Rebuttal

Ok so as some of you know I got into it with Dark/Soth over at Clearcasting  during this post in the comments section.  Today Arioch had Dark post his viewpoint.  Instead of posting a really long comment I am going to utilize this blog to reply to his post. ^_^

Don’t look at me like that!  It gives me a blog post 😀

Dark feels that people in heroics should be doing a minimum of 2k dps in heroics.  Thinks there is no reason why everyone should not be taking advantage of all of the resources available online and all the BoE gear out there.  Since DPS is easy, there is no reason they shouldn’t be able to pull off 2k.  If they can’t pull off 2k then they shouldn’t be in heroics and need to stay in regular dungeons until they do.

Now this assumes that every person who hits 80 has already spent a lot of time researching their spec, their gearing needs and has a bank full of gear ready to go.  This is being called min/maxing.  I call it twink leveling.

Your average player is NOT going to do this.  You mostly find this with people who already have a main who can support this kind of money sink.  Yes it is a money sink.  Instead of using quest gear from Storm Peaks and Ice Crown to start regular dungeons you will pay money for BoEs that drop in heroics or raids or even crafted epic gear.  They will have the best gems that are appropriate.  Might not use the epic gems, but usually the blue quality.  Everything will have the best enchants that aren’t the really expensive ones.

Now I am not saying that you shouldn’t have gems or enchants on your gear.  Far from it.  I just think it is a waste to put an epic gem in a piece of gear I am going to replace quickly.  Epic gems go for the minimum of 150g on my server.  That is for both uncut and cut gems.  Half the time you can get the gem cheaper when it is already cut on the AH.  If you have an enchanter then you probably don’t have too much of an issue of getting enchanting materials.  I feel enchants follow along the same lines as the gems.  You don’t need to use the +10 stats on a chest piece that you are going to replace right away.  +8 stats is perfectly viable.  Hell if it is still a blue or a green you could even put +200 health on it without having too much of an issue.  Although I am sure Dark will disagree with me on that one as he has in the past.  Since we are talking about a fresh 80, they most likely will not be exalted with the Northrend factions, but they should be at the least friendly or even honored.  At honored, most of the factions will offer the lower tiered head enchant.  Failing having any rep with these guys, you can always get the PvP ones from WG.  Those are definitely not ideal, but are much better than having nothing.  Stone keeper shards are fairly simple to come across.  You just need to do a couple WG dailies and you have enough.  They even sell shoulder enchants if you don’t have rep with Sons of Hodir or are a scribe.

There is a huge difference between a brand new player coming into heroics and an alt.  New players usually, not always but usually, will not have access to the resources an alt will have.  New players don’t always know that they should go online and look up information on their class and spec.  They tend to not know about the blogging community and the gems that are found in it.  Until someone mentions to them that these resources are out there, they usually won’t go looking.  I look back when I first started playing.  I knew nothing of EJ or bloggers.  I was told about wowwiki by Andrew and that was in reference to picking a class for the game.  I used to use that to tell me what each of the stats did.  I had no idea that spirit was horrible for a rogue.  When I went back and looked at my lower level toons after I had been playing for about a year and saw what kind of gear I had them in I cringed.  At the time though I was thrilled I had such “good” gear for them.  To give you an idea: the rogue had all spirit gear, the balance druid was decked out in agility and the hunter had intellect stacked.  I still can’t believe how stupid those choices were, or that I spent money buying the gear off the AH.  Hell, my ret pally had a one hander and a shield as did my warrior >.>

These are the people who probably don’t do too too bad with their limited knowledge.  Most of them are quite responsive if you give them tips.  I was in a heroic VH with an affliction warlock that was spamming seed of corruption on a single target.  I told him my main was an affliction warlock and would he be willing to get some rotation advice.  He said “sure!”  I told him the rotation he wanted to use, when to use seed of corruption and even some ideas of where to put his teleport.  We got really lucky with the bosses in that run.  We had the dog and the giant alien.  Essentially stand there and dps fights.  His dps on the dog was 1100 using essentially shadowbolt spam.  On the alien he jumped up to almost 1500.  He was thrilled.  He wasn’t that geared out, not even fully ilvl 200.  Just right for heroics.

