WoW: The Five Stages of Talent Tree Acceptance

1: "This sucks. There's no more complexity here! You're giving the game over to the casuals! FUCK YOU BLIZZARD!!!!!!! You're destroying the game!!!!!!"

2: "You won't fix Talents this way and there will still be cookie cutter builds. You should just go back..."

3: "<insert Theory Crafter site here> says Leaching Poison is the best newb. What do you mean 'not for this fight'? Wait.. did the boss AoE just destroy me..."

4: "Did you see what that guy did there? Fuck me, why didn't I think of using it like that..."

5: "You know, I'm kinda getting us... Wait, what do you mean they're nerfing my level 90 talents?????? FUCK YOU BLIZZARD!!!!!!! You're destroying the game!!!!!!"

MoP: Does Beta Archeology Still Suck?

No idea.

Here's the only thing I learnt from the Beta before realizing it was going to take too much of my time now to get a feel for it: the prof is still pretty much so only a max level prof. Perhaps when 5.2 hits and they go "oh, ok, now you can have heirloom Tomes of Pandaran Flight", it won't be but, for now, trying to grind arch while running all over the place ground-bound is just painful as you level.

So, knowing that I'd have to either level my Archeologist to 90 to be able to test properly (especially since the Lorewalker functions don't really become available until 89/90), or level Arch on my other 90 I'm gonna wait until some point in MoP to get around to addressing this; assuming I find time to get around to it at all. Just throwing that out there in case anyone's waiting for an update.

MoP: The Little Things Matter Too

In Beta a lot of people get focused on the bugs and "MY DPS IS NOT HIGH ENOUGH!!!!!!!!!" x is better than y ish stuff but you also need feedback on just plain old fashioned playability; what are minor quirks in the game that you think need to be addressed. For example:

I noticed that we've got all this new stuff around the Eastern Earthshrine in Stormwind (pet battle trainer and Panda village/Monk trainer), but the area hadn't been tied into the city all that well for the low level characters who'd now need to get there.

One suggestion later...:

... and we have a nice path up there for the new players to easily find their way in.

So, don't just be focused on what's "broke" - if you see something minor that just needs tweaking make your case clearly and it might just get done. But remember, the crowd, or Blizzard, could have a different opinion than you so be prepared to defend it clearly and without devolving to insult spam either.

TyL: From Extensive Beta Experience.

People are apparently searching my blog for an answer to the following question: "what happens with characters mop beta"

I can happily answer this, assuming the inquiry is inline with wanting to know what happens when the beta ends: they get deleted. With extreme prejudice. It involves submersion into magnetic fields and the screams of billions of bits of virtual characters data snuffed out in slow, agonizing, torture.

You know that scene with the Shoe in Roger Rabbit? Worse.

So, no, you won't be able to take your level 85 Pandaren Monk over to the live server, nor your painstakingly grifted AH Gold, or anything else you get over there. Just enjoy your lead time, find - and report! - some of what's broke, maybe spot some of the things you might want to do/get ready to streamline your levelling, and get out when you're not having fun anymore.

MoP: What Happens In Beta Stays In Beta....

Yesterday:


Today:


We shall never speak of this again.

MoP: Want This as a Mount

These huge ass detailed lizards brought to you by the Valley of the Four Winds.

MoP: Because Rubik's Cubes are Cool.

I suspect there's not a Panda friendly model yet.

MoP: Gatekeeper Quest

Sooo, after dealing with my ISP's subcontractor de-provisioning my modem I finally get into the Beta for MoP and run into this 4 quests into trying to roll a Panda:

Why are all those people there? Because someone thought it was a good idea to have a quest where you need to click on an item to get credit and then didn't stop and consider just what would happen if there was only one of the item available for everyone. Little hint: it's called a choke point.

So, now there's 60 some odd toons sitting there; some trying to be "first", some just griefing by body blocking and jumping through your way, and others spamming some macro (that, depending on who you ask, either works or doesn't), in the hope they can progress though the zone. Grouping can help you try and get it done, but the /s spam makes it damned hard for anyone to announce a group. It's poor quest design and really needs to be addressed before the game goes live. Two ways to do it would be:

1) Phase the event so it's your solo run to your solo scroll

2) Change the quest so people in proximity can get credit. This has been done for other quests in the past so shouldn't require much if any new tech.

Hopefully they'll accept that something needs to change because even if this quest is "just fine" 12 months after launch, it's going to be a meat grinder for the first two weeks as is for anyone looking to roll a Panda.

