First Thoughts on No Man's Sky

No Man's Sky is apparently another good example of how terrible massive hype can be for your product. It's true that few things live up to hype that big (personally I don't think Star Wars VII did either) but I think it was difficult for NMS not to be as hyped as it was. How can you avoid to get peoples mind boggling when you tell them that you've got 18 quintillion procedurally generated planets to play around with in a game that is bigger than the actual universe? Can you really be at fault then when people don't at the same time realize that procedurally generated sort of is the opposite of carefully crafted which in turn might mean not-so-well-thought-out? Spore will forever be the prime example of what happens when someone tries to cram everything into a game without making sure that anything of it is actually fun. We already know minimalistic can be fun - just look at Tetris. Maximalistic seems to be harder to grasp.

Fortunately personally, I wasn't too hyped about NMS. Excited and interested for sure, but I had a feeling already pretty early on that if a truckload of procedurally generated content was all they were going to boast about, it wasn't going to hold up for very long (this doesn't mean I am cleverer than everyone else, just more pessimistic). But like I said, I was interested nonetheless. Partially for the technical feat of it and partially because it still was a game about exploring space. Since Escape Velocity is one of my all-time favorite games and this sounded like a much, much larger 3d version of it, NMS was already early on on my radar to keep track off (I have since also checked out the actual spiritual successor to Escape Velocity, Endless Sky, but that is matters for another post, possibly).

Before I decided to buy it I actually watched a couple of reviews of it. I often do this if I am about to spend more-than-usual amounts of money on a game I am not entirely sure about yet (Pokemon games always have a free pass). The reviewers pretty much confirmed what I thought would be the problem with the game and since my interest to experience it myself was still there I decided to buy it, eventhough reception was somewhat mild. About a week ago I bought it, second hand actually, and have since spent a couple of hours with it. And so far it is pretty much what I expected from it.

A lot of other reviewers have already summed it up pretty well - It's difficult to put your finger on NMS. Is it fun or not? The problem isn't the hype as such - I think it deserves to be hyped for the technical feat that it is. Why everyone seemed to think this would automatically also make NMS awesomely fun to play is beyond me. I think the problem with NMS boils down to the fact that you can be so easily overwhelmed by it. It is huger than huge and no person will ever even come close to discovering all the planets there is. Everyone ever playing probably won't come close to it. One might wonder why you should even bother making a game that big, or maybe why you as a player should even bother going around doing discoveries at all? In almost every other game any area the player can go to has been designed to further the experience of the game - you can't think of NMS that way.

If we get down to the facts of it, gameplay wise I think it has received more scorn than it deserves (mind you I have only tried the ps4 version, I've heard the PC version had some troubles of its own). I heard a lot of complaints about the inventory management and the UI in general, personally I don't think it's that big of a problem. Yes you are required to be pretty spartan in your collecting, in a game that is all about gathering. It seems like an odd design choice and I can agree it would've been nice to at least be able to store items somewhere else than in your very meager exosuit and spaceship storage (although upgradeable). Everything you want and need to craft requires different components and you only really have space to focus on one of them at the time, especially counting in the fact that you need to run around with materials to power up your suit and mining tool as well.

I don't find this a huge problem however, it just means you need to do some careful planning. Make sure you know what you need and go out to collect only those things. So what if you come across a very rare item/material along the way, or something you know you need for some other item? Leave it, mentally map it or just be ok with the fact that you can't pick up everything you see. NMS is a lot about "be ok with it". And not in a "the game is badly designed so deal with it or leave" kind of way but "this is not the game you were looking for, but there is actually an entertaining game here so take it for what it is or leave" kind of way.

One reviewer was annoyed by the fact that every planet seemed littered with artifacts, items and structures left around by other alien creatures. It made it feel like every planet had already been discovered, so what was the point of even going there? This is a simple case where a choice of fun game design trumped over realistic game design (like how even the most realistic of survival games never require you to take a dump). Personally I can't see any fun whatsoever in landing on a planet that is literally just material to collect. Part of what makes a planet interesting is to see if there is intelligent life and if they left something behind. My critique would rather be that it's all very samey, and I will get back to this. So I agree that it gets repetitive, but I disagre that there shouldn't be anything. That would in the end become even more repetitive.

Graphically I also think it has its ups and downs. On the one hand the orange glow of space really bothers me. Is it to make the planets easier to see? Is it just in my part of space? Am I in some sort of orange nebula? I wanted the darkness of space and the orange color just makes it look like I am flying around in carrot soup. I hate it, in fact.

Space apparently also available in pee yellow

On the other hand I've walked for minutes just taking in the scenery. On the first planet I landed on, a comparatively nice planet it turns out, I found a cave system close to my space ship where I just wandered around looking at things, pretending I was actually there. It was very serene, beautiful and definitely fun. Right then and there I did feel like a true explorer, transcending even the feeling I had when first running around in Skyrim, following map markers and being curious about what was around each corner. Here I had an entire planet for myself (basically), massive cave systems, gorges, cliffs, trees, beautiful flowers and weird looking creatures to explore. At that moment I even felt like I didn't need to leave that planet at all. That was a rather important feeling, it turns out.

And it is a truly awesome feeling when you look up at the sky, see a planet or moon far away in the distance, hop into your spaceship, lift off and fly there. Imagine if you could just decide from one moment to the next that you wanted to go to the Moon (and the Moon wasn't just covered in sand, but also other stuff), and then go there. As you slowly rise up from the planet you're leaving, look down and see it all spread out under you - it slowly dawns on your that you just left a planet, it's actually the size of a planet! And you've been there, on a tiny part of it and left a tiny mark on it. There is sooo much more of that planet to explore, so why are you already moving on?

This is a fundamental question in NMS that you should think very carefully about. Unless your first planet turns out to be a pain in the ass, survival-wise, consider spending a lot more time there than the game prompts you to. Getting your spaceship fly-worthy takes less than an hour, unless you wander off like me. But is the grass really greener on the other side? I haven't played NMS long enough myself to verify this, but I have feeling that the more planets you visit, the less fun they become. The more will the procedurally generated fact of the world grate on you and the more anonymous they will become. Oh look another dog-dinosaur looking animal. Another cave system, another set of green flowers. Another block that gives me iron, just like the other block on that other planet that gave me iron. It's comes down to whether you prefer a life of one-night-stands or a few lovers that mattered. Maybe you shouldn't be so quick to move on and take some time to savour where you are.

NMS in a close update?

NMS is a very lonely game. You'll meet other aliens, which don't feel real at all and that you don't care anything about so it can be very daunting that you are basically all alone in that massive game. I think the game would've truly profited from being a multiplayer game, because eventhough Hello Games has said gamers can interact with eachother, this doesn't seem to be true. If it should be something like Eve Online or maybe like the multiplayer in Dark Souls, I don't know. But I would've loved some sort of hub where I could get some interaction from people, yet retain the possibility to fly off to a lonely part of space whenever I felt like it. NMS needs a civilized part, a part of the Universe where there are cities (or at least a city) and not just rocks and grass. This, I think, could make the game truly amazing.

I haven't visited overly many planets myself so far, maybe five. And eventhough they visually look fairly different they play out almost identically. Some might be more difficult to play on because of environmental issues, but there are almost the exact same things to do. The soup might be mixed differently but it has the same ingredients. Because of this you are just as likely to find something exciting around the corner as on a planet 100 lightyears away, for better or worse. If you jump from planet to planet hoping the game will offer more, that is when you will be sorely disappointed. If you go on a treck to find the fun the first couple of planets couldn't fulfill, you'll have a bad time. The game offers you basically everything it has straight from the get-go and I don't think that has to be a bad thing, it's just unconventional and takes some getting used to. Like mentioned, it might make you wonder why even bother with 18 quintillion planets in that case, but they're just there. They don't make the game better or worse, there's just more of it.

Dark Souls + Easy Modes = True?

I read an interesting blog post the other day, and the first few paragraphs immediately struck a chord with me;

"I understand the game [Dark Souls] on an intellectual level, and in my first play session years ago I basically zipped all the way to the Taurus Demon without much pause. I’m not bad at the game, but I certainly don’t possess the personality traits that would make me excel at it. I’m often impatient. I don’t like to lose progress. I don’t enjoy doing something over and over again in order to learn how to do that one thing (I bounced off Bloodborne for this reason).

