Advice for emblem-gear-fueled dungeon speed runs

I don't think it's a controversial statement to say that the new emblem system has changed the face of the five-man dungeon scene, making it near unrecognizable compared to what it once was. Heroics these days are more comparable to running Scarlet Monastery at level 60 than Blackrock Depths. It's safe to say that much of we thought we knew about five-man dungeons has changed, and new assumptions need to replace old ones if we are to evolve to face the new challenges (or lack thereof) that await us on the other side of those instance portals (now replaced by an interface). Many have made these changes subconsciously already, but some may have avoided heroics during this time of great change, and this guide is for them. Note: This guide only applies to heroics, and only to the original Wrath heroics. The advice bellow doesn't apply to raiding or The Frozen Halls.

Tanks:
-Focus on whatever the DPS is attacking.
When it comes to trash, kill order is mostly meaningless these days. As much as you may want your DPS to attack the healer first, you will encounter DPS that just won't want to do it. Rather than getting worked up over them, it's better to just go along with it and focus on causing threat to the enemies they are attacking. Why? Let's say you focus on causing threat to the target you think should die first. This makes it easier for the DPS to over-aggro, so you will lose control of the mobs, making the battle slower. If, however, you focus on what the DPS is focusing on, you stay in control on the situation and the mobs will die faster, making the run faster, and because the mobs won't be running around doing damage to everyone, the run will be more enjoyable in general.

-Focus on AoE threat while fighting trash.
Back when kill order mattered, you would try to cause the most threat to the enemy highest on the kill order while not causing too much AoE threat because your DPS would be focusing on the target of highest priority and not trying to cause massive AoE damage. These days, DPS just want to AoE everything down, meaning if you try to focus on causing most of your threat to one target, you'll end up only holding on to that one target. Though you should use your auto-attacks to cause extra threat to whatever your DPS is attacking (as per the previous piece of advice), you should focus on using your AoE abilities rather than your single-target abilities.

DPS:
-Try to attack what the tank is attacking.
The tank losing control of trash is bad. Sure, with the kind of gear you're wearing, you can probably afford to take a few hits, but if the tank can't keep control of enemies, he can't cause as much damage to them as he could otherwise. As such, the run will be slower. The tank will be causing the most damage to his target, so it helps to focus your attacks on whoever your tank is targeting. You can turn on target-of-target in the options menu to make this easier.

Healers:
-Do some damage if you don't need to focus all of your time on healing.
If you and the tank are in great gear, you probably don't need to spend all of your time healing him and the group. In the olden days, it was considered unthinkable for healers to do any damage to enemy targets. After all, they need to heal when people take damage, and healing causes threat. The DPS can stop doing damage if they cause too much threat, but healers don't have that luxury. Extra threat was just something healers didn't need; it was something they couldn't afford. These days, however, you'd be lucky to break 1% of the tank's threat in an average heroic run. As such, consider dropping some damage on your enemies to make the fights go faster. This will be easier for Priests and Shamans than for Druids and Paladins, of course, since Druids need to leave Tree of Life to do damage, loosing a healing boost in the process, and Paladins can't do much damage without entering melee range, but Priests and Shamans should definitely consider dropping the odd offensive spell when they have nothing better to do. If anything, it will make the run more fun for you while you wait for your tank to drop bellow 95% health.

-Forgo mana efficiency for spell potency.
If you out-gear heroics and are rocking tier-nine or ten gear, you don't need to worry about mana. You do, however, need to worry about wiping. Heroics have become so easy these days that players simply have no patience for wiping. Now, granted, wipes are a near impossibility these days, but you still don't want them to happen. An unexpected development (adds, runners, etc.) can cause a sudden influx of damage, even in these heroics that we have all run before, so you need to stay on top of your game. In fact, being so comfortable with heroics likely leads us to make mistakes we would not have made in the days when they were difficult, if only because of sloppiness. Anyways, your main goal is to avoid a wipe, and knowing that running out of mana is a near impossibility unless you are blatantly overhealing everyone, you should feel free to use your larger, more expensive heals to reduce the chance of a wipe to near zero. It may feel wasteful, but it's only wastefulness if you can run out of whatever you are using.

Should the dungeon finder should put people of similar gear levels together?

