2nd!

Okay, I'll stop that, for your sake.

There's been a lot of talk about tanking and tanks and LFD queues sucking major ass lately. It basically boils down to LFD sucking major ass lately. And it's all Blizzards fault. Well, not true, it's those damn trolls on the forums too, and blizzard listening to forum trolls. And Steve Allen. Him too somehow.

At this point: spoiler alert, I'm in the minority, and I fully realize that. Apparently. At least among people that post on blogs and wow news columns (already, a minority of the playerbase). So,  I'm in a further minority, a minute minority if you will.

You see, I like games. They're not real. Indeed, thats my FAVORITE part of games, it's almost like they were based on someone's fantasy or some science guy wanted to do somee fictional stuff. OK. that was bad, sue me. Anyways, my point is that depending on who you ask, real life rocks, sucks, or is meh. Count me in for some of the "meh" if you would so kindly, please. Games are where I go to escape, to enjoy, to do what isn't even theoretically possible in real life, or at least what isn't realistically theoretical in real life. The Escape! Escapism! Wooh! And now you have all these muthafuggen snakes on this muthafuggen plane. Er, Tanks in a game. Muthafuggen tanks in a game. I have been quite vocal of late (I am kalamadea in that first link) on various public forums, especially on Blessing of Kings who keeps talking about it. Basically, blizzard has designed their new expansion so poorly that it requires bribing tanks to do what nobody thought twice about last expansion. Y'know, their job. Just so people that can get into a system that used to work just fine.

The problem: forum trolls that complained about easy heroics in wrath. Well guess what, they were PERFECT in wrath. They were the exact cure for what ails ya: an acute lack of badges. -itits.  It's a disease, look it up. Yes, as Azuriel so correctly put it, heroics were and are a group daily quests. Couldn't agree more. Hard heroics are fun at first, with friends. Figuring out how to do it, wiping and learning, getting accustomed to mechanics. Pure fun. Then, like a good raid group, you get it down, and again, and again, and soon you don't need any of the loot and you know exactly how to do it and it becomes farm content. Except now, you have to do that farm content over and over and over again EVERY DAY with new recruits, and you're wiping to farm content. That doesn't drop loot you need. Just for the badges (now points) at the end.

I don't know how many of you went through high turnover rates raiding, but there is nothing more frustrating than wiping over and over again to fights you used to breeze through becuase you have new recruits. OK, there is... it's wiping to heroic trash in LFD. I want my challenges where -I- want my challenges, not in things I have to slog through just to get it out of the way so I can go actually play. I don't want to struggle through dailys, I don't want to struggle through daily heroics for my damn valor points. I want to get in, get it done, get out, and actually play the stuff I want to play in, intead of the stuff I kinda have to play in just to keep up. I want my challenges where I want my challenges, where -I- decide to be challenged. Hrm, not a raid night. Can I solo that old raid? what about that old heroic? Hey, Think we can 3 man tempest keep? Wanna do some BGs? Thats what the game is to me, not wasting my time doing mindless drivel 5 times over becuase one retard can't jump in and out of a beam on Corla. Scratch that, I like mindless drivel (see The Insane title), I like the long grind. What I don't like is completely wasting my time becuase some other random ass that I never met before and will never meet again never hotkeyed his interupt. Helping them used to be great when they were on your server, you had a vested interest in it. Now it has become pointless, there is always ALWAYS a new one, and they usually don't want to listen to you when you tell them that spellpower mail isn't good for a hunter or maybe you shouldn't stack agi as a DK.

Blizzard is now trying to bribe tanks to tank, and not even becuase tanking is hard, it isn't. It's annoying. That is WORSE than hard. Hard you can overcome, annoying just makes you want to stop. I enjoyed tanking in wrath. I was fairly decent at it, judging by party remarks. Not amazing, but decent. You ran in, did your rotation, and WATCHED. That was the key, somebody would pull a new group, bam! Shift and pick them up. taunt as needed. Pat is coming, shift, get the group away from it. DPS goes crazy on a mob you're not concentrating on BAM, taunt, get it under control. Cata is all about setup, downtime before a pull. Mark targets, remember who has what CC and what that CC is able to actually be used on. Mark a kill order (that all the dps succinctly ignore). It's a hassle, it takes forever, and it's annoying.

And that's my next point, Cataclysm content takes forever. Want you're valor points? hope you didn't get any of the dungeons that take an hour+ (oh wait, thats almost all of them), with those aforementioned people that can't be bothered to CC or interupt or follow a kill order. Basic Mobs have more health and hit harder, so dailys take longer to do, and still require you to kill just as many mobs as old expansions did. Or else fight through as many to get to the named elite thats actually kinda fun to fight. Queues take longer becuase nobody wants to tank, and nobody wants to heal. Dungeons take longer once you get in, and by the end, you're kinda drained and forgot you logged in to relax from a long day. It's a vicious cycle, and culminates in many people not wanting to play, let alone join LFD.

Blizzard, I implore you: bring back wrath heroics.