I have a thing for hybrids. My first character and long time main was a druid. And my primary BC alt was my shaman. And then, of course, there’s my shadow priests. I guess I like to be able to pinch hit in the middle of a fight, and to have the day-to-day variety that being a hybrid allows.
I was reminded of this fact in our alt ICC this week. I got to bring my poor neglected shaman. We ran about 4 such alt runs this week since the weekly raid quest was Lord Marrowgar and thus we had a ton of interest. In our run, we ran into a few bumps along the way — the bulk of them being in fighting the ice giant for the weekly ICC quest.
In true hybrid fashion, I started pumping out the chains of healy goodness whenever I saw things get hairy for our healers (or when we lost a healer.) Yes, this meant my DPS numbers, which had been great along the way as we cleared through lower spire, went into the toilet. But it also meant we were able in several cases to keep pushing forward instead of wiping.
I love having that utility — to seamlessly swap between roles mid-fight to keep things rolling. But it is interesting that with few exceptions (such as a druid in our raid team who has dropped into bear on more than one occasion when a tank went down, saving us squishies from insta death) I don’t see a lot of that. I see shamans insisting on putting down fire DPS totems when a totem of wrath would help the raid as a whole. Or standing and dying, DPSing, when they could easily toss a heal on themselves instead.
Yes, I feel the pain of the shadowformed priest or the Boomkin form druid who lose time and mana by popping out of their forms (I know I hate to do so except when necessary.) But it seems like for too many folks, the meter humping necessitates their never feeling there *is* a moment that warrants making an on-the-fly decision to swap their role for even a moment or two in the spirit of helping the team deal with an unexpected hurdle.
Whyfore all the meter humping? You don’t do any DPS when you’re dead. And no one cares how much DPS you pumped out on the boss attempts that failed. It’s about the attempts where the teamwork was there, and the boss goes down. Not about how much DPS any one of us individually did. It’s about how we played our role in the team as a whole. That MM part of the MMORPG.
I tend to see this behavior a lot, which (for me) is a huge turnoff. These days I’m taking a break from tanking (until I hit Outland) and simply doing the DPS thing. I see this at the lower levels too, there have been many times I’ve stopped DPS’ing to help heal, or assist other players when they are in trouble. It seems that some players get tunnel vision and won’t step out of their role to assist the group.
WIth my Paladin it’s usually involves taunting mobs off a player and leading them back to the tank. I don’t use meters with my alts in instances. I have a fairly good idea where they are at DPS wise. Although in the recent groups I’ve been in with my lowbie toons someone has asked for a recount and my toons have been at the top which I guess is nice, but not my main goal. I just want to have a great run with those I’ve grouped with and at times that does mean I need to ease up on DPS to accomplish that.
Exactly RE: the tunnel vision. I want a run to be successful more than I want to see my name in lights. And the requesting meters in the leveling instances makes me batty, tho not as much as the undergeared/inexperienced tanks wanting to steamroll through without stopping for mana ever. Grrrr. My lock is so far behind your paladin now! I bet you catch up with my druid (76) before I hit 80.
Oh requesting meters drive me nuts too. I don’t like them but I have used them for myself to see areas I could improve but you won’t see me asking for it in group. If I want to know that badly I’ll enable mine. 🙂 For myself, at lower levels, it’s more important getting comfortable with the rotation which is where I’m at playing Ret in instances. As I get higher I’ll definitely watch my DPS since I don’t want to be a burden to those I group with but for now. I’m still having fun checking out rotations, testing out my own little variations to see what works.
I’ve read a lot about the spec, even dropped Prot (temporarily) while soloing to get a feel for Retribution it so that has been very helpful.
Oh I have a good ‘fail pug’ story, I just need to find time to post about that one. The two ‘stars’ also happened to be buddies. A Druid healer who would only heal his friend (Ret Paladin) over our tank. His friend signed up as DPS and tried to tank. I did mention we already had a tank, right. She was very good too. Anyway our ‘second tank’ was undergeared, didn’t seem to know what tanking entailed, and his health sunk fast. I really need to post about those two. /facepalm
Yep my Paladin might catch up with you. Who knows, I still have a wee Shaman in her 30’s and a Mage in her teens. /grins