As it stands now, the Dungeon Finder tries to create groups whose members have varying levels of gear; it tries to put people who outgear heroics to a ludicrous degree and people who are just starting to gear up together, rather than separate the two. Of course, this frequently ends up with people who are new to level 80 being put with elitist a-holes who could never fathom doing heroics in non-epics, even though we all used to do that. Many people have claimed that the Dungeon Finder should instead put people of similar gear levels together; people who are new to heroics would be put together and people who outgear them would be put together. But is this system really in everyone's best interests, or are we ignoring the risks of such a system?

Let's first look at the benefits of grouping people with similar gear together. People who out-gear heroics would stand to gain a lot from this kind of system. Most people who run heroics these days know that finishing the heroic is a given; the only thing that changes with your group composition is how long it takes to do so. As such, having "under-geared" members in your group only slows you down, but rarely if ever prevents you from finishing the heroic. If the Dungeon Finder put über-geared people together, they would get to breeze right through heroics and get their daily emblems of frost without difficulty. Many of the "best run" stories I hear about heroics are stories of groups where everyone had amazing gear and the trash and bosses died really quickly, so I don't think many players would object to more of their runs being like that.

What about the players that are still gearing up? What do they stand to gain from a system like this? Quite a lot, actually. If a player is just starting heroics, they likely don't have much experience with groups or with their class in group play. Heroics are not just a place to get gear; they also serve as a training ground for people so they can better play their characters when they move into raids. Now, let me ask you something: What does a tank learn when a healer can heal him through all his mistakes and the DPS can survive the damage they take if they overaggro? What do DPS learn when the tank causes so much threat that they don't need to worry about aggro and the healer can heal them through damage they should be avoiding? What do healers learn when tanks barely take any damage and DPS don't need to be saved immediately when they take damage? As it stands now, the Dungeon Finder spoils newer players, allowing them to get gear without the necessary experience and lessons that once accompanied it. That would be different if those new players were put with other new players: they wouldn't be carried through the heroics, so they'd learn something from it, and they'd be spared the hateful tongues of those who think one needs ilevel 232 epics to run heroics.

There's also the issue of intimidation. When a healer can't heal a tank that is chain-pulling half the instance because healers can usually heal him through that or he can't heal the DPS because they are taking damage that they should be avoiding, it's likely to turn him off from heroics. When a tank can't hold aggro because DPS refuse to watch their threat and they then chastise him for it, it's likely to turn him off from heroics. If a DPS are continually kicked from groups because they are only putting out 1.5k DPS, it's likely to turn him off from heroics. However, if people who are gearing up through heroics are put together, these issues would vanish because the potential for their existence would be lost. A new tank cannot chain-pull half the instance; a new healer can not heal the DPS through their mistakes, so he won't be expected to; and a new DPS can't pull aggro off of a comparatively geared tank. In short, players that are gearing up through heroics stand to gain a lot by being put in groups with other people who are gearing up through heroics.

Also, if the Dungeon Finder put people of similar gear levels together, there would be more of a sense of progression in heroics. If a new player starts out in heroics with players who can carry him through it, the heroics are already easy for him, and he'll probably get bored pretty quickly. If, however, he first runs heroics with people like himself, heroics will be challenging for him like they were in the early days of Wrath of the Lich King. As his gear gets better, he'll be put with people with progressively better gear, so the difficulty of heroics will go down accordingly, rather than starting easy for him when he first steps inside of them. Under a system like this, getting gear would make heroics easier for the player, rather than making him less of a burden to his groups. It would be a form of positive progression, rather than negative progression.

Now that we've gone over the easy stuff (the benefits of this system), what would the drawbacks of such a system be? One drawback for the more geared players would the potential for the widespread impatience among better-geared players to get worse. After all, no system is perfect, and people who are just gearing up would at some point be put with elitists. If the more geared players got used to being in very speedy groups, the less-geared players would be even more abused than they are now when they are inevitably put with more geared players. Rudeness is already an issue in heroics, but a system like this gives it the potential to become even worse. Still, considering just how bad rudeness had gotten in spite of mixed groups, I don't think it could get much worse. Would people who are gearing up suffer any ill effects from this system? None that they don't already suffer; they'd just suffer them less frequently.

So, in the end, everyone benefits from the mixed-group system being abolished in favor of a system by which people are put in groups with people in similar gear. It seems that the newer players would benefit the most, which is ironic, considering that the mixed-group system was probably put in place to benefit them.

Where is the line between "playing your way" and being a burden?

