Once upon a time – ok, Monday night – a crazed gnome warlock (Invariant) and an even more crazed gnome mage (Profusion) queued up in dungeon finder. Then they went and killed lava spiders for a while. About 900 spiders later, the BRD loading screen popped up. Since they were questing in Searing Gorge, this saved them a whole five minutes of running to the stupid instance, a nice convenience. Which would only make graveyard runs more annoying later. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Our gnomish heroes were greeted by a shaman healer and a night elf rogue. “Hi,” they replied back, as Invariant checked the cooldown on her soulstone and told the shaman it’d be ready in ten minutes, only to have the shaman run away from her. Was it her felguard pet? No, it was the heretofore overlooked gnome warrior who had charged the first pack of dwarves he saw and was bashing them with his axe. With a sigh at the impetuousness of plate wearers, our heroes got to work.
Profusion cast Blizzards and Fire Blasts. Invariant – after checking that the healer was solid and had a good mana pool – followed her instincts, ran into combat, and started trying to Hellfire herself to death. Fortunately the healer was better at keeping her alive than she was at killing herself, and things proceeded at a fast pace. The tank seemed to know where he was going. He charged down halls, into packs, around corners, all the way to the Ring of Law, through it, out the other side, over the bridge, jumped down, attacked the Fire Boss, and started heading for the room full of dwarvish crafters and giant statues when something seemed to bother him.
“LOL, [Bracers with Spirit]?” he asked. “noob”.
It took our heroes a moment to realize he was speaking to the rogue. This rogue had been a pleasant companion and kept up very nicely, and he had indeed recently equipped some bracers with spirit as well as stamina on them.
Profusion began to defend the rogue, pointing out that when you are levelling, sometimes you wear inappropriate gear. He didn’t mention all the times his max level characters have worn inappropriate gear, such as the Lovely Dress spotted on his hunter just a few weeks previously, as this was irrelevant to the conversation at hand.
Invariant asked whether the tank had not ever been tempted to equip pally plate. “lol not I’m not a noob” he said. Invariant pointed out that sometimes it’s still an upgrade. The tank said something obnoxious. Meanwhile, the rogue left the party without a word.
“Good l2p noobs shouldn’t play this game” said the tank.
“Yes,” Invariant agreed. “No one should play this game until they have mastered it.”
“The real noobs are the ones who are qq’ing about stats in a level 52 dungeon run,” Profusion said.
At this point, the tank began using truly foul language. Invariant was a bit surprised, as she runs with the profanity filter for a reason, then realized that this person was actually using special characters to get around the filters. After dropping the two most foul words he possibly could, he dropped group in the middle of a fight. Invariant’s loyal minion tanked the rest.
“Good, that saves us from having to kick him,” we agreed, and waited.
After a few rounds of shuffling players, they started off again, lost the healer, finally getting another warrior and a druid to perhaps finish the instance. They went along merrily. At some point, the third tank disappeared. Invariant, being impatient, had her minion try to tank a group only to have everyone go horribly squish.
“Sorry,” the druid said. “I couldn’t click on your pet fast enough.”
“Do you have a healing mod that’s set to show pets?” Invariant asked, her inner healer instincts coming to the fore.
“No, I don’t use mods,” the healer replied.
“Ah, but you should try Vuhdo! It makes healing a lot easier.”
They arrived at the instance again as another tank joined the party and the healer – a truly excellent druid, mod-avoidance-issues notwithstanding – tried to settle the argument with an appeal to authority:
Unfortunately Invariant knew to counter the “argument to irrelevant authority” debate tactic by showing it for what it was.
The new tank charged merrily along to the Ring of Law, then stopped in the middle. “We already did that,” they explained. “Come on.” Our heroes went upstairs to go find the statue and gain the key to the city. But the tank did not join them, and suddenly his picture went to the unhappy “disconnected” logo. With a sigh, our heroes waited, then booted him.
Finally a new tank appeared, a white knight in shining armor, wielding the power of virtue and light. This paladin, this paragon of holiness, lead the way courageously through the now largely empty instance as our heroes explained that they really had cleared most of it.
The following conversation was mysteriously retrieved and is displayed for your edification. This is the last we know of what became of our brave adventures.
Looking For More 
Sigh, at least two sophisms directed at whom was likely a new druid player.
I know you were trying to help him but your choice of words may paint you as elitist pricks.
I will combine two sophisms so you can judge for yourself.
I have 7 80’s, 3 Master’s Degrees (Actuarial Sciences, Mathematics, and Information Technolology), and a Ph. D. (Mathematics – category theory) and I do not use healing addons other than Decursive when raiding. Key binding is the way to go!
In the situation which triggered the discussion, I would have set focus to the tanking pet and healed him as I would have any other tank. Not much relevant to the discussion at hand but I find very few people use Focus and Assist when I run the occasional dungeon or raid with random players.
Another true but odd situation; my wife is performing better in raids since she turned off nameplates when DPSing or healing. Don’t ask me why, it just boggles my mind.
It was not about her level of eduction. It was about debunking the logical fallacy he was using. He was using the ‘I have X level of education and think Y’ as if it was support for his opinion. His reasoning implied that only the plebes would used the crutch. The only way to poke the hole in that line of thinking is to offer to counter point of someone that has more technical education and thinks differently. So throwing degrees around was simply a way to target that specific logical fallacy and explode it. Some people use keybindings and some don’t Some use mouse-over macros and some don’t. You are using far more than the build-in defaults yourself and hence would not argue that anyone using anything but the default settings was non technically literate.
Personally I only have one technical degree but I can easily see that I put out a lot more heals with Vudo. Some of that depends on the class. A rejuv spamming tree needs to be hitting every GCD to get the most out of its healing. That could be done with two clicks with the default raid interface, or one mouse over keybind macro, or a single click in vudo. I find setting up vudo is easier than managing keybinds and macros. As a technically literate person you realize there is no difference between taking advantage of the built-in macro and binding interfaces and using the equally built in API to do the same thing. There are a lot of ways to do the same thing. Personally preferences vary and many things work. what is faster for one person is overly distracting and confusing to others.
I don’t think that comes across as a jerk. It is just poking a pin in the line of reasoning being used. It is a classic and widely used logical fallacy.
The direct analogy would be if someone said “I studied math in vocational school and I think calculators are for the weak” and you responded “I have a masters in mathematics and I use Matlab (or or Maple or whatever other tool)”. It is a very simple way to debunk the poor reasoning. She was not saying everyone smarter than him uses addons. He was saying the opposite and she was offering a unassailable counter example. His statement was in response to us recommending he get a nice healing addon. His response was confrontational and held implied insult. Her response was simple and effective without counter insult.
Thank you for the explanation. I will remain silent as to which points I agree or disagree.
I tend to use a very soft approach when conversing with strangers, especially if it is clearly demonstrated they are not old seasoned veterans.
I generally say something like “If you find yourself in XXX situation, you may want to look at YYY as it helps me address this problem”.
My wife is just confounded (it’s a mutual thing, no worries) because my employer strongs arm me into a two-day “tact and diplomacy” seminar every year because they do not, on the surface, like my brutal honesty. It does provide some entertainment values because upon my return, I usually write some “nice” emails which are either totally void of meaning or contain alternating opposite views.
OK, this does not make me an angel.
Having said all that, my opionion is your blog is one of the best online resources to understand game mechanics and to improve one’s play and I recommend it to many relatively new players. It is with this profile in mind that I wrote what I wrote.
The cartoons are just a fun bonus and are appreciated!
Really enjoying your blog. Just had to mention how much I enjoy the cute pictures detailing your adventures. They always bring me a smile =D