How not to suck at Cata

[thatbloke]

this post was linked to on the front page of mmo-champion and contains a large amount of common sense advice, which WILL apply to EVERYONE in some way or another.

Cata will mean that people will start having to pull their lesser-used skills and abilities out into the open more frequently and, heaven forbid, the return of crowd control. (that will be interesting with the dungeon finder...)

The main thing from that: be PATIENT. Everyone has to be new to it at some point, and while there really is no cure for stupidity, be aware that constructive criticism isn't a bad thing, and EVERYONE will have room for improvement.

 

[Silk]

So he could have just said "if you played vanilla wow skip to the end, you know this stuff already"

Be interesting to see who can actually play wow if they're going back to old skool - where you have to think about aggro, cc, etc.

Edit: That's not to say the post is in any way un-informative. Give it a read

 

[thatbloke]

So he could have just said "if you played vanilla wow skip to the end, you know this stuff already"

Be interesting to see who can actually play wow if they're going back to old skool - where you have to think about aggro, cc, etc.

The other point he made, and that I agree with, is that people, even who played vanilla and TBC, have become "rusty" at such skills.

I'm expecting massive amounts of rage on various forums going "OMGNOOB"

 

[Chuchurocket]

Mind control as CC is going to be needed? FUCK YEAH! Although i still think they should maybe redesign it so that the thing you MC becomes your pet and you can still do something during it.

 

[Gidean]

I dont really ever see any of the points he brings up as "old school" as people, even people like myself that have been playing for 5 years or longer still make silly mistakes. Starting a new expansion is all about reevaluating your style of play and character, cleaning out your bags, selling off the old usless crap and getting ready to fill them with new usless crap.

Its a really good post tbh, there should be something like it in an official capacity maybe.

Lastly stupidity, i.e running out of the fire into a grp of mobs is sometimes bad luck an sometimes just bad play style but it will continue to happen even with posts like this but it definatly cant hurt to reread the basics if your rusty.

 

[Enya]

What Gidean said. A good post tbh.
I also do think that players that started playing WoW during WotLK and successfully raided understands the mechanics in -do not stand in fire.
Hell it's even written in plain english on the loading screen.

And Razz. Heres to hoping that people will not die in a fire.

 

[Zooggy]

Hoy,

Stickied. This thread will remain here until we hit 85.

Nice find, Q-Man.

Cheers,
J.

 

[Windzarko]

So he could have just said "if you played vanilla wow skip to the end, you know this stuff already"

There are loads of long-term players who really suck, though.

Having played since Vanilla (a system which changed for BC, then Wrath, and now Cata, and thus is no longer valid as a point of comparison) means basically nothing in the context of how good a player you are, and how well you know things that should be basic, common knowledge (but rarely are).

 

[Silk]

I think FPS gamers make better wow players, as they actually know to react to stuff and don't treat it like a dice rolling RPG where stats and luck determine everything.

So my best advice for any wow player is get good at a First Person Shooter, then come back.

You'd be surprised at how many people still use the crappy (shame on your Blizzard) default binds, which have A and D as rotate left/right.. seriously wtf. They should have some basic tutorial which shows you how to strafe and use your mouse to move the cam for rotation/direction.

 

[thatbloke]

I thought A and D were the defaults

 

[Silk]

I thought A and D were the defaults

Oopsie, yup. I use RDFG (pro mode baby) hence the confusion.

 

[Windzarko]

I'd say this ("this" being Silk's last few comments) is a strong case of Your Milage May Vary (YMMV); I haven't rebound much of my stuff at all (most of my rebinds either involve buttons 4 and 5 on my mouse, or the mod Clique for click-cast-bindings for my healers), and I can say without ego that I'm one of the top 5 (maybe 3) players in the guild; there's only one person I count for certain as being flat-out better than myself, and several I see as being on-par with me.