However, I love the way the game is put together. I love the little story moments. I love the characters. The relationships between those characters, the ruins, and the grand narrative of the world are balanced in such a perfect way. But, due to the way I like to play games, I mostly have to get those things packaged for me from Twitter convos, wiki readings, and channels like Vaati’s."

(The entire blog post is very good and you should definitely read it, I don't know what my post can add to the discussion really but what the heck).

This could've just as well been a description of my feelings for Dark Souls, and not just Dark Souls, but a ton of other game series I love and respect, yet don't have the patience or skill to play. So I can definitely sympathize when I hear players ask for an easy mode for a game, and maybe especially a game like Dark Souls. Do I think Dark Souls should have one however? Yes and no. Let me try to explain.

I try to avoid Easy Modes whenever games have them, but I'm not ashamed of going there if I feel like the game is giving me too much of a hill to climb. Geneforge is a good example of this as it allows the player to change difficulty mid-game if necessary. Starting up a game I am worried Easy Mode will remove from the experience as in if the game is too easy, I won't enjoy it. The same goes if a game turns out to be too hard however. I think this is where the first disctinction comes in - easy, normal and hard mode are just names that try to convey difficulty relative to eachother. Just because it's easy mode doesn't mean it's easy nor does hard mode have to be hard. Some games have easy mode as "normal mode" in different regions for instance, showing what the developers think of the intended audience gaming skills. The important thing to remember is that the varying modes are there to allow for individuality since we perceive challenge very differently. This is why I often dislike when game developers actually change content depending on which game mode you play, for instance making easy mode shorter or have other modes have different endings. I realize this is to incentivize people to try the game on harder modes because why would anyone play the difficult modes if you can have it all on the easier modes? This basically boils down to a discussion on whether players can be trusted to manage their own "fun level" in a game - essentially relevant for this post but still a bit of a sidetrack that I will forego for now (although my answer would probably be "no").

Challenge in a game is a huge factor to how fun it is - maybe not 100% of the fun, but definitely important. But how big a factor? If you had asked me, and probably a lot of other people, ten or even five years ago, I think most would've said that it is the single most important factor. Graphics and story were important too, sure, but people play games to overcome challenge and get that satisfactory kick of succeeding, right? Then came the interactive story games (again, technically) or as they were lovingly nicknamed - walking simulators. Anyone who has played The Walking Dead, Gone Home or To the Moon know that the challenge factor has been turned down to almost non-existant, something that would probably have been unthinkable not that long ago. Yet these games have been very well received and although debates have gone high and low on whether they should even be called games, one thing is clear - people have fun with them. So is challenge really that necessary for a game? Can any game be made into a walking-simulator for the people who prefer to experience the story rather than the challenge?

This is where opinions differ but first a quick sidenote. There is another argument being held up as a reason not to add easy modes to certain games - artistic integrity. I respect artistic integrity, but personally I don't think it should ever stand in the way of having fun with a game. I wonder if the people who shout about artistic integrity when people want easy modes in a game, or change the gender of Link, have never ever used a mod for any game they've played? Have they played a DotA game or Counter-Strike perhaps? Reimaginings of existing content is hardly a thing of evil and I doubt the gaming world would be any way better off without it. So when some of these people say that the way the game was originally designed is the only way to enjoy it, I tend to just think they're narrow minded. But it's rarely that simple and I can see where they're coming from. So let's wrap it back up to where we were, because these two issues are related;

Can any game be made into a walking-simulator? Can a game be played in any possible way and still be the same game?

Playing differently doesn't have to be bad.

See when I first read the above blog post I totally agreed. I would love an easy mode to Dark Souls. My SO, who is a massive Dark Souls fan and belongs to the arrogant pricks that likes to tell people that it's "not that damn hard", made me try it out. And I instantly understood what he liked so much about it, equally fast I put down the controller and told him it just wasn't for me. Just as the blogger mentions I get very quickly bored with bashing my head against a wall and find absolutely no enjoyment in repeating my actions over and over. My problem is that the satisfaction I feel from finally overcoming a huge obstacle in no way makes up for all the frustration I felt overcoming it (funnily enough this was never an issue in WoW where I could wipe 100+ times on a boss without getting bored, but that's matter for another post). I even get frustrated with how easily I get frustrated. I hate failing too much and I don't enjoy winning enough to play those sort of games, simple as that.

This unfortunately makes me miss out on so many good games, Dark Souls being just one of them. Basically any NES era game is out of the question and most platformers/puzzle games as well. So at first I was all go for adding an easy mode to Dark Souls. But then I started thinking about what would happen if I did the same thing to other games I like but don't have the patience to play. My first thought went to the Resident Evil series of which I am a huge fan but have never finished a single game. And the more I thought about it, the less I liked the idea of putting an easy mode into Resident Evil. The tank controls are part of what make it fun, the risk of dying is what sets the mood I love so much about the game. In essence, if you made it too easy, if you removed the risk of dying or the feeling of dread and peril around every corner, if you didn't jump when the dogs came crashing through the window - it wouldn't be Resident Evil anymore.

How about a Resident Evil/Gone Home mashup though?

It might still be a fun and enjoyable game! But it would be a wholly different experience. And that doesn't mean it shouldn't be done - if people accept that they won't be playing the same game and still want to check it out, then really what is the harm? But I really think that some games have the difficulty so firmly inbedded in the core concept of the game that changing it too much would completely alter the experience. So if you play Dark Souls on easy mode can you really say that you have played the same game? I've got to agree with the nay-sayers who say "probably not".

Imagine the reverse, like putting enemies that need to be avoided/killed into a game like Gone Home or swapping the Walking Dead QTEs for FPS shoot outs. You could still experience the story of the game, but the end experience would be very different from someone who played it the "original" and if you like, intended, way.

And in the end I am fine with that. I still think that adapting games so that more people enjoy them outweighs any fears purists might have that the altered experience might... what exactly? Ruin the community? Ruin the legacy of the game? Even though I can understand those fears I choose to believe more good than bad can come from it and there is plenty of proof to show it's true.

(Seriously though, how cool wouldn't a RE + Gone Home crossover be?)

Baby & Game (Part 2 - All Fun And Games)

A couple of years ago I read Jane McGonigals book "Reality Is Broken" and eventhough I wasn't overly fond of the book in particular (you can read about it here) I did like the core concept - that through presenting seemingly dull tasks as fun games there is a lot of manpower to be put into useful things. As an example I remember a game that allowed "players" sort through thousands of snippets of old documents found by archaelogists, marking the ones that had letters on them (and which letters), thus saving the actual archaeologists tons of time. I tried this game myself and it wasn't fun, or should I say ellaborate, enough to spend hours on (but then some game concepts are very simple yet keep you hooked) but good enough to jump in every now and then. Even if only a couple of thousand people try it out and spend in total an hour playing it, there is alltogether a lot of time saved for what in reality is a menial task. Hence, Reality Is Broken. The title is actually quite catchy, since it pinpoints something crucial about the world around us. It's easy to make things boring, but it's also not that difficult to make things more fun.

Personally I've noticed that trying to make things more fun for yourself is a much more difficult task than to do it to someone else or have someone else do it for you. Maybe it's a bit like tickling, where it just doesn't work if you try to do it to yourself. Anyone who's tried it knows that sticking to a diet, gym regime or quit smoking all by yourself is a lot trickier than when you have friends who're in it with you. Or if you have some sort of app that allows you to track your progress. I mentioned to a friend at work the other day that the way she was tracking points and progress on her diet was a lot like a game. You're presented with a challenge that you need to overcome and the app gives you clear visual feedback on your progress, something that might be difficult to see if your just checking the scales. I know there are apps that do similar things for smoke-quitters - tracking how much money you've saved and "life you've gained". I once tried a browser game that was meant to make daily chores more fun in allowing for my character to level up and become stronger if I managed to do the laundry and dishes, or die if I failed (I died pretty early on...).

