Okay I had my fun. Poked fun at the other casters and got some nice burns in on warlocks, shadow priests, elemental shaman and boomkin. I have folks saying “SQUAWK!” and I even got a WoW.com link. Go me. I rock. But I want to seriously take a second look at mages and warlocks and point out that we each need each other.
Full disclosure: I have an 80 mage mostly in ICC10 gear. I also have a level 80 Warlock in a mix of blues and naxx who has been on the shelf since Ulduar release. Lots of reasons for that, not important for this discussion.
Think of your raid for a second. If you are in a 10 man you probably have something more or less like 2 tanks, 2 melee 3 ranged, 3 healers. The actual values might shift a few here and there, but it is probably something in that division. If you are lucky enough to be a mage and there is a similarly geared/skilled warlock, you guys probably have a rivalry on the meters. If you don’t go start one. I’ll wait.
I had a lock rivalry back in BC with a warlock, I have one now with a warlock in ICC. But I’ve never had as close a rivalry with other mages. Why is that? Well I think it is because when you see someone of the same class, you can learn from each other. If the other mage outperforms you, you can probably pinpoint it to effectiveness in rotation, gemming, enchants, gear, or lag. But more importantly you can learn from that person. It takes the form of master and pupil.
So if you are the better mage, you teach and help gear the lesser mage. You make them better in ways of instruction. But the lock, the lock is different. He is so very different. He is similar to you in ways that have people outside of caster DPS look at and say “oh they are the same”. You guys both need mana, roll on the same loot, and cast from afar. As far as the rest of the raid is concerned, you are the same. But you guys know better. The lock is your nemesis.
His motivation and methods are completely foreign to you. Mages are largely a direct damage spell, locks love damage over time. They love their pets, even frost mages consider the elemental a novelty not a class defining attribute. But there you both are on the meters. His bar a dark purple, yours a light blue. Always near each other. Battling for DPS supremacy. Sure the rogue is up there, but she rolls on leather, and it just isn’t the same. The lock is your rival, and the minigame now comes which will triumph this battle. Now I want to stress, NEVER let that minigame trump good raid habits like don’t stand on the fire, train your little ooze into the big ooze on rotface, or get threat because you want to out DPS your rival. But that said, the minigame gives you a little extra incentive to do your best, even on farm content, because every boss is bragging rights.
So feel free to hate your rivals, but remember in doing so, they are bringing out a competitive and useful part of yourself.
What rivalries do you have, and do they make you better?
I used to have a rivalry with the lock but he's gone demo lately so that sort of ruined the whole thing. Of course I'm going to beat him now. So although I don't have to compete for gear against them, I'm pitting myself against the hunter(s) and rogue.
That being said, as RL, I try to tone down the minigame aspect of it. It's very frustrating to me to have people so worried about topping the charts that they won't stop DPS when I tell them to, or AoE when I want a single target burned. Most of the competition is good and makes us better, but there's always that one guy off being a dumbass in his effort to be at the top.
As a caster hybrid DPS I always find myself in competition with all the pure DPS (Mage, Warlock, Rogue, Hunter). I giggle seeing my DPS higher then those pures who are higher geared than I am lower on the chart.
We have a recently created motto in my guild: "If you can beat Fealen on sinlge target DPS, then you have met the benchmark to be in 25man"
Last night there were 12-14 people (4-6 pures) that weren't meeting the benchmark. Those are my rivals…..they drive my perfection.
I have no rivalries. I am peerless…..Gaze upon my e-peen in wonder.
My 10 man runs with 2 mages, a warlock, a shadow priest, a hunter, a DK tank, a pally tank, and 3 healers. One healer is a tree druid who also has a shaman that's enhance/resto and the other is a pally with a ret spec. The last healer is a holy/disc priest. So needless to say there is always a rivalry for caster loot.
I replaced a DPS DK when he needed more time for school, so my gear is a bit behind the others. I occasionally run my ele/resto shaman who is my 25 man character. It's kind of surprising that there's not really a rivalry in our 10. We know who's going to be on top and it changes from fight to fight. The other mage with his ridiculous gear is on top a lot, but often beat by the warlock or the shadow priest. I've given up trying to beat them as I'm so behind in gear, but it's still a nice challenge to see how close I can come with my gear.