This last weekend, it was revealed that account hackers have successfully bypassed Authenticator security using “man in the middle” attacks; interposing themselves between player and server, and taking the player’s input for themselves, telling the player they failed to login, and then using the info themselves to get in and change things to suit themselves.

Today, I received an email from Intravax, who had a harrowing story to tell;

We had 3 of our members’ accounts stolen within the last month. No major damage as there are caps to what ppl are allowed to withdraw from the vault.

Then one of our officers got hit and that did a bit more damage, although it wasn’t anything that couldn’t be replaced in a week or 2.

Then, this Monday on 3/1/2010 it was like our WoW version of Sept 11th. All our officers got hit, including our GL (each of us have authenticators) and 6 other guildies.

The hackers were like a virus and multiplied by immediately inviting several dozen other characters and promoting them all to the highest rank possible, and we were cleaned out and all our toons were deleted (most of us had at least 3-4 Lvl 80’s all geared in T9 or above). As an added twist to the gut, before the toons were deleted the hackers used them to spam in /trade and /general for their gold selling companies, thereby getting our accounts suspended our reputation tarnished.

All 6 tabs of our vault were filled to the brink with top level flasks, gems, enchants, crafting mats, buff food, etc.  Additionally, we had over 75k gold which was donated by the officers and guild members to offset the costs of all the crafting materials that were donated.

Is it a claim made by a reader, impossible for me to confirm? Yes.

Do I believe the writer? Yes. Yes, I do. The entire email was very well written, it wasn’t asking for any kind of action or publicity on my part. Intravax was just letting me know what had happened to him, his friends and their casual guild, and giving me a heads up to be careful with my own casual guild bank settings, so that the chances of the same thing happening to Sidhe Devils might be reduced.

Thank you, Intravox. I can assure you, having been the victim of account hacking years ago myself, before Burning Crusade was released, I know at least a little of how it feels to come in and find that your character or account is trashed.

In my case, the hacking happened in mid-session, Christmas Eve several years ago, while I was on vent with friends in Undead Strat doing, as I recall, a timed Baron run. So, I got to hear, live and in person, the play-by-play details as my friends followed my character, still all in party together, through hearthing from Eastern Plaguelands/Strat Undead to Ironforge, watched me strip naked, and then, still in party with my main, watched as party chat showed my character D/E’ing all my stuff , mailed the mats off… and then followed my character as it ran back and forth from the bank to the mailbox, sending off all my stuff to someone else.

At least my character wasn’t deleted.

Merry Christmas, Windshadow!

Talk about wanting to just quit the game in disgust. That right there is a feeling of violation that is difficult to overcome. The emotional aspect, quite apart from the inconvenience of lost items, characters or gold that might be returned after an investigation, is hard to describe.

What is it? Why does this keep happening, despite the best efforts of Blizzard to prevent it?

Sophisticated methods for hacking player accounts are designed, developed, tested and implemented.

This represents a significant investment in time and resources on someone’s part.

What would be the incentive to cause folks to go to such extended lengths to get access to your account?

Here is my assumption; real world money is the incentive.

It is my assumption, my theory, that the majority of hacked accounts are performed by gold sellers looking for inventory to sell to a willing market, and not malicious punk kids with too much time on their hands.

A market of consumers that will seek them out and offer them real world currency in exchange for virtual world gold.

I don’t buy gold, and you don’t buy gold, and nobody you have ever known has ever bought gold… and yet, somehow… people still make money selling gold.

Funny, isn’t it?

It’s my understanding that there are several ways gold sellers acquire the gold they offer to fulfill orders.

First, there are people that work directly for gold sellers, that go out and farm and play the auction house to develop gold.

Second, there are people who may be regular players like anyone else, but they work as affiliates, independant ’stringers’, and when they have gold available to sell, they contact the gold sellers directly and offer it to them… for less than the gold seller will flip it for to the buyer. The gold seller has the website contacts to sell, the stringer has someone they know to sell to when they have some extra.

Methods one and two, as I described them, are fairly safe for the gold seller, but they represent an investment, an expenditure. They have to either pay someone to play to harvest the gold directly, or pay a stringer to get their supply.

The third method is to hack a stranger’s account, loot all their stuff, ship it off to a third party to clearance it, and then delete the account.

This is fast, and aside from developing the hacking method and identifying the target, inexpensive on the part of the gold seller. Either the account is hacked or not, and with guild banks, the potential score goes beyond access to one player’s account.

This business all revolves around the fact that players have something that has a real world monetary value, and there are those out there that have the means and the desire to take from others to enrich themselves. And even better… where are the cops to prosecute them for the stolen goods?

“Excuse me officer, but I had $1500 in property stolen last night.”
“Oh, really? Tell me, where did the crime take place?”
“On Kael’thas, Alliance side. They got everything. Wiped me clean out. They got away with over 25,000 gold, enchanting mats, Frozen Orbs and epics with a street value of $1500. And they defaced my property by deleting my characters!” 
“Uh…. huh. Get the hell out of my sight, nutball.”

In almost all cases, I would be willing to bet that it is not a vindictive or malicious act; I really believe it is the real world monetary benefit that keeps them doing this.

So long as you have something they want, something that is valuable to them, and there is no actual risk involved to them in taking it, then they will continue to plot means of stealing you blind.

I would like to propose a possible solution.

Blizzard, please, open an official micro-transaction store and just sell the gold yourself.

Do it.

No limits on how much, make it legal, and price it so low that it’s undercutting the gold sellers.

