3.2 - Needs

Currently in need of combat logs of fights using AD. Just type "/combatlog" before and after you trigger AD and the health recovery. Log out and mail it to Chloe@tanakdinaddon.com. I'm also looking for someone to help co-author Tankadin. It's getting to be a project bigger than one person can currently handle considering I'm working 50 hours a week generally. Once again send an e-mail with the following if you are interested:

1. WoWInterface ID (Make one if you don't have one already)
2. Maintankadin.org ID (Make one if you don't already have one)
3. A few examples of some code work you have done. It doesn't necessarily have to be lua or a WoW Addon.
4. Why you want to work on this project

Updates!

Day off work means a day for updates!

Change Log For Tankadin2:
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r109b
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Added ability to output your stats to the Tankadin2 Broadcast Channel. Added from Tankadin, button is located under the Announce Data Options.

Change Log For AD Plug-in:
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r107
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Fixed "Death Avoided" upon Death
Fixed "Death Avoided" upon taking large amounts of damage.
Added Wipe Mode - Stops tracking AD data until next combat. Also prevents "Death Avoided" Messages while wiping.

Localization Additions:
TANKADIN_AD_MODESWITCH
TANKADIN_AD_WIPEITLABEL
TANKADIN_AD_WIPEENABLED

Added all available locales.

More might be coming in the next day or so.

Donations

Thanks to those who have donated. Basically I'm going through some rough times, currently in the process of moving as we speak and my budget it getting kinda tight for a bit. The money that I have received will allow to keep developing things for Tankadin and my other mods by me actually having monies to pay for my WoW subscription. To those who have donated, send me an e-mail or a PM on the maintankadin forums if you want some recognition or something developed for T2. You deserve it for keeping me going at this as much as the Tanking and UI community.

Why This Game is Hard.

I'm a competitive person. It's a part of what drives me in many aspects of my life. Competition breeds excellence.

So when Ulduar came out, I was excited as hell, even though it came at kind of unfortunate timing for me.

The instance itself has been good. I think the tuning of the encounters was done fairly well, and I'm looking forward to beginning work on the hard modes within a couple weeks.
In my opinion there isn't honestly a great deal in the instance that is actually all that difficult. At least as I define difficulty, which is challenging in and of it's self and not challenging due to sub-standard playing ability or knowledge of maximizing your class.
Thats what I think most guilds out there have trouble with. It's not honestly that the fights are difficult, its that they demand individual accountability. You can't just carry half the raid in a 25-man environment, or even one person if they are a key role like healer or tank. That's the main reason why 25-mans are more challenging than 40 mans were. Back in a 40 man, for the most part you could let half the raid just die, and the 15 people who knew what they were doing could go on and finish the fight. But ulduar for the most part requires individual accountability, and I like that.

Those guilds racing to the world firsts really arent all that different from your standard guild. Just in a few vital distinctions. If you compare the players in a world class guild to your average Gladiator or simply those 5-10 people in your average guild who are just generally really good players, there really isnt a whole lot special to distinguish between them. Those guilds just have enough of those people gathered together in the same place to have a comprehensive roster with redundancy and the flexibility to stack classes.

What holds most people back who care about succeeding in the game is, in my observation, that they just can't seem to find enough like-minded and skilled people grouped together. Those kind of people were dissatisfied with Naxx, because it didnt challenge them personally, but liked it in that the less dedicated and more fumbling, disorganized, and unpracticed members of their raid group who they find themselves forced to bring along didn't hurt their ability to progress. They liked that being slave to who logs on that night didn't prevent them from killing new bosses.

People who raid like to raid. That's a fairly easy concept. But the average person likes to be able to know for sure that if they choose to log in, there will be a guaranteed raid spot waiting for them, because people don't like to be benched.
So as a result, most guilds do not form a comprehensive roster. They don't have good redundancy. Because flexibility has been counter-intuitive to reliably getting a raid spot. If you bring 7 healers every raid night, recruiting an 8th or 9th just means that every night 2 people are going to be benched. That's not in the best interest of the previous 7, or the 8th and 9th.
So the standard guild has their 7 healers. All of them log on every raid night, or just about. Then the guild hits something like Mimiron and realizes that 4 of their 7 healers are paladins, and things would just go so much smoother if they replaced 2 of those holy paladins with Priests or even Druids. But they cant. Because they don't have anything in their roster to swap in, or what they do have are guest/family rank players who dont raid often, or people's undergeared alts or off-specs.

So fights become harder than they have to be. Simply because of the nature of your average guild's motivations.
Are the fights difficult really? Not in particular. They are challenging at a level where they engage you and allow you to have a great deal of fun as a competent player, but the average player base tends to simply make themselves jump through more hoops than are necessary.


Dual Specs should help. They give a little bit more credibility to the same person covering multiple roles. But the truth is that people aren't always as competent at their secondary roles as they are at their primary. If you've tanked your whole career, you might be a competent healer but you wont have the finesse of an expert, or the ui customized around it.

Overall I'm happy with ulduar. It was refreshing to see stuff that we were harping at our players back in Jan. in easy-mode naxx clears about keeping their edge on get rewarded in this new setting's obstacles. I like being able to use my tools, all of them. I like interrupt buttons, and stuns, and disarms, and Hands of Protection, and Cloak of Shadows, and Ghostwolf, and and taunts as a plate dps class, and defensive cooldowns to be useful regularly, and not just everything immune to them or trivial without them.
So much difference is made by simply having everyone in the 25 man raid pressing their buttons, all of them. That's the thing that beginning guilds really miss out on understanding, and Naxx was a bad teacher because it didn't reward all that stuff being used. It was simply more efficient to just faceroll nuke/heal/tank because it didnt matter anyway.

I love those pro moments that you see all the time with a raid of competent players. Seeing the resto shaman shock a spell cast, then pull aggro but drop an earthbind totem, shift to instant ghostwolf and kite the mob happily along for 30 seconds without a care in the world. Seeing an unexpected add pack come from a new direction and a rogue sprinting out into the middle of it, Tricks of the Trading the tank and Fan of Knives'ing it all onto him. Seeing a Paladin tank on Illidan on a Flame bubble/taunt right through an eye beam without missing a beat. The warrior who dashes ahead and warbringer charges and the dps that runs up right into Intervene range for him to Thunderclap-kite them right on back to the group.

The reason a ton of guilds kill Flame Leviathan but can't get much of anything else is because on Flame Leviathon you aren't playing your class, you are playing a seige vehicle. One that has 3 buttons.
Then they get to other stuff and don't know how to maximize themselves as a class, nor use all their miriad of tricks and crazy abilites that every class has that all fit together into a win.

When my guild prepared for progression, we told everyone "think about your abilities, all your tricks, and the kind of stuff you can use them to counter. Try to imagine creative situations you could put your tools to use. And when we do naxx, practice using them. Kick every casting bar, stun every whirlwinding mob, avoid the frontal cone of everything, dance resistance auras, bandage the guy next to you who got iceblocked, even though he got a partial heal, bring Frostweave Nets and Grenades and Speed, Invisibility, and Free Action Potions. Shapeshift, Intervene and put on a shield, cast heals as a hybrid, and pop Stoneform and Every Man for Himself."

Understanding other people's ability toolset and learning that higher level of awareness of what's going on is the first step to controlling a difficult encounter, and understanding and using your own entire arsenal of abilities is the way to defeating it.

-Joanadark, Maintankadin Forums.
http://www.maintankadin.failsafedesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=22948