Pimped my UI, part 3

Here is the fruit of my labors:

If you scroll down to earlier blog posts you can see how messy the earlier UI was, how much real estate was taken up by various nonsense and over-sized elements. My goal with this new UI was to slim everything down, to not allow any elements to be bigger than they needed to be.

The two main things I decimated were my unit frames and my bars. For the former, there was no reason to have giant health bars and portraits. A small bar would suffice. For the latter, I was key binding just about everything already so I didn’t have to worry about abilities being noticeable enough for easy clicking, so I scaled those suckers down and slipped them all into a tiny space. ButtonFacade with the DSMFade skin helped make the buttons smaller and svelter.

I also completely jettisoned ClassTimers, which was really only serving the purpose of “oh, is my seal on? What about blessings?” Now I have that function carried by Power Auras–those funky symbols and text you see floating over my character. If Righteous Fury is off “RF!” will alert me. If Blessing of Sanctuary is off, the blue S. If I don’t have a seal on, that weird cross symbol will warn me. If I’m afflicted by Forbearance and can’t pop a cooldown, I’ll know.

Per Kerridos’ suggestion in the last UI post, I set Recount to only show when out of combat (it’s an option in the appearance tab, I think) and Omen to only show while in combat. Piling the two on top of each other, I cut how much real estate the two take up. Definitely one of the biggest space savers I managed to accomplish.

To pretty up the whole package I deployed some kgPanels (I was going to try sunport but the screenshots they had didn’t appeal to me) to organize the map-buttons area and the Omen/Recount spot. I really like how it adds sharp lines and solidity to the presentation.

Lastly, I was initially going to give MSBT the heave-ho, and I did for a time. But, the Ulduar hardmodes on Friday was pretty convincing that while I don’t think I’m noticing my damage intake in scrolling combat text, I subconsciously have been. It was a lot harder keeping track of damage intake by glancing at my player unit frame rather than seeing the numbers whizz by. Though, I still unchecked a lot of what MSBT was showing and reduced the text size/alpha to make it less distracting.

I can’t wait to take this UI for a spin in ICC tonight, I’m looking forward to seeing more of the fights than I ever have before.

So much Cataclysm news

Looks like Blizz is gearing up for the Cataclysm beta shortly, slow leaks of Cata info are starting to pick up the pace, threatening to build up to a torrent. For starters, they leaked how rage would be redesigned, and then followed up with a description of how dispel mechanics would work in the next expansion. The latter affects us, particularly these two points:

Paladins will be able to dispel defensive magic, diseases, and poison.

Protection and Retribution paladins will lose their current ability to dispel magic.

So it sounds like baseline Cleanse will remove diseases and poison, and magic dispelling will be made a Holy talent. Interesting.

Then this morning, we awoke to this ominous announcement of our imminent class preview:

The paladin is still deep in development. Instead of giving a preview that would be potentially less comprehensive than the other classes we made the decision to post it when it’s ready, in order to properly honor the paladin class and those that play them. The wait isn’t too long however as we’re expecting to be able to post it on April 16.

I wonder what this means? Personally I hope it’s a confirmation that big changes are coming to all of our trees and that Blizz is actively taking into consideration my wise counsel and prognostications, haha.

I can’t wait for April 16th to see what’s in store for us.

A weekend of achievement

I’m delaying the UI post one day so I can tweak some things tonight. It will go up tomorrow! In the meantime you can see my new UI in these screenshots.

Friday we were supposed to wrap up ICC-10 and finally kill the Lich King. Hell, I even named the calendar event “The Dethroning”. I was going all in on any possible, and probable, jinxes. Unfortunately, raid didn’t happen. One invited person didn’t show and two couldn’t make it. And those in guild were either severely undergeared or all ready saved. To salvage the night we instead went for some good ol’ fashioned Uld10 hardmodes.

They went last weekend (when I wasn’t around) and cleared up to Firefighter but couldn’t down that fight. So Friday we started on Mimiron and after finally managing to scrape up a healer (one of our super geared raid healers came on) we were good to go. We then defied our expectations and easily one-shot Firefighter. The glories of severely overgearing an encounter!

With that easily acquired feather in our caps, we then double backed and opened up Algalon’s lair. Because, why not? We had the keys, none of us had ever seen the fight, it would only take an hour max. Might as well take a few whacks at it.