So eventhough the book was so-so, I am a big fan of the idea that by making things more gamey, ie fun, there is a lot that can be accomplished. Both on a society-scale and a personal-scale. I am sure you've also had the thought "if only I put all these hours into a degree/learning an instrument/learning another language/actually writing that book I always wanted to write I'd probably be rich by now". I read the book before I decided to try for a kid and I had embraced the idea long before I read the book but I also think I had fused the two in my head a long time ago. That having a kid could in many ways be seen as playing a game. I made the comparison to Tamagotchi in a post once, and mentioned then that I obviously understand that having an actual child is a lot more serious than "just" playing a game. After all it's another person we're talking about here, not my personal object of entertainment. Unlike a game, a kid is not something to give attention to when you feel like it and ignore when you don't. Nerdraging and rage quitting are not options you should consider. Rather than seeing child-raising as a game, I tried to think about how game-playing could affect my interactions with my child.

If you think about it, they do have a lot in common. There are things you do in games that aren't in themselves particularly fun but that you do anyway because the overall goal is worth it (ie grinding for an item). In the same way there are things you need to do with a child that aren't in themselves particularly fun but that you do anyway because it makes you happy to see your child happy (ie change diaper, read the same book/play the same game for the hundredth time). Most importantly, gaming requires a lot of patience. After having died 150 times to the same boss (yes, it happens), after having failed with the same platforming jump for the 30th time, after having spent 20 minutes on trying to crack a puzzle - having fun will give you the patience you need to give it another go.

Having a 1,5 year old, I realize that whether I say "yes" or "no" about something really comes down to patience. No I don't have the patience to make sure you don't break these things, so I'm not going to let you see them. No I don't have the patience for this to take three times more time, so I am not going to let you "help" me. No I don't have the patience to make sure you don't hurt yourself, so I am not going to let you go there. I decided early on I wanted to avoid saying no to my son just because I didn't have the patience to do it. I wanted my "no's" to mean something to him, hopefully making him understand that when I do say no, it's because it really means no, not because mommy doesn't feel like it. And dealing with a child really requires immense amounts of patience. Even if they're completely well behaved they can require so much energy. It also requires so much more patience since you're dealing with someone who has no concept of time and has very little patience of his/her own.

That's why I figured I would probably do us both a favor if I tried to make things more fun, for myself and for him. It definitely helps that I have the time to not have to rush things, I imagine it'll be a new challenge once I am pressed for time, trying to get to work while getting kid and everything else ready (that'll probably be matters for a future post). But now I have the time to let him help out with cleaning, in fact he has so much fun doing something I find quite boring, it gets more fun for me to do as well. Because he loves watering the plants it actually gets done every now and then, I used to forget about it until my plants started turning dangerously yellow (I am sorry!). Because he loves throwing things in the bin we don't have crumpled papers (like receipts) lying around anymore (and have sadly lost some other things when not looking). We can make a game out of putting away things when you're done with them, getting dressed, brushing your teeth (works some of the time at least), sweeping the floor (he loves that too). If he is having fun with it, I don't have to see it as a chore and it's a lot easier to have patience and energy for it. And to be fair I might as well make the most of it while he thinks it's fun, because I am pretty sure that won't last for much longer.

And obviously not everything is fun and games all the time. I can't have my kid help me with everything (like cleaning the toilet) and I can't be available 100% of the time (he still doesn't really get why I need to go to the bathroom). But the mindset definitely helps offsetting a lot of frustration.

In essence, I think games have taught me not to see an unhappy child as an obstacle but as a challenge, an opportunity for me to learn something and maybe try something different. They have helped me to keep my focus on the goal rather than to feel stuck at a problem, knowing that eventually I will get to the reward even if it feels like hard work at the moment. Those countless wipes in WoW definitely helped me forge that way of thinking and I actually think it has helped me in my everyday life.

Baby & Game

Whenever me and the bf have some free time, we pretty much use it to game. We do watch the occasional series or in my case write a bit (reading has unfortunately been put on the back burner for now) but for the most part we try to get some game time in. It's funny how we try to maximally utilize the baby sleep time by pretty much cutting out anything remotely irrelevant and cram in more game time. Make tea? No time. Go to the bathroom? Not now! God forbid he falls asleep while we're out. Run home and maybe there is still time for some minutes of gaming! This is not the actions of addicts, but of gaming deprived individuals (that's what I'm sticking with at least).

Which is why I don't play sim-games - aspertypical.com

It's inevitable however that we go bold enough to try and do something gaming related while the little guy is awake. As much as I love playing "spin the shiny thing", "rattle the plastic thing" or "bang the hard thing", every now and then you need a break from those thrilling games and do something mommy wants to do. This is when the hunt for baby entertainment begins. And I've made some nice discoveries.

Growing up owning a Nintendo 64, I was one of the people who never liked it when other people said that Nintendo only made "kids games" like it was a bad thing. They didn't get it all wrong however. The N64 games are perfectly suited for infants and toddlers!

Watching a Let's Play of Banjo & Kazooie, a game I always liked but found way too difficult for myself to ever finish, I noticed how my little son (currently 8 months old) loved to watch it with me. And not just Banjo & Kazooie, but pretty much anything with big, colorful sprites/figures and not too quick movements. The whole mid-90's segment of video gaming is filled with games that fill that criteria - games like Croc, Spyro, Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster Busts Loose and Lester the Unlikely. These are examples of games at least my kid thinks are absolutely hilarious to watch, often having him even laugh out loud at the funny sound effects and animations (or whatever it is that amuses him, I don't actually know!).

Giant carrots are hilarious to a baby - giantbomb.com

My bf who is a massive Sonic fan was also happy to notice that our son loves to watch him play Sonic. At least Green Hill Zone and definitely the bonus stage - especially in Sonic & Knuckles (I guess he likes the "booap booap" sound effect the balloons do). He snaps his head towards any direction he hears the Sonic tune from, his entire face turning expectant, hoping to see some Sonic action.

In non-gaming but still baby-related news we've also managed to identify at least two songs he enjoys listening to, not counting all the actually-designed-for-children-but-nauseating-for-adult-tunes he likes;
Psy - Gentleman, which almost always silences him when he's cranky and
James Blunt - You're Beautiful, maybe that is mostly because of how horribly highpitched the bf tries to sing along.

Me and the bf have discussed how we want to introduce video gaming to our son, when the day comes that he actually wants to play some himself. He is already curiously investigating our controllers (admittedly he is curiously investigating pretty much anything at the moment) and it's not too far off before he hopefully wants to give gaming a try. We both feel that starting out on the older consoles could be a good thing, as the games often are straight forward and designed with small children in mind - Sonic again as an example. Really older games, talking about NES here, might be a bit too unforgiving and difficult for a really small child to enjoy (or maybe that's just my impatient ass who thinks that, the kids back in the 80'd didn't complain!), but the SNES/Mega Drive era could be perfect for a small kid to start with (although in all honesty a lot of those games are pretty tricky as well).

This is where anger is born - gameskinny.com

Maybe the most important thing I hope to teach him is a respect for where gaming is coming from and different styles of designs - a time when instant satisfaction and reward wasn't as prevalent as it is today. Just looking at my own gaming experiences I can see how the instant gratification system has affected me. I don't want to be one of those people who needs a game to be super fun the first 10 min or throw it out, and I don't want my son to be like that either. It's always easy to think you'll do things one way of course, but we'll see how easy it is to put into practice once we get there. Most likely it is something that'll come naturally. Either he will show an interest for the old consoles or he won't. I just hope I can fill his head with some classics before he gets to the age where he feels the need to play whatever his friends are playing. I have really fond memories of watching my mom play games and I hope I can share the same thing with my son.

It'll be very interesting to see what kind of games he eventually enjoys playing, as me and the bf are quite different in tastes. He likes the late 80's-early 90's console platforming games the best and I prefer the late 90's-early 00's pc games the best. It'd be funny if he decided to fill out some genres currently unrepresented in our household - racing and sports games. Time will tell.

Are the demands for raiding too high?

Little more than a year ago I wrote a post titled "Are new players too impatient?". That post was written towards the later half of Wrath, we had seen Naxxramas, Ulduar and ToC pass and ICC had been out for only a few months. Even then, with ICC fairly new and fresh, in fact players had only just gotten access to killing Lich King, taking in new raiders into your raid group was not something uncommon. Gearing for ICC was ridiculously easy, not only had new players the first three raids to fall back on, the newly implemented ICC-heroics provided some good gear as well. As one who had struggled through regular heroics, then Naxxramas, then Ulduar, then ToC and then ICC-heroics, I was getting annoyed at the new players who thought they could just skip all that progression and jump straight to the good stuff. This isn't because I thought I deserved loot or raid spots more than them, but because I was confused at new players who didn't seem to understand that I was where I were because of the time and effort I had put into it. Back then I wrote;

"(...)my gear is pretty good, since I raid alot, usually a couple of times a week. But it didn't start out that way, naturally my gear also "sucked" at some point, and will suck again with each new content patch, that is the way the game goes. Behind the gear I have right now lies endless hours of raiding plus all the time spent preparing to raid."

