I had left my Warrior, Alcashi, at 79.5 or so. Once I resub’d, I painlessly leveled to 80 in just a few wins of Alterac Valley, while questing to unlock the phase for the Ebon Blade tabard. Queue-from-anywhere is truly a wonderful thing (though enabling it to work from within battlegrounds would seal the deal).

A fresh 80, I took to running easy heroics right away, skipping any time in normal instances. After a bit of research and advice from friends, I decided it best to go Arms initially as it would provide the best dps with my craptastic gear.

I geared up quickly, almost stupidly quickly. A Naxx 10 kitted me out in better gear, and a bunch of Trial of the Champion runs on normal, along with consistent heroic runs soon had me sporting solid gear. All that eluded me was a decent weapon, as I still used my trusty Heirloom Arcanite Reaper.

A pug Uld10 that ended up wiping diastrously on Mimiron provided Stormedge, and soon after Edge of Ruin dropped in Heroic Trial of the Champion. With two solid two-handers, I respec’d Fury.

Since then it’s been remarkably smooth sailing — Mal’Ganis has a solid community of intelligent players thanks largely the presence of Elitist Jerks on the server, which makes finding groups far less painful than it would otherwise be.

I’m still a bit surprised how easily and painlessly I geared up, and how I’ve been able to experience the latest and greatest content so quickly (I’ve run both Trial of the Crusader 10 and 25 man several times). That said, I haven’t done the Heroic versions of either size raid instance yet, nor have I even finished a complete Ulduar run, let alone done a hard mode there (spent a rather amusing hour trying to help do Yogg+1, and just watching people walk into clouds over and over again). But I’m not an achievement whore, and could care less about nerd points (not that I wouldn’t do hard modes if I had a consistent group to do them, but it’s not something I care enough about to organize a consistent group for).

Diminishing returns on advancement means I’d rather level another character to 80 (I have quite a stable between 60 and 70) and learn a new class rather than perfect one character, especially as there’s just one major content patch (Icecrown) before Cataclysm, and with Emblems of Triumph set to drop from heroics next patch, it shouldn’t be too hard to get geared out enough to experience the normal versions of the Icecrown raids. Seeing Arthas won’t be restricted to just the hardest of the hard modes, thankfully.

All in all, I’m impressed by WoW’s continued polish and accessibility, even to a serious casual player like myself.

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First, I think of how close I already am to 80 — my warrior’s level 78, with full rested. Once I hit 80, I can gear up and go forth and tank to my heart’s content, starting out with five-mans, then heroics, then Naxx, and perhaps even Ulduar some day.

Then, I think a bit more and realize — but wait, I want to tank. That means I need to pick my tanking set carefully. And there are tons of stats to choose from, all of which have their own importance. Further, certain bosses will require different sets of gear. And all the while I’ll need to juggle reaching the defense cap, as well as keeping in mind plus-hit so I don’t miss the boss…

Wait, I know how to solve this gear conundrum: with a spreadsheet.

Well gosh, that doesn’t sound fun, that sounds like work. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love spreadsheets and linear optimization and all that — but it has its proper place. That place does not include alongside slaying dragons. I see it now:

The dragon swooped once more lower than ever, and as he turned and dived down his
belly glittered white with sparkling fires of gems in the moon — but not in one place.

The great bow at his ready, Bard held off on shooting his black arrow. “How should I shoot so as to maximize the velocity to strike the dragon’s belly with optimal force?” he mused. He looked at the arrow, and then, opening up his laptop, fired up Excel. “I’ll just run a couple of simulations here to see how far I’m supposed to draw back the bow, or whether I should use a lighter arrow, or whether…”

His meditations came to an ignominious end as Smaug breathed flame, enveloping Bard, the dock, and Bard’s laptop. A flap of wings of the great beast later and only dust and ashes remained, floating with an odd tranquility on the surface of the Lake.

(With apologies to J.R.R. Tolkien).

In other words: I know that to play the best, I’m going to have sit down and hack out a spreadsheet to help me decide which pieces of gear to wear when. Or I can use a tanking spreadsheet over on EJ, or Rawr. Either way, before I can start having fun tanking, I need to sit down and have some fun in good ol’ Excel.

I’m not the only one who notices this. Writing from a mage’s perspective, Player v. Developer’s Green Armadillo notes that mages get to do their own bit of spreadsheeting to manage hit cap.

Contrast TF2 — now I’m a noob of the first degree in TF2, but from my noobish perspective, I don’t need a spreadsheet. Perhaps I’m wrong, blinded by the dazzling light of my noob aura. But maybe I’m not. Maybe TF2’s designed so as to be fun throughout, and the way to get better at it is not outside the game, spreadsheet in tow, but inside the game, playing.

Now, not all of WoW is like this — but gear selection largely is, and because WoW focuses so much on gear, that echoes everywhere else. Tanking is a unique beast — unlike DPS, which well, is all about damage-per-second — tanking’s answer is more nuanced: it depends.

Because I’m not a fan of doing something only half-right, I’d rather not bother leveling up my warrior all the way to 80, because I know I’ll have to spend some time with a spreadsheet min-maxing my gear. Add in the random drop factor and that higher level gear tends to have less defense on it than lower level gear… and you start to see why tanks need to juggle more than most. While I love spreadsheets, I don’t want to have bust one out every time a drop happens to decide whether I need or want it. At the same time, I don’t want to roll on everything because it “might be useful.”

In short: If the optimal gameplay of some aspect of a game effectively reduces to min-maxing a spreadsheet, you’re doing it wrong. Simplify away the spreadsheet and make it fun for players. Move the focus away from the numbers and to the actual game — remember that? — that part where we kill the dragon.

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