When I switched back to tanking three weeks ago, I did following:
basic gameplay loop and catch up on current quests and weeklies
basic guide on wowhead, full setup and basic understanding
did some 18s 19s, heroic raid and beginning of mythic raid
after that I started to dive deep into blood spec - analyses, articles on the advanced gameplay, interaction with streamers who are known for their blood play, participation in class discord
M+ routing (by this time I am full BIS 483+ ilvl) to be able to mentor my groups if necessary (I also pug a lot).
What’s left for me is to review and train little of UH pve and UH pvp in depth + proper setup of those.
I organize this (and all others) game by achievements and what they represent in my understanding. First achievement is level cap where I consider knowing my playstyle, basics of all offspecs, pvp basic preparation and current activities to do list. Just by doing this, I cover this first achiev, I am full stacked, can tank basically anything and I move to next achiev below.
Edit - it should be three or four weeks, and I dare to say my char is absolutely stacked.
Do you know how hitting a punching bag relieves stress, same concept, if I’m having a bad day, I then get to take it out on you, and you then get to shake it off with your innate good vibes.
The proverbial you, not you specifically.
So what I can infer from your statement is that it’s not just beneficial to me health-wise, but it’s also very beneficial to you.
I usually follow guides for the classes I dont play much, its just easier to get started that way.
My favourite classes I just play how I want. As a casual I also dont have to pick the best talents coz nobody cares!!LOL Sometimes I end up picking much worse talents just because they fit the theme of the character better!
oh, and I really wouldnt worry about what others think of your set up either…‘others’ are often complete idiots!
Example- recently did a LFR where we all died except for the tank and 1 healer and they were actually getting the job done all by themselves on the final boss. Somebody waited until just before they killed it to initiate a kick vote (which got passed because people can be stupid and mean).
In other words are these the kind of people whose opinion should matter to you!?
I do use guides and I do read up about raid and dungeon tactics. Though, I tweak my talents to my playstyle and to what I think works best for me.
I am not one of those players that plays for parses either I play for the kill and do my best. I am lucky enough to belong to a guild that has the same philisophy and understands there are different levels of players. Hence they have what they call the resident team which are the minmaxes and they have HC team which are players who understand their classes and are raid/dungeon savvy. Then they have the socials who they tend to help out from time by organizing guild events.
In the 9 years I have been in this guild I have seen players move from social to resident as they get more comfortable with their class and organized play.
You should play the way it best suites you and if you get stuck or battleling then there is nothing wrong with looking stuff up.
I’m not your punching bag tho, and others aren’t either. Shaking it off takes effort, and that is energy I’d rather spend on something more fruitful. And I can tell you to bugger off if you behave that way, I don’t mean someone should be toothless prey.
But taking it out on an innocent third party, to me, is emotionally incontinent and potentially abusive. I see no reason for subjecting another to that, making them shake off stuff that wasn’t theirs to begin with or feed some weird cycle of negativity.
Hol’up, I’m not saying that you’re a punching bag.
The person that is saying it, is you.
You don’t even realize it, which is what I find fascinating.
Polite Society does a brilliant job of convincing us that being kind is something we should aspire to, so like me, your parents probably tried to instill that virtue in you, right?
Luckily for me, I had older brothers when I was growing up, so I was able to unlearn most of it.
I’m not above any behavior that someone else can get away with.
It’s actually the exact opposite, I grew up in a very abusive environment. And I watched these patterns and how negativity can ripple through people, on and on, or how you can decide it stops with you. And as a child I simply decided it’d stop with me. I refuse to be a part of that ripple effect if I can help it (I’m not infallible, let’s be clear ).
We both have our ways, and I’m sure you mean it in a more lighthearted manner than what I mean. But keep in mind this attitude may have just as good a reason to exist as yours, without it simply meaning conforming to what you are told. In that case I’d be an entirely different specimen.
I didn’t say that you passing your negative energy on to me isn’t bad for my mental and emotional well-being. I’m just saying that perpetuating that cycle doesn’t make it better for me, whereas breaking the cycle does. Your actions do hurt me, so no, it’s not very beneficial to me, I just do damage control.
