As another group barreled its way through a WotLK dungeon like a bull in a china shop, a fond remembrance of days past crept into my head.
LFM DPS/CC would ring through the worldwide looking for group channel.
Disodium (my retired warlock) earned his place on runs by being the CC master. Sure a Mage was a bit more reliable with his sheep, However could a Mage keep 3 things cc'd at once? Maybe even more than that for a limited time. Seduce one, fear one, howl of terror one. Juggle more than one mob with fear and curse of exhaustion. The ability to flawlessly CC made my warlock more desirable than a less skilled lock on an instance run.
The toughness of individual pulls was measured by how many mobs you had to pull. A CC class was mandatory. Now and days it is pretty much assumed you are just going to waltz through the instance burning down however many mobs you can pull at once, If the tank dies its the healers fault or the tank is under-geared.
Now I am not 80 yet, but I think its safe to assume we will not be doing these mass pulls in heroics or raids. Are the regular instances teaching us all to play like noobs? When is the last time you saw a Hunter Ice Trap? That to me was always the measure of a skilled hunter, how well they could cc via traps. Now it is hard to get a quick read on the skill of your group, because it doesn't take much skill to spam blizzard or volly.
I enjoy the casual approach and it is quick and easy to just roflstomp groups of mobs at a time, but it might take away some of the fun. I know it's not as fun to spam seed of corruption as it was to micro-manage my various CC abilities. Maybe this is why we don't see as many warlocks as we used to.
What do you think? Any of you Mages miss your sheep spell?
4 comments:
Hell yes I remember CC.
As a healer, most of the time I prefer crowd control. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy being on my toes and it works out great if you have a decent geared tank.
However, I usually dont like healing the lock or the mage that gets aggro.
As a dpser, my mage. I absoluetly LOVE blizzard and aoe'ing everything in sight down.
Same goes with my paladin, currently ret. It awesome to blow all your cool downs, concentrate, and hit Divine Storm. All the numbers make me happy on the inside. =P
But to answer your question - No I do not miss sheep on my mage. I do miss CC overall I must admit though. I might be weird, but I enjoyed difficult pulls that required CC. It always kept you on your toes.
Good read
Most tanks, even in PuGs, aoe tank everything. My gear allows to heal through that in almost every pull. Sometimes I hex something out of boredom.
I miss the good old CC times. I miss tanks that would take too much damage without CC. I miss loose mobs that would onehit everything.
In BC you would always look for a good cc class. Or you'd prefer not taking too many melees into your group. But even that isn't really a problem anymore and most heroics can easily be done all out melee.
Now I'm hungry.
What is this skilled hunter of which you speak? I was on a ZF run with my warlock, I had seduced a mob and the group I was running with actually told me not to waste time with CC.
I think this expansion is creating some bad habits and if blizz does crank up the difficulty, a lot of people are going to have a lot of problems adapting!
With my main being a shadow priest I always had issues getting into a group in BC. Mind Control and Shackle Undead aren't the most effective forms of cc but worked very well if used right.
Now that there is no use for cc it is very annoying to see someone actually try. Now with mind sear I just sit back and aoe.
Has the game really has become that easy?
At 70 I changed my paladin from a healer to a tank. With half healing gear I can still pull 4 mobs at once and have no problem.
I ran regular Nexus and when the Huntard aggroed another 4 mobs 8 didn't even seem to be a problem. As much as I was excited to type /flex over and over it's still sad that it is so easy.
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