Algalon is, to put it lightly, a very intense fight. I can only imagine what it was like to do this when it was end-game content rather than the playground of a pack of drunkards. There are multiple counters letting you know when different dooms are going to befall your raid, the least of which was definitely not the Big Bang. The way we ended up handling that was Morvain, the DK, would tank initially then when I picked it up from him, after my first phase punch, the first Bang would occur.

I’d get hotted up and a everyone would go in a black hole and the hit would typically proc Ardent Defender, and the hots would push me back up to nearly full health immediately afterward. The second one Morvain would take, using a guardian spirit for similar effect. The third I would have AD back for, so I’d eat it and maybe pop Divine Protection if I got uncomfortable.

We did a bunch of attempts just working out the various mechanics, usually wiping to some little mistake that would kill someone and then domino effect into a wipe. That would lead to us quickly sprinting back to our corpses ASAP to get another lick in.

With about 30 minutes to go I was getting a bit nervous if we were going to get it that night. Then that attempt everything clicked, I guess, and we pushed it to the sub-20% phase for the first time. Suddenly waves of enemies were appearing and Morvain and I just went crazy taunting as much as we could. In a blur, Algalon dropped combat with us and then went into his monologue. It was pretty cool to get to see the fight, let alone kill it, however cheap the victory might have been.

Also, Algalon is hands-down the most beautiful boss encounter I have ever seen.

After Algalon I started debating with myself which Keeper I wanted to send down for One Light. Normally you’d want Thorim to get rid of the Immortal Guardians, but at our gear levels Phase 3 would probably go by really quickly, and I would be capable of holding a huge number of the guardians. As long as I kept them far enough away to prevent Yogg from getting free heals. I was trying to talk myself out of sending down Freya who would bend the difficulty curve a bit by giving us sanity wells.

I eventually settled on sending down Freya, dooming that lockout perhaps. Nonetheless, during my epic wasting of time up top running back and forth between Freya, everyone continued to clear down to Vezax. Once I got down there we finished off the trash and then went on to one-shot Vezax’s hardmode with little difficulty.

The real challenge was, as I suspected, Yogg. And not because of the hardmode. A lot of us were tired, some of us were clumsy, others rusty. It was pretty late and we kept stalling on the normal mechanics of the fight. People not getting out of the brain room in time and getting mind controlled, not enough dps being done to the brain, etc. If it was earlier in the night, I doubt that fight would have been much trouble. We ended up calling it at midnight, server time because a few had to go.

On the last attempt, as we were wiping, I ran into a portal to check off at least one the visions from my In His House He Lays Dreaming achievement. The wages of being a tank, eh? Certain achievements you usually have to finagle or trick your way into getting, like Hot Pocket or Denyin’ the Scion or Take Out Those Turrets, or snatch them mid-wipe.

Then yesterday was, in addition to Easter, the beginning of Noblegarden. The latter being the last holiday I needed to get my Violet Proto. And of that holiday I only needed three achievements: Chocoholic (I was 25/100 on this), Desert Rose, and Spring Fling. So in the morning I buckled down and headed over to Falconwing Square, which was crawling with pink bunnies darting from egg to egg and I was immediately reminded why I hated Noblegarden so much.

I eventually just camped in one spot in Falconwing that had near me three to four different eggs, and just darted between the four spawns grabbing them as they popped. Eventually my eyes started to bleed, so I bought the Spring Robe for Desert Rose and moved on to Brill, determined just to do Spring Fling and not hunt anymore eggs.

Then I saw how nearly deserted Brill was and what easy pickings the eggs there could be. I found another fruitful camping spot and hung out for a while, getting enough eggs to finally put me over the top for Chocoholic. From there I finished up my epic rabbit breeding journey and then did a quick tour of the various dry spots in Azeroth. Finally I finished up the last achievement of the last holiday I needed for What a Long Strange Trip It’s Been.

I’m so glad that’s over.

… I should do Noblegarden on my druid if I’m going to use him in Cataclysm. Ugh.

Got the UI itch again

Every so often I get the feeling my UI is way too cluttered and I need to do something about it, lest the seas rise and dogs and cats begin living together.

Right now, I would definitely say my UI is obscenely jampacked with way too much screen real estate taken up by various addons and widgets. It could stand to be pared down a bit.

I doodled a quick sketch of what I’d like to do:

My main goal in a new design would be to free up as much of the screen as I can. That means jamming everything in the bottom whatever-fraction of the screen, and having as little as humanly possible beyond that. I think realistically I can swing that, provided I make the buff icons at the top as small as possible.