WoW: Enhancement MoP Talents + Skills (V2.0).

Zee MoP Talent Calculator has been updated today. The big change is that the Mobility tier has been taken out and some tiers have been shifted around. The "control" tier of roots and knock backs has been moved to Tier 2 and has seen Repulsion Totem replaced with Windwalk Totem from the lost mobility tier. Tier 1 is now the defensive cool down tier which remains largely the same, some numbers have been shifted around, but most notably Stone Bulwark Totem only regenerates to about one third it's initial drop value every 5 seconds now.

Tier 6 can now be found at Tier 3, but Elemental Harmony has been given the chop which makes me sad. In its place is now Call Of The Elements: a 5 minute cool down that resets your totem cool downs. Which could make for some interesting Elemental usage in PvE, but is nowhere near as useful as being able to drop Stone Bulwark Totem and Earthgrab, and Tremor all at the same time would've been; perhaps why they shot it. Following that, Totemic Restoration now no longer restores totems but, instead, simply reduces the cool down on them by half the runtime time that would've been remaining when they were killed - up to 50%. Totemic Projection remains unchanged.

Tier 5 is now Tier 4 and sees the same abilities in place but cleaned up to make more sense. Elemental Mastery is now straight 30% haste for 20 seconds and no instant cast; turning it into a mini-Heroism/Bloodlust on a 2 minute cool down that actually does something for us now. Ancestral Swiftness, if I'm reading it right, now provides a constant 5% melee and spell haste passively while also acting as an instant cast cool down on a 1 minute timer. Booming Echos remains the same and I suspect the question in the damage tier comes down to this: do you need to burst down targets at specific time windows (think Spine)? EM. Then wait for the math folks to sort out which of BE and AS works best in fights that favour more consistent output over burst.

Closing things out for the moment, as Tier 6 is currently empty, Tier 4 now becomes Tier 5 with no significant changes that I can see.

Two other things are worth mentioning as the spell tree also got a bit more fleshed. Firstly, there appears to be no plan to replace the Haste Totems at the moment. Instead, it looks like all Shaman will be bringing 5 straight up Mastery points - not rating: know the difference - to the raid via a new ability: Grace of Air. All Shaman also will currently bring the Wrath spell power buff via Burning Wrath. Secondly, our level 87 spell has been added and is apparently a transformative ability called Ascendance on a 3 minute cool down lasting 15 seconds with different effects/forms for each spec. We only care about one of those here: "While in the form of an Air Ascendant, auto-attacks and Stormstrike deal pure Nature damage and have a 30-yard range."

Now that will make bosses with zone clear mechanics a bit more interesting, won't it....

WoW: MoP and Enhancement Shaman Talents

Note: The Tree has been updated since this was written.

There's a lot of whining that it's all PVP talents in the Shaman tree and, worse, that there's no specific Enhancement Talents. Lets look at the first part of that and we'll get to the last in a bit:

Tier 1:
These all look like PvP talents until you start to look at some of the fights Blizzard's been putting out lately. Don't you wish you had a Totem on Rag that could AoE throw adds away from the hammer? Hey, look... Repulsion Totem. There's a bunch of adds in the room? To the point where you're stacking the raid with Druids for Roots? Hey, look... Earthgrab Totem. Frozen Power is what you grab when there's one add and not many.

So, there are current fights where these have use. Judging from the ability overlap into other Classes trees, expect more of them.

Tier 2:
Nature's Guardian is what you take when you're up against Decimate mechanics and the healers aren't quite there yet. Especially when they also involve threat dumps because we're still early threat whores due to Windfury.

Stone Bulwark Totem has absolutely no obvious use in PvE. Except on Ultraxion... Maloriak... Alysrazor.... you know, pretty much every fight with metric tons of outbound unavoidable damage where a shield that's going to approach ~50% uptime (depending on how many seconds apart the "waves" are - it refreshes every 5), is going to be of high value to help keep you on your feet and killing. The metric between it and Astral Shift? Can you afford to lose 50% of your DPS output for 6 seconds and are the attacks frequent or far apart. On DPS + Healing checks like Ultra, the answer is a straight line no. On a fight like Nefarian where you're primarily looking to mitigate crackles? Likely yes. Depends on what that shield looks like at 85/90 and the simple reality that only taking 50% of the hit is more than likely going to be better for you than simply absorbing some of it.