These new players could come with their badly geared alt and say "hey, I want a spot in the raid too!", where we would go "sure thing, just gear up a little doing some heroics, buying some boe gear, and you can join" and they would answer "why do I have to do that? You guys have good enough gear to carry my lack thereof". I saw this line of reasoning over and over and I just had to tell them that just because I've spent all this time getting good gear doesn't mean you can take it for granted and use me as a spring board into higher content. At least not without saying "pretty please".

"When I started gearing up for raiding, there hadn't already been alot of raids out and people were around my gear level. I couldn't expect guildies to give me an easy boost through Naxx because their gear was as lousy as mine. I had to do endless heroics (without the LFG-tool mind you!) and did the old wipe-a-roo in raids plenty of times to get my gear, I couldn't expect easy kills anywhere."

Before you tell me I sound like one of those old people who go "when I was young we had gravel for breakfast and fought Arthas uphill in a snowstorm", I will forego you right away - yes I do sound like that. The reason people sound like that is because newer people who come around and reap the benefits of our hard work (albeit it was made because we thought it was hell of a lot of fun) without actually putting any thought into how it is that we got there. We worked for it mind you! But don't get me wrong, like I said I don't have any problem at all with people who come undergeared to a raid, it all depends on whether the rest of the raid minds boosting them or not;

"A new player comes along with everything that comes to it - no experience and no gear. He could hit the heroic-train like everyone else, but he doesn't have to. He could actually get into Naxx/Ulduar/ToC (even ICC) and down bosses, because the rest of the raid can carry his weight at this point. And this happens, I didn't mind that at all. I've been on the sugar cane end of that trade myself."

But I've always had a problem with people who take nice things for granted;

"(...) because the raid can carry his weight (as long as the good geared outnumber the badly geared) the new player actually expects the raid to carry his weight. He get all grumpy and doesn't understand when he's benched for a raid. He seriously asks "how come I didn't get to join?". And when you tell him to go get better gear he answers "how can I if I don't get to raid?". He sees the advice to go do some heroics as an insult or punishment of some sort. He doesn't realize we've all had to do it before him. (...) People who come in afterwards just see how easy things seem to be and want a slice of the cake. They don't realize the persons they're asking to give up their raid spot maybe has done that particular raid 50 times to get to that point, and probably doesn't want to give it up to someone who hasn't even begun doing heroics."

Interestingly enough however, I am seeing the opposite when it comes to raids at the moment. Admittedly, we're at the start of this expansion, so things could probably change. I can't actually recall how we treated "new" players back when Naxxramas (Wrath edition) was current content, but I get the feeling that gearing for raiding has never been so difficult as it is now (except perhaps in vanilla). There is one out of raid raid-boss available in Argaloth, who by the way only seems to drop pvp loot anyway. There are no lesser raids that can provide easy gear to new players (yet, this will change with 4.2). You've only got to grind heroics to get any sort of raid-viable gear, this is especially true if you happen to be a very poor person and can't afford buying many boe. So far nothing is wrong though, this doesn't differ much from how it's been at the beginning of any expansion. But like I said, it seems like people already raiding have put the bar a little higher for new players this time.

When I started doing raids I recall having no more than somewhere around 340 gear score (I think in fact it was 336 exactly). And sure, I had hell trying to keep people alive at Magmaw and Halfus the first couple of times, but looking back at it I'd say that was because I wasn't all comfortable with the new heal style rather than my gear being shite (and also, priests still sucked then). Someone with 336 gear score right now however, would barely make it into our alt raids. Maybe if we were desperate. He'd definitely wouldn't get into our regular raids, but we are doing heroics at the moment and want people to be able to jump straight into that. On the other hand, that's another piece of the problem. To be able to raid nowadays it's not enough to have a viable raid gear, say somewhere around 350. Raids that do heroic modes will probably prefer you to have even better gear, somewhere around 360-365. I read the most hilarious tweet from @Pyriss the other day;

"Healer in ZA told me I needed to raid more and get better gear. Really...raid more to do a 5 man for gear that is inferior? Interesting..."

The point is that the demands to be geared enough have never been higher. Back in late Wrath we saw undergeared players complaining about not getting to raid as often, because in reality they could get into most raids and the raid would still do good. Now, we're seeing rather the opposite where established raid groups are basically demanding to get people who have full raiding experience and gear already. It reminds me of the swedish employment market where you have to have an exam and 5 year experience to become a waitress (it's seriously not far from). Like I said, this is common in the early stages of an expansion, but I feel like the demands have never been as high as they are now. Getting enough gear to meet raid demands seems to be really difficult nowadays. Where does it put most people? In the heroic limbo.

Having a couple of alts who do heroics, I know that it aint fun doing those over and over and over to get rep and gear enough to be able to join some sort of raid. That must be especially true if you're in that position with your main and that is all you've got. And even more true if you're used to raiding and doing other things than just grinding the same heroics. People didn't enjoy grinding heroics back in Wrath, and they're not enjoying it now. And the worst thing is, unless you happen to know a raid group who is willing to take you in once you're geared enough, all that effort will probably be in vain since I have yet to see someone pug for the current raids. So far I've only ever seen guild raids who pug the last spots to fill their own ranks, but never a full-fledged pug raid. People expected to get undergeared into raids in Wrath and now raids expect to have a fully experienced and geared player into the raid. Maybe I am getting senile, maybe this was exactly what happened in early Wrath and BC, and I have just forgotten all about it. In truth, Cataclysm has only been out half a year. Yet it is obvious that people are getting tired. Cataclysm also holds three less heroics than we had in Wrath, and it seems like all you get is Halls of Origination anyway. I remember that the only instance I thought was troublesome back in Wrath was Oculus, now I sigh whenever I get anything but Vortex Pinnacle or Lost City. Raid guilds seem to crumble left and right, and I doubt many people enjoy the idea of going from raiding to dungeon farming. If you happen to be one of those people that are stuck in heroic-limbo, with no real prospect of getting into a proper raid, I can definitely see why this seems like an ideal time to quit WoW, for some time or forever.

Are raid cooldowns for everyone?

Blizzard dropped quite the bomb on the resto shaman and druid community the other day when they announced that they will implement some sort of raid cooldowns for these two classes. It seems clear that a raid cooldown is something shamans and druids have been longing for for a long time, and plenty of druids have treated this as the final piece to fit their healing puzzle. Blizzard revealed Spirit Link Totem to be the new Resto shaman raid cooldown, and I must say it looks really cool. At the same time they also revealed a significant buff to Tranquility, big enough to warrant the suspicion that that buff is supposed to be the raid cooldown resto druids are getting. Most resto druids are unhappy about this, for the simple reason that they didn't really feel like they needed more healing. What they needed was some way to mitigate damage. We have seen an increased streamlining of classes, where buffs for example now are provided by many classes and no buff is unique to one class.

This has started a really interesting and relevant discussion around the internet, where the question really is whether we prefer the uniqueness of a class or every class being able to handle every situation equally well. Blizzard have stated that they want us to be able to bring "the player, not the class". I completely agree with this, but up to what point? I don't think anyone of us would like every class to be completely equal. There would be no point in playing a certain class if it worked exactly the same way like all the rest. So what things should differ between classes? Are raid cooldowns one of those things?

Derevka has preceded me in this discussion with a great post suitably named "Are more tank cooldowns really the solution?". It does say alot about Derevkas point of view, and in essence it wraps up my thoughts as well. We both think that just handing out the same kind of spells to all classes would make the game boring.

"Is just adding a tank cooldown the best solution? Is just a band-aid of “make Barkskin castable for resto druids” the answer? I’d much rather see a CD that is unique to Resto Druids, and leverages their existing strengths over a clone of Guardian Spirit or Pain Suppression. "

Classes need differences, we need to have something on which we can build our "teamwork" as Derevka mentions. But I am getting ahead of myself, let's take a step back and see why I think about this the way I do (and what am I really thinking anyway)?