In the constant (supposed) conflict between casual and hardcore players, one argument that frequently comes up from the casual side is, "I play this game to have fun, so let me play it my way!" This reply is used in a wide variety of situations, from suggestions on how the casual could better contribute to the raid to base taunting by hardcore players who think that casuals are somehow inferior to them. The advent of raids that are easy enough that casuals can actually run them has brought these two groups together more frequently than they have ever been together before, so this kind of conflict has begun to arise more and more. Who has more ground to stand on in this debate?

One of the arguments I see frequently cited by those arguing that they are only playing there was is that WoW is "just a game." I have already addressed this argument in a previous post and found it to be untrue. WoW is more like a sport (at least in the group setting): people come together to cooperate towards some competitive goal (even in PvE, the raiders are still competing against the raid bosses) for the sake of recreation. When you look at it that way, it's easy to see why someone who wants to "play their way" could bring the whole team down and make it less fun for the other people to take WoW more seriously. After all, some people find fun in success and measure their success by whether or not that raid boss was downed, so a more casual player could easily make that more difficult if they aren't pulling their weight. In that case, the river flows both ways: casuals often accuse hardcores of ruining their fun by taking the game too seriously, but hardcores can just as easily lob the accusation that casuals ruin their fun by not taking the game seriously enough.

Who's right? We can't say; WoW is a game, and how one plays it is completely up to each individual player. No one has the right to say that one person "should" play one way or another, so it seems the only surefire solution would be for casuals and hardcores to not raid together. However, in the grand scheme of things, this would do nothing to resolve the underlying issues that cause this kind of conflict in the first place. If the real source of the conflict is the idea that one group is preventing the other from enjoying the game, then the only thing that can really resolve this kind of conflict is for both sides to be more accommodating of the other. As they say, treat others as you would like to be treated.

Are our actions in WoW meaningless?

As those of you who found my blog through wow.com know, I am currently reading World of Warcraft and Philosophy. Though the book as a whole is very interesting, there is one point in it that has stuck with me ever since I read it: we give our lives meaning based on how we change the world, and because the world of WoW is almost impossible to change in any meaningful way by player action, everything we do in WoW is meaningless.

I think the most poignant example of this point is the Argent Tournament daily quest You've Really Done It This Time, Kul. For those of you who do not have access to this daily, it involves killing members of the Cult of the Damned for keys to unlock the cages holding Kul the Reckless and four other crusaders whom he has taken with him to fight the Cult of the Damned. Unlike the other Silver Covenant Argent Tournament dailies, this one is not on a rotation with any others, meaning you do it every day. Every day, you go free Kul from his cage, and sometimes he says, "Thank the Light. I'll never do anything this foolish again." And then, the next day, he is back in that cage, and you need to rescue him again.

Many dailies are the same way. No matter how many times you do Taking Battle To The Enemy, the number of cultists in Icecrown is never reduced. No matter how many times you do The Ghostfish, Marcia will never discover the secret of that Phantom Ghostfish, as evidenced by the fact that she will likely send you out to do the daily again. No matter how many times you do Vile Like Fire!, those buildings will never actually burn down. Dailies pretty much involve players doing things over and over again with no perceivable impact on the game. Not one. The Argent Colosseum was built in spite of the fact that I'm pretty sure no one did the dailies that involved collecting materials for their construction. The obvious exception is how the Sunwell Plateau dailies unlocked the next round of dailies as people completed them, but this is the only exception I can think of.

Think, also, about quests that send you out to kill an enemy that is threaten the town. I am sure many players will be familiar with the quest Wanted: "Hogger", in which you set of to kill a gnoll who... well, the quest never exactly makes it clear why he is a threat to Stormwind, but he must be. He is an elite, after all. Anyways, you get together with your friends, you kill this guy, and you go to get your reward. And yet, if you go back to that area, who do you find? Hogger! Yep, he has respawned, and your efforts to do Stormwind a favor have yielded nothing. Look at the first quest human receive when they start out: Kobold Camp Cleanup. You go kill those kobolds as Marshal McBride requested, and yet they are still there when you return for the next quest. I could go on and on, but any quest you do will have no real effect on the world around you, save the Wrathgate questline in Northrend and the series of quests in the Death Knight starting zone. (Both of which, you may notice, are often considered the best questlines in the game. Coincidence? I think not.)

Instances are almost identical in this regard. Suppose you and four of your friends go through Deadmines. After much trial and tribulation, you kill Vancleef. It was hard work, but you now have the satisfaction of removing that threat to Stormwind. Or do you? The next day, you see some people talking about how they are looking for more adventurers to help them go into the Deadmines and take down Vancleef. But I already killed him, you may say to yourself. Curious as to what they mean, you decide to follow them into the instance. The reappearance of the henchmen you killed before him gives you the impression that something is amiss, and lo and behold, there he is. The man himself, standing as if you have never killed him. Substitute any boss in any raid and it is the same case.