Other big changes are making ability icons tiny, since I keybind them anyway, I don’t really need to see them all that much. I may end up hiding huge swaths of them. I’m also going to replace ClassTimers with Power Auras, since I used to former to track if I had my main self-buffs on and if Forbearance was up. I’ll just code the latter to concisely show if Forbeance is forbearing me, or if I’m missing Righteous Fury/Blessing of Sanctuary/et al. Going to also ditch Scrolling Battle Text because that’s just information overload that I don’t follow as is.

Lastly, I’m going to use kgPanels to make everything more organized looking.

Can’t wait to get cracking on this–I love a project. I’ll report back monday with the results.

The curse, reversed

The revitalization of the guild continues apace! Last night we swore revenge on the epic beatdowns the Blood Queen had inflicted upon us. We, along with our trusted friend the 10% buff, were going to get our pound of flesh from her sparkling hide.

The first pull was around 7:00 or so, after quickly doing the raid weekly and then shuffling over to Icecrown. Once we were through the trash I gave a rundown of the fight to the four or so people who had never done it before. After rambling for ten minutes, I then gave the cliff notes version:

Swarming shadows, run to the walls, don’t drop it in melee. Pact of the darkfallen, get to the middle. Air phase, spread out six yards apart. Bites, do them.

And then we were off to the races. We had an epically awful first go attempt that failed at around 45%. No matter, those four people saw the mechanics of the fight. The next attempt we got her to 12% or so before she enraged. That filled me with hope. I told everyone I believed in them, and then we proceeded to wipe for the next two hours.

Sigh. You people just can’t make things easy, can you?

By the end I was starting to despair, as I’m sure people could tell by the lack of enthusiasm in my voice. I knew we were capable of the kill but we needed to overcome those stupid little mistakes that would get someone killed. People dying in airphase. Not getting bites off and getting mindcontrolled. And so on. There are a hundred ways to mess up, and just one death usually meant falling behind the enrage timer.

What I think eventually turned the tide was making the first biter wait as long as he could before biting the second person. This would then push the second wave of bites to after the air phase, rather than right before it. Once we started doing that, we stopped losing people during the first airphase. The only downside being that this reduced how much time we had at the end with all vampires up, but thanks to Mr. 10% Buff we had the wiggle room.

After the two hours of wipes some off us were rezzed up at the boss, others released and started to run back in, only to find the Valks back up and circling the Upper Spire. I started to run down the hallway to meet them, but all the packs there had already respawned. Those of us left behind wiped ourselves and then met everyone at the teleporter to reclear back up to BQL.

It was already 9:30, basically thirty minutes before the raid would end and it was starting to look like we weren’t going to get her.

I knew, despite any despair I might be feeling, we couldn’t use the respawn as an excuse to quit early. That attitude was fatal to the guild and we had to break it, or it would break us. So, reclear we did, and made our way back up. Some folks took a quick break and we readychecked, flasked, and were off.

I pulled and we all started to pour in the hurt. 65% before the first air phase, ahead of the timer. Bites occurring after she came down, so we were safe for that.

To help this crucial point along, I popped Divine Sacrifice/Guardian to shave off some damage. I also bubbled because someone got awfully close and I didn’t want to accidentally kill them. Thankfully, no one died during the airphase. Everything was going well, people just needed to hold it together.

More bites go out and the second airphase happens. Again, no deaths. Then the last wave of bite assigns go out and I watch the window for the addon to report back successful bites. I watch Vampires 9-13 get created quickly, then with sweat dripping down my brow, the last few trickle in. Vampire #14. “Two more guys!” Vampire #15. “One more, get that bite off!” Vampire #16. Everyone was bit.

“Pop bloodlust, burn cooldowns, NUKE HER!”

I pop wings and immediately start laying as much dps in as I can. It’s about 40 seconds left on the enrage, 25% to go. I’m watching both her health bar and the enrage timer with equal parts dread and hope. Shouting encouragement into vent, both tick down to the inevitable. Finally, with about 1% to go we had only a few seconds to live. Finally, with her hp in the decimal points, it was obvious she was about to enrage. I quickly popped bubblewall, both trinks, and an armor pot, bracing myself for the burst.

It was all for naught, though.

With a screech she then collapsed to the floor, never getting a hit off. We killed her the millisecond she enraged.