But like Cylaris said, enough off topic.
To answer OP’s question: I don’t do high-level stuff, so I don’t need BiS gear and the absolute perfect build. I do look up stuff like the boss mechanics in dungeons/raids I’m going to do, as well as general stuff like keybinds and macro’s. And I use addons like BigWigs and Weakauras to help me.
Both, actually. While leveling, I look at the spells, abilities and talents and pick what sounds good to me. It’s also when I sort out keybinds for abilities I use a lot. Then at max level, I’ll look at guides to get the full picture and learn what the core rotation is (Icy Vein’s “easy mode” sections in their guides are good entry points).
I’ll also watch guides on YouTube, though I generally prefer written guides for most things. But when it comes to raid encounters that I’ve not done yet, I learn better from videos where I can see what will happen.
I took a talent called Call of the Wild (which calls random pets from your stable) on my gnome hunter just because I wanted to fill her stable with ducks and attack people with my flock of feathery Doom!! bwa ha ha!!
is it the best talent? no idea but it makes me laugh!
guides and sims are not always the best min max. especially guides are not and sims depends on the class and its complexity for the algorithm which was developed
Levelling back in TBC, people were surprisingly kind. I remember one player seeing my lvl 45 warrior with glowing green weapons and whispering ‘thou shalt not have agility on thy weapons!’.
By contrast, the most recent M20 had one of DHs asking if my armour was broken as “you’re doing **** dps warr, why aren’t you in fury spec”. This is the nature of the game, you only remember the outliers for the most part: the ones that pour scorn on your choice to play a certain spec (arms forever, at least till gladiator returns), or the rare ones who show you kindness.
For my part I try to be in the latter - I carry hundreds of spare consumables on me, and if I see a tank struggling in dungeons I’ll discreetly trade a gem and some potions if I see them in greens or blues. Guides can be confusing, even for a veteran player, so I don’t call anyone out for losing aggro or health too quickly. Best to learn by seeing, by doing, and by failing. Anyone who boots you is simply being unpleasant , and doesn’t deserve the benefit of a second thought.
Luckily I didn’t experienced that on my rogue. Maybe because it was “harder” to screw it up I guess… but still really terrible.
If only the community wasn’t filled with tryhards, maybe the game would have kept more new players who wanted to give the game a chance only to meet some LoLesque community (for the most part).
To be honest, it really depends on the kind of guild you’re in, the people you encounter and what not.
Yesterday I tanked my very first dungeon in Dragon Flight as a Prot Warrior.
And that group was nice. They moved at my pace, didn’t pull ahead, and didn’t even complain when a mob escaped from my pulling and ran to the ranged DPS. They just kited it back to me so I could pick it up and we proceeded nicely through the Ruby Life Pools.
And then some groups start pre-pulling and whining if you don’t grab the first hallway in 3 seconds.
I have actually rarely witnessed it in the game. I don’t doubt that it happens, but my experience with leveling dungeons and TW dungeons has been that everyone is simply silent (not even obligatory “hellos” and “bb, tys” anymore, which was still a thing a few years ago) and adjusts to the tanks speed and route. If a tank doesn’t know where to go, a DPS or healer typically indicates the way by jumping up and down where the route continues.
It’s not a socially meaningful experience, which is something that just fell out of fashion not too long after cross-realm LFG (but to be fair, it also had advantages if you were on a smaller realm), but it’s not toxic. The most social thing I have seen lately was a LFR run where someone couldn’t find the “portal” to Fyrakk and someone offered to go back to get them and show them the way. Nobody complained, nobody kicked.
I’ve been pugging some lower keys last night, and it was almost the same there. A bit more talking, like saying hi, offering unwanted loot at the end of the run, and “bb, thx for the run”. They were all three-chest runs, so admittedly there wasn’t any opportunity for anyone to complain, either.
Overall, the PUG community is light on social interactions, but I rarely see any appalling behavior like I have encountered in some competitive video games.
Sometimes I end up picking much worse talents just because they fit the theme of the character better!
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