Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Unsolicited Advice

Legendaries have an interesting effect on on people. Each of those orange items are by design meant to be rare. As a result they can elicit greed, envy, and a multitude of other undesirable vices. When the Rogue only legendaries were announced for Dragon Soul an interesting thing happened. Suddenly everyone and their cousin was dusting off their long ignored or neglected Rogue alt and attempting to get them into Dragon Soul to start the quest.

The vast majority I spoke with knew little to nothing about what the actual quest entailed, only that they could get "a pair of daggers".  About half gave up after no more than hearing they would have to pay 10k as well as solo bosses with 200 and 300k health respectively. I don't know WHY they thought since these were for "rogues" only it would suddenly translate into "cheap". We may use Cheap Shot but come on guys really? The first part really isn't to bad and for someone with a rogue alt, if they actually wanted to invest SOME work, you could get Fear and Vengeance with a minimum of fuss.

However just because you have the first set of quest daggers doesn't mean that they will be the best items for you to use.  It all depends on what spec you are running and what you are doing. Our community has been especially blessed over the years with the spreadsheets we have had at our disposal. Thus allowing us to know precisely what we should do to get the optimal dps from our characters. Thus comes my little rant.

Each week our guild goes into LFR as kinda a break. A chance to gear up alts, spend time together as both raid teams and just RELAX in a larger raid setting. Frankly when we are doing 10 mans, while it is FUN, you have to focus, etc.  This last session we headed in and as happens from time to time had a rather loud individual join us as one of the other LFR members. Now this member was NOT a Rogue, nor did he play one as his main. He was a healer. I WAS the Top of the dps meter at the time when we had this conversation as well. But he decided to inform me that "my weapons were wrong".

Now I am always willing to listen, you never know when you might learn something helpful. So I said "Oh really?" He then proceeded to tell me how I should be using BOTH daggers as Combat because of the proc on Fear and Vengence.  I responded with "according to my spreadsheet I lose about 300 dps using Fear over No'Kaled, the Elements of Death" my current main hand. (Now granted I couldn't remember the specific numbers of the dps difference at the time but I knew it was over 300 dps the last time I checked.) He then proceeded to lecture me the DURATION of the raid about how I was wrong and didn't know what I was talking about. After determining that this individual did not play a rogue as his main, nor was he familiar with Shadowcraft or Elitistjerks I then proceeded to no longer respond. I just didn't see the point.

Unsolicited advice has its place. If I see a rogue struggling I will check to see if they are using the correct poisons, gems, etc. However there is a correct way to give it and opening up with "You are doing such and such Wrong" is generally not the best. Try instead "Why are you..." For example "Why are you tanking in your Chief's hat?" The response can range (at least in our guild) from "Opps! Forgot to change after making feasts!" to "Because we are going to Taste the Rainbow tonight and I wanted to be prepared!" People are generally more willing to listen to what you have to say when you start with a question and invite conversation rather than an attack.  This is even more so when you are on a character of another class, say an alt.