFK’ing and just generally wasn’t paying attention, because of my high health and was telling me so over Vent. Meanwhile, I’m still hard at work, paying attention to his mana, what the mobs have targetting, how to get the next pull, while keeping the run going and not stopping to skin (which I never get to do as a tank – because that would slow the run down).

I agree with you BBB on implementing challenging dungeons again. I remember the strats that when into pulling trash in hMgT. At first, tanking the new ICC instances was great – people were paying attention and it really felt like everyone was pulling their weight and working as a team. But even that’s starting to fade a little from FoS.

And when I see people in good gear putting out crap DPS, not moving out of bad stuff, and just goofing off, it makes me so mad as a tank. Because I can’t behave like that. The whole success of a run is pretty much solely on a tank’s shoulders – the speed, the smoothness, etc. You can’t pull too fast or too slow, you can’t pull too many or too few. And you certainly can’t stop to skin or mine or even AFK for a moment to get a drink or answer a phonoe or whatever it is that DPS get to do.

So bring back the crowd control, the thinking, the need to extend an effort. And then the mentality of “meat in a room” will fade. Because I never thought of DPS as “meat in a room” in BC. They were “sheeper, trapper, silencer, banisher” and they were my teammates, instead of a burden on my shoulders.

Yes, I lament the loss of CC. Truth to tell though … I think it’s gone not as a design decision but because most folks can’t really pull it off. The Pug-O-Matic makes it even worse. You can’t possibly count on it.

I ran CoS in cat last night … pretty much takes an act of god to make me tank a pug. I was added last obviously. By the time I got there the “tank”, a pally said “Someone go do the crates.” (This is after they were IN Strat.) to which the hunter responded “What crates?” During the ensuing argument about who was going to do it I had gone back and done it. The tank and the mage were guildmates who proceeded to ignore everyone else and just plow through, because they could. The tank picked up maybe 70% of the mobs the whole time. I cat tanked a lot to keep the priest alive. The hunter was along for the ride. At the end they didn’t even chat with Arthas at the start of the gauntlet.

My point in relating this is that as long as this kind of group is even remotely possible they can’t have CC or all hybrid classes (although the idea is intriguing!) because it’s too hard a concept. Unless they completely rework every mechanic … which they won’t do.

The response of a very large proportion of the DPS I’ve grouped with on random to this post and to sometimes it seems like anything at all would be “lol” and nothing else. The reputation of being idiotic meat that expects to be carried has been earned just as the reputation of tanks as divas and control freaks has been earned. I *love* playing with good DPS, I appreciate the hell out of every utility ability the DPS in my guild have and miss them when I don’t have that to rely on as a tank. But most of the DPS I meet in randoms are not good.

What I actually would like to see is another tier of content that I could only describe as five-man raids. I think this is what heroic dungeons used to be, until they got turned into badge-farms; but what I am thinking is dungeons like the new Icecrown ones. Give them better loot, give them better incentives, make them much harder and not completable without a group where everyone is on their toes, and *take them the hell out of the random system*.

Here’s my take:
http://kilirants.blogspot.com/2010/01/kili-rants-on-class-roles-and-why-dps.html

In my opinion as to your idea, BBB, to give everyone a multispec/multitalent, I’m not sure that would really work. I’m already disliking the trend of DPS being hugely interchangeable – where’s the flavor? It’s turning all pretty bland.

I have a rogue, because I *like* to sap, stealth, stun (I suck at blinding) *and* to help out a (new) tank with Tricks of the Trade.
I have a mage, because I sometimes like to stand in the back, wiggle my fingers, FrostNova and blink away.
I have a kittybear because, well because I like to pick herbs in flightform, but I’ve grown to like ripping things to shreds, and I wanted to learn about the flavor of bear tanking. Similar about a Ret/Prot pally.

Note, though, that I don’t heal. Perhaps someday, somewhere, but the idea of healing doesn’t appeal to me as of yet. I know players who’d rather heal or tank than DPS. I know DPS who’d rather quit than heal or tank :)
Even if you give everybody the option to switch between all three roles, I submit that you’ll see the same distribution as you see now with dual-specs – a lot of DPS, and few healers and tanks. I think it’s the mindset of the player, and you can’t fix that by changing the mechanics of the game.

I want the flavor back. I want my rogue to sap again, the mage to sheep I want to feel the difference between being a ret pally, a blood-DK and a rogue, depending on what I play. But as it seems to be right now, there’s no difference between my DPS toons. Sadly, that means that when I tank, I need a friendly, sometimes forgiving healer, and “just 3 random DPS” (who don’t cringe when they *have* to run with a warrior).

On another note, it annoys the heck out of me that as life gets easier in heroics for DPS and healers as their gear improves, the tank’s life gets harder. On the warrior, I keep some “old” gear around to keep my rage up, I hear from Tankadins that fewer heals needed means fewer return on mana. I don’t know what a grown up bear issues are as gear increases – I defer that to you :)

Oh. Umm… Sorry. Wall of text… and rants… How’d that happen?!?! Maybe I need to start a blog?