Alcaras' Blog

I keep going back and forth on whether I want to level my warrior.

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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