Players are somehow able to find gold sellers online, so I’ve got to imagine, since you’ve got computers and the internet yourselves, that you could figure out where they are and how much they charge.

Give the player, the person that seems unable to tear themselves away from buying gold, a legitimate, safe and dependable location to get it from.

Remove any reason someone may have to visit a gold seller outside of Blizzard.

Tell the players, if they really cannot stand to farm gold for epic flying or that awesome epic hammer on the AH themselves, you will give them a place to go where they know they’re getting the best deal, the transaction will be safe, they will not be subject to viruses or hacking, and they will not be risking an account ban.

On the flip side, make it clear that if you DO catch anyone buying gold or selling gold outside their own store, you WILL still ban their account.

I didn’t want to make the obvious analogy with prohibition and alcohol… but seriously. If players, regardless of what the consequences may be to them, continue to go give the gold sellers money, then the gold sellers will continue to find ways of getting it to give.

Remove the incentive. Take away their payday. Reduce their market to nothing.

Make them go find someone else to rip off.

Now, I’m not naive. I know that the WoW economy is very involved, and Blizzard does a lot to try and balance the availability of gold through play with the number of things that you can spend it on. Blizzard is a world economy in scope, and they have to do a lot of work behind the scenes to battle inflation.

That being said… I think, purely my own opinion but what the heck, on a blog that’s what you get, pure opinion, but I think I can safely say people are sick and tired of wondering if today is the day some thief has hacked their account.

Just do it. Cut out the middle man, sell the gold yourself, and call it a day.

I won’t buy it, but someone out there sure as heck will, and you’d be performing a valuable service for the community if you can finally find some way of cutting the gold sellers off at the knees.

My apologies to the parrotheads for hijacking Jimmy’s song for my blog title. :)

I’ve been writing this blog thingie for quite a while, and I feel safe in believing that my long time readers, those who have stuck with me, have a pretty damn good sense of humor.

Either that, or they’re masochists and are needing their pain fix. Either way, works for me. :)

If you enjoy humorous posts from someone that does, occasionally, provide some helpful posts too, then you probably read Jong over at Forbearance.

Yes, I’ve mentioned him before. Hey, as long as he’s willing to handle all of Meg’s drama, I’ll keep plugging him. Patience of a saint, is all I’m sayin’.

Saint Jong of the Endlessly Enduring. Has a nice ring to it. 

Most recently, Jong highlighted a guest post over at World of Matticus.

This guest post at Matticus has acted kinda like a rocket amongst my friends.

When I asked one person if they’d seen the post, they said yes, and when I asked them what they thought, the answer was kinda garbled. Like, the ability to form coherent words out of individual letters was temporarily lost.

All I got out of ‘em was “Wdlj tho0 Fuoba wasl;ib tha[oitn  periknaf thinkoauhfg?”

Now, that was a very illuminating look into the thoughts of my friend, but that’s not the kind of coherent I was looking for.

I don’t find it nearly so difficult to frame my own thoughts on that post.

And oh my yes, I do have a few thoughts on it.

First, let me say that I feel that the situation as presented was well described. As things stand now, yes, 5 person instance groups generally consist of a tank, a healer, and three DPS players of various classes. 

Also, again generally, currently all the variables that affect a 5 person instance group at level 80 are resulting in groups where, so long as the tank and the healer are well geared and well skilled, the exact composition, gear and skill levels of the DPS players are not critical factors in the success of a run.

However, after that point, we kinda diverge in drastically different directions.

For example, I don’t really think that the situation calls for accepting the way things are now as being the “normal state of affairs”, and then sucking off the tank and the healer for being awesome enough folks to bear the responsiblity of carrying the group on their slender shoulders.

No, I take a completely different approach.

The case as described is that DPS are, how did he phrase it? Oh yes, “just meat in the room”.

Well, instead of accepting that as the case and moving forward, how about wondering WHY?

For starters… we’ve had a gear level reset without a corresponding reset of content. We have the majority of existing 5 person content remaining the same, and in some cases being nerfed, while the gear available from running that content has leaped ahead.

Yes, the purpose was to get more people past the Naxx/ToC/Ulduar gearing point so that folks can enter ICC as a functioning guild, but a consequence has been to dramatically lower the difficulty level of 5 person content.

Add in to this the fact that the 5 person heroic content had, even before Ulduar, been tuned so that Crowd Control was optional and mostly disregarded, and you have a clear prescription for removing the utility of DPS classes except for basic buffs and pure damage.

Add one other factor. Most tanks now do, in tanking spec and gear from Emblems of Triumph vendors, more damage than fresh level 80’s in all item level 200 gear. 

That’s right, your average level 80 in Heroic drops and crafted gear will usually do less damage than a tank in pure vendor gear from those same Heroics, because Emblems of Triumph are that powerful. 

That certanly contributes to the feeling that DPS is an afterthought, doesn’t it? Tell me, have YOU ever heard someone in a pug say, “You suck, the tank is doing more DPS than you”?

If you’re the asshat doing the saying, I don’t want to hear it.

Do you remember Burning Crusade?

It was very common to have encounters with multiple mobs difficult enough that the majority of groups used crowd control to lock down at least one mob, maybe two, while the rest were burned down.

In Burning Crusade, it was not expected that a tank be able to take and hold everything successfully, and if he did, surviving was questionable. It was expected that a tank be able to take and hold most, but that some mobs would be distant enough ranged types, or dangerous enough fearing/stunning, powerhouse types that CC was desired, and skill in using it was sought after.

