Nerf avoidance to improve tanking and healing

I'll also add that high avoidance plays into this problem too. When tanks can dodge or parry 50% or more of attacks (to pick a random number) then bosses have to hit twice as hard when they do connect.

Source.
GC also quoted someone, part of what they said was this: "The fights are structured so that wether the tank actually needs it or not, a heal needs to be on the way just in case you get hit."

Avoidance is out of control. Blizzard recognized this with Sunwell, but they either didn't realize the full extent of the problem or they did not take actions to fix it. Avoidance is too high but also not useful enough. As the poster stated, the heal has to be cast anyway. Avoidance serves to only hurt players.


Overhealing
Since the heal has to be cast anyway, avoidance just makes it an overheal.

Stats
Avoidance is just another stat. Since it cannot be relied on by the tank or the healer, it is taking away from other stats which would add mitigation or aggro; such as strength or agility. I'll be honest, I feel kinda silly calling agi a tanking stat, but it does add armor and crit, so it fits.

Hitting harder = harder?
Yes. No. Maybe?
Avoiding half the attacks but getting hit twice as hard averages out with no avoidance and regular damage. However avoidance and the boss damage compensation just means increased risk (hitting much harder) without much benefit (since the healers still need to heal, they can't gamble on avoidance).

So what's my brilliant suggestion?
Nerf avoidance heavily and boss damage as well. Cut avoidance from routinely breaking 50% to more like 20%. Shift the stats towards more damage/mitigation such as agility or strength. I don't want to see the avoidance gain from rating reduced, since I want avoidance to be worth the cost, but instead the devs should intentionally add less avoidance to gear.

This will strengthen block tanks significantly. Block will become a stronger source of mitigation. Sure, a 2k block isn't that great when a boss hits for 20k, but what if it hits for 10k? That's not too shabby. It would be even higher if there was more strength/BV and less avoidance.

This would make gear much more interesting. If aggro was nerfed so tanks had to actually fight a bit for aggro, they'd look more towards aggro stats. Heavily nerfed boss damage would also make effective health a far less important concept, meaning that stam stacking would be silly.

Non-block tanks would have around 20-25% avoidance while block tanks would be much lower, 5-10%. The goal is that they'll still avoid more, but no one gets so high that Blizzard has to go back to hugely scaling boss damage to compensate. Overall though, tanks would take more damage than currently.

If there had been no arenas...

I wonder how things would have turned out. I'm going to take them as a total package of ratings, little boxes, powerful PvP gear, and the increased focus on PvP. Maybe that makes the last one the best question, how would things have turned out with less focus on PvP?

Balance
With no microscope to PvP balance, we'd have probably seen fewer PvP buffs and nerfs. This would mean weaker balance. As a result of that, BGs would have even worse balance. If you think DKs are bad now, imagine before all the nerfs. Some balancing would have still happened, but I think a lot less and PvE would have been driving more of the balance, at the potential cost of PvE. Strangely, arenas may have saved BGs.

However I cannot say this is absolute. BGs survived for years with terrible balance. They had rewards, but the time cost was high and I'm not even thinking of the rank rewards. TUF was a pretty powerful weapon, comparable to MC weapons and not too much worse than BWL; however it required exalted with AV and that was a long grind. Other BGs offered powerful gear, with WSG having some of the most powerful pants in the game (at least as I remember), but WSG exalted is possibly one of the longest grinds ever. BGs might have persisted with a new level of terrible grinds, though Blizzard would have to figure out a way to not instantly hand out gear because someone hit exalted at 60.

Gear
Without the powerful gear given by arenas we'd likely see the continuation of the old PvE to PvP. BGs would be dominated by PvErs, not PvPers. Again, arenas may have saved BGs. Or could updated rep items been strong enough? They likely would not have lasted through the addition of new raid tiers.

But without the surge of PvP gear from arenas and the non-set honor pieces, would we have played differently? Arenas, more than BGs, drive players to improve their gear. Without arenas would people have chased PvP gear as much? Would Blizzard have even added PvP gear? Without the gear motivation, BGs would exist only for PvP, not for gear collection. But we'd also see fewer people, since they tend to follow the gear. Arenas saved and/or killed BGs.

Raids
I benefited and/or was indirectly hurt by arena gear. The pieces from it allowed me to get T6 equivalent despite having no chance at all at BT. While some stats were wasted on resilience and excess stam, arenas allowed me to reach a much higher level of gear than I could have otherwise. This saved me from needing to compete for T4 and allowed me much higher damage than I'd have had otherwise. However it also made me care much less about early raids, it removed an incentive to raid.

Could arenas have hurt or helped raiding? They did provide an alternate and often easier source of gear. However that gear might have been beneficial, allowing a player to effectively get the gear from a boss before killing it, allowing for faster and further progression.

...
What do you think would have happened without arenas?