In a post a couple of weeks ago, when it was first announced that resto shamans and druids were going to get their own raid cooldowns, I commented that I didn't think that resto druids really needed it. Back then I wrote;

"Druids on the other hand [apart from shamans] don't need a raid cooldown. First of all they already have good raid cooldowns in Tranquility (which now is better than Divine Hymn) and Rebirth. Add Innervate to that. Also I feel like the unique healing style of druids is not easily filled by another class. Hots are so powerful I consider them to be sort of a "continous healing cooldown". Shamans even have a special cooldown to be able to do what most druids can do basically all the time - run and heal. "

At that time I had forgotten about Tree of Life, which really is a good healing cooldown too. But of course, it is still all about healing, where resto druids want to be able to actually reduce incoming damage as well. My above quote annoyed some druids, quite alot it seems. One comment from Beruthiel started out;

"I'm going to admit that as I read this, my jaw completely hit the flow. I even asked myself "did he seriously just say that?". I hate to say it, but you are way off base on this."

I can understand his reaction. My way of wording made it sound like I didn't think druids deserved a raid cooldown. Maybe even like I wanted to hog all the raid cooldowns for myself (being the priest that I am). Also I will admit, I had not given 10 man raiding much thought when I wrote this. Nonetheless, I still think this way. I still don't think druids necessarily need a raid cooldown, especially not for the sole reason that "they don't have one yet". I don't think druids are shit without one and that no serious raids pick druids because of this. But it does open up the question of stackability (among other things).

Apart from the general usefulness of mitigating damage, the strength of which I have talked about a dozen times before, there are actually fights out there where you need to mitigate damage because the tank will probably be oneshot if you don't. I understand the line of reasoning from the resto druids here. Just throwing a heckload of heals won't save anyone from those really big blows. You can't heal someone from being oneshot. Quite true. This means that for fights like Chimaeron hc, where mitigating damage is vital, bringing 3 resto druids (for 10 man) or 6-8 resto druids (for 25 man) will pose a problem. I completely agree that the stackability of druids isn't very good.

But on the other hand I refuse to see this as a problem. In any case I refuse to see this as the problem druids are referring to. Just looking at my own backyard, disc priests have struggled with stackability since they became a viable raid healing spec, where until Cataclysm you mostly never took more than one disc priest to a raid, regardless of size. Because of how Shields and Grace work, disc priest just stack very, very poorly. Yet we haven't said a peep about this issue for the three-four years that it has been around. If you're going to tell me that a disc priest could just switch spec to holy, you must know that the differences in healing style between the two specs are big enough to be next to switching class alltogether. Throughout my raiding days in Wrath, whenever we had another disc priest in the raid, I had to go holy (because I had the choice). The only time we ever used two disc priests was for the LK fight. And it is still so that more than one disc priest steps on the toes of the other. You still don't want to stack disc priests in raids for most fights. Besides, how often is careful mitigation the make or break of a fight? You might argue that "once is one too many" but I don't agree. It is impossible for Blizzard to design all fights so that all healers are exactly equally useful, I've never had a problem with having to struggle more than other healers for a fight or two.

Druids and discipline priests are alike in many ways. Both their healing styles have been based on "buying other healers time", rather than throwing the big heals themselves. Although disc priests were once seen as tank healers, shields were quickly deemed as too useful as a raid healing tool to have a discipline priest focus on only one-three targets. Throughout Wrath, most discipline priests spent as much time spamming shields on the raid as druids spent time spamming Rejuv. We also often topped the meters because of this, and admittedly both resto druids and disc priests were decent single target healers as well, but not as good as a paladin for example (the best example being healing Valithria, where pure single target output was the issue, paladins and shamans excelled over disc priests and resto druids). But just topping the meters doesn't save a raid. Like mentioned we merely bought everyone else time enough to do the actual healing. Like a healing friend of mine (who plays resto shaman and resto druid) told me the other day - "when two targets are at 5% and 30% respectively, a resto druid would throw a WG and rejuvs". And a disc priest would place a shield, quite regardless of health. This is generalizing the healing styles, but the point is that most of the time disc priests/resto druids do more good throwing those small heals and moving on, than pausing and throw a big heal. None of these spells will save the target, but it might just buy the paladin/shaman more time for that big heal, because they are the ones focusing on healing up the lowest targets. So in a way those heals are saving the target, of course. Resto druids and disc priest are rather indirect savers in this manner.

At the same time we were and are eachothers opposites. Disc priests mitigated damage mainly (and this is still so), while resto druids were pure healers. No other class lacks mitigation completely (resto shamans have Ancestral Fortitude, Holy Priests have Inspiration and Shields too and Paladins have Sacred Shield). I want to believe that we can stand on each side of this line of healing styles, and still be equally useful, without having to meet up in the middle. I've never once complained about the fact that I as a disc priest (which I mainly play nowadays) basically lack hots, which are an extremely powerful healing tool. If I really wanted to play with hots, I would roll a druid. I have decided to heal in another way - which should be, if not exactly equally useful, at least close to. But whether this diversity works or not is up up to Blizzard.

Because of how healing was designed in end game Wrath, stacking only resto druids for a difficult raid fight might actually have worked. But that is beside the point. The point is that we used to have clearcut roles where we didn't solve every situation as good as another class, and this wasn't an issue. We were all needed, the "cushioners" and the s"niper healers", the aoe healers and the single target nukers alike. It was an immense relief for me as an aoe bombing holy priest to know that we had a paladin making sure that the tanks wouldn't die. My task was to keep him and the rest of the ranged alive, and in turn he didn't have to think about that problem. In my opinion this is a how a good healing team should work. And when you roll a certain class you should know that you will be mainly put to fill a certain pair of shoes. You will probably not get to do "everything all the time", but be put in the areas you can handle the best. This is true for all roles, tanking, dpsing and healing alike. On Nefarian 10/25 man I always do aworse job healing the Onyxia tank than our resto druids. I just have big problems keeping the tank alive if we get a Tail Swipe and Electrocute at the same time, because while I am stunned I do no healing whatsoever, while the resto druids hots still work their magic. Same goes with healing the addtank. I just have trouble keeping a constantly moving object alive. If we didn't have a resto druid for our 10 mans, this problem would be alot bigger. I still think that is ok because eventhough it requires more work and risk, all the others healers could do that job if they really had to. I feel like this is the case for resto druids in the vast majority of situations. There is always use for at least one resto druid in all the current fights, correct me if I am wrong!


Also I could feel that if anyone really has reason to complain about not having good raid cooldowns, it should really be warrior, druid and dk tanks. Paladin tanks have raid cooldowns that is freaking awesome, while the others don't have anything even remotely like it. In this case, Divine Guardian is powerful enough to warrant taking a paladin tank over a warrior/druid/dk tank (of equal skill and gear) in basically all difficult raiding situations. I am glad they are nerfing DG, but it's funny how this rather big unfairness in raid cooldowns has gone basically uncommented (at least I haven't seen much about it).

But, there is a big but here. It doesn't really matter how I think healing should work, what really matters is how Blizzard designs the fights, and whether all healers are capable to fill at least some role in those fights. If there really are situations where guilds feel they have to pick a certain class over another to complete the fight (and it's not just because they're being silly, but because of real issues), there are at least that many reasons to warrant a change. The change doesn't necessarily have to be among the healers however, we might just as well tell Blizzard to become better at designing fights that require a little bit of every class in the game. A huge task of course. It would be a lot easier to just give all healers equal tools to solve every issue in the game.

When I said "druids don't need a raid cooldown" I was really thinking "I really wish druids don't need a raid cooldown" or "druids don't need a raid cooldown if Blizzard only knew to design proper fights". It's not that I don't think they don't deserve one, it's really nothing personal. In fact I would think it a splendid idea to move Inspiration from priests to druids. What I really want is diversity. I want to have to rely on another class to do their job, and for them to rely on me doing my job, but it all boils down to whether there are fights where we're both needed. Just as with any other class, if you need something a class doesn't provide, you need other good reasons to bring that class. I do feel like druids have a strong healing style. Like I mentioned in my other post I feel like druids have plenty of strong cooldowns already, and they shouldn't need to be able to solve every situation. This isn't just my point of view, but something shared by many healers. For example, my healing on the run is pretty sucky, but that is ok because I leave that in the capable hands of other healing classes. This is how I want it to be. But if there was a fight where healing on the run was crucial, or a fight where my healing style was basically obsolete, and I felt like people chose resto druids over me because of this, then yes of course - there is a problem. I have to say like Derevka however - is another raid cooldown really the answer?