DPS was desired not just for their damage output, but also for the other things they could bring. Group utility.

Things change. It’s a fool that puts his hands up and tries to stop the tide as it comes.

But we can also take the time to point out that, just because things are a certain way, it doesn’t mean we are supposed to accept that it’s HOW THINGS SHOULD BE.

If DPS is undervalued, then to me it’s clear that things need to be retuned, if not now then in the next true content level, so that they are once again universally acknowledged as being an essential, respected part of the success of a run.

Earlier, when talking about how ‘generally’ the case for brute force was true, there were and are exceptions.

Halls of Reflection is an outstanding one.

I don’t care how good the tank or healer think they are, if the DPS players do not put out the raw damage in a fast enough manner, in a focused enough fashion, then Arthas will not be defeated. Period. (We’re pretending they soon hotfix the current following exploit, okay?)

I frequently see Crowd Control being used in Halls of Reflection, without the direction of the tank, to nail down riflemen and mages. And things work smoother because of it.

Things can be intentionally tuned so that, no matter what, the tank can’t ‘get ‘em all’.

Think they can’t? Blizzard can always decide that tanks are getting out of control, CC is completely underutilized, players of DPS classes are feeling maligned and abused, and Blizzard can then go out and CHANGE IT.

Blizzard hasn’t really swung the nerf bat in years. Years.

The way people are acting, the air of entitlement I see, the elitist asshats in pugs, I really want it swung hard in some ways. Especially on those that play DPS classes that have been taught that spamming buttons for DPS on the recount meters is the only sign of skill at a class.

Used to be, a Hunter brought some ice trapping skills to the party, and a good trapper was damn well respected. Did he do DPS? Who cares, was he able to chain trap? THAT was a mark of skill.

If there are people that are being led to believe that an entire group of players can, amazingly enough, be referred to as ”just meat in the room” with a straight face, then maybe things do need to change.

I’ve got a few suggestions. Maybe they are utterly unrealistic for WoW, and their implementation would result in something like what happened in Star Wars Galaxies. I don’t know.

But let’s talk about changing the dynamicfor a few minutes, something that Tish Tosh Tesh is outstanding at talking about.

We’ve got tanks, healers, and DPS in our 5 person runs.

In a group, one gathers up the enemy and holds their attention, one keeps the tank and, when necessary, the rest of the group alive, and then thereare the DPS whose function is to kill stuff.

The idea here is to have a group of people working together as a team. The nature of the roles provides variety, imposes a certain amount of built in tactical direction, and guides defining how a team succeeds.

But there are drawbacks, as we can see.

As things stand now, tanks are meant to generate and hold aggro on the enemy, and also survive awesome damage. Enemies have to put out epic damage, to keep a healer busy, and also to keep any old DPS from stepping up and being a tank. So tanks have to be able to survive massive damage, and mobs have to deal lots of damage, to differentiate them even more from DPS. 

As long as we’re talking about keeping healers busy. 

In instances, there are getting to be ever increasing AoE and persistent damage types, all designed to challenge a dedicated healer. Since the team has to HAVE a dedicated healer, that player has to be kept busy somehow. And if all you do is jump up damage to one target (tank) to really stress the healer, then it will inevitably result in wipes from the tank being one shot. So, to keep the healer occupied without frequently one shotting the tank, they have to spread the damage around to the group. A lot. In imaginative ways. Plus fears and things designed to make damage jump anyway.

The power of the current gear as related to the content, and the way Crowd Control is unused, can be fixed by changes in the next content level. Designing dungeons that don’t allow easy line of sight pulling of mobs that include ranged DPS in different directions would certainly help. Make them hit like a baastard or Curse or Fear, and you’ll quickly see some CC being brought in.

But this tank and heal thing is a poser, isn’t it.

What I’d like to see, to start with, is the elimination of damage output in a tank spec.

That’s right. I’d like to see tank specs do nothing BUT cause threat. No damage, or if there is damage, it’s so small a sneeze would bump it off Recount. Acknowledge that a tank’s role is to acquire and hold threat, NOT kill everything all by themselves.

Second, give EVERY class a tank spec. Every single one. And have that spec use the classes’ normal DPS gear stats.

Rogues? Give them a tanking spec that takes the feel of Dodge Tanking and runs with it. Threat generated by Dodging, AoE taunts, tricks like smoke bombs that stun or blind groups of mobs and cause high threat, the whole thing.

Priests? Enhance their bubble with multiple layers, let them do some serious threat from resisting damage and have them be healed by damage done to their bubble, have them base their tanking on holding fast in the face of the enemy and trusting in the Light.

It can be done.

Take away the option of pouty little children that “Take their toys and go home” if they don’t get their way in a group.

Oh, did the tank leave in a huff? That’s fine, he sucked anyway and was prone to tantrums. Which of the remaining four of us want to tank the rest? We’ve all got a spec and gear for it, after all.

Dedicated healers? Do away with them as well.

Give every class a mix of healing and damage spells. Every class would be hybrid DPS/Healers.

You could choose to specialize in DPS or heals, the same as any other hybrid, but the capability of tossing heals would still be there, just like the Shaman, Druid and Paladin.

If you change the dynamic, tune content so that the DPS are mostly responsible for healing themselves, and working together to toss the tank a heal or two but mostly work together to control and kill the mobs. 

Perhaps even modify things even further, so that as with Blood specced Death Knights, the more DPS you do or the spells you use to CAUSE DPS are what you use to heal you.  

Improved Leader of the Pack is all about self heals from your own successful critical strikes. Take that a step further.