Ulduar, alts, challenges, and frustration

I'd promised to help a friend with Ulduar 10, so last night the raid finally formed and we set out. I originally was going to elaborate more, but I was getting into that thing where I have nothing to say, so I say it a lot. So, summary:
We died a lot. We made progress. It was fun. I was outrolled on a huge upgrade (compared to a much smaller one) to my ret weapon, which would be fine since it's a PUG, except that the higher roll was by a guildy. This did not surprise me much.

I played my druid a bit, got a couple levels. I also played my hunter and also got a couple levels. This morning I joined an Uldaman PUG. The other hunter was stupid and left early on, probably for the best. The shaman left. A priest joined. The ret paladin tank left. We finished the run with a pre-40 shadow priest, my hunter, and a holy priest. It is not practical to tank 8 mob pulls with a ferocity pet. However it was fun and I was really happy when we downed the last boss. It's good to see that some people don't run away from challenge.

In frustration: Ulduar 10 seems much better than 25. I suspect this is because for 10 we picked people rather than struggling to get 25 and ending up going with 23-24, some of whom are terrible. I think I'm done trying to do Ulduar 25 with my guild. I'm giving some consideration to finding a better guild since it seems to be dying.

Further frustration: I don't do well with long family events. Anything past three hours gets annoying. When it gets to be around four and a half and someone says we should get going and then we don't leave for another 45 minutes, that pisses me off. Unfortunately RL does not have the option to pull the network cable and then play an alt.

Tomorrow I'm helping my brother paint his basement. Some people will be going to sales. Aren't we supposed to be spending at least some of the day off remembering people who died for our country?

Have a good Monday.

Today's theme is stamina

JC gems are getting nerfed. Their BoP gems will no longer be prismatic. This means that JC tanks can no longer stack stam and get free stats in the process from the socket bonuses. I find this to be perfectly reasonable. The bonuses are there to discourage stacking one stat to the complete exclusion of others.

[Oops] I forgot to add: min-maxing with professions is a fool's quest. Everything at the top gets nerfed: professions, specs, classes, arena teams. If you change your profession to try to get the best, you are changing your profession to one which will be nerfed. When it gets nerfed, don't complain, you would have been safe originally. Average is average. It moves slowly. The top moves a lot. If you want a roller-coaster, then go for the min-max professions, class, spec, whatever. I'll stick with whatever is fun for me. It is a game after all.

On the subject of stam stacking: it's a bad idea for 99% of tanks. I'm underestimating. But what about effective health? Psh. It matters for only a very few rare encounters and odds are, you're not doing any of them. In fact, it doesn't matter there either. Let's see why. Effective health is about time to live, about how much damage you can take before you die. What's the difference between 40k EH and 41k EH? Not much at all. Unless you're taking damage in 1k doses, the odds are very low that you're going to die with 40k and wouldn't have with 41k. If you're taking damage in 1k doses, you could get by with far less anyway. Odds... those are the reason avoidance stacking gets bashed. Avoidance is a gamble but health is certain, except health isn't certain to save you anyway. Avoidance at least means that on lower burst fights your healers can relax or maybe switch specs to DPS.

This doesn't mean that stam doesn't matter. If you can't take one hit, you're too low no matter your avoidance (okay fine, 100% avoidance rogue tanks worked on a couple fights in BC). After that, what are you going for? Two hits, three, three with an AoE? There are various stepping stones of useful health. Which one are you aiming for? Maybe you can't add it up, so you just stack stam and hope you're at the next one. Fine. However do not assume that extra stam is helping you or your raid. Consider that the 1/100 time when a little more health would have saved you, a less laggy healer would have done the same, or a little more avoidance.

While we're on the subject of health and enough: 22k is enough for early heroics like Utgarde Keep. I switched from my rogue to my warrior to tank H UK. I get the invite and they ask:
"Are you tank specced?" Yes.
"Are you in tank gear?" Yes.
"Your health is really low." It's enough. I tanked this yesterday.
"Did you finish?" Yes...
This was with the engineering gun, BS helm, and pants from H VH. I was well over the defense cap. Compared to what my paladin started with, I was overgeared.

There are times for certain types or amounts of gear. Early heroics require very little gear. Later ones more. Naxx more, Ulduar even more. Heroics don't require much stam, they tend to favor avoidance because few bosses hit especially hard. Trash favors block, bosses favor avoidance and stamina. This has an important lesson: don't try to imitate the gearing strategies of super-high-end tanks and think that will make you better. It won't. They're not gearing for the same content as you and they don't fight the same way.

Okay, tangent time. During some of my readings I found claims that poverty is caused by culture. Okay, not that bad of an idea, I see some truth to it. But the attempt at practical application tended to be fail: reversals of cause and effect. Poor people act trashy while rich people are classy, clearly poor people are poor because they have no class. All we need to do is introduce some class and they'll be all better. It doesn't work this way. Sure there are practical things like "wear pants and don't swear so much during job interviews" but that's not the aim of so many of these analysis of culture and poverty. When I started this I remembered how it was related to the gearing thing... Oh right. Acting like the elite does not make one elite.

