I was mowing the lawn on the weekend when it occurred to me that people rarely notice a mown lawn, but they notice an overgrown one.
Then it occurred to me
As it is in real life it is in WoW.
Tanking
- When a tank is hitting all the right buttons at the right time, you don’t notice. You just pew pew away without a care in the world.
When the tank doesn’t know or use the right rotations, or hits the wrong buttons or wrong skills you get plenty of time to notice on the ghost run…
AOE and bubbles and heals
- You notice the big numbers when you flame strike, blast wave etc
You don’t notice the bubbles or heals…
Buffs
- You notice when the Pally doesn’t give you Salv, or there is no Pally.
You don’t notice when you don’t pull aggro…
Preparation
- You notice when people aren’t ready, don’t have reagents, pots and food.
You don’t notice when everyone is outside the instance ready to go…
Decursing
- I notice when Maiden’s Holy Fire is ticking or kills me.
- I notice when Attumen’s curse stops me hitting.
- I notice when my portrait is purple.
I don’t notice when the “curse” is removed immediately (I am often yelling at our priest long after the curse has been removed.)…
Small heals
- I notice the big heal when I have 200 left.
I don’t notice the top up heals or the HoTs…
Threat meters
- I notice when the mob peels off the tank and consumes a party member, if not the whole party.
I don’t notice when someone carefully monitors and controls their threat…
Interrupts
- I notice when Aran’s fireballs and frostbolts hit me.
I don’t notice when they are interrupted…
Crowd Control
- We all notice when the rogue sap fails, the sheep breaks or the shackle breaks.
We don’t notice when the CC’d target is kept till last…
It’s what you don’t notice that matters
When people are prepared and do things right, things move so smoothly that you don’t get time to think about what people are doing right.
Maybe at the end of the run it occurs to you how you shaved 1/2 hour or an hour of the usual time.
- Do you thank the healers after each boss fight?
- Do you thank the tank after each seemless run?
- Are you to busy stroking your epeen with the damage and healing meters to notice the interrupts, CC, decurses etc?
- Do you reward the lower damage dealers that use their utility abilities at the cost of their meter rankings?
- Do you thank the OT for swapping from damage gear to tanking gear without complaint, or the feral kitty that swaps to bear or tree form to get through the messy fight?
What don’t you notice? (now you have time to think about it)
How will you acknowledge the unseen in future?
Gnomer and Out!
I personally don’t notice much, other than my beer is empty and its probably bad form to go get a top up mid boss fight
That said as a healer the thing i’m often most blind to are
tank regaining threat when i’m surfing the aggro wave…hard for a tree to do but i still manage
…need to learn a better healing rotation
How i know is i get you got aggro alert then nothing happens..
DPS….IMHO dps are stat jockeys only worried bout how big their crit is
…but seriously good dps is critical…without them we die a slow death
The other people i don’t notice are the healers who aren’t quite healing as much as me….sure at times i may think i could do it without them….but without them ppl will die..1 down soon becomes 2 and on it goes.
Who will i thank….well i would like to thank my wonderful family….my high school teacher who believed in me….my agent who….and most of all i would like to thank the lord for my god given skills :0
Funny thing is Dave, I wouldn’t know if you were playing (or asleep, drunk – OK, you are always drunk, it’s the Queensland thing – it’s hot right?) or not.
You see, that’s one of the things I don’t notice.. you throw HoTs I keep killing.
The only 2 times I remember you are there are:
1) When I die and I am cursing you, because you know you should be focusing on me and not the tank! I mean, who got you into this game in the 1st place?
2) When I am wondering why in such a dead place as Kara, there is a big healthy tree.. with eyes
Ohh and you love to pull aggro.. you and Attumen and Nightbane have something going on. I know you get bored and like to challenge the tank, but…
“You don’t notice when everyone is outside the instance ready to go…”
That’s the only part I disagree with, for myself personally, but I notice because it’s such a big pet peeve of mine!
