Tuesday, June 16, 2009

The level cap: Beginning of the game or Retirement?

This is my first extended experience with the Wow "endgame". Although I was level 70 before WotLK hit, it was only by a few months, and I didn't even really have enough time to get geared to tank heroics. This time is different as I'm at the defense cap and have reasonable beginning levels of HP and Armor, tanking heroics is actually an option. What I have been considering is whether or not its an option worth pursuing?

My normal routine goes something like this: Go to JC trainer, get JC daily; Fly to Argent Tournament, mine anything along the way, get lumberjack and kill scourge dailies; Fly to Shadow Hold, get 3 Ebon Blade dailies (the one where you shoot down the dragons is about my fav daily EVER!!); complete dailies; turn in; log into an alt. I do 6 dailies which take about a half hour and go level my alts. I just dont have any desire to run heroics, I've been trying to consider why.

A guildie last night was looking for a tank to run heroic Violet Hold (which I despise, but I'll get into that in a minute). I decided "hey, there are pants for me potentially in there, I can at least get some badges and help out a guildie." I'd run it before on reg, just seemed like a lot of running around between portals a la black morass, no biggie. But two things remove my desire to ever run it again: A) if you die, you have to re-do everything up to that point, and B) there is a boss in there that requires pulling around the room. I don't want to run anyone around the room. Turn him away from the group, fine. Dodge out of the way of the knockout blow that deadly boss tells me is coming, fine. Hit space bar repeatedly while tanking, annoying but acceptable. Run him around the room? Nuh uh. I've heard there's a raid boss that requires a wow equivalent of the thriller dance, I don't want to do that either. Since I'm unwilling to jump through blizz's hoops, should I be doing endgame content in the first place?

I was super motivated to get to 80, I thought it would open all these doors for me. Really I'm finding it is more like retirement. Sure my pally comes out to do some consulting, does some jewelcrafting for himself and others, but really he flies around, collects his social security and sits around, mostly unused. Its kind of sad, me original character is in retirement and doesn't even know it.

3 comments:

Ruhtra said...

Hahaha

I love the viewpoint, but perhaps it is better to run the heroics that do not require the kite method then. Just a thought. As far as retirement goes, that is a funny way to look at it.

It all really boils down to what you want to do and taking advantage of the opportunities that present theirselves.

Darraxus said...

Perhaps you just shouldnt tank? Tank requires a lot of things and kiting is often times one of those. Heroic VH is one of the easiest Heroics by far. Maybe end game just isnt for you man. And the fight you are thinking of is Heigan. As the tank, you dont stop moving the entire fight.

Brey said...

Heigan is my favorite fight in the game right now. Probably because I learned it so fast and my guild assigned me to be the Heigan MT.

Level 80 is what you make of it, really. Some days I don't feel like raiding, some days I do. Once you're geared out it's fun to do heroics with lower guildies because they give you so much respect.

You should really just do a full Naxx25 pug. Any gear concerns are out the window as a tank after that. I guarantee you will upgrade at least 2 pieces to Best In Slot or 2nd best (pre-Ulduar) and you are pretty much set as a tank. I know the first time I did Naxx25, I got Wall of Terror (and 2 other pieces of gear I still am using). You should try it, it's definitely very good.