Let's start with the facts, then I shall pollute these waters with my opinions.
Information has just (to me) been released about a new change being made to our good old friend the LFD tool: You can read the full thing here. A plausible solution to shorten LFD queue times for DPS classes.
So say you queue up and your queue ticks on for several minutes. Afterwards, the queue coding changes. Rather than queueing you into a waiting line, essentially the usher will call out to any roles missing from your queue, which is most likely a tank, then a healer. This is fancy glitter speech for how the queues should have changed to shorten DPS waits. And you got it! To give priority to the stagnant queues. I wonder when this "Call to Arms" kicks in, when three DPS have assembled, or is it based on an individual's wait time, or the incomplete group's total wait time? We shall see.
Should you have been "Called to Arms", if you finish the dungeon you get thrown in under this title, you get an extra goodie bag containing gold/elixirs/flasks/gems/mini-pets/mounts.
Whoa, pets and mounts? Don't worry, these are all pets and mounts available through doable means by the player, and they will have a low low drop rate. The mounts will be "dungeon" mounts. I wonder if the Stone Drakes in Stonecore and Vortex Pinnacle are included?? Or the Blue Protodrake??
Personally, IF my main character had an "in demand" role, such as tanking and healing, then I would probably like this little addition. Though the only time I see heals in demand are for high level BC dungeons. Unfortunately, both of my mains are pure DPS toons, a warlock and a hunter. They've already gone out and collected a lot of the pets and mounts anyways. Now unless we start seeing single DPS roles dropping group, I don't see the DPS role coming in "demand" anytime soon.
Will this entice me to play my tank/heals? You could say that healers get an extra shot at obtaining mounts that could be hard to solo with their squishy butts. Well, my main tanking and main healing character is one and the same err one in the same.....whatever. My druid. No. I tank when I feel like it, and I heal when I feel like it. Even if I did get some sort of pet or mount I would probably think "damn if only Truny had that!". It'd make me feel tragically lucky, but its not game breaking. If I did want the Raven Lord mount on my "healer", my "tank", the same character would run in and take a shot at Sethekk Halls (spellcheck). A lot of people are sad and mad that tanks get handed rewards which would in turn reduce their enjoyment and their hard work. Well really, it doesn't take much effort to go to the auction house and pay 5 gold for a parrot? The cross-faction pets on the other hand cost upwards of 3,000 gold on our server, but we will see how often they drop from these goodie bags. Its not like tanks will automatically have their pet and mount rosters completely filled up in one day! And heck most people don't really care for vanity items.
What's keeping me from tanking outside of a guild group are people who don't understand CC or how to manage threat. I'm a bear tank, give me MANY seconds to build aggro. Sometimes it just takes ONE person to make a run completely bumpy. I don't heal much because...well not because of game mechanics or anything, druid healing is easy peasy...its because tree of life form is gone....yeah...I'm shallow. What about my other tanks? Well my next most active tank is my Paladin, and I tank with her because its FUN! I don't even care about loot or badges or whatnot.....heck I get into such a frenzy I tend to leave my group behind, and they hates me forever for it.
So will this "entice" me to play a more needed role? No. But now I know there's a chance I'll be "Called" and be rewarded with much glory. Though I heard Bear Tanking is getting much love in 4.1 so perhaps it will become even funner and the incentive becomes moot. See, as a tank, we already have the benefit of instant queue times, if that wasn't enough to entice you to tank I'm not sure what is!
Do I appreciate the proposed shortened DPS queue times? Maybe, if I ever queued again as DPS. OH WAIT, there could be a chance all my guildies are offline when 4.1 comes out and I felt like queueing for the new ZA/ZGs I guess....though highly unlikely.
Will This Work?
Shorten queue times? Yes. If a LOT of tanks queue. I think initially a lot of people will want to try out this new feature, only to be reminded how tedious heroic dungeons are. Heck, even in a guild group when I'm playing on my DPS toon, and our group doesn't require CC or much brain power I can still only do about one before getting bored. Or maybe that's just me. This brings us to the issue of dungeon design, difficulty, etc etc etc lets not get into it.
But will this make dungeon runs better and smoother? No. Though, since the "Called to Arms" person will only receive their goodie bag after the LAST boss in any given dungeon is dead, this will PERHAPS give the incentive to people to stick with their groups and try to communicate and work out issues, such as the enhance shammy always going down to 50% hp at every pull, or MAYBE we should CC one of the mobs that have an AOE.
Will we end up seeing more terribad tanks? Or will we end up with more people trying out the tanking game and liking it and continuing to tank until the end of their days? Of course its complicated to deal with such a multi-layered issue.
Will this make tanking or healing more fun? No.
We shall see, this will be very entertaining. So, my four dear readers what do you think about this?
Truny the Called
0 comments:
Post a Comment