Hello once again everyone and welcome to the third instalment of Semi-Harcore and my ongoing rants on tanking, raiding, and World of Warcraft in general.  This week instead of one big topic there are a few smaller ones that I want to talk about and address.  In no particular order, other than that in which they appear here, they are: More CC, Paladin tanking in Cataclysm, bad levelling tank practices, Nationality, and English vs. American.

More Crowd Control

A few weeks ago I wrote about the lack of CC in the current game and how I believed that we should see less AoE tanking in Cataclysm.  The point was essentially that we should bring back CC and skill to the tanking game in WoW.

Not that anyone with the name “Messiah” would ever try to imply they have any control, influence or say over anything, BUT the following was posted last week on the official forums:

Our goals are that you won't be spending as much of your tanking time AE tanking in Cataclysm as you did in Lich King. A second goal is that when you are AE tanking, you should use different abilities than when you are single-target tanking. A third goal is that when you are AE tanking, you should use more than one (or maybe two) abilities. None of those seem contradictory.

HURRAY!!!  I can’t wait to see what exactly gets changed and implemented, as anything has got to be better than the “round ‘em up and consecrate” current method of tanking.

Paladin Tanking Changes

A lot of information was released recently about the class changes and Tanking Paladins are not immune from pending changes, nor would we want to be. One of the biggest changes was actually already discussed as my last column’s topic where I discussed the new Vengeance mastery, so we can skip that one.   There are a few others to talk about briefly though: Blinding Shield, Guardian of Ancient Kings, separate rotations for AoE and single target threat, and holy shield.

Hopefully we will not be as big of a wuss as Eadric once we get his shield

Blinding Shield is a new ability that will blind anyone nearby that is looking at you when activated, much like Eadric the Pure's ability Radiance in Trial of the Champion.  This ability could be extremely useful for mitigating initial damage spikes when AoE tanking.  It could also be useful in PvP to give you some time.

Guardian of Ancient Kings for tanking Paladins will give you the ability to summon a temporary guardian that will absorb some of the incoming damage.  This essentially provides another cooldown ability and brings us more in line with DK’s and Warriors who have additional cooldowns compared to us.

Next up Blizzard has talked about having two separate rotations for tanking, one for AoE and one for single target.  If you read more into the Cataclysm Paladin change notes that were posted you can see two potential ability changes that could allow this.

The changes that I see affecting our rotations are the inclusion of both Crusader Strike and Holy Shock as core abilities rather than being gained through talents for only retribution and holy builds.  Both of these abilities are instant abilities and cause either high damage or holy damage, meaning they could be excellent single target threat generators.  Since nothing has been talked about that could be an additional AoE ability though, we will have to wait and see on an AoE rotation.

Lastly Holy Shield will have its charges removed and will instead grant its bonus non-stop for its duration.  This doesn’t change its ability much most of the time as you only ever ran out of charges during extremely large pulls.  However, for those large pulls it will now consistently grant damage mitigation, which should help.

Overall I don’t see anything exceptionally game changing for Paladin tanks.  We are currently solid tanks and look to continue to be solid tanks with a few additional toys at our disposal.

Horrible Levelling Tanks

The last thing I really need to address in this column is a practice that I have seen occurring far too often now, and one that needs to stop.  Not having much to do in the game at end level since ICC is now a one night raid, I decided to spend some time levelling an alt.  I’ve always wanted to play a Shaman, but never got around to it, so decided to dig up a mid 20’s level alt I left long ago.

Having never levelled a character since the random LFG instance feature came into the game, I figured it would be cool to try it out while levelling.  Sure enough it adds a ton of interest and variety to the levelling process.  While I am not sure it is any faster, it sure feels faster. Anyway on to the topic at hand, while levelling from just 24 to 40 I have come across at least 6 players that have been tanking with two handed weapons.

Remember Tanks, this is what a shield looks like, use one! Unless of course you are a Druid or DK.

Remember now this is sub 55, meaning they are not Death Knights.  My first reaction was to send them a polite “I think you forgot to switch into your tanking gear and weapon” message.  What I got back was a little disconcerting to say the least. I was told in all cases that they did not have tanking gear, or even shields.  They flat out stated, “I signed up as a tank to avoid the 30 minute DPS queue”.  WHAT???

I tried to reason with them and explain that it doesn’t work that way, they signed up and were accepted as the tank for the group, they needed to tank.  They simply said, too bad this is what I’m doing I won’t wait 30 minutes.  They had no respect for the group or even for anyone else’s time.  Many flat out say, as long as the healer does their job and heals I’ll live, having no understanding about damage and tanking mechanics.

As a result of these completely ignorant, asinine players the rest of the group was left with a horrible set of choices.  The only choices are wait 30 minutes to kick the player in which case you could probably already be done, leave the group and wait 30 minutes to re-queue thereby penalizing yourself, or complain to Blizzard and wait for probably nothing.

While we were able to make it through in all cases it was extremely painful as a healer since they had no avoidance, health, or defensive talents. In the few cases where I was DPS I had to constantly help the group’s healer as the incoming damage was just too much for them to keep on top of.

This practice must stop.  I can think of two possible solutions that could work.   The first, and probably the best would be for Blizzard to build in a check to see if the player signing up to tank actually has tank gear or a tank spec. I’m actually surprised it’s not there already, as this is a horrible abuse of the current queuing system.  The second option is to allow complaints from players over this to result in bans for the offending players.

Please if you see anyone doing this, report them and make Blizzard more aware of the issue.

Nationality and English

I have had to address this way too many times to count via email, so figured I’d settle it once and for all here in my column.  In case some people haven’t noticed I speak, well in this case type, English, not American!  Please, do not send emails pointing out spelling mistakes for things like colour, honour, centre, defence, realize, paralyze, or even levelling, or controllable.  They are all perfectly correct and accurate spellings of the words. 

I am Canadian!

Feel free to send spelling corrections for other words though, as our public school system sucks up here almost as bad as it does down there and my spelling really is atrocious even after being spellchecked.  For everyone not aware though, we speak pretty much the same language here in Canada as in the States, but have stuck closer to the original and probably more formally correct UK English, although we have started to slide and sometimes use the Americanized English forms as well. 

For anyone interested in know a bit more about the differences, you can find them here on Wikipedia or listen to a more succinct version provided by one of the best beer commercials ever made here: I am Canadian!, or the William Shatner version here.

Ok, now that you all have something else to blame Canada about, back to your regularly scheduled WoW content…