Making it work comes down to tuning the instances for it. Less “All out damage on tank”, more wide spread damage.

You would go from a situation where the tank is normally getting nailed with a boulder in the face and chain healed, to a situation where the tank is being nibbled to death by ducks for little bites of damage. He’s there more to hold all the nibblers off the group and give them a chance to focus on killing the enemy in order of importance.

If the tank is NOT doing damage, then you can’t win just by keeping the tank alive. You HAVE to have people doing DPS. If each player is capable of SOME self healing, then if the tank dies, it’s not necessarily a wipe, it’s just a more chaotic situation that has to be recovered by the players all combining their heals and DPS in a skilled fashion on the fly.

And truthfully, without being locked into a “We MUST have a dedicated main healer” situation, the door would be opened for much less spiky damage and silly mechanics in the first place.

Do I think we’ll ever see anything that drastic in WoW?

No, never. It’d be a completely different game. I’d like to see it, myself, but no we never will.

People say, with justification, “Don’t fix it if it ain’t broke.”

And the millions of customers that play WoW are a pretty strong indication that it’s not broke.

But I do think that we’re in the middle of some strange times. And I also think that, as things stand now, asshats are feeling encouraged to believe that this is the way it’s supposed to be, and are being abusive to others in groups and feel entitled to throw their elitist attitudes and elitist DPS standards in others’ faces.

I look forward to the day when doing the current Heroics will give rewards nobody wants for end game, in the same way that Burning Crusade Emblems of Heroism and drops are still useful for a little while while leveling, but are then abandoned forever.

I only hope that when that day comes, things will be designed and tuned so that DPS classes will be acknowledged once more as having utility in a team above and beyond pure damage output, and people will no longer have the effrontery to call them “just meat in the room” and expect to be taken seriously.

I’ve been waiting for his post all day. I was online when it happened, and we all helped talk him down off the WTFROFLMAOBBQ ledge.

Dechion, good friend and guild mate, has been regaling us with tales of his bad pug experiences since 3.3 went live. First person that I know to get Perky Pug, first person to catch the wave of asshattery.

Yesterday, yesterday has to cap it, though.

You see, and please read his more detailed story full of facts and screenshots on his blog, he joined a random pug, found the other four members were all from the same server, 3 were all guilded, and they ran Heroic Trial of the Champion together.

Once the Black Knight was down, they used a nice, new technique to ninja the loot for themselves.

Black Knight dies, and as his body hits the floor they instantly kick Dechion from group before the body gets looted.

Let’s get past a few things as we talk about this.

Move past whether or not anyone really cares if they lost a chance at pretty little purple pixels. Move past the fact that whatever asshattery was committed, it happened in a virtual realm, and who cares anyway.

Those are stupid arguments used to belittle a core issue and cloud the conversation with bullshit. 

It makes no difference what Dechion was denied, or whether it was in the ‘real world’ (thanks, Jess) or in a virtual one.

The core issue is that one person played in a group, confident that the rules would allow fair play to equal fair chance at reward, and the others in the group found a way to use the rules to deny him his chance at that reward. 

The ninjas in this case were all from the same server, Dethecus.

Their names are:

• Nocando
• Giantswan
• Roxanna
• Ortherion

The first three are from Axis of Justice, and the last is from Storm Forged, a pretty massive guild on Dethecus.

Gear?

This couldn’t have been about gear. You look at the gear of these four, and it’s almost inconceivable that any one of them was just dying over a piece of Heroic ToC loot.

Of course, that word may not mean what I think it means, because maybe one of them has been hankering for that one special drop for the last 6 months, and refused to be denied it yet again. You never know what goes on in the minds of asshats.

But if it isn’t about gear, why would they have done it? 

What about… because they could? For a laugh? For revenge that one of them died in the run and has a repair bill, so to hell with Dechion, he’s from another server, nobody will ever know?

All of the above?

Who cares.

The fact is, a glaring loophole has been found that allows a group to run something when short just one person… and then cut that person out of the loop at that last, critical moment.

How would you like this to happen to you?

Say… when Arthas has been defeated at the end of a hard fought Heroic Halls of Reflection, and as you run to the airship with everyone else, you get kicked from the group before anyone even reaches the chest on the ship?

Wouldn’t that be special?

What happens if the loot window opens, and only THEN you are kicked?

Does anyone know if having a loot window open for rolling prevents your being kicked? Or prevents you from rolling on the loot?

Wouldn’t it be lovely if you were running in ICC 5 mans, and the Battered Hilt dropped, but before you had a chance to roll, the rest of the group kicked you?

Think about it.

And if you see any of those four, please, from me, and with all my heart, tell them Big Bear Butt wishes them all the karma they’ve got coming to them… and a special, extra kick in the ass just from me for irritating my friend.

One last thing.

We know three of them were from the same guild… and the thought runs through my head…

How do we KNOW that Ortherion was in it with them? What if he was kicked too?

I don’t know… but it takes at least three for a kick, and three were from the same guild, so I’m not budging on that point at all. If someone comes up to me, in all fairness, and says that Ortherion was kicked also, had nothing to do with it, and is hurt that I called him out with the other three, then I’ll certainly give him a chance to make his case, and if he’s convincing, I’ll be pleased to make a retraction.

Until then, well… tarred with the same feather, my friends. And if this spurs someone on to prove they had nothing to do with it… perhaps with screenshots, or by ticketing a GM from that server? All the better, all the better.

Yeah, that’s right. I said “You people”.