Could virtual worlds inspire learning?

I spun this off from my earlier post about crazy Halo 3 kid.

It's disturbing to imagine that video games aren't just worlds to play in, they're worlds to live in. All social ties and entertainment can come from games. When this happens the real world is little more than an inconvenience, a dull place which steals away parts of life.

This doesn't mean I am pessimistic. I find some hope in the alternate realities which we create. Education, for example. Yes I know, video games destroy many students, though I'd argue that they were going to be destroyed by something, and at least games are cheaper than booze. But the great thing about virtual worlds is that they are knowable and people want to know them and encourage others to know them as well. Class mechanics, theorycraft, and rotations are the science and engineering of the virtual world. With luck people will realize that they can understand not only the virtual world, but also the real world. Every theorycrafter is a scientist waiting to realize it. Every person who makes a FAQ about class mechanics is a teacher waiting to realize it. Every person who reads those, especially those who actively seek them out, is a student waiting to realize it.

For more on how virtual worlds may affect the real one, check out this older post.

Halo violence and anomie

Remember that kid who shot his parents because they took away Halo 3? While bored at work I thought of a new way of explaining why he did what he did. Note that explain and justify are completely different. Just because the wind blows one way doesn't mean you have to go rolling along like tumbleweed.

Let's start off with anomie. This term was created by Émile Durkheim. It is the loss of direction felt by individuals when social controls are waning. They lose direction and purpose. It often arises during social transformation.

So what are the transformations? Well as has been claimed ever since people had a concept of family, families are falling apart. I don't care about this for now, though it should be noted that the structure of families has been changing for a long time and varies significantly across cultures. There isn't a one proper way to have a family, instead there is whatever structure we expect to use to create and socialize the next generation. Moving on.

Depending on how much one plays, video games have the potential to create an alternate reality of equal or greater importance to the individual than the real reality which we all are so prone to believe in. People immerse themselves in realities to varying degrees and so place different importance on each. Refer back to my idea of devs as politicians, and then imagine how they also influence the society. Games create societies in themselves along with their own rules. They are their own reality to which a player must adapt. As a minor connection, failing to adapt leads to virtual suicide: quitting.

Halo 3 has its own rules. When these rules change dramatically, those in the world are disturbed by the shift. Now imagine if the rules went away altogether: the game was taken away. Think about if you ceased to be in the real world, or even WoW. What do you do? None of the expected rules exist. How do you act? How do you even exist? The laws of physics may be different. Anomie might not be the proper situation here because it doesn't even begin to describe the change.

It's disturbing to imagine that video games aren't just worlds to play in, they're worlds to live in. All social ties and entertainment can come from games. When this happens the real world is little more than an inconvenience, a dull place which steals away parts of life.

The solution to the extremely rare problem of violence caused by video games (Or is that even certain? Perhaps they are only the trigger) is not o ban them or for parents to force their kids to go cold turkey. That only activates the disorientation. Instead excessive gamers should be drawn back into the world. How? Well start off by finding other gamers to hang out with. No, it won't make them more attached, well it might, but it will also forge real world connections and allow for a transition into reality. It doesn't have to be a complete transition, but enough that they understand the existence of multiple realities and can exist in any of them, especially the real.

I realize I just spent a lot of typing assuming the existence of a real world which we all share. Please set aside the facts of different perceptions and the ideas of philosophy of whether reality even exists and just go with it.

The faces... stop staring at me! Stop smiling at me!

Damn you, cereal boxes with your pictures smiling happy people eating your contents. They creep me out. The eyes never move, and yet they always follow. They smile endlessly, as if they know something you don't, or don't know anything. Why must they taunt me so?

I can turn the box around, but what about when I have to pour more? Someone opened the bag on the wrong side, so I must turn back to the faces, the horror, if I want more cereal. I can turn the bag, but sometimes it settles and get too wide to fit properly, so then I have to shake the box up and down to get the cereal to spread again. I know they are still there on the other side, smiling at my fingers as I hold the box.

Madness is no way to start the day.

Do I not like raiding?

Maybe it's my guild.

I feel like it's a lot of wiping. It's a lot of people being stupid. It's a lot of frustration.

I'm just not feeling the incentives anymore. Learning? I don't feel like we're learning. Gear? My ret gear is in most need of improvement, but since it's only my secondary I have barely any chance to get upgrades. They go to the main spec DPS so they can get small upgrades. Am I being a loot whore? Maybe, after all, it's not like I use it on half the fights. Social? Half the people annoy me, the other half are quiet.

Sorry about all the negative posts lately. I am actually feeling pretty good, except for raiding. Maybe I just don't like raiding. Maybe there are lots of people who don't actually like it, but feel like its what they are supposed to do. I think I'll focus on my alts for a bit and give raiding a break.