Friday, February 19, 2010

MUT MUT ENVENOM!

Welcome to raiding as a Rogue! I've shelved my priest, because healing is dumb, and healers who heal are boring people. There, I said it. I tried to pretend that staring at Grid (and using Clique to Ctrl and Alt click little boxes) made for exciting gameplay, but at this point I'm pretty much over it. I tend to roll healers because it guarantees me guild invites, and I never get booted from PUGs, but then once I'm firmly in place I pull the ol swicheroo and out comes IXSOBELLE.

MUHAHAHHAHAHHAHHAHHA! FOOOLS!

I'm being kind of a dick, and you gotta take it with a grain of salt. Healing has its place, and I've done/still-do it when the need arises. But, honestly, I just wasn't the best healer there was. I would heal reactively, which means if nobody was taking damage, I wouldn't be spam spam spamming my big CDs. In fact, I tended to kind of take a simple pleasure in just... standing around... during quiet portions of the fight, letting my mana regen. Apparently this was all wrong, and I should have been spamming Circle of Healing every instant it cooled down, whether the raid needed heals or not. I even tried on a few attempts to do just that... to spam Flash Heal into people who didn't need it, and pop CoH every time it was up, and I still came in at the bottom of charts. Friggin Prayer of Mending... I need a big siren attached to my monitor to tell me when it's done and I need to chuck it back out there.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a big chart whore; but in our guild we have these guys who can just CRANK out health, and then there's me. Maybe I just didn't want it enough? Whatever.

Raiding as a healer also had (has) a few big drawbacks. Primarily there's what I like to call my "effective UI":

Basically, this is what a healer sees all raid long. Grid (raid unit frames) and SmartDebuff (decursive/cleansing) are all I'm looking at, and I faithfully watch as little bars shrink and then grow. Oh, and every once in a while I check a little sliver of the screen in the middle, right below my feet, to make sure I'm not standing in fire. Zzzzz.

Now, I won't pretend that DPS is gloriously taking in the entire scene... in fact, on fights like Saurfang, I just tunnel vision my Rogue cooldowns and a few buffs like Hunger for Blood to make sure I'm doing my job effectively. At the end of the run, though, I find I was much more 'useful' to the raid as a whole. I feel like I'm just better at being a rogue than I am at being a priest.

Then again... as shadow DPS, I do alright, too.... ugh. I'm not sure where this post is going.

It's no secret that there's good DPS and there's bad DPS. I think everyone should roll a tank, healer, and DPS just to see the game from every perspective. Not respec one day and pretend that you get it, but really PLAY each role from 1-80. It gives you insight to how annoying it is to put up with the other two thirds of the group. From tanks that don't move bosses out of fire for their melee, to DPS that feel like standing in the fire to finish this 2 sec nuke cast is acceptable.

I think tanking is probably the most exciting (glamorous?) thing you can do in a raid. The spotlight is on you and everybody is reacting to what you do. You set the pace of the run and although a DPS or heal can die and you can still finish the encounter, you can't die, period, or it's over.

DPS have a nice, relaxing groove they fall into, where you're just trying to optimize your CDs and positioning for maximum output... you're mostly just trying to get in the zone, and that's your main priority.

Healing just feels stressful, especially during fights like Festergut where there's so much damage and you need to make decisions from time to time on who gets to live and who to let go, all in a single GCD and ughhfgghahsgasjas

MUT MUT ENVENOM! Ahhhhhhhhh, my life is so much simpler now.... we can get into it later how Mut rogues are two button wonders, but for now I'm just enjoying the simplicity of it all...

12 comments:

Unknown said...

"MUT MUT ENVENOM! Ahhhhhhhhh, my life is so much simpler now.... we can get into it later how Mut rogues are two button wonders, but for now I'm just enjoying the simplicity of it all..."

I play a Feral...I hate you :P

Seriously though one of my officers (and one of our best players in the guild) just switched to his rogue as his main and all he does is laugh because he cranks out great DPS and freely admits he does nothing >.<

I agree with your thought about everyone should roll one of each type of roll and really get to know it. That said I've only ever done the Tank and the DPS because I really don't think I owuld be good at it. I can at times to forget myself on my paladin when soling, or on my druid. So trying to keep others alive just seems like it would go bad, and i'd rather not be the cause of others dying.