Now, maybe you ain’t one of the actual people that make me bugnuts. Chances are, if you’re on a blog looking for advice, and it’s a blog that pretends to mostly talk about tanking, maybe, just maybe, you’re open to suggestions or are looking to improve your tanking skills.

If you are, God bless you.

You’re free to climb out of the bucket. Provisionally.

But holy shit!

Or, as Cassie said this last weekend, “Okay, all the morons and stupid little children are home from school for the holidays. Time to stop pugging.”

I had heard… I’d even sometimes seen… but never, never had I imagined the complete and absolute collapse of skill and sense in PUGs like what we dealt with last weekend.

Holy shit.

Just… how the hell? I’m not even talking about a single person, or people from all one guild, or even people from just one server. I’m sure we all expect to run into the oblivious on occasion. 

I mean an endless perfect storm of jerkwads.

Here is the worst run that I stayed in. I left more than a few that were just incredible fails of blamefests, but I stayed in this one, and it was amazing to the end. In a “surely at some point things will change, and I want to be there when it happens” kind of way.

Complete random PUG, zoned into Nexus, and I was queued as Healer.

I actually prefer to tank, I really do, but if I’m going to tank, I like to know who my healer is. So, usually in a pure 100% PUG I’ll go as heals.

I like to think that, hey, things may suck, but at least I know there will be good heals. Elitist? Arrogant? Sure, I’ll own that. All I know is I’ve carried some pretty amazing failpugs just by overhealing idiots that think Rogues can consistently Tank, and Hunters that don’t know what Feign Death is.

Sadly, I’ve also run in failpugs where I felt grateful that our Rogue COULD tank, because the actual tank was just a complete… no, let’s not go there.

But this one… I’m there as heals, and we zone in, it’s Nexus.

The tank instantly leaves.

You’re queued as a tank and you bail on Nexus? What a lazy prick. If you want something specific, queue for something specific. If you just don’t like Nexus… come on, the instance takes less time to run than the deserter debuff does to wear off.

And if you bail, it better not be out of fear… they don’t GET much easier than Nexus.

Anyway, we try for more, and I see that the Priest is queueing as Heals/DPS.

So I say, and hold onto your laughter, I say “I’ll tell you what. It’s easier to fill DPS. I’ll tank if you switch to heals.”

“ok”.

Off we go.

It’s a bit slow, but we do the first few pulls and it’s okay. My only initial concern is, I notice that we’ve got two melee DPS, and both are running up to stand next to me to fight. Not behind the enemy, but right next to me in the enemy’s face.

I politely, gently, quite considerately suggest that if they move behind the mobs to DPS, then the mobs can’t Parry their attacks, and their damage will go up.

Both of them are from different servers. Both of them are melee. Neither of them ever acknowledge I said anything, and neither ever moves behind the mobs. The whole run.

This sets the pace for the entire run.

• Nobody kills the targets I assign.
• Nobody moves behind the mobs if melee.
• Nobody gets out of Whirlwind on the first boss.
• Nobody kills the Portals but me.
• Nobody gets out of the ice spikes but me.
• Nobody moves to remove the cold debuff but me.

I offer advice, suggestions, they all fall on deaf eyes. They do nothing whatsover but spam buttons, move as little as possible, and get carried by me and the healer. The healer, who increasingly through the run is getting bitchy from healing people who are making no effort whatsoever to do things… well, as if they gave a shit.

At the end of the run, boss dead, longest damn Anomalous fight I’ve ever seen (since I’m the only bastard killing portals)….

And the DPS of the group is like this;

• 2100+ DPS Me (the tank)
• 1000 DPS
• 1000 DPS
• 900+ DPS
• 125 DPS (healer)

Now, I have no problem with people having low DPS. As I said before, you don’t get much easier than Nexus. If you’re looking to learn how to play as a newly dinged 80, then Nexus is the place to be.

But if you are a brand new level 80 looking to play as DPS… what in the name of all that’s holy brings you to just completely phone in your gameplay? If you have no intention of making an effort, or paying any attention to the rest of the group, why are you even here?

Just flat out refused to get behind the mobs. As though I were somehow lying about the effects of Dodge. And ignoring kill order… not as if I ever had to worry about them pulling aggro, but it sure would have been nice if there was some focused DPS so that the mobs went down a little faster. You know, like the ones that can heal?

Sure, I know people are too leet to think that kill targets should apply to them, even after I ask that they follow my kill order. And I suppose that people are too special to listen to the advice of anyone else, like kill portals first, even when they’ve got a little skull on top, because hey, who the hell am I as the tank to tell other people what to do? I should keep my mouth zipped and be a nice little Mangle-bot.

But if you are so damn special you need to go do your own thing and to hell with everyone else…

If you really do know everything already…

At least cough up more than 900 DPS. Just sayin’.

Okay, now that I got that out of my system, here’s the real frustration from the weekend.

An ever growing tendency for tanks to cop an attitude.

Now, this probably sounds hilarious after the attitude I, the tank, just displayed on the blog. Bear with me a moment.

I’m serious. I don’t mean a nice ‘take charge and git ‘er done’ kind of thing that in bad lighting might be mistaken for leadership, I mean a pissy little 8 year old elitist prick kind of thing.

Tanks that can’t hold aggro, refuse to mark targets, pull too much stuff and don’t actually aggro any of it except their one main target and let the others run off willy nilly on everyone else… and then type all in caps “omigod the dps sux, healer u sux, piss off losers” and leaves group.

Or get into arguments, I kid you not, over who did what. And refuse to go further until they’ve blamed someone else for whatever it is. 