Surge of Light vs Divine Touch

Although I enjoy discipline healing more than holy healing right now (which is a matter of taste really, not because I feel like the one is better than the other) there will be some fights where I will try to see if holy works better. Usually a fight where I am not put to point heal and have to move around alot. Such a fight is Atramedes. The other day when we were wiping our asses off on Atramedes hc again, I decided to give holy a shot, since our holy priest was performing alot better than me (we can't have that, can we?). Unfortunately my holy spec was still a shield-focused build, inspired by a post by Oestrus regarding whether the changes made to shields would make shielding the go-to spell for holy as well. I wanted to try it out, and did so, but I didn't like it. But that's matters for another post! The point is that I had to respec and I did during a break. As always when I respec my holy tree I pause a moment when I come to Surge of Light vs Divine Touch. Our holy priest in the guild doesn't use SoL, and I am definitely no fan of it either. Even after the buff, I feel like the throughput gained by it just is... pathetic, to be honest. But I know there are priests who say that "this is a great life saver" and "I just love it when it procs, that's when you really need it". I must say priests must be of an especially optimistic breed, because I just don't feel this way about SoL. I don't want to spend 2 tp into something that might, maybe, be useful. Because most of the time it won't. Problem is that the alternative isn't all that good either, being Divine Touch. We have to put at least 1 tp either in SoL or in DT, so question is, which is more useful? 5% (10%) initial healing on Renew or 3% (6%) proc chance for SoL?

At first I decided to see how often SoL procs throughout a random raid. Since our holy priest doesn't use SoL, I had to check out random priests over at worldoflogs.com. At least that information will be completely unbiased from any ideas of mine. I chose fights randomly, both 10 man and 25 man, normal modes and heroic modes. The first thing I noticed, which came as a little suprise, was that most priest had decided to go for both Divine Touch and SoL. They're both pretty weak talents, but DT is based on Renew and SoL based on Heal (which is the spell we mainly use to proc this). I'm not sure where the benefit lies in talenting for both, since we really just take these to get further down the tree. Alot comes down to healing style, do you use Renew or Heal the most?

I've said it before and I will say it again - I am no theorycrafter, rather I like to experiment with numbers to get the general feel for something. This time is no different. Therefor, I settled for 10 numbers of SoL procs and 10 for DT healing (I can't spend all day sifting through wol-logs!). Although that sample is ridiculously small, it will give a hint on the usefulness of these talents. Even small samples will get us an idea, with which we can work on. The number of procs I found from these priests varied greatly, between 1 to 46, but we're still talking raids that took at least 1 hour, to a maximum of 6 hours (not accounting for possible breaks). I didn't check priests from russian/german/other countries of which I don't speak the language. Neither did I check if they had only one point in the talents or two. Like mentioned, the efficiency of SoL heavily relies on your need to throw alot of Heal/GH/BH throughout an encounter. Most holy priests will mainly heal with PoH, CoH, PoM (and Lightwell if your raid is good). SoL procs very rarely from spells that aren't used very much. DT too is based on a spell that most priests just don't use very much. It is time to find out which one of these talents that seems to be the weakest.

If I were to make a mean value of the times of procs I found, it'd be a rough number of course, but it still gives a general idea about the efficiency of SoL. Nevertheless I've found priests who've had it proc 46 times over 4 hours and 1 times over 6 hours, so the differences can be great. It is important to remember this.

The average raid for my SoL-sample took 207 min. During that time, depending alot on fight and healing style, SoL procced roughly 15 and a half times. We assume they were all used, and that they all fully healed (no overheals). My Flash Heal heals for about 17k (only own buffs), which gives 263.500 extra, free of cost healing (assuming none of the spells crit). Over 207 minutes that is 21 extra hps. These are crude numbers, so let's also take a look at maximum versus minimal efficiency in my sample too.
Maximum (of sample): 36 procs over 3 hours is ~56hps.
Minimum: 1 procs over 6 hours is 0,7 hps.

Even if my sample is far from statistically reliable, I feel safe in saying that at absolutely best, optimal conditions, spamming Heal/GH/BH, no SoL procs being overheals, we can expect to get 100hps from SoL. Even if this already is pretty low, even in an optimal situation, it is clear that SoL can be next to nothing in usefulness, depending on healing style.

Let's look at Divine Touch for comparison.
For the Divine Touch sample, the average raid took 252 minutes and DT healed for an average of 416900. Over 252 minutes that comes down to 27 hps. Here too the differences between biggest and smallest gain were pretty big.
Maximum:  1367000 healing over 4 hours is 95 hps.
Minimum: 17000 healing over 6 hours is 0,7 hps.

Looking at this it seems like DT has more potential than SoL, but the sample is too small to say anything definite. Overall the gains are small whichever talent you choose, and which one will be better for you will depend alot on, like mentioned, whether you rely more on Renew or Heal (and GH/BH). As boring as it sounds, both these talents are pretty much as useless as we feel like they are. DT will buff your cushion-healing somewhat and SoL will occasionally provide you with that extra Flash Heal, but none of them will make a huge difference. The best thing you can do is spec for either and do two raids to compare which seems to work best for you. Personally I will go with DT, because I feel like it will suit my healing style better, and also I feel like Renew is easier used in the content that I currently play over Heal/GH/BH, since there is alot of aoe healing and moving around. Like my holy priest guildie said it - the better gear we get, the less will we use Heal.

Oh and as a side note, I decided disc probably will work best for Atramedes anyway, just have to regear for shield spamming and see how that works. UPDATE: Yeah shield spamming worked, he's downed!

Why are there so few tanks?

I was torn as to whether I really should write this post. On one hand I feel like tanks are a dying breed, and I wouldn't want to do anything to scare potential baby-tanks off. On the other hand I hope that this kind of post could hopefully enlighten some non-tanks about the troubles of tanking and how we really deserve the most patience and understanding of all.

I've heard plenty of people who've tried to tank, complain about how difficult it is. Actually I don't think I've ever heard someone say "wow, this was fun!" the first time they do it. One could really wonder why people keep at it at all. It's difficult not only skillwise, but because you ultimately are fighting not only the mobs, but against your own group as well. Not only do you have to play your class, you have to bend to the will of everyone in your group. They won't help you, they will fight against you. This might sound pessimistic, but if you start tanking with any other ideas, you will be brutally disappointed. Unfortunately, Blizzard have designed tanking to be a teamwork effort, just as healing and dpsing is a teamwork effort. Dpsers need the tank to position and keep aggro on the mobs. The healer needs the dpsers and the tank to use cooldowns and not stand in bad stuff. The tank need dpsers to help out with interrupts, cc and focus fire. When one fails to help out, they are not the one who gets the blame, but the one who fails with their job. Dps dies in a fire, it's the healers fault. CC target kills the healer, it's the tanks fault.

Another issue about grouping is that there are 3 of the dpsers but only 1 of the healer and the tank. When the tank (or healer) has a problem, none of the others will care about it because it is not their problem. The healer doesn't understand your issues and the dpsers won't either, and even if they do they don't care. Or if they happen to have a tank of their own they expect you to be able to handle every situation as perfectly as they are, although you probably don't have 5 years of experience, run with guild groups and mostly epic gear. You wouldn't imagine how bad people are at understanding that just because something isn't difficult for them doesn't mean that it isn't difficult to someone else. It is these people who will scream at you to make bigger pulls (with no regard as to the increased difficulty level for the tank and healer) just because they want it to go faster or to be able to use their fancy aoe skills. It is these people who will laugh at you for wanting to use crowd control, with no idea that good cc makes it alot easier for the tank and healer.

It is true that alot of tanks are rude, selfish and bossy. Although I could say this is true of most people in a pug, it shines through the most in a tank. There are several natural reasons for this. Some I will talk about further down, but also the tank is supposed to be the natural leader of the group. Experience can turn a tank who usually tries to make everyone happy into a tank that forces everyone to do it his way - here you might get an understanding as to why this is.