This is a great reminder – I’ll be sure to thank my trees tonight!
I just had this talk with a guildie who is leveling a Warrior alt. He said over vent that he was tanking an Underbog PuG and everything went fine until the pull before Black Stalker where a Ret Pally had pulled threat off him, said he was a better tank before they wiped, then left group. He was debating on quitting his Warrior right then and there but a few of us with tanks and healers had told him that the instant something goes wrong, they’re the first to get blamed for the wipe. No one really compliments you when things are going smoothly but the intant chaos shows it’s ugly face, the fingers start pointing.
Great post!
You yell at the priest for Attumen’s curse? That’s horrible! Know why? It’s a curse! Curses can only be decursed and not dispelled, which can only be done by mages and druids!
That said, I tend to be very situationally aware while on a healing class. I see the heals, I know what’s going on, and I focus on a lot of things. About the only thing that I notice on my DPS classes are that the tank is holding threat and that I am getting heals as needed. Again, healing mindset!
lol no I wouldn’t yell at a Priest for Attumen’s curse, just for Maiden’s.
I have worked out a neat trick for increasing my damage meter rating on Attumen.
I used to decurse everyone…
Now I decurse the tank and myself.. only…
The tank can hit – thus generating aggro…
I can hit, thus rises in the charts…
No one else can hit…
Sneaky me…
Hm… so you don’t give a damned about cursing and then you thank the other mage, doing it for you at the cost of ending up lower on the damage list… cunning…
Just kidding. You’re right. We often look at the huge and easy numbers when evaluating stuff and miss the small but very significant things. Good point.
Worse.. there are no other mages… so everyone stays cursed except for tank & me…
And yeah.. it’s like hybrids.. they often get forgotten too.
An awesome quote from Futurama of all things.
“If you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all.”
Personal opinion : The best healers are the ones you don’t even realize are there:
- They stand in the back where you don’t see them
- They don’t pull aggro
- Your health bar doesn’t budge
- The group doesn’t need to stop for a mana break
The same could be said for tanks, except it’s kinda hard to miss a plate covered cow bashing guys over the head with an axe.
@krizzlybear: that’s a great quote, I really need to carve some time out to watch more Futurama.
I think the fact that you dont notice could be a good thing, it means you’re concentrating on your job. Debuffs, lack of buffs, heals, etc make it harder to do your job, so you notice.
One of my favorite things about wow is what you notice in different roles. When healing, I barely notice what we’re fighting, I’m concentrating on the group. When tanking, I notice ONLY what I’m fighting (I dont DPS much).
Personal pet hates:
1. Mages who think I’m their Scorch bitch and never do their part to keep the debuff up, meaning 15% of their dps is actually mine. That’s something that never gets noticed when the post fight epeen stroking is going on.
2. Likewise with decursing, and making sure something that gets sheeped, stays sheeped.
3. On the subject of sheeping, what is it with Sheep (or Turtles if you’re me) that seems to trigger an irresistable urge for dps warriors and rogues to pop Whirlwind or Blade Flurry whenever they’re standing next to them?
1. Yeah I hate that too. I can cope with them getting extra dps, I can’t cope with loosing the debuff because I missed the rotation for some reason, and all it would have taken is one from them to keep it up.
2. Yeah decursing I feel the same. Sure I am slack on Attumen, but these days Dave the Tree hugger could practically solo him. I like to think I have giving everyone else in the party a threat reduction buff by not removing it.
Sheep.. Turtles I am pretty anal about them (and I am not from New Zealand).
I downloaded some addon the other day that notifies team mates when they have targeted my turtle, or prospective turtle… scares the living hell ot of players in BGs, but has proven to be useful there (where no other comms are occurring)
[...] Ok, so while I am on the subject of Addons, Mods whatever you want to call them, I am reminded of my recent post It’s the things you don’t notice that really matter [...]