Using all the default stuff can be quite stiff and not right for some people, but it really is a case of what people can get used to and feel comfortable with. My only real qualm is that there still isn't a loading screen tip or tutorial tip suggesting the use of mouse-turning rather than keyboard turning for combat situations; whilst some ranged DPS can get away with it in PvE, I've seen too many tanks and melee die due to doing the slow shuffle-turn rather than spinning 180 degrees and moving off instantly.

Also, A and D turning has never bothered me too much, since Q and E are strafe and some shooters had me making heavy use of those keys for various reasons, and so my fingers have no trouble switching to them at a moment's notice.

One thing I WOULD suggest, however, isn't entirely WoW-related, it's more Teamspeak-related; a lot of people use keys like Shift, Ctrl or Alt for their push-to-talk, which sometimes can cause problems if you're trying to move and/or cast at the same time, and if you're using Ctrl, you might accidentally turn off the game sound or somesuch. I got over this by binding push-to-talk to my middle mouse button for ages (after unbinding it in WoW; it normally causes you to start running forwards, so definitely unbind it if you plan on doing this), and eventually moved on to binding it to button 5 on my mouse (caused less issues than middle-mouse if I was tabbed out and reading something from a web page, like boss tactics). Again, YMMV, but I'd recommend giving it a go if you're currently using Shift/Ctrl/Alt/etc

 

[Silk]

Dunno how you gauge a top player in wow tbh, especially given the diversity/roles of different classes. Are you a better DPS'er than a tank? Wait, wut?

You remind me of a younger me. I don't miss the days of competetiveness.. I remember coming tops on damage meters, doing the most decurses, claiming to be ze best, all that lark. You know what.. it isn't fun. That said I'm half tempted to respec retri and give you a run for your money - I guess some competetiveness never goes away

My key setup has just evolved from my FPS days. The pro mode thing was a joke.. RDFG is a weird but wonderful setup which I'm surprised others don't at least try. Nodule on the F key.. easy to find. Lots of surrounding keys for other binds.

I'm still trying out different setups. I think with bar mod I've got tanking feeling comfortable now, 60% of stuff on the keyboard and 40% on the mouse. Maybe I can do some proper raiding in cata, depends how many tanks you have. Might have to find a diff guild if you have no need of me.

As for comms, I use the down arrow!

 

[thatbloke]

for TS I'm really weird and use the Y key.

I have ALWAYS been a clicker and have only ever had 1 button bound to the keyboard which was my felhunter's dispel.

I have, however, been toying with the idea of getting one of those G13 gamepads to play with...

 

[Zhinrak]

I don't miss the days of competetiveness.. I remember coming tops on damage meters, doing the most decurses, claiming to be ze best, all that lark. You know what.. it isn't fun.

Personally i can not get my head around this mentality and the sort that other people have. I love the competitiveness of games, its the whole reason why i play them. I can understand though if its a situation where who ever is top is being an arrogant prick about it but still. I do not see the point in playing this game and not trying to be the best that you can be. Why bother playing a DPS if your not going to aim for the top of the meters?. Why play a tank if your not going to aim to have as much threat and survivability as possible?. Why be a healer if your not going to aim to do the most healing and keep every last person alive? Its like going into a race with the intention of casually strolling along the track and accepting what ever position you end up in.

Also to your comment of gauging a good player in WoW. It is simple. Using Umb as an example, there is very few roles he cannot fill if needed. IF he tanks he does a damn good job at it, If he DPS's he aims to be among the top (and often is) and when he heals he makes sure that his targets do not die. There are incredibly few people in our guild capable of this. Heck there are incredibly few people in this guild capable of pulling the numbers they should be.

I actually find it amusing how over the months leading up to Cataclysm, people on WoW, TS and the forums have been making comments like "finally its getting hard again!", "yes were going back to CC and vanilla like game play". To be blunt, most of our guild really should not be celebrating this. Considering how "easy" WotLK is, a surprising amount of our guild fail at it. If they are this bad in WotLK I'm worried for Cata. I will not name names, because I'm already being enough of an ass hole as it is, but it was depressing for me to play the game when i was constantly being chosen for LK runs over people significantly better geared than myself.