It took a second for the kill to sink in, and then I quickly clicked on her body to see the loot. And there it was. The shield. The Icecrown Glacial Wall. The bulwark I had been drooling over since it was first revealed. (Yes, yes, I know, the heroic 10man shield is better, let me have my moment, damn you.)

Taking up the IGW, I put to rest the ghosts of all the shields I had lusted over before, but been thwarted in my attempts to obtain. The ALD, Bulwark of the Amani Empire, Bulwark of Azzinoth. All had escaped my ambitions. Finally, I had broken the curse.

More importantly (far more importantly), this was a huge victory for the guild. We went from weeks of early exits, no new kills, endless demoralizations. It looked like ES was on the way out. This week we bucked the trend though, we refused to leave, we didn’t let excuses prevent us from continuing to try fights.

I’d like to take credit for it, but I honestly can’t. I’m a terrible guild leader and an even worse raid leader. Sure, I can explain the fights, I can diagnose wipes somewhat efficiently. But, I am just as susceptible to despair as any rank and file, and after those numerous wipes I was all but giving up on the inside. It was only by the light of the optimism of my officers and the happy warriors of the healing corps that the mood of the raid stayed afloat and we were able to muster the will to down this blood-sucking bitch.

This victory belongs to the entire guild. You guys earned it!

Back on track

Last week was a particularly low point for the guild. We had a bad Tuesday with multiple dumb wipes, and the night ended early when we fled ICC before we could suffer further humiliations. The determination was “well, we don’t have the group for stuff past farm, so nothing left to do.”

Then, to follow it up, Demo announced later that night he was going on extended hiatus and stepping down as guild leader. And, as if that wasn’t enough, Wednesday the raid didn’t even happen due to various attendance issues, my own included.

The question became, was this a TKO for ES?

In the interregnum period between last Tuesday and last night, I did a lot of thinking about what I was going to do to right the ship of state, so to speak. My main priorities were first and foremost to get us back on track for ICC-25 progression and get the latest Thorim, Blood Queen, good n’ dead. Concurrently, I also wanted to expand ES, make it more than just a raiding guild–that is, give people reasons to log on other than ICC on Tues/Wed. Promote some good ol’ fashioned esprit du corps that would make for higher morale in the trenches of Icecrown.

So last night I had a brief meeting, just to inform everyone of my coup and talk about my goals for the guild, not the least of which was a new emphasis on optimism. That is, no more of this “we don’t have the group for this” BS. Nothing kills morale faster than hopelessness, and we weren’t going to play that game anymore. I gave a dopey little pep talk about how we’ve accomplished great things as a guild, how we were the only 25man guild on the server in the first week of Icecrown to down Saurfang in 245 gear (ie, the only guild that killed Saurfang but was not doing ToGC25).

Not to say that’s some huge, earth-shaking achievement, but it proves we can play with the big dogs when we set out mind to something, buckle down, and don’t get bogged down in dumb mistakes.

Anyway, what I basically said was we weren’t living up to our potential, and we were going to fix that.

Post-meeting we shuffled off to ICC and started the run. The plan was bee-lining for the Plague Wing and putting some serious work on Putricide, who at that point we had only killed once, and after some serious effort and two weeks of attempts. Following that, we tried to shift focus to Blood Queen and neglected the good doctor, but that didn’t bear much fruit.

Last week, as I said, the “don’t have the group for this” card was played and we didn’t even try him.

But not this week, things were differently baby! We stormed into Putricide’s lab, wiped spectacularly the first time in one of those “shaking the rust off” wipes where everything that can go wrong, does. The second time we stomped Putri (well, “stomped” maybe isn’t the word, but we got him nonetheless).

I am filled with hope and other warm, squishy emotions. If we could down the sucker with three new people last night (and what could be described as “not having the group”) then, dammit, we can farm him.

After Putri, we took a quick breather and steamed over to VOA to rock Toravon and decompress a bit. Afterwards we jumped Koralon in the off chance that something would drop that one of the newer folks could use. Luckily, the WoW gods smiled on us and Ghrayrynn, a feral druid, scored the 245 tier gloves. So my insistence that we do big smokey had some payoff. Statistically, it was bound to happen.

Back to ICC we went just to clear out the Blood Princes and set up a straight shot for us to Blood Queen the following night. After the pull there was a huge lag spike and it kind of went to hell very fast. A few melee got ‘sploded by the Empowered Vortex, and then on the Keleseth phase, some one managed to kill all of the orbs protecting Slyke (the spriest ranged tank) which then led to him getting squished.