I never thought I’d see the day when a group degenerated into “Did you pull those mobs?” “No, you did!” “Did not!” Did so!”

Example; After Ick in Heroic Pit of Saron, those two groups of mobs heading up the hill with the Flamewraiths. Tank, no marks, no attempts at holding aggro on multiple spellcasters, just runs and guns into the center mob. Has no aggro on half the mobs, mobs run free, both Flamers are bursting, party wipes. Second shot, same as the first, party wipes. Third shot, same as the first, but the second group farther up the hill also gets pulled. Group wipes.

Tank stops dead, and begins to demand to know who pulled the other group. “Allright, who pulled that group? Who was it? I want to know who it was!”

Can someone tell me what earthly difference it makes? The tank is incompetent, and hasn’t attempted to change his style yet, so who cares if the second group was pulled or not?

Rogue says, “I dunno, maybe it was my Fan of Knives.”

Tank chews the Rogue out. Chews. The. Rogue. Out.

Next time, tank doesn’t do any different, but the DPS all focus on the Flamewraiths and then the main mob that chain casts Deathbolts, they basically get it done despite the tank.

Are you kidding me?

What next?

“I won’t tank this group unless everyone likes country music same as me.”
“I like country.”
“Me too, let’s go.”
“Wait, hey you, Hunter, what kind of country do you like?”
“Chris LeDoux rodeo style.”
“That ain’t the right kind of country for me, I vote to kick the hunter.”

Are we in high school now? WTF?!?

Cassie is doing Oculus. She’s grown to like Oculus. No, really, I kid her over it, but it’s true.

On the final dragon fight, flying high overhead, her group wipes.

The tank begins demanding to know who had a ten stack up on the boss and never triggered their ability to consume it. There were three yellow drakes on the run, Cassie on one of them. She prefers the yellow, she likes them and knows them well.

Me, I like green. Dot dot dot….

I kid you not, the tank (on a red drake) demands to know which yellow didn’t trigger their ten stack. He’s adamant, he saw a ten stack up and unconsumed, and by God, and he’s not going any further until he knows who it was!

And the DPS cater to this little tantrum, by chiming in saying, “Well I used MY ability, it wasn’t me!” “Well, I know I used MY ability, it wasn’t me either!”

Cassie, actually being an adult, isn’t even acknowledging this complete loserfest.

So the tank announces, “It must have been Cass then!”

The logic for this, apparently, being that she didn’t defend herself, so she must be guilty, and hanging her head in shame before the monitor.

The others gang up on Cass. “Yeah, it must have been Cass. You suck, noob.”

Are you really serious? 

In her second random heroic of the day, she got TOC.

The group mounts up and the talking starts.

The tank yells, ”Geez, you did the long intro, you noob.” 

An argument immediately breaks out. Can you guess why?

The argument follows;

“I did not, I wasn’t even near the guy.”
“Wasn’t me, must have been player x.”
“Nope, wasn’t me, must have been Cass.” (who again was not participating in the argument).

This time she lost her patience for this type of behavior, informed them they were acting like children, and left the party.

These are stories not meant to showcase two individual runs, but to serve as an example of what I’m seeing in more groups in general, and with the tanks in particular lately… rude little pricks.

Tanks especially, the short group wait time seriously seems to be causing some of them to think their shit doesn’t stink.

That they really are, somehow, more important than, or more special than, other players.

If that’s you, this is your wakeup call.

I don’t give a good goddamn who you THINK you are, what your gearscore is, how short a wait you get, or if you think that the groups all revolve around your tiniest whim and if you are the slightest bit displeased, somebody better start soothing your ruffled feathers or you shall no longer grace the group with the awesomesauce of your presence.

If you really think that, as the tank, you deserve to have your ass kissed by the rest of the party if they expect to do a run, then I’ve got startling news for you, sister mary sunshine. And it’s NOT that you can save money by switching to Geico.

You deserve the same politeness and consideration as every other player that pays their money to play. No more, and no less.

If you’re going to be a dick right out of the starting gate, then you deserve much less.

I surely hope that this is a blip on the bubble. I hope that this is not indicative of a growing trend, and we’re going to see a lot more of this.

I’ll be the first to say, if you don’t like the people you meet in PUGs, then don’t pug.

But on the other hand, there are lots of great people that I know are out there, and if you don’t pug, you’ll never see them. I’d hate to have that happen.

Just yesterday, I had a great pug.

I had the best pug of the weekend when I healed a Culling of Strat with 3 people from my own server, strangers, from a guild named Vampires.

They were very, very good, and very, very nice.

The fact that we had a hunter that was afk 75% of the instance only shows how crappy the other pugs were that this one was my best, and also shows that just because one person is an idiot, it doesn’t mean the rest of the party should necessarily suffer for it. We four-personed most of the run, and it went well. Got the extra boss, etcetera. Joked a little. Good times.

I just hope, I really hope that things will return to a more polite, considerate feel. Or that the weekend was, as Cassie suggested, a fluke based on the holiday break.

We all play WoW. This should be something that serves to pull us together against the outsiders that think we’re crazy. We start stabbing each other verbally out of general pissyness, and things are going to get a whole lot uglier.

Regardless, Gabriel and his Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory does seem to feel more like a proven law than a theory at this point.

Ah, the rush of joy from the first few weeks of the new LFG!

How quickly it turns sour in the face of reality… or in this case, asshats.

Don’t get me wrong, I still love it, but I know my experiences are starting to mirror those Das Panzercow shared yesterday.

