Breakfast Topic: The gap
by Matthew Rossi 
Sep 21st 2009 at 8:00AM
I have been chain running TotC 5/Heroic as much as possible to try and catch up and frankly, wow, the difference in every aspect of play is astonishing. You forget just how much of a difference it all makes, until you suddenly find yourself effectively back in time on a character with the stats you used to have when things were hard. Going from a 35k health pool to a 27k one (up to 30 now, thanks to TotC) was a huge wake up call that made me adjust my pulling strategies, use of my cooldowns, and even how I go about generating threat. As all my stats improve I'm finding myself lowering my foot to the floorboard, so to speak, but in a way I think it's a good thing to be reminded every now and again that you can't just tell people starting out in blues and greens to do what you do in your full raid epics.
It's an experience you can have in other ways, of course: taking your alt rogue to DPS a heroic and being shocked at how much lower his DPS is than your DK main, for instance. So I posit to you, gentle readers, how have you found yourself minding the gap?
Filed under: Rogue, Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, Breakfast Topics, Death Knight, Items, Instances, Classes
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
Johndoz Sep 21st 2009 8:05AM
There is NO WAY to get past the gear gap.
Heroics are ruined ((YOU NEEEEEED 40K HP TO PUG H NEXUS LULZ)) thanks to blizzard putting badges into them.
You simply have to abandon your char and wait until next expansion.
Ponga Sep 24th 2009 6:59PM
I disagree,
I have a Tauren dk that I just hit 80 with 3 days ago. I am 19 def below raid capped and have quite a few pieces of epic gear for my tank set. My main is a uld/toc 10 geared hunter and I find that I you have supportive guild mates that are altaholics it is easy to gear out.
Chukie Sep 21st 2009 8:17AM
Im a 39k unbuffed prot pally these days. Anyone refuses a lesser geared tank for easy content like voa I tell them I did a h:CoS timed run 6 days into the expansion not even defensed capped. And then have them invite that other tank just trying to gear up back before they find their raid short 2 tanks.
Stag Sep 21st 2009 9:22AM
Dunno why johndoz's comment was voted down. The level of elitism is absolutely ridiculous in pugs atm. People seem to expect you to massively over gear heroics.
Obviously this can be overcome by running with guildies, but it's still fucking stupid.
Samuel Reese Sep 21st 2009 9:59AM
The thing is, the only thing that was created by Blizzard was a double-edged sword by introducing badges to the Heroics. On one side, yes you've got the elitists who care more about rolling through without stopping and will therefore demand gear checks on every instance they go into.
On the other, and far more valuable in my opinion, is that it helps close that gap between fresh 80s and the 80s that have been at max level for so long. It gives incentives for the raiders to go back into 5-mans, whereas before this they were more or less ignored. Lord knows how hard it was to get a non-guilded PuG going, this at least made things easier to fill up groups faster.
The sad fact is that unless it's TotGC 25, people expect you to roll through it with zero headaches. They complain about the game being too easy, when in fact it's only that way if you are severely overgeared for said instance. By artificially eliminating the challenge to the game, IMO, it makes the whole thing redundant and boring.
TL:DR - Elitists will always exist in every aspect of the game, but badges didn't ruin Instances.
t0xic Sep 21st 2009 10:03AM
@Stag:
I've found a combination of both. Elitest PUGs that expect you to be wearing T9 and people barely cracking 900 dps. Last night I tanked chain heroics on my pally and had #2 DPS at 2100 for a couple of runs. I'm not even sure how you play a level 80 hunter and get 900 dps. He wasn't even BM.
I agree that elitism is all over the place (in various forms). I had one guy leave my group because I said I hadn't tanked HOS in over a month, and would need people to point me in the right direction if I went the wrong way =) Oh well. Easy badges for the people that decided to stay.
Stag Sep 21st 2009 10:09AM
The thing that especially gets me though is the fact that often the people dishing out on what they see as 'undergeared' people are often nothing special themselves or are quite obviously lazy people who've only gotten to where they are by being carried themselves.
For example, my alt priest had to put up with tears from some guy who happened to be wearing Ulduar gear... cept not one piece of it was enchanted besides a couple of pvp enchants.
PeeWee Sep 21st 2009 11:52AM
Agreed. I've seen some some asshats demand iLvl 226+ in all slots to be considered in a VOA run. VOA? That place is a faceroller for any class, even in blues -- including Koralon. The healers need to be more alert and people have to be slightly less retarded and not stand in fire, that's all.
If you can see when patches of fire appear on your screen and have the ability to move out of them, you're ready for VOA.
Adamanthis Sep 21st 2009 12:30PM
This was my experience as well. I recently levelled a prot pally alt to 80. I took my time learning to tank by running every non-heroic instance in Wrath several times to get the best gear available and learn the fights. I'm defense capped with iLevel 187 or 200 gear in all of my slots. I thought I would continue at 80 to run a few of the easier heroics and continue to upgrade, but the static from prima dona puggers has made the experience sour quickly. I'll still use the character if a guild group needs a tank for the daily, but other than that, she is in semi-retirement.
