Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Friendly Fire

Has ya ever watched a warrior tank doin' his job? Ain't the most excitin' thing ta see. He hits the bugger with his weapon. He hits the bugger with his shield. He shouts. Sometimes he done stomps his foot and either some lightning shoots out across the ground (contraries ta popular opinion, the lightnings ain't comin' out his arse), or some dust cloud shoots across the ground in front of him. Devestates done do a little swishy thing in the air too, but is pretty hard ta see and most folks prolly don't notice. I usuallies don't.

Pally tanks, they throw some fire on the ground and drop hammers of light on the bugger. Bear tanks, they do ... well ... bear stuff. DK tanks, they put fire on the ground and also worms. But overall, is not a whole lotta flash in tanking. I sez that's a good, 'cause what with the tank and the melee dps and the bad guys, is already gettin' confusin' and hards ta see what all be goin' on down in the scrum.

Now, I's noticed a trend what I ain't real happy about. Fer some classes, they's spells done been gettin' fancier and sparklier every dang expansion. Fer no particulars reason, far as I can see. Back in Rash of the Itch King, retributionators got they's Divine Storm. Hunters got Rain of Arrows. Rogues got Rain of Knives. Shaman got Rain of Frogs. DKs got that damn fuhggin' creepy thing what with the arms comin' outta the ground, and don't even get me started on Army of the Dudes. Great googly moogly what did that make a mess of the melee pile. Now, Blizz backed off on some of these, but in Cata they just cranked it up ta new heights. Lessee now...

Healers. Healers got all sortsa circles of happy they can throw on the ground now. I's all in favor of me healers gettin' useful tools, but dies they need fer ta look so much like all the puddles of nasty I ain't supposed ta stand in?

Mages. Sometimes mages throw out some big floaty fireball thingy what hangs around the bad dude and ... I dunno ... lasers him or sumthin'. Looks suspiciously like sumthin' I's supposed ta stay the hell away from.

Shadow Priests. Some mysterious shadowy figure starts tryin' fer ta sneak up on me, what be me response? Hells yeah I tries ta get aggro and tank the flupperbubber. 'Cept I can't, 'cause is just the shadow priest's shadow got loose. Like Peter Pan. Is seriously distractin'.

Elementary Shamans. Big circle of ground shakin' nastiness opens up right in front of me? All the instincts say step the fuhg back! Which of course would waste the whole point, since the glubberjudder would then take a few steps forward, and it all misses. Howevers, that ain't nearly so bad as:

Warlocks. BIG SWIRLY CIRCLE OF PURPLE DOOM! DO NOT TOUCH!!! WHAT'S ITS RADIUS? IS IT LIKE A LOTTA CRAP IN THIS GAME WHAT CAN KILL YA EVEN THOUGH YER SCREEN SWEARS YER OUTSIDE OF IT? HOW FAR BACK I GOTTA GET? Oh yeah, is a 'lock in the group. False alarm. Damn dirty 'locks....

Now, I expects if'n yer a serious player and is tankin' Z's every day or is doin' heroic raidin' like, ya know, all of the Blizz class designers, then you's gotten attuned ta these things and yer brain filters'em out somewheres between yer eyeballs and yer panic button. Me, I's tanked often enough and crazy enough where I gets a jolt of adrenilations but I's able ta stay focused on the task at hand. But I don't like'em, not one bit. Now, imagines yer some casual tank, or some poor bugger tryin' it fer the first time. All this sparkly pixel crap what ya gotta constantlies be figgerin' out "is this good sparkly pixel crap or bad sparkly pixel crap? Hope I don' figger wrong and get us all killed." Sound mebbe a wee bit stressful?

Now, why all these new spellification whizbang effects? Can the folks in the back, wigglin' they's little fingers, even see them all that clearlies? Me, I's pretty sure is mainlies a race between the design teams fer ta see who can done come up with the craziest, most far out, most colorful glowy thing fer they's dude. Just wait'll ya see what they's dreamin' up fer 5.0! Gonna confuse the everlivin' crap outta anyone within fifteen yards of the bad guy.

Is a good thing there ain't a shortage of tanks in this game or nuthin'.

8 comments:

Dorgol said...

I remember when ZG / ZA was re-added they also changed the graphic for one of the priest spells. I kept getting out of it, but wasn't sure if I should. After I asked I figured that one out.

Then comes the Firelands patch. I'm in ZA / ZG again and there's a new spell effect. I KNOW those mobs don't do anything that looks like that, but I also know that no one in my group does either. Better safe than sorry, GTFO.

The Moonkin complained that I was pulling the mobs out of their little beam-of-silence (not to be confused with the cone-of-silence).

Sometimes you just can't win.

Canth said...

Amen to that.

Can't they just make all "friendly" spells green, and all "ouch, get the heck out of that" spells red or something?
It's more than annoying. And half the time, you end up re-positioning the mobs cause when you take one step back, one of the buggers thinks maybe you were gonna take three steps and ends up standing behind you, leaving you to run through em to where the melee is and turn em all about face so's they don't stab you in the back where it hurts.

Agnes said...

I totally agree with this. I used to know what the different friendly spell effects looked like, but with all the new stuff lately I find it really hard to know if I should GTFO of the sparkly or stay in. I'm just recently getting used to the warlock purple circle. The best one was the tank that got yelled at during the cat boss in ZA who didn't pull the boss out of the water totem circle...except it wasn't a water totem, it was the resto druid's green circle of healing.

Dorgol said...

"cat boss in ZA" - the poster child for this problem, in my opinion.

How about this one - in ZG and ZA there are mobs that have a chance to spawn an "earthquake" on melee hit. All tanks know - when you see the earthquake GTFO cuz it hurts.

Except the buff that procs the earthquake can be spellstolen by a mage! Melee mages can put out a TON of DPS (never thought I would say that) if the tank knows not to move out of earthquakes spawned by the mage!

Siobhann said...

Your post was so funny I was laughing out loud but the problem is real. I was doing a rare random as enhance DPS and it took forever to figure out those damn purple things were from the lock.

Three expansions of "don't stand in crap on the ground" and now it's "stand in crap in the ground... oh, wait, not that crap!"

Saniel said...

Nothing caused quite as many false-alarm heart attacks as watching the shadow priest's shadow wade through the Lich King's Defile...

Anonymous said...

You are so right about this! That mage Fiery Orb of Death thingy freaks me out. I always want to run from it! Learning to tank has not been easy with this stuff.

BTW, reading this made me lol so hard, I almost snorted Taco Bell out of my nose!

Great Post!

Zwingli

Melfina said...

See, this is why I love the addon GTFO. It makes noise when I stand in bad. And the warlock aoe fire thing is the worst, especially in Firelands. I keep running away from it.