I’ve mostly been grouping with Windshadow the Druid, and that had given me a skewed perspective.

The very first couple days of 3.3, sure I did some LFG on my Paladin as DPS, but everyone and their little brother was online trying it out then.

Now, things have matured, Emblems have been won, and the self-centered attitudes of so many people are starting to come out, like stink rising off of… well, you know.

My Druid is dual-specced as Tank and Healer.

As a Tank and Healer both, I had long experience in running all Heroics that had been out successfully, frequently with guild members that had new alts. With the new LFG channel, all that happened was that in the pugs, most often there would be at least one raider that had better gear than I was used to seeing, so the runs, if anything, got faster.

Queueing up for LFG, as a Healer, I generally saw an instance pop in under two minutes, if that long. As a tank, it takes about 1 millisecond.

The longer queues would come when Cassie and I wanted to play together, and we’d group and join as Healer/DPS combo. Sometimes, it would take as long as five minutes.

Awww. Yep, I said I had a skewed perspective, right?

Switch to my Hunter. I was looking, and saw that my Hunter had 29 Conquest Emblems, and nothing at all worth buying from Conquest or Valor. Nada.

BUT… with just a few random Heroics, I could get enough Triumph to downgrade everything into an Heirloom Trinket. Still don’t have two of both Heirloom Trinkets, so hey! Cool! I could get there with just three or four random Heroics!

Yeah… welcome to the world of solo DPS queued for LFG. 15 minute to 25 minute wait times.

Damn, was I spoiled on my Druid.

So, now I can see first hand that, yes, it’s all much, much better than before, but it’s certainly not responsive equally to all roles. And really, how could it be?

If you’ll recall, my prediction prior to 3.3 was that solo DPS would be able to get a group far faster, but I never imagined that 20 minutes would seem long. I stated that I’d just be delighted if I could get a group without being online for two hours in the channel, and hell yes, that wish has been fulfilled.

I’m seeing more than just differing wait times, though. I’m seeing, as I said above, a rapid increase in asshattery. Or maybe laziness.

We could debate the RNG factor affecting what instances we get, and our suspicions that Blizzard has, ahem, weighted some to crop up more than others. But I’m sure it’s not the case. Ahem.

I’ll just throw my paranoia into the ring by saying I’ve had Utgardt Pinnacle, Halls of Lightning, Halls of Stone and OMG Oculus a LOT more often than anything else. And I still haven’t seen Culling of Strat, one of my favorites.

That’s not actually a complaint, since I like Lightning, Pinnacle and Stone. It’s just an observation, when Cassie and I see the loading screen, I believe her direct quote these days can be counted as being, “What, are you kidding me, Halls of Stone AGAIN?!?”

I tried to do my Hunter in LFG a couple days ago… I had Oculus for my first of the day, and as soon as the Tank zoned in to see where we were, he left party. Within 5 minutes of waiting for another tank, the party fell apart.

So I went and did other things.

Later that day, I went into LFG again. After my 20 minute wait, I got… Oculus again.

The new tank left the group again.

Got Azjol-Nerub after that. Two DPS both declined the group without even seeing what the instance was going to be, and when they got replaced, one of those DPS and the Tank left as soon as we zoned in.

Yes, in Azjol Nerub.

A Death Knight switched to tank spec, we re-joined LFG, got another DPS… and THAT DPS left group as soon as entering the instance. After that a Ret Pally came in and, OMG, stayed and we could run the place.

As we ran, the Tank and the Healer (a Shaman) took turns sniping bitchily at each other. The Healer kicked things off by being snarky at the tank’s gear, the tank got defensive in reply by playing the “I quit WoW for a year and only just got back so that’s why my gear sucks” card, then the Healer responded with questions concerning noobness about the tanks’s skill after so long away, then the tank would comment that at least he could tank and chew gum at the same time, etc etc ad nauseaum.

The whole run, two different people from two different servers entirely, bitching at each other. For No. Apparent. Reason.

The run lasted about 12 minutes from first pull to dead Anub. Okay, maybe it was longer, but that was a seriously fast speed run, everyone had over 3k DPS, including the tank… we even accidentally pulled Hadronox before he web wrapped the stairs because the tank didn’t know any better, and we still pulled it off.

Yeah, what the hell are these two crackheads bitching about? I have no idea.

But come on.

This trend, of tanks in particular leaving the party and taking the deserter debuff if the Instance is not to their liking, is happening with an ever accelerating pace.

Welcome to the world of primadonna rockstar tanks that think that the world really does revolve around them.

Nothing in the game is serving to disabuse them of that notion, anymore. Want a run as a tank? You can get one whenever the whim strikes. Don’t like what you get? Why not leave, there’s always another one whenever the fancy takes you.

A solo DPS trying to get a group in good faith, willing to stick out a run, will wait from 10 to 20 minutes after he joins LFG.

A tank looking for a quick and easy run can get an instance immediately, see what it is, get pissy, “Aw, AN again?” and leave group, and by the time their deserter debuff times out, that DPS is just getting his first group.

I was playing with PetEmote in Dalaran yesterday, PetEmote has been updated for Patch 3.2 and I configured mine for Voytek the Spirit Bear, and while testing my emotes, I saw this said in Trade Chat:

“Enjoy the runs in LFG while you can, noobs, as soon as all the Tanks get the last of the Triumph and Frost they want, and the new bosses are unlocked in Icecrown, you’re never gonna see another tank again. They’ll be raiding with their guilds and getting Frost and you’ll be shit out of luck.”

