#1 - Aug. 18, 2011, 10:52 p.m.
'Been playing WoW since November '05. Have enjoyed every expansion, including the current one. I've watched as WoW has become less challenging and more challenging in various ways, and overall it seems like the game has had a good direction.
With the new (recent) hotfix to threat, however, for the first time I have to wonder about Ghostcrawler and his team, and about the future of WoW. Making tanks not have to work for threat (other than in the first 2 seconds of a fight or when an add joins, just to pick it up / get "a hit or two" in) will make things pretty boring for those of us who enjoy challenges. I have 3 tanks and I love working hard to stay ahead of the most geared dps -- and I can do so even if those dpsers outgear me by an entire raid tier. It's not easy, but it's doable. Given vengeance, tanks who have trouble staying ahead of their dpsers over long fights, even when the dpsers way outgear them, must not be working very hard other than in the first couple minutes of the fight. This is true; any solid tank who really pushes it in a boss fight knows this.
One of the reasons Ghostcrawler quoted as to why they felt this change to threat was necessary was to make it easier for Dungeon Finder pugs to succeed. The example he gave was a group with an undergeared tank fighting to hold threat against overgeared (raid geared) dpsers. He argues that it's not about skill, it's only about numbers -- no matter how hard the tank works to hold threat, those raid-geared dpsers will out-threat him and thus the group will not have fun.
Okay, I hear that arguement, but ever since the early days of WoW, part of the "skill" of playing a dps toon has always been that we need to adapt to situations -- if you are undergeared, you work harder and do what you can to help your healer's mana pool; if you are over-geared (compared to the tank), you know when to back off. "Backing off" does not mean "throttling yourself". In a 5-person Dungeon Finder pug, it means waiting a couple of seconds before bladestorming, or waiting until the undergeared tank has built some threat before popping your "one-shot macro" on the mob / boss. So this hotfix to threat, making it nigh impossible for dpsers to pull off of even an undergeared tank, actually DUMBS THE GAME DOWN for dpsers -- meaning, when we are dpsing in a raid, we won't have to even think about threat. This makes the game less challenging -- i.e. more boring -- i.e. makes it so that while on dps toon we won't have to use our brains as much. And tanks might get bored with such a model, too; making all tanks have the equivalent of Death Strike might be fun, but perhaps not challenging enough to make up for the loss of risk -- the risk that if you slack off while tanking, that mage might just pull the boss off you. (But to be fair, with Veangeance as it was before the hotfix, the tank would have to slack quite a bit! And oh, mages have Invisibility!!)
On a sarcastic note, I suppose the positive side to this will be that not having to worry about threat will free up action bar space for PvE dpsers -- No longer will you ever have to feign death, vanish, feint, cower, fade, soul shatter, pop invisibility, bubble, or use hand of protection or salvation as threat dumps / delays, ever again! Not to mention misdirect or use tricks of the trade! So (if you're a die-hard PvE'er) you might as well just clear those icons from your action bars to make room for more one-shot burn macros! That way you won't have to think as much while pew-pewing at bosses; you can just nuke away at the same rate from start to finish. BOOM! MASH BUTTONS MOAR!! BOOOM!!! BIG BADA BOOOM!!. 'Seems like that's the new direction for WoW, no? Making sure that Dumbgeon Finder Tool Pugs can kill stuff mindlessly is taking the top of the developers' priority list, and the rest of us who enjoy a challenge just have to sit and watch as the game gets easier and easier. Is there any wonder WoW's world-wide numbers are dropping?
Seriously though, Ghostcrawler et al, please think this over. There might be a less "dumbing-down" method of solving the problems you perceive in the current game (for both raiders and dungeon finder pugs).
Thanks