1. When you tank, people expect you to read their minds
Good tanking is ultimately about being provided with good information. If you know what to do and how to do it, tanking is really easy. When you know that something will be ccd, or that problem X will be solved by someone else, you know that you can focus your energy somewhere else. In random pugs, because the written communication is hampered by the fact that we also use our keys to tank/dps/heal, you will have to learn to read peoples minds instead. People will rarely take the time to stop pressing their buttons to type out some information to you. The only one who occasionally does this is the healer, who in the same time threatens everyones lives by stopping to heal to tell you something. Ideally dpsers would help you out, but they never will.

• When a cc breaks you are supposed to know whether it will be re-ccd or if you have to tank it. People won't tell you, so you have to make a quick decision as to whether you trust the player who ccd it or not.
• When you make a pull, you are supposed to know which target each dpser is taking. If you don't, and lose aggro you're a "bad tank". It doesn't matter if all dpsers choose different targets, don't go for your marks or the fact that it really is them who should take your target, not the other way around.
• You should know when the healer needs mana. The healers are fairly decent at telling you when they desperately need mana. They won't tell you however if they think they need mana when they are at 30-40-50% mana before a boss pull. Some healers need all the mana they can get, some do just fine with half a mana pool. You should know which kind of healer your healer is without having to ask. If you ask, you are a tardy tank who pulls too slowly.
• You should keep track of everyones cooldowns. You can't mark for a repentance when it is on cooldown! The paladin won't tell you it is, but you should've known that before you pulled.

2. Whatever choice you make, it is the wrong one.
There are five wills in your group, and you have to accomodate everyone (and know what they want without them telling you, see above). Each and everyone of those has a different idea about how fast the dungeon should be done, how to make every pull and just about everything else about the instance. If you try to please one, you will step on the toes of the other - this is a fact.

• If you wait for healers mana, you pull too slowly. If you don't wait for healers mana, you pull too fast. Like I said above, healers expect you to know whether they need mana or not, and if you make the wrong choice (which you will), you are a bad tank.
• When a cc breaks and you decide to go for it before it gets aggro on the healer you are a cc breaker, if you don't, you are a bad tank. Like I mentioned above, whether you decide to trust the ccer or not, it will turn out you made the wrong choice. The ccer might sometimes re-cc and sometimes not, but you should know which.
• If you don't mark targets, you're a reckless tank. If you do mark targets, you're a slow, cowardish and bad tank. It also doesn't matter how you mark targets, it will be the wrong way "Go for caster first! No the healer! No the other guy!".
• If you use an addon to announce your skills in the party chat (like cooldowns and interrupts) people will be annoyed. If you don't, people will be annoyed (this is true for all classes though).

3. You are supposed to know everything, at once.
It doesn't matter that it is the first time you tank, or do this instance, or do this pull. As a tank you should know exactly how to proceed and deal with a situation. When the dpsers and healer don't know the tactics of a boss, they will turn to you. And if they do know the tactics of a boss, they expect you to as well. If you ask for help you will get heavy sighs thrown your way, at best. Worst case you're kicked. The amount of knowledge you should have extends to tiny details. You should know that you have to sidestep at that precise moment, that you could've avoided that skill by using intervene/anti-magic shell/stun.

4. You have to solve the problems other people create.
In line with all the above issues, when something goes wrong you are expected to solve the issue. Perfectly. If people don't know how to play their class or how to do the dungeon, you are the one who is going to have to fill in for them and fix their mistakes. Why? Because when the group dies it will either be your fault or the healers, it doesn't really matter if the dps were the cause of the wipe. They are 3 against 2 (and the healer isn't always on your side either) and their caps will win.

• If someone ninjapulls or breaks cc or otherwise fails, they expect you to fix it. They won't get the blame if you fail, you will.
• If the dpsers don't kill the adds, you will have to.
• If the dpsers don't know how to cc, you will have to solve the problem of tanking 5 ranged mobs and using all your cooldowns to survive.

5. You have to be the best
Fortunately this has become more equal during Cataclysm than it was before, but it is still a fact that everyone expects the tank to not only have the best skills, but also the best gear. This comes partially out of necessity - the skills and gear of the tank will affect the group the most. If one dpser doesn't perform at max, the group will still probably do well (if all dpsers have bad gear, you have a problem though, but yet again they are three and you are just one). A badly geared healer can still manage to heal a group without problem if the tank is well geared. But a well geared healer can't save a badly geared tank. Survivability is one issue about bad gear, threat another. As a tank you carry the entire group on your shoulders, where a dpser only carries himself. I really don't understand people who wait 25 min in queue and then whine about the tank taking 5 seconds too long before a pull. You might think that I am joking, but this happens commonly in random pugs. Your performance will always be compared to the best performance. If some tank managed to do that pull without cc, you should too. If some tank managed to do this instance in 20 minutes, you should too. They don't realize that the group is completely different now, and that you have to factor in the skills of the healer, the other dpsers and yourself. And gear differences. For some reason, everyone thinks "it is possible, therefore you should succeed". "Best" is of a totally arbitrary and unmeasurable value, which means everyone will have a different idea of how you can do something the best way.

6. Everyone knows how to do your job better than you.
This point sort of wraps up all the other ones - everyone seems to know how to tank, yet no one does it! People don't seem to realize that a tank that gets to do things the way that suits him best, will almost always be the best for the group as a whole. A tank who constantly has to repair mistakes (ninja pulls, broken cc, no cc) will naturally do a bad job. The situation was shitty to begin with, a tank can only do so much to make it better.

As with every other part of this game, people tank because they enjoy it. They want it to be fun. Unfortunately, there is no role where the fun is easier to ruin than the tank role. Tanking is already a challenge, and it doesn't necessarily become easier with better gear. Because we combat the group as much as the mobs, there will always be a high difficulty level of tanking as compared to healing/dpsing with good gear. Towards the end of Wrath, most healers could place a hot, tab out of the game for a minute and return and no harm was done. Good gear made healing ridiculously easy. Dpsers killed mobs so fast that instances were a joke. But to the tank the challenge of keeping aggro is always the same. We do not need or enjoy the added challenge of ninja pulls, broken cc or no cc at all. We do not think it is a fun part of our tanking to repair and fix your mistakes - yet you expect us to feel that way. Because many non-tanks like to make tanking more of a chore than the fun that tanks hope to get, people avoid it.

Patch 4.1 - Maybe there really is something here

I wasn't going to say anything about the 4.1 changes. I thought they're too far off to be of much value since everything will have changed once they go live anyway (especially with the current rates of fixes). But then I changed my mind. There is something to be said about patch notes, even if they don't go live. They still show something about the way Blizzard thinks and helps us navigate and understand the course Blizzard has set for our class. Eventhough a particular change might never go live, or goes live looking very differently, we still get an idea about what Blizzard thinks is a viable solution for us. Following the changes to these solutions will also tell us more about what Blizzard thinks works and what doesn't.
This won't just be about priests, since there was loads of interesting news in the 4.1 patch notes. And as I usually do it, I'll only pick out the interesting notes. Source.

But let's start with the most interesting changes first anyway - the priest ones;

Divine Aegis duration has been increased to 15 seconds, up from 12.
Power Word: Shield duration has been reduced to 15 seconds, down from 30.

We know Blizzard aren't happy with how Shields turned out to be used. They want them to be good, but not too good. They don't want us to start spamming it again. Renew doesn't have this issue because the hps of one Renew is pretty low in comparison to the Shield. The "problem" with Shields are that they have so many pros, and few cons. The only thing holding shields back at the moment is the Weakened Soul debuff, which we can lower on target with Heal/GH/BH. Blizzard tried to slow us down further by increasing the mana cost on the spell, but like I mentioned before this is only delaying the inevitable spamming that will come when we get better gear (and mana becomes less and less of an issue). Loads of solutions were posted on forums around the internet, and two of my favorites were lowering the cooldown of the Shield and making the shield something of a cooldown in itself (like a small Lay on Hands). The second solution is so-so, because it would in essence mean to give discipline priests another damage mitigation cooldown, and I know not everyone would like that. The first idea, the one Blizzard are proposing to use in the Patch Notes, is actually a great one. It doesn't actually nerf the Shield in any way, it only forces us to plan our usage more carefully. Personally I think this is the way all spells should be balanced. Make them as good as you want, but make the choice as to when to properly use them a tough one. With a lowered uptime we can't just throw out Shields, because a Shield not soaked is completely wasted.