I always have fun with friendly groups, even ones that struggle a bit, because it always makes reaching the end feel like an accomplishment - like a MMORPG is supposed to. I absolutely detest groups where players consider it a tedious chore for badges, and are rude and hostile to any mistake or delay. Personally, I find the game much more enjoyable when not massively outgeared for what I'm running and their is still a modicum of challenge.
With the prospect of cross-server instance groups in the future, I wonder if this isn't something that could change. I'd love to join a Heroic Nexus group labelled "NOT GEARED!", where the run is filled with characters new to Heroics, still getting upgrades, and still learning the finer points of their class at the level max. Maybe even, god forbid, wiping a couple of times.
Guild groups are of course the best option, but sometimes one isn't available, and I like meeting new people as well. I don't begrudge the ToC25 geared groups from wanting their 42k HP tank to power through their daily grind, so it's really just an issue of how puggers with the same expectations can find each other.
Goodk4t Sep 21st 2009 6:17PM
VoA does not apply here. Yes, it's a "faceroll" raid, but yet the main reason people wipe it's because healers or dpsers being lackbusters, so yes, it demands a gear check.
About the people in blues issue, it's quite simple: VoA drops ilvl232, ilvl245 gear. Nobody wants to pass his T9 gear to that player in blues that got carried doing 900 DPS.
Prissa Sep 21st 2009 7:47PM
While I completely agree that requiring everyone to have ulduar epics just to run a heroic is obscene and just plain elitist, I found out from another angle the other day that it's not necessarily just being elitist.
Was doing a heroic Nex run, with a Naxx25 geared healer, dps in uber totc epics and a tank in blues and the odd crafted epic. We weren't ragging on him or anything, we were happy to have him. But to put it simply, we could not do it. Tank can't hold aoe? that's fine we'll focus fire. No, that didn't work either. When the dps pull aggro after doing one or 2 spells, you can see the group just isn't going to work.
So now I consequently find that it's not unfair to ask to run with -similarly geared- people. The tank was fine for his gear. But there was no way he could tank for that specific group.
Akki Sep 21st 2009 8:13AM
I feel your pain as a recent level 80 warrior who wants to play prot. There also seems to be a shortage of tanks on my server.
styopa Sep 21st 2009 10:40AM
Meh, I've given up trying to get anything PUG'd as a tank. My warrior toon is my 1st alt, so after I'd raced my main to 80, he was *just* too far behind the mains to get in on the wave of level-running, and enough ahead of the wave of 1st-alts that I got bored waiting to find PUGs and ended up leveling a new druid from 1-80 on a pvp server, which then put him about 2 alt-waves late, again.
I rationalize it that
- when Cataclysm comes out, I expect that within about +3 lvls most of the Tier 8-9 stuff will be replaced by lvl85 heroic drops.
- having T8+ stuff won't appreciably accelerate the leveling process to 85 because frankly it would be hard to imagine it GETTING much easier than it is already.
- with the (yay!) simplification of gear, as well as the gear customization capabilities, that is going to throw the BiS-theorycrafters for some SERIOUS loops, and (in my expectation) almost entirely revamp what is BiS, specs, etc. anyway.
dps.dave Sep 21st 2009 2:40PM
SAME HERE! On Dalvengyr, heals are easier to find than any tank by a long shot. I'm going to be selling my services to PUGs when I get a chest piece here in a minute :D
Thundercream Sep 21st 2009 8:19AM
zomgwtfpewpewioncannonzfromspace
The most irrelevant particulate lies anthropomorphized in the latent structuralistic monotheme embedded in such a discussion. Blink twice, forsake an entantiodromiatic moment, then chipper on down to the QQ town.
Dragoest Sep 21st 2009 8:27AM
..... WHAT?
Wyred Sep 21st 2009 9:33AM
Fuckwit student thinks he's the new William Burroughs, News at Ten.
Jabadabadana Sep 21st 2009 10:57AM
It's enantiodromiatic. If you are going to regurgitate large words at people, have the intelligence to spell them correctly. Heck, proofread your next comment, it has a typo too, and one that your spell checker can actually proof.
Besides, what you're complaining about is a common occurrence, and you're comment is essentially as irrelevant, if not more so.
PodPeople Sep 21st 2009 11:39AM
Looks like someone discovered a thesaurus and a dictionary, and maybe next week they can figure out how to use them properly.
klink-o Sep 21st 2009 8:19AM
Yeah my alts are pretty much at a standstill. Unless it's a guild group, i don't even bother trying to get gear anymore. On a side note, after stomping TotC 10 and 25 normal with our mains for several weeks we got wrecked on our alts. We did manage to pull through after actually using some strategy, though. It was quite a wake-up call to how far we've come and how much of a difference gear can make.