On the other side of the spectrum you have the people who should know better but don’t care.  These are the ones that piss off most people.  They stand in the fire, they roll need on spellpower plate as a warrior, because “it makes their thunderclap more powerful” and they wont accept help from anyone.  These people have no excuse for their 800 dps in a heroic.  These people usually grow up to become the ones spamming trade and general looking for more for their raid and requiring the achievement and 5k dps for Naxx.  >.<  These are the ones that not only want to be carried, but expect you to do it.  Screw these guys.  They will probably ninja the loot anyway.

What most people (elitists) tend to forget, or choose to forget I am not sure, is earlier in the year when heroics and Naxx was the only thing around, 1-1.5k was the norm.  People who could regularly pull off 2k+ dps were awesome to have in your group.  I remember when I started doing 1600 dps on my warlock.  I was over the moon.  The people I was running with were also proud of me.  I didn’t manage to pull off 2k dps regularly until I got into the T7 level of gear.  My guild didn’t raid so I didn’t have acess to that gear outside of pugging, which I didn’t want to do.  For running heroics though, I was perfectly fine.  We didn’t have issues getting bosses killed.  We might not have gotten the heroics completed in 15-20 mins, but most people didn’t get them completed that fast either.

Fast forward to today.  The badge available in heroics is the T9 level of gear.  If you run regular dungeons, you don’t get badges outside of your first random of the day.  At least I didn’t on my mage.  After you get 30 badges you can get your first piece of tier gear and move up from there.  Just queue up and go.  Some people will say that they have been seeing people in the harder heroics that don’t belong there.  I think people forget that you can still queue up for specific dungeons and the dungeon finder is not necessarily broken.  If you actually stop and think about it for a moment though, you will see that these people are perfectly geared for the instance.  They are doing the standard dps for the level.  You are the overgeared one doing above average dps.  Why are you holding these people to your standards?

It puts an unfair burdon on a game that is supposed to be fun.  I joke about my fail mage because she is a fail mage.  I have no intention of raiding with her.  I just want her to be compitent to run heroics when I get tired of healing and want a change.  I love my warlock, but I need to work on my key bind situation and currently hers is all messed up which makes her not very fun to play.  My mage fills this hole.  I will admit I get lazy in my guild heroics runs and don’t really do as well as I should.  When I am in a total random I put out the very best that I can.  This is on top of being a good mage by providing  a table, buffing and removing curses.  I manage 1600-1900 on bosses, if I am lucky with the hot streaks I can pull off over 2k.  My overall dps is usually around 1800-1900.  For the level I am playing, this is perfectly viable.  Could I be doing more?  Most likely.  My spec isn’t ideal, I don’t have enough crit and a bit too much hit.  However, I am having fun.  I like being able to use a blast wave to knock the zombies off the healer in CoS then follow up with a free flamestrike.  If I went with the raiding fire spec I would have to say goodbye to my fun spells.  I refuse to get duel spec on a dps toon unless I am going to PvP with them, which most likely will not happen.  I play this game to have fun.  I don’t need to be at the top of the meters to have fun.

I just like to be at the top of the meters to piss off Zakk, but hey that is another story ^_^

Ultimately you should do what makes the game fun for you.  For Dark it is having every last drop of dps being wrung out of his toon 😉 for me it is laughing at my fail mage.  I don’t doubt we both have a blast in what we do.  I also don’t think there is a right or wrong to this.  I just have a problem with people telling me I am bad for wanting to have fun.

Heroics are not srz bzns, raids are, but heroics aren’t.

So let’s take the stick out and have fun playing the game that is our addiction.  ^_^