We wiped it and ran back, and while we were setting up for the next attempt I admonished everyone to be careful with Slyke’s balls. This, of course, set off a wave of laughter and a torrent of jokes involving Slyke’s balls. One of the officers whispered me about what a great sign that was–when was the last time we had a good laugh in ICC25? Probably not for a month or two. It seemed a weight came off people’s shoulders with that Putricide kill. Everyone was getting more optimistic.

Now lets parlay that into another great night in ICC. Blood Queen is long overdue for a stomping.

Lastly, I want to congratulate on of my guildees, Ulkjen, for finally getting his epic flying. Ulk isn’t very good with his gold, and for the longest time didn’t even have cold weather flying (until someone loaned him the 1000g). I remember back in Naxx having to go outside to summon him because he couldn’t fly back up from Venomspite.

To help him save, over the last few months he’s been sending me random deposits of 100 to 200 gold and I’ve been keeping them in my pile. Last night he finally hit the magic number and bought the epic training. Like Jgalt said, “if there was ever a ‘SS or it didn’t happen’ moment, this is it.” Grats to him.

10% ICC buff is live

So Hellscream’s Warsong/Strength of The Chynn is now up to 10%. Putting aside any misgivings about the nerf to the instance, etc etc, the bigger question is what this means to us tanks?

With the free health this buff gives (potentially in the neighborhood of a free 5,000 hp), the issue arises of how much health is too much health? And, if we reach this hp plateau, should be start to gem or gear differently?

Wrathy thinks the time is now and proposes gemming beyond straight stamina again. Obviously, because he’s in the 25man hardmodes he’s dealing with a different animal, but nonetheless the lessons trickle down to us normal 10/25 raiders as well.

Does a tank really need to have 60k hp in 10man normal mode? At that point wouldn’t it make more sense to scale back and boost avoidance, to free up some mana for your healers?

Perhaps. I need to do some more thinking about this, and particularly see how the buff to the buff affects tonight’s raid.

Hmm: Taunt hit chance changing?

I’m going to vote for not interesting gameplay.

At the very least, you should be able to reduce your chance to miss a Taunt to zero if you reduce your chance to miss with a weapon to zero. It’s also possible we’ll just let them always hit. (Source)

Taunts going on the melee hit table is a long overdue change. Taunts always hitting seems like unnecessary trivialization. I would prefer the former.

Make it so, GC.

The LK fight doesn’t seem that hard

First of all, the die is cast:

My first act was to kick all the Taurens out of the guild and put out all the basic campfires to prevent future challenges to my rule.

Moving on, last night we went back into ICC for our weekly 10man foray against the Lich King (I say weekly, though this is only the second night of attempts). There was some raid lockout shuffling because most of the people in the group went Wednesday night and cleared up to Sindragosa, so I ditched the raid lockout I was baby sitting and we starting the night two-shotting Sindragosa and then moving on to Arthas.

This just speaks to how disillusioned I seem to be with 25man raiding right now, but the group we had last night was so much fun. There was no impatience to speak of, everyone tried their hardest, no stupid mistakes were ever repeated. Spirits remained high the entire time. It got to the point on the last few attempts where we were just joking around during phase one because we had it down so pat.

But I get ahead of myself. Suffice it to say, 10 > 25.

Offtanking phase one

I’ve learned that tanking the Shambling Horrors in the first phase is something I excel at. I hold it off to the side, picking each up with a Hand of Reckoning and use my stuns every so often during enrages if Cendra (hunter) is otherwise pre-occupied. Picking up the little ghouls isn’t an issue either, saving the shield toss for when they spawn can usually pick them up. If not, I wait til they inevitably target the Ret pally and then Righteous Defense them all back to me.

We did an attempt or two at first with some issues killing off all the Horrors before Remorseless Winter began but afterwards we easily started coasting into phase 1.5 with the Horrors getting picked off by a disease megahit. We also got to the point where we were pushing it past 70% after the second Horror spawned.

Remorseless Winter we then had an attempt or two to streamline. Our biggest issue seemed to be when the phase ended and people would run for the middle but run smack dab into the orb chasing them. We had a few hilarious deaths with people getting blown right off the side of the Citadel.