Rich said...

i got the 2 piece set for my rogue last night in ICC:

(2) Set: Your Tricks of the Trade ability now grants you 15 energy instead of costing energy.

... and was like GAHHH! ANOTHER BUTTON TO PUSH, WTF?!

(then I realized I was just being a bitch and sucked it up)

Bloodshrike said...

I'm...slowly.....leveling all the character classes on 3 different servers. 10 toons on each server, almost all character classes x3 (my only DK is on my original server).

It is nice knowing what a class should be able to do, so I could offer advice on a run to keep someone from wiping us.

But I don't heal, and my healing classes are usually the lowest levels on each server.

Jan said...

And this is why I loved playing my pint-sized warrior. Of all the roles to fill in WoW, tanking has to have been the most challenging and diverse, even for tank & spank encounters.

:3

Kyir said...

The UI that I had during Naxx required me to look at everything except maybe 4 square inches at the center of my screen.

I miss those days.

Hatch said...

I also feel like I'm more of an asset to my group when I dps. I think it just fits my personality. There are stellar healers or tanks I know who are terrible at dps. And I'm a passable tank or healer, but can't keep up with them. But when it's time to pewpew someone with a giant axe, I'm your man. It's definitely all about getting in "the zone".

And yeah, it really is mut/mut/envenom repeat. I recently went back to combat on my rogue alt just to alleviate the boredom.

That rogue set bonus should just become an innate part of TotT.

New patch notes make Rupture crit, I guess they are trying to go back to the old rotations that used more than one finisher. We'll see how that turns out...

Vulpina said...

Hey if you're doing 10-mans without someone else to put up a bleed for you, you've got to Rupture too.

That really pisses me off when I have to use 3 buttons. wtb a warrior.

Not a kitty druid cause then he'll roll on my shit.

lol. Hey to be fair, rogues are busy making sure they STAY ALIVE with their negative armor when Berserking procs. ;)

Anonymous said...

i liked your comments on healers. i've been playing resto druid since vanilla wow (conwaytwitty/alliance/arthas) and YES it is boring but YEA it is nervewracking.

those are the two essential qualities to it. it's really in between the responsibility level of tank & dps.

Anonymous said...

my point was to say...healer is best for those with high latency.

tanks need to have instant knowledge of the boss/mobs next move, dps need to spam the most buttons they can, but healers do have room to play.

latency makes me play a healer. i live in NYC and there's really no way to get onto nice low-traffic internet so i'm stuck with playing a healer.

going to try my 70 DK as a tank but I bet we fail b/c I can't see wtf is going on.

Unknown said...

"
lol. Hey to be fair, rogues are busy making sure they STAY ALIVE with their negative armor when Berserking procs. ;)"

Not like that's only happening to Rogues :p

Me personally I don't think I would fins playing a Rogue fun with so few buttons to do. While I might bitch about the feral complexity its in good fun. The complexity keeps me engaged. It also lets me gauge how good I am because if you don't know what you are doing as feral you are going to be sitting at the bottom of the meters because you can't keep all the buffs, debuffs, and DoT's up.

Though I must admit ICC most of the bosses are a PITA as feral(or melee in general really) because you end up running around so damn much its easy for crap to fall off. Saurfang and Festergut (think he's the one who does the spores) are the only two were as melee you sort of just sit there and rip face.

Jeremy said...

I tanked for awhile in Wrath; Naxx and Ulduar and Malygos, before slotting made room for me to DPS, and now, the other tank at the time to also DPS.

I must say, it certainly is much less stressful, but more importantly, I personally feel like I am doing more than ensuring I haven't died for 4 consecutive minutes.

Anonymous said...

I don't understanding how people who stare at boxes enjoy healing when they could be looking at the ugly A$$ end of Fester and Rot. I think I determined that they get more pleasure from knowing health bars are full then then do playing the game by clicking boxes.
/says the Shadow Priest that is healing more then DPS atm due to necessity