Tier 3:
Improved Ghost Wolf is all about: "How do I improve mobilty for me" while Windwalk Totem is all about: "How do I improve mobility for everyone". Both of these have a place in Dungeons or Raiding where bosses that either slow, snare, or root are not unknown.

Tranquil Mind is a somewhat new idea that seems to be spreading across the Trees: group/raid wide silence immunity. If you're wondering where this comes into play, think Nalorakk in Zul'Aman. Again, when you see counters spreading widely into the toolset, expect more PvE fights to make use of them in the future.

Tier 4:
Is where we run into a talent that likely will only fall to healers: Healing Tide Totem is not an ability we can expect to pick up with regularity. Ancestral Guidance is probably going to be preferred depending on the output simply because we're a spec that attacks very rapidly between our melee white damage and cooldowns. Depends on what the comparative output of the two actually turns out to be. Healing someone for 45K on a 120K Lava Lash crit isn't exactly negligible though - specially when it splashes onto a Tank and prevents a wipe.

However, on any fight where there's significant Magic Damage? Fortifying Waters turns us into a spec that brings a 10% magic reduction cooldown with 0 mana costs to the Raid and can be renewed as fast as we proc Maels: freeing up healers to use GCD's and mana to heal. That has its worth too.

Tier 5:
Elemental Mastery? Admittedly mneh. If it did spell and melee haste it might be worth talking about but the problem with it and Natures Swiftness is that all our spells are already instant so all we're really getting is a free mael cast out of it (not that there aren't situations where having the ability to instant cast will be unwelcome either way but most of them are those where we'd be losing the DPS value from the haste because they require movement which frequently takes us out of melee range), but at least NS does spell and melee haste on a one minute cooldown: the value of that haste we can debate when we start to see stat values in 5.0.

Otherwise, yes, the output tier is kinda boring and likely locks us into Booming Echos affecting about 40-50% of our output by duplicating spells.

Tier 6:
Elemental Harmony is the clear PvE winner here even after they removed Fire Totems from the ability for obvious balance reasons: quenching the burning dreams of those looking to deploy Searing for Lava Lash while keeping Fire Elemental and Magma up for AoE. Being able to deploy your Stone Bulwark and/or your Earthgrab and/or Tremor at the same time or your Repulsion and Windwalk will come in handy in situations.

Totemic Restoration is, admittedly, the talent I can't make a PvE argument for largely because it's very rare for totems to get destroyed in Dungeon/Raid PvE save by random pats you should be avoiding.

Totemic Projection is a talent we've been demanding for years and, now that we can have it, most of the quality of life improvements that have been/are going to be made makes it feel unneeded. With buff totems going behind the barn to be shot it suddenly seems pointless to have at first glance but you need to consider two things: it lets you "throw" your totems some place so you don't need to go there and then for the potential savings in mana from not having to recreate totems since there appears to be no need to spend mana to make the move.

So, think about being able to drop Earthgrab at your feet, "projecting it" - and everything else - to where it's needed, then refreshing Searing where you are so you can maintain DPS and root/snare at the same time. That has value to DPS because those three GCD's are likely still less of a dps loss than the time it would take you to run back and forth. If you want to make an argument against that, limit it to the idea that it should work more like trap launching which under the new system would be a real QoL improvement and eliminate one of those GCD's.

All that said there are obvious PvE uses for our talents. To argue otherwise is to indicate a lack of any real insight into how the fights work and how Blizzard works to constrain DPS by adding things like Adds and Movement Impairments/Requirements to prevent us from just hacking and slashing away Patchwork style. These are the kinds of limitation in thought that's affecting pretty much all the discussion on the new trees.

Now, getting back to that second point: that there's no clear DPS Talent. Well, yeah, our Tier 5 tree is kinda mneh for Enhancement. Instead of just saying that though, start thinking about what might be a good cooldown for not just Enhancement but also one/two of the other specs as well because the Talent Trees need to flex in that way under this system.

I'd suggest an Elemental is required but it runs into the reality that several other Classes already have "Spawn Guardian Critter of Awesome". So, we need to think of something more unique, interesting, and that has the ability to flex across the specs. Preferably, we need 2-3 of these things that might have their time and place along the lines of Warriors choosing between Bladestorm (for AoE dps), Shockwave (for some AoE dps but largely Stuns), and Avatar (for single target DPS). Building that into a Class that Heals, Ranged DPS's, and Melee DPS's is a bit tricker than that Warrior example because we all have different wants and needs but it's the kind of thinking that really needs to be applied here.

No hurry, we're not in Alpha yet: there's time to ponder.