I had a "discussion" with a guildie yesterday that turned sour. Way sour. Before I go into the details, I know that I cannot be liked by every man, woman, and child. It is an unreasonable thing to expect from anyone.
I am the person that I am, and though I try to be as honest, caring, and compassionate as possible, there are people in the world that will not like me for whatever reason they have chosen. It's not my fault, it's just the way that things are. I cannot fault said person, but at least have the decency to be open with me, explain your dislike, and we can work on at least coexisting in the same space. And so begins my tale...
The guild I belong to recruited a Druid about two months ago. Let's just call this Druid "Half-Baked," or "HB" for short. Though app'd as a feral druid, he took on a Boomkin role. He does a good job raiding and knows his class well, including the feral aspect.
He and I hit it off rather well, as we would often discuss the finer points of bear tanks. I felt they were good discussions, where we would each explain our stances on the bear philosophy. HB's stance leans more towards threat, whereas mine drifts towards straight mitigation. For HB, hit is more valuable than armor and stam. As an example, Heritage would take precedence over Boundless Ambition.
Then a bit of his personality started to enter into these discussions. An air of superiority crept into conversations between him and I. In his mind he was the better bear tank, felt I was vastly inferior to him, and would kill to get my position in the guild as one of the three tanks. Due to this, he began to talk down to me, berate me for my stance. And if I made a mistake in the raid (as humans have a tendency to do), he'd make a mental note and use it as fodder against me.
I began to catch on to his ways. He'd ignore tells, but would speak up if it was an opportunity to put me in a bad light. I told my RL friends about this character, and how I was beginning to dislike his attitude towards me. Though I didn't know what to do about it, except grin and bear it.
But yesterday was the day that broke the camel's back. Simply put, I got tag-teamed. One of his RL friends, also in the guild, both teamed up to attack my character (2vs1 isn't fair). What was a discussion about how running Naxx with the guild is more valuable than running with a PUG, even if it meant waiting five days to run Naxx, turned into a discussion about how HB was an expert and I was a fool. Derogatory remarks were made, and I did my best to maintain composure and still remain civil and respectful.
One thing HB said that made me laugh out loud at its absurdity was, "Not to be a tool, but I talk with some of the best druids in guilds in Europe and I could have introduced them to you for some debate."
Oh mighty HB, would you please bless me with your greatness?!
At that point I knew it was feeble to continue. How could I win what became an argument, when two participants were ganging up on one?
I don't want to be "that guy," but I discussed this with the GM and officers. I didn't want to necessarily get HB in trouble, but I wanted advice. How can he and I coexist in the same guild, when it is so clear his dislike for me and how he wants to bogart a tanking spot I have been proud to have for so long? I'm not one for drama, but I wanted to make my feelings know to the leaders of the guild, lest this snowball into something much worse and more sinister.
The guild leaders listened to me and said they would address it. I was especially happy to hear during this that HB had made it known to the GM his intentions of usurping me, but told a different tale to the officers. I play this game for fun, and an environment like that is not fun. They talked with HB, but what was said is beyond me.
I'm also hurt that I no longer have a guildie that I can discuss the finer points of being a bear with. I'd rather just ignore HB at this point and continue to play my best, but I learned some things from HB and hopefully he learned some things from me.
I still firmly believe mitigation is more important than threat. Before 3.1. threat would've been something I'd have complained about (and have), but 3.1 has brought changes that increase bear threat for the better (crits on bleed, anyone?). Though I will be the first to admit that you should not discount hit as an important stat, bears do have a tendency to want to prioritize armor, agi, and stam first.
And to you, my one reader, feel free to inspect my bear and offer advice and opinions. I have lost that ability within my guild and would love to fill that void.
Until the next Faerie Fire pull...
-Lushious
Tired of rambling about being a Druid Bear to his friends, Lushious has now focused on boring the internet to tears with his World of Warcraft exploits.
5 comments:
Threat is (sadly) such a non-issue in WotLK raiding right now that I just have to assume that HB hasn't actually been playing the tanking game..... or paying attention to his meters.
I think you have more than one reader... and I wish I had your gear...
But yeah, I would go for mitigation too, as threat is about no issue (except for Hodir's hard mode maybe) and you want to survive the bosses even when the healers sleep. At the moment our Ulduar25 MT warrior has about 38k health raid buffed, and if the healers aren't prepared, he'll get two-shot by about every single boss we encounter, because he geared for threat and not mitigation.
Every bear worth his salt that I know and read (including Karthis above) knows that how you gear is situational and depends on the role you'll be assuming and boss you'll be fighting. There is no one answer. When I'm tanking Sarth2+ I'm in fire resist gear and sta gear - very low threat. When I'm doing trash I'm in threat gear (aka more hit). On heavy hitting bosses I'm absolutely in mitigation gear. On bosses that don't I lean more towards threat because It also does more damage.
That being said, as Karthis pointed out, in WotlK threat has been of very little concern to us bears.
I would like to point out one other thing your 'friend' seems to have missed in regard to threat. It is much better to stack expertise than hit until you reach the parry cap. This provides both threat AND mitigation via less parry-gibs. If he hasn't even considered this then I would think him a bit noobish.
He is short sighted. Whatever gets the job done and whoever is the nicer person doing it gets my vote. :)
Name dropping and the air of superiority does not sit well with me either.
And you sir. Are kinda nice.
**Dang..wished I had your gear.
I have to agree, threat really isn't much of an issue, but what is his stance past having threat? If you don't value mitigation, then you're dead in the water after you get that threat.
I also find that people who state that they know "the best" of something, but never introduce you to them are pretty full of it. Besides, there's tons of theory crafters that could debate for hours on the subject of what stats have what weight and how to tweak your spec and gear accordingly.
When you get someone who's all about saying "I'm right and you're wrong" then you're dealing with someone who's not looking to debate, but instead put you down.
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