In short, almost nothing we do in WoW actually impacts the world itself, and thus, it is meaningless. We do get gear and experience for what we do, but that only affects our characters, not the world around us. Keep in mind that meaningless doesn't mean pointless. Our actions in World of Warcraft are fun and enjoyable, and for that reason, they have a point. I am only arguing that within the world of WoW itself, they are meaningless.

Is that a bad thing, though? If it weren't for all of the mechanics discussed above, WoW could not exist as a game. Dailies need to be repeatable by their nature. Enemies killed for quests need to respawn so that other people can kill them and complete the quest. Instances need to reset for the same reason. If instances were one-time things only, then it would be more and more difficult to find groups for them as the years went on. How many alliance players do you know that haven't run Deadmines? In other words, our actions in WoW need to be mostly meaningless, or else WoW couldn't exist as a game.

But is WoW doomed to meaninglessness? I think not. There are certainly things Blizzard can do to make our actions feel like they are having some effect on the world. Having more questlines like Wrathgate would be a start. Then we would feel like our efforts are actually changing Azeroth in some way. As for dailies, perhaps the number of enemies we need to kill or the number of objects we need to collect could go down as we do the daily. Imagine, for example, you go into the Argent Tournament area, and you pick up Taking the Battle to the Enemy. After you do it for five days, you notice that the number of cultists you need to kill has gone down to fourteen. After five more days, it goes down to thirteen, etc. Heartened by this fact, you keep doing the daily until, after twenty five days, you only need to kill ten. When you reach this point, the quest text itself changes. When you first started, the quest text read like this:

The coliseum is perched in the most dangerous part of the world, adventurer. The territory we've taken from the Scourge has been paid for in blood and misery, yet the enemy continues to strike back with a seemingly limitless army. To make matters worse, this undead army is supported and assisted by mortal sympathizers, the Cult of the Damned.

Go forth into Icecrown and slay any cultists you encounter.

Instead, it now reads like this:

When we first came here, adventurer, we were under constant threat from the Scourge and its mortal sympathizers. Thanks to your efforts, however, we have managed to reduce the threat they pose. Our work is still not done, though; go forth into Icecrown and keep killing those cultists.

Once again, you are further motivated to keep doing the daily. After fifty days, you now only need to kill five cultists to complete the daily (it wouldn't go any lower than that). Now the quest text has changed again.

We can't thank you enough, adventurer. Thanks to your tireless efforts, the Cult of the Damned is hardly a threat to us anymore. Still, we cannot rest, for if we stop our efforts now, they will only regain strength. You know what to do.

So you keep doing this daily, but you soon grow bored with it. You stop doing it each day, and upon going back to do it after thirteen days, you are horrified to discover that the number has gone back up to seven. After all, if you aren't keeping those cultists in line, who will?

To make this more general, I think it would give our actions some meaning if dailies rewarded you for doing them by becoming easier as you do so. However, to keep things fair, they would become more difficult if you neglected them. They would never go over their original amounts, though, which would never be made unreasonably high to account for the fact that it would eventually be reduced.

What about raids? Can anything be done with raids to make them feel meaningful? I doubt it, unless you are ok with running a raid only once. Perhaps a boss could say things like, "This time, I will not fall!" before you fight him, but there is no way to give raiding meaning without changing it in some fundamental way. If you make the bosses easier after they are defeated (this makes sense, since being defeated would, in fact, make them weaker if they needed to use all of their resources to come back to life), then players would complain about not being able to face the "real" boss more than once. It's a shame Blizzard nixed the old model of unlocking new dungeons by completing old ones, since that would give your character's actions in raids some sort of meaning. Perhaps they could make the final bosses in each raid drop an item that starts a quest to become attuned to the next dungeon, and it would be lootable by everyone. I would consider that a happy medium between the old system of attunement and the new system of accessibility.

Before ending this post, I want to bring up again that just because our actions are meaningless within the world of WoW doesn't mean that they are meaningless in our own lives. They bring up happiness, they allow us to socialize with people while playing a fantastic MMO, they provide a diversion from life's drudgery, and they allow the creation of a greater community of WoW players. Any time spent playing WoW is only meaningless from your character's perspective; it is not meaningless from your own.