Well, I guess all tanks raid then, right?

Because guilds need SO MANY tanks, that everyone that wants to tank gets to.

Oh, wait… raiding guilds only need two, MAYBE three tanks in a 25 person raid.

Well, I’m sure that out of 25 people, only two or three ever really want to raid anything. I’m sure.

What happens when there is a scarcity of a commodity, and there are tangible benefits to be derived from providing that commodity?

Someone identifies it and fills the need.

In this case, my simple prediction is that as tanks continue to be scarce, more people seeing long wait times as DPS will dual spec if possible, and start gearing up a tank spec. Then they will expoit the fact that tanks get instant groups, and run to their heart’s content.

Please keep in mind, I never said they’d be GOOD tanks. :)

As was pointed out by Panzercow, the new world order as far as most groups go, is zerg the content, ignore Crowd Control, and blame the Healer if someone dies.

I did a random last night with Cassie, I was healing, and we got Heroic ToC.

The tank was a Bear tank, and we had the Hunter, Rogue and Mage.

The Bear tank stood in the poison puddle. Never moved.

I’m healing my butt off, since I feel it is my job NOT to just keep everyone alive, but instead to keep everyone at 100%. If a single Health bar dips, I get pissed. Lose health on ME, will you! We’ll just see about that.

On a related note, I hate Warlocks. There you are, keeping everyone alive fighting the trash after Ick in Heroic Pit of Saron, the Flamewraiths are AoEing everyone and porting and the tank isn’t on them, they’re not getting interrupted, and why the hell is it that one bastards’ health keeps plummeting like a stone?

Why, the Warlock is Life Tapping to get mana back as he struggles to be leet DPS, of course. While standing in the AoE fire. That prick.

Anyway, so Heroic ToC, Bear tank is standing unmoving in the puddle of poison, just standing there. Cassie is melee DPS and she’s not able to both get on the mobs AND avoid standing in the puddle. Cassie is bitching to me about the noob tank that is too stupid to get out of the green bloody-be-damned fire, and I’m agreeing “yes dear” as I’m actually reduced to spamming Nourish on the tank to keep him alive.

The fight is over, nobody died, loot box appears.

The Bear tank asks how he’s doing tanking.

I do a /inspect, out of curiosity. His gear is a pretty solid mix of iLevel 200 epics and a few Triumph items right off my list. A Darkmoon Card: Berserking trinket seems an odd choice, but really, not bad. Certainly more than adequate for Heroic ToC.

Out of politeness, I accentuate the positive, and mention that he held aggro very well.

I am having a hard time thinking of how to politely phrase the concept, “Next time you might want to get your furry butt out of the green puddles so DPS can get it stuck in” when he says, and I kid you not…

“Oh good. And great heals! I knew you were a great healer when I saw I’d been standing in the poison and I didn’t have to move because my health wasn’t going down.”

…..

Way to encourage them, Bear. Nicely done. Dumbass.

If I’d let him die, or even let his health hover towards the low end, maybe he would have been inspired to work more on his mobility next time, or pop his cooldowns.

But no, I kept him alive, and reinforced the idea that you can brute force things, and it’s okay. Zerg, zerg, zerg.

Sigh.

Please, if you have never tanked before and want to step forward and join the ranks of the new tanks, please.

Do so. Do so without regret, and without fear.

But here are some tips. Serious tips, not snarky ones.

First, if you CAN gear up from going as a different spec on LFG in Heroic, by all means do so. There is no shame in running as DPS or Heals, and rolling on tanking offset gear and using Triumph Emblems to buy tanking goodies.

Dechion, I’m talking to you. :)

Whatever you choose to do, when you first set out to tank, use LFG to select normal early instances, such as Nexus, Utgardt Keep, Drak’theron Keep, Gundrak and Azjol-Nerub .

Take the time to go to, say, Wowhead and look at their zone descriptions for the instances. Create little cheat sheets, one page instructions breaking down what each boss does, or tips to watch for from the trash.

As an example, have a sheet for Azjol-Nerub that details Skirmisher abilities on the first boss, so you are prepared for when it ignores you and heads for the most distant player to destroy. Or mentions on Hadronox that if you stand in his green poison cloud, your lost health is healing the boss.

When you zone into a specific chosen instance, let the rest of the group know that, regardless of your gear or the level range of the normal instance, you are there to practise your tanking skills, and ask if everyone is okay with taking it a little slower than they may be used to, to help give you a chance to learn how to do it right. Depending on the group, you may even get some folks willing to offer helpful, non-dickwad suggestions.

And above all else… practise. Be serious about getting better.

Identify the normal situations… what to do when a ranged caster doesn’t come to you, what to do when you’ve got a large group on you and you lose aggro on one mob, learn how to mark, etc. 

Take the time, if you don’t already know it, to familiarize yourself with the different options of crowd control that other classes may have.

As a Bear tank, you can’t silence distant caster mobs to force them to come to you. But you can always ask other players to use their CC, so long as you and others don’t break it. 

You can also do what I do, use an addon like CaelNameplates to see aggro on all mobs, at once without tabbing, and be ready to toss Growl/Feral Faerie Fire on ranged mobs that you see you lost aggro on. Or Feral Charge them when your current target dies. Or whatever.

My point is, if you want to learn to tank, remember you don’t HAVE to LFG a random Heroic in your new full set of Triumph gear, get a Heroic Halls of Reflection, and be left wondering what the heck to do next.

Here’s hoping that things ease out soon, we get more people inspired to tank, and happy tanking!