As i said, I'm going to take this moment to just be an arrogant prick and just say that I am awesome. When i DPS I'm almost always one of the top, when i tank i tank damn well, and when i heal i heal as hard as i possibly can. As easy as it is for me to look at the meters after a fight, see myself on top and think to myself "damn I'm good" i usually don't. I'm often looking at players who are doing half my output in gear twice as good as mine and wondering why they are not doing better than me. Especially when you consider how much difference gear make in WotLK i should not be doing 3-5k more dps than someone who probably has double my gearscore.

I hope that its nothing more than overwhelming pessimism that has over taken me, and that in fact the guild will succeed in Cata and the quality of the guild will improve. But from what i have seen of a large number of our players (and from what i still see when watching my housemates raid) I'm not hopeful. More people in this guild need to wake up, look at their respective characters and realistically think "am i really doing the best that i can on this character?" and if not you should be doing everything you can to change that because to be blunt, there is a huge gap between our top players and our average players. Our top players often carry the others through the raids and this needs to stop because its just a hindrance.

I know that there will probably be many arguments to what I've said and about how i have said it etc etc. How ever, i like many of our top players in our guild, will not be happy until i finish a raid and see every single one of our DPS within a few percent of each other, reaching their top DPS numbers while our tanks can hold threat and our healers and keep everyone alive without fault.

 

[Youn]

When did this turn into a e-peen topic?

 

[Silk]

I have NO idea! Wowzers that's a lot of epeen.

Zhinrak.. I think my point was, sometimes it's enough to know you are being your best (and know your best is bloody good). No need to rub it into people's faces or claim you are the best, better than so and so, or whatever. Also your pipe dream about DPS finishing within mere % of each other will only hold true when every fight is idential and every class and spec is identical. Thankfully that's not where we are.. game would be a bit bland.

From your post, it sounds like you wanna be in a hardcore raiding guild mate. I don't think the Haven ever pretended to be full of uber top of the game players. I know we have some good/medium/bad players but I was under the impression that's just who we are.. a casual guild that happens to raid. So with that description we'll always have a mixed bag. If you're so uberpwnsupermanzomg then why not take some of the incredible awesomeness and teach others? In a nice, constructive way, not a "omg you suck" way. Even make a post about what works best with your class.

 

[Zhinrak]

I think the point of my post (which did get very lost in there) is that people need to be more cautious about what they wish for.

Many of our guild seem to have this misconception that they are much better than they really are and have become very complacent. Our guild struggled for much longer than it really should have on a number of boss fights and raids throughout WoTLK, and that unless the average quality of our guild improves, Cataclysms difficulty could prove far more challenging than most of this guild expect.

I know The Haven is "casual" but that did not stop most of our guild being so good during TBC. Throughout TBC the majority of our guild were doing great in terms of their classes and such and compare a number of the same players to how they are now in WoTLK our average quality has slipped.

I guess what i was trying to say is that i hope come cataclysm the difficulty is hard enough to wake the guild up and keep it on its toes. There is nothing stopping us from being casual and good.

As for me giving advice to other players due to my moment of arrogance. Well i have given my advice to many people, both who have asked for it and those who didn't but i felt could use a few pointers. Issue is i have often gone un-listened to, or more frequently i try to give someone advice on a class i play, but their character is far better geared than mine. They ignore the fact I'm doing more damage than them and assume that being better geared makes them better than me and my advice invalid. Needless to say I've given up being subtle and friendly about these issues most time.

 

[Elincia]

When did this turn into a e-peen topic?

/joke
Right now!
I have more achievements done then everyone in this guild! I must be epicly awesome!!!!11!!one!!
/joke off

Anyway, we'll see what happen in Cata. I don't fear we will suck as a guild.
And don't forget, more failing equals sweeter victories

 

[Ki!ler-Mk1]

I dont know if its in the wall of text on this page or not, but while Q and E are default strafe, i use A and D to straief by hold right mouse, and y'all can too