Phase two issues

At this point I would take over maintanking Arthas because Soul Reaper was kind of a non-issue for me. The attack would hit, and provided I was at full health it would take me into the AD-reduced zone, paring down the 50k hit to a very manageable 47k hit. And, if worse came to worse, I had the extra life proc backing me up. Basically I could ignore the mechanic provided I was fully healed. If a healer got picked up by a Valk that’d be another issue, and then I’d pop a cooldown to be safe.

Defile was another one of those issues that popped up early but was quickly squelched. We got down a system of scattering a bit right before Defile’s cooldown was up, then the targeted person would hastily run out of the affected area. The first time we got to phase two, there was a hilarious Defile wipe where in short order the entire platform was covered in the oleaginous effect because we were so horribly stacked.

The last roadblock that we ended the night on was Valks carrying people off. This is easily fixed those with some discipline on stuns. It looked like everyone was blowing stuns immediately off the bat, which is a terribly dumb idea, if only just because it screws with the diminishing returns on stuns and makes future attempts to slow them down nigh impossible.

Our best attempt we got him to 43%. Next week I’m sure we’ll be cruising in the phase three territory… which honestly doesn’t seem that difficult. No Valks, just Defiles and keeping people alive during Harvests. Considering how amazing the healers are I’m not concerned about that in the slightest. I think next Monday or the Monday after I’ll be rejoicing in a LK kill here.

How to spice up tankadin threat in Cataclysm

So it goes without saying that Paladin threat generation as it stands now is, shall we say, fairly straightforward. Unassuming. Non-pretentious. Some might go so far as to describe it as faceroll.

Indeed, some of us might treat the ease of the Paladin rotation the same way we treat that no-good uncle of ours who’s had one too many run-ins with the local constabulary. Around the family dinner table you might joke about what an idiot he is, but you’ll invariably flip out on a neighbor that’s gossiping about him like some clucking hen. No one makes fun of family except for family, right?

Well, let’s pretend this is the familial dinner table. We need to talk about Uncle Faceroll.

One of the biggest problems with Paladin tanking in general is how automated and streamlined it is. The whole process requires minimal input compared to other classes. Oh sure, we have a wide range of buttons to press, but there’s something version wrong when you can bind that whole rotation to two macros. Our second “cooldown” kicks in automatically, our AP debuff is applied automatically, our attack speed debuff is tacked on to an ability we already use. In short, our tanking style requires significantly less input than other classes.

Take warriors (please! har har har) for example. They have a “counterattack” ability, a proc that can change the priority of their rotation, an “on next swing” attack, and have to actively keep up both debuffs. Druids have a dot they have to stack and actively keep up on a boss and an on-next-swing, among other things. DKs have two diseases they need to keep up on a target at all times and a counterattack. Conversely, we have a straight rotation, as immutable and immovable as a glacier.

Here’s what I think should change:

1. Change Holy Vengeance to a separate ability that applies the dot, independent of what Seal you have up. The attack applying the dot will be low threat, and having five stacks will be mandatory to maintaining proper threat on a boss. Because the ability applying a stack will be so low threat, you will be discouraged from allowing clipping your stacks. Seal of Vengeance can still do damage as a proc based on how many stacks you have up.

2. Redoubt is undoubtedly changing in Cataclysm with the shuffle being given to block. Perhaps retool the talent to be a clone of Sword and Board. When you block an attack you have a x% change to proc a free, immediate Shield of Righteousness.

3. Holy Shield is also probably getting an overhaul as well, and with much less consistent blocking probably would be as tps-heavy as it is right now. As such, retool the ability so that when you dodge/parry/miss an attack, you can hit Holy Shield and you’ll immediately respond with a “holy bitch slap with my shield” ala Revenge or Rune Strike. This might be a tad redundant with ShoR already existing, so maybe just make a new counterattack ability for Paladins.

Yes, I’m advocating homogeneity

I know that’s such a dirty word in the community, but honestly it’s the only way I can see to fix this impasse. The 4 kinds of attacks tanks in this game have (generally) are instant, on next swing, counterattack, and a dot application. Certain tanks have abilities that fall under those categories, or maybe dance on the border between them.

All our attacks are instant, with one leaving a puddle of dots on the floor, and one adding a dot to our attacks… automatically.

This is what heterogeneity has gotten us? We’re the “faceroll” tank class, for good or ill, and if that’s our special flavor, I’d rather them make us a little more vanilla.