When I read the Tankadin 969 Guide the fellow who wrote it gushed about Dominos and how it allowed him to create his own Hotkey Bars and set them up where ever he wanted, and it sounded cool and looked great on his screen so I downloaded & installed it. When I logged into WoW ALL of my Hotkey bars had been shrunk to about 1/4 the width of the screen and were now stacked one above the other beneath my character, while the XP bar had been moved to the top of the screen and was now a big blue bar with big blue numbers *shudder* Not prepared to spend time trying to set up and get used to Dominos I immediately disabled it. I still have it installed but I liken it to playing Guitar, specifically, playing the G-chord, more specifically changing how I fingered the G-chord.
A G-chord is played by holding down the 5th string at the 2nd Fret, and the 1st & 6th string at the 3rd Fret, and here's a picture for the mentally visually challenged.
The finger position in that picture is the traditional method of playing the G-chord, and as such is how I first learned to play it.
But there's a problem with playing it that way, as illustrated by another picture, this time of a C-chord:
From that picture you should be able to see that a C is played by holding down the 2nd string at the first Fret, the 4th string at the 2nd Fret, and the 5th string at the 3rd Fret.
Yes, this is going somewhere :P
Many popular songs are written in the same key and as such use the same basic chords, A, C, G, D, & E, or variants thereof. I'm not going to get into finger positions for A, D & E, suffice to say that switching between A, C, D, & E is usually quick & easy because of somewhat similar finger positions. My point here is that switching between C and G is somewhat more complex because the fingers need to go through very drastic position changes, especially the 3rd/ring finger which needs to move from the 6th string down to the 1st string. The 1st/index finger must move from the 2nd string/1st fret up to the 5th string/2nd fret while the middle finger has it slightly easier with a shift from the 4th string/2nd fret to the 6th string/3rd fret. If that made your brain hurt then just look at the pictures and see for yourself the position change each finger needs to make.
I was getting pretty good at playing most of the songs with my Church's Youth group, except the finger change between G and pretty much every other Chord still tripped me up. As I studied the chords, particularly G and G7, I wondered why there was such a drastic change between the finger position for the two, especially as the difference between most chords and their Minor or 7th versions required little more than changing the position of a single finger, whereas switching between a G and G7 was like going from a G to a taller C, and here's one last picture, this time of the G7 chord:
You can see how the G7 more closely resembles a C than a G, and yet to go from a C to a C7 you need do nothing more than plop your pinky onto the 3rd string at the 3rd fret. That's it. To change between a C and a C7 all you have to do is add a pinky finger, whereas to change between a traditionally played G and a G7 requires total rearrangement of the fingers akin to changing between G and C.
And that was when I realized the traditional method of playing a G-chord on a guitar is wrong. The books are wrong. The teachers are wrong. And if you're fingering a G-chord in the traditional manner then you're doing it wrong (and now I know how Galileo felt when he went against the system.)
Yes, I said it. If your guitar teacher is teaching you to finger a G-chord as in the above picture then they're teaching you the wrong way. Of course they'll never admit it because almost everyone does it like that so it's widely accepted as the correct way to finger a G-chord, but it's not. It's wrong. (It was also widely accepted that the earth was flat and the center of the universe, but the people who believed that and called Galileo crazy and placed him under house arrest were wrong, too).
Why is it wrong?
It's wrong because the difference between almost every chord and their minor and 7th variants is almost always the addition or subtraction of one single finger, whereas switching between a traditional G and a G7 requires a complete change of the hand position.
The correct way to finger a G-chord (IMHO) is not by using the 1st, 2nd & 3rd fingers, but by using the 2nd, 3rd & 4th fingers. Why do I believe this is the correct method? Because it follows the same principle of switching between G and G7 as switching between all of the other chords and their respective 7ths.
Using the 2nd, 3rd & 4th fingers to play a G, switching between the G and G7 does not require a large change in the position and shape of your hand. It requires nothing more than lifting your pinky off the 1st string/3rd fret while putting down your index finger on the 1st string/3rd fret. The middle finger and ring finger stay in the same position, on the same strings, on the same frets. And because they don't move your hand shape remains practically the same. All you've done is lifted off one finger, and put down another. And that means this is the correct way to play a G because it makes the transition between the G, G7, and all the other chords a whole lot smoother. At least it does when you finally get the hang of playing a G using your 2nd, 3rd & 4th fingers.