The buff to DA is probably in some part to counter the "nerf" to the Shields, but also because DA quite honestly deserves a little more love. It will make crit a slightly better stat for disc priests, since one of the problems right now was that DA wasn't up very long and that made it an unreliable source to use for healing (here I am, writing in past tense). Only time can tell how much difference those 15 vs 3 seconds will do in the end, but honestly I feel like these are good changes.

Dispel Magic can only be used on the casting priest as a baseline effect.
Absolution (new passive) enables priests (Discipline and Holy, my note) to use Dispel Magic on up to 2 harmful effects on friendly targets.

The first line had loads of priests worried. Very worried. But Blizzard knows that removing dispel magic from all priests would just be utterly silly. They made it so that all healers had a proper dispel in Cataclysm for a reason. What they want to do here is make sure that spriests can't use dispel magic. The only reason I can see for this, rather huge, change is of course - pvp. Meeting shadow priests in pvp was probably too much of a problem, seeing as they have relatively good defensive capabilities while also being an offensive class. This is an issue we saw with all paladin specs back in Wrath and something Blizzard constantly have to combat. In pve this won't make a big difference, since the only time spriests (at least those I raid with) use dispel is to dispel something on themselves.

Holy Word: Sanctuary has a new spell effect.

Loads of ground aoe-effects are being overhauled, and I'm very happy about this. We already had loads of trouble distinguishing bad stuff on the floor from the good stuff, and sometimes you couldn't even see the bad stuff at all. That's just poor game design and I am glad Blizzard are doing something about it.

Paladin

Word of Glory now has a 20-second cooldown.
Walk in the Light (passive) removes the cooldown of Word of Glory.

Similar to removing dispellability from spriests, Blizzard are removing some of the self-healability from paladins, except holydins who are the ones that rightfully should be able to double-spam WoG. Unlike the change to spriests, this will be more noticed by especially protadins in raids and heroics. I did feel like protadins had very high survivability by being able to selfheal loads. It made me smile when playing my protadin, and it made me angry when I played my warrior/druid who basically lack this kind of skill. Dks have Death Strike, which is a nice heal, but you have to line up your runes pretty neatly to be able to pull off two Death Strikes after one another like you could do with WoG. Does this make Eternal Glory less worth the points for Retri/prot? For retri perhaps, if they even take it today (I have no idea about retri tbh) but for prot I still think it is a good talent. It's not like they removed WoG all together for Prot, they just made it so we can't use Eternal Glory to pop two WoG after another.

Divine Guardian cooldown is now 3 minutes, up from 2.

One thing I've really noted when playing my protadin is the amount of cooldowns. I'm not sure if they're really that many more than other classes, but it sure feels like I have a cooldown for every fight, usually even two. There is Divine Protection and Guardian of Kings and also Divine Guardian. I'm not entirely sure of all you other tanks are aware of what Divine Guardian does, because if you did you'd complain more about not having anything even remotely like it yourself. Divine Guardian, which reduces damage taken on the entire raid (any size party group) by 20% for 6 seconds is a re-he-heally good cooldown. The amount of damage you can mitigate when using this cooldown the right way makes you drool. Divine Guardian laughs in the face of Power Word: Barrier. (And believe it or not, our protadin had not specced this until I pointed out to him that it was awesome). Ok, I am exaggerating. But considering that the other tanks don't have anything like it, DG is quite the choice-breaker. It makes a whole lot of difference, bringing a protadin to a tough raid. So although it nerfs us all, I am glad that they are increasing the cooldown on this skill. I would also like it if they gave all tanks a raid wide cooldown, it doesn't have to be about mitigating damage, it could be something like mana regen, health regen, haste, crit...

Shaman

Fire Nova has been redesigned and decoupled from shaman Fire totems. Instead, it now pulses that same area-of-effect from each target that is afflicted by the shaman's own Flame Shock debuff. It now damages all enemies except the target hit by Flame Shock. The ability's cooldown has been reduced from 4 seconds, down from 10.

Fire Nova is nothing like it used to be. The only spell that has changed as much, or more, is Judgement. Fire Nova used to be a crap as totem that you dropped and that did one (one!) pulse after a couple of seconds. I even think it had a cooldown. That was basically all the aoe shamans had. It was a sad, sad time. Then Blizzard revamped it to the way it works today, and it seems they're still not happy about it. I think it works ok the way it is (which could be because I am still thinking about how horrible it used to be), but I am intruiged by the changes. It will make shaman aoe work alot like Mind Sear (priests) where damage radiates out from the target which means you have to plan where you put those Flame Shocks a little. It will make shaman aoe a little less vulnerable to moving targets, because it really annoys me when I have to move my little totem forest along with me because the boss decides to run all over the place.

Magma Totem now lasts for 60 seconds, up from 21.

Like I mentioned, Blizzard seem to finally have realized that something that is stationary isn't that op, so to make Magma Totem a little less bad they made it last a long time. Not sure if that really makes much of a difference, but a buff is a buff.

Earthquake is no longer a channeled spell. It now has a 2-second cast time, lasts for 10 seconds, and has a 10-second cooldown. Its damage has been reduced by 40% from its channeled version.

Does this mean you can have multiple Earthquakes up at the same time? If so, I will see this as a rather big buff to this spell. It's a buff either way though, because not having to challenge it means you can deal other damage while Earthquake is up, and that will definitely compensate for the 40% damage reduce.

Improved Fire Nova has been redesigned and replaced by a talent called Seasoned Winds. When an enemy spell cast is successfully prevented with Wind Shear or Grounding Totem, the shaman gains magical resistance (in an amount equal to what a protection totem/aura would grant, stacking with such buffs) to the spell school(s) of the interrupted spell (except for Holy spells), lasting 10 seconds.

Smells pvp.

Warrior

Charge and Intercept no longer have diminishing returns on their stun effects.

Yes, yes, yes. It was really annoying that my 2 sec charge stun made my Concussion Blow and Shockwave last shorter duration (believe it or not). Overall however I don't think this will make a big difference for pve warriors, but it is a small buff to pvp warriors.

Dungeons

Zul'Aman has returned as a level-85 5-player Heroic dungeon featuring a revamp of the original dungeon and improved loot!
Zul'Gurub has returned as a level-85 5-player Heroic dungeon featuring all-new encounters, achievements, and improved loot!

Zul'Gurub was, together with MC, part of my first raiding experience. My brother was part of a guild that actually managed to down Hakkar, I only ever got to do Venoxxis and some tries on Arlokk (suddenly panthers, thousands of them). Being able to experience it again, albeit in a rather changed form, is something I'm really looking forward too.
Zul'Aman was the first really challenging raid I did. I had one Karazhan of course, but none of the bosses there were especially tough. Looking back at it, Karazhan really was a great beginners raid with a little bit of everything. Zul'Aman on the other hand had challenging, fun and really difficult fights. The only part of ZA I didn't like, were those blasted sentries. We just never became very good at handling them, and they casued many, many wipes for us. I think one reason I really like ZA is that it was the first raid where I really felt like a good healer, where I really tried to do my best and learn something new about my way of healing in each fight. Malacrass is still the toughest boss I have ever fought. I am really glad they're re-implementing ZA to the game, but I would seriously have loved it if they just would have tuned it for 85. I wouldn't mind doing all those fights all over again, exactly the way they were because most of them (of not all) were really fun. But, I am happy with a 5 man dungeon as well, if it's just half the fun the raid was I will love it.

Design

All non-damaging interrupts off the global cooldown will now always hit the target. This includes Pummel, Shield Bash, Kick, Mind Freeze, Rebuke, Skull Bash, Counterspell, Wind Shear, Solar Beam, Silencing Shot, and related player pet abilities.

No more having to carry around a certain hit-gear for those bosses where you knew you had to do some heavy interrupting (mostly Nefarian). I wasn't affected by it of course, as a priest I am pretty much without any interrupts, but I know this was something of an issue for our dpsers, where some even regemmed/specced/geared completely just to have enough hit when we did some tougher encounters. But maybe that doesn't have to a bad thing? I remember when we had to carry around certain resistance gears, back in Wrath it only frost resistance for Sindragosa but back in Vanilla and even BC you had to have almost full gear sets of some sort of resistance type to manage some bosses. Was this a bad thing? I'm not so sure, but maybe that is a subject for another post ^^.