If you already know how to play guitar, getting used to fingering a G a new way is like learning how to touch type using the Home Keys. After a lot of practice my fingers finally realized I wanted to play the G my way and not the traditional way (but it took them a while to learn that), and it did make switching between chords a lot easier. For what it's worth I can touch type and relatively quickly, but I never did manage to teach my fingers to use the Home Keys.
Coming full circle, I liken this to learning to use Dominos or some other Addon which totally changes the layout of your UI. With change comes a rebellion, a reluctance to learn the new method. You like the old method just fine, so why change it? If it ain't broke, why fix it? I liked what I read about Dominos but when I installed it it was too different; I preferred the appearance of the default UI. Why should I learn to use a completely new UI, one that needed customizing before I'd find it aesthetically pleasing, when the current one worked just fine?
And so I didn't. Daunted by what was required to return WoW to what I perceived as a playable state I disabled Dominos and went back to the default UI. While it may not be as pretty as some of the custom UIs I've seen (and some I've seen are just amazing) the default UI serves its purpose and allows me to play the game but more importantly, enjoy it now.
I recently ran a few Instances with Paaco tanking on his DK, and as we pulled the first Trash Mobs in the first Instance and I started on my Retadin rotation, my Chat log exploded with whispers. They all came from the same character, the Healer, and they were being generated by a Macro he had installed called RankWatch. What RankWatch does is monitor the spells being used by yourself and your party members and it can alert you and/or them when you and/or they use downranked versions of spells. Without realizing it that's what I'd been doing, even though I'd been to the Trainer and had the most up-to-date levels of my abilities/spells, because a bug exists with characters with dual-spec where not all of their abilities/spells on their Hotkey bars get updated. In my case, for example, I'd learned Exorcism(8) at 73, but my Hotkey bar still had Exorcism(7), and I would quickly discover it was not the only downranked spell I'd been using. About 4-5 of my Abilities were downranked.
Up until then I'd been pulling approx. 1,100dps, with bursts up to 1,200, but unfortunately I'd also sometimes drop embarrassingly below 1K. (Noob!)
After updating my Hotkey bar with the most powerful of my abilities my DPS skyrocketed and peaked at over 1,600dps. Now the Shaman in my party may have had a little to do with that, but IMO (even though I'm a Noob and always will be) I very much doubt he can take credit for a 33% increase in my DPS. I'm sure his Totems were partially responsible, but a large part of my DPS increase still came from upgrading my previously downranked abilities. And with an increase in DPS came newfound enjoyment in what had been a gradual stagnation of Ret. I'd actually contemplated going back to Prot for questing/grinding because Ret was just not doing it for me. But now, once again, it was.
After the first run the group stayed together to run a second Random, and my Retadin DPS was still crazy high (or more correctly, no longer noobishly low). When Paaco logged for the night I visited my Paladin trainer and learned my new level 74 Abilities (I'd actually dinged 74 the night before then Noobishly logged almost straight away). I then switched to Prot and made sure my Prot Hotkey Bar had the highest ranked abilities, just in case.
With renewed faith in my ability to provide MQOSDPS I switched back to Ret then hit up the DF Tool for one last Instance. Not normally running PUGs without Paaco Tanking it was a somewhat new experience for me, and either Paaco is a good Tank (which he is), or the NElf DK sucked as a Tank (which is equally possible) because initially I suspected I was in for the typical PUG from Hell with a Tank who couldn't. After a couple of Trash Pulls the Tank blamed Lag for her inability to Tank then DC'd on us, and I stepped up to the plate, switched to Prot and offered to Tank the rest of the Instance. While my first experience as a Tank in Wrath had been a painful affair this Run was fairly smooth. There were a few chaotic moments when the Shaman used the horrible "let's throw all the Mobs far away" ability, but not one wipe, or even anything like a Near Wipe. I already knew I could bring the Pain as a Retadin, but now my faith in my ability to Tank had also been restored.
Was it that I'd noobishly been using downranked abilities to Tank in Wrath? Was it the gear upgrades I'd acquired between 70 and 74? Was it a combination of both? (Probably ;) In any case I was now, once again, an Indestructible Tankadin! and once again enjoying the game, all thanks to an AddOn called Rankwatch that I didn't even have installed.
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