... so far.
(to spare you some reading, no, CRZ won't be here)
Incredibly Alt Unfriendly
"Finally... have nothing in LFR I really wanna chase, daily reps are done, there's my last token for the Legendary gem... I can start using more of my downtime between other raids on other toons... Hey Wraithion, here you go little dude..."
"Thanks mortal... here's your starter gem... let's make it a bit more powerful... you've got Revered with me right?"
"Yup yup, easy to knock out while doing Shieldwall..."
"Excellent... now, there's this thing your people call Valour... I'd like you to earn 6000 of it to prove your worth..."
"NP, look, I've got this!"
"... I'm sorry, you seem to be misunderstanding.... I meant 6000 Valour just for me...."
"... so you're saying I need to continue to cap Valour on this toon for the next 6 weeks?
"Yes."
... and here is where I just went "Fuck It" and walked away from the grind to do alts and other stuff anyways because this is an example of the pinnacle of lazy gating methods: "Hey there, please keep doing something becoming increasingly tedious because it's past the point where it provides any other benefit to you. Thanks." Thing is, at the start of a raid tier I probably wouldn't have minded it: in the middle of a raid tier where I want to be settling down to do other things on non-raid nights than slave on my main? Yeah, no.
While we'll get to gating and dailies in a bit, because they're worth discussing on their own, there seems to have been an idea that the only reason people had alts was because there wasn't enough to do on their mains and MOP is the extreme overcompensation for that. There's now way too much to be done for your main and not getting it done - especially if you're trying to even pseudo-progression raid - makes you feel like you're not maximizing your potential.
Meanwhile, the rewards for doing this work have been decreased so it takes you significantly longer to get it done. We've gone from getting 250 VP for each LFR run and 120 VP for each Dungeon run to 90 and 80 respectively and, in the later case, from 120 for each time, to 80 the first run of the day and 40 every run after. While you can do Dailies while sitting around in queue to trickle in 5 VP at a time, and there is a buff to VP for alts once you actually cap your main (or any toon), the significant increase in time it takes to get there gets in the way of being able to work on other toons at anywhere near the rate you were able to work on them in Cataclysm; an expansion pack which, for all it's faults, I'd argue was the most Alt-Friendly expansion they've done.
So, the shift in extremes between the two is glaring. While the patch 5.1 change to rep for alts is welcome, and I get that they need to keep things balanced for the people who don't play alts as well, I'd argue that its the largely the extended VP Grind for your main that needs to be addressed. Most of the people I know who've basically given up on doing things for their alts point to the fact that they're going to take forever to gear when they can frequently only free up a night a week to touch them off their mains.
Gating
No, not Raid Gating. Much worse forms of gating.
In Cataclysm (there're examples from the prior expansions as well), there was a zone called Deepholm which was pleasant on the eyes and had a few fun quests... until you had to do roughly 70% it for the nth time in order to get your shoulder enchants. Then, you learnt to fucking hate the zone for its mandatory nature if you didn't roll Inscription as one of your profs.
Golden Lotus is the new Deepholm in that you're going to have to do it over and over again to get access to other things you want (unless you don't want them), and it doesn't mater how you spin it, that kind of gating is tedious. That this has not been learnt yet is kind of shocking because it's been fought against since at least Wraith and Hodir led them to make things like Shoulder/Helm enchants BoA for a while.
The spin that they didn't want people to feel like they had to do everything at once is a nonstarter as well. Because each faction has different items, and people are going to be able to weight those items on degrees of how much they want them, simply cap Dailies again and force them to choose which ones they get done in a day in order to get what they most want.
But permanently gate factions with stuff people want behind a faction with stuff they may not want? Sorry, at this point you guys should know better.
PS: Oh, and seriously guys, how did JP gear with a lower iLvL than Heroic gear and mandatory rep requirements that couldn't be met until long after the gear would be irrelevant ever go live? Do you QA your last minute changes at all?
Motes of Harmony
Likewise, Motes of Harmony have turned into a form of gating for professions as well. People used to maintain a production line of alts they could funnel mats to to make things for their mains or other toons but, now that high end crafting revolves around Spirits of Harmony and these are BoP, this becomes increasingly impractical.
Their dual nature in many cases - for several prof's Spirit's are not just used in Crafting but in buying the pats to craft with as well - makes things just as painful. If you're a crafter for your guild, you feel like you need to maximize spirits so you can be ready to make things for the guild but this means you can't get on your alts to get pats/items made by grinding out motes there (this gets back to the increased pressure to be on your main). So, I'm sitting on 60 of these things at this point while my alts are trickling them in/can't get any to craft with because they're BoP.
Incredibly annoying.
The Daily Issue and Rep
While I touched on a key daily concern in Gating - the mandatory nature of the Golden Lotus - here's the main problem with dailies in Mists:
"Hey, the kids liked those Molten Front Dailies. Let's do a whole lot of those!"
What's that saying about familiarity breeding contempt? Something else about too much of a good thing?
Here's the thing: you can slap a fresh coat of paint on them and you can randomize the dailies all you want but it doesn't change the fact that they're still dailies and dailies as endgame content was tiresome a long time ago. The other big mistake was tying gear and, worse, profession patterns to daily rep in a way that made them feel mandatory for people to do: which leads to the Gating complaint above. It's one thing to make VP your gear purchasing price, it's entirely another to tie daily grinds for VP and Rep to get gear because then people are doing your dailies not to have fun, or as a break from doing other things, but because they feel the have no other choice to get something they want/need.
That's not fun - and despite arguments made elsewhere is not "choice" either - and it gets in the way of other things that might be fun because you can't Brawlers Guild or effectively do Pet Battling while grinding out dailies at the same time.
Suggestion: let your players actually choose which factions they feel are necessary and continue to provide other things to do than dailies instead of trying to tie them into the same old grind to keep them playing.
Removing Flight: 85-90
Some people hate this because it makes things take longer.
My issue with removing flight isn't that it makes things take longer, it's that it requires me to quest to get it back to begin with. I rather liked that in Cataclysm they added experience for gathering professions and archaeology and, when I needed mats, I could jump on an alt and gather things I needed or learn just how much Arch sucked while slow levelling to cap.
MoP takes that flexibility away because doing this on land mounts is far too time consuming. It's greatly missed because the problem with questing isn't that it takes time: the problem is that once you've done it once or twice it's just boring and the reality is that there's really not significantly less linearity to the questing in MoP than there was in Cataclysm. There's really just a choice between doing some side quests in Jade Forest and then which two of Krasarang Wilds, Valley of the Four Winds, and Kun-Lai Summit you want to do.
Once through is ok, twice through, manageable, eleven times through? As I've said before, Tome of Pandaren Flight can't come quick enough...
Next Up: What MoP Did Right.
Showing posts with label WOW. Show all posts
Showing posts with label WOW. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Sunday, December 2, 2012
TLU: Apropos Comparison
Tank: To be fair, I thought the Shammy would make quick work of them all.
Me: Enhancement Shaman know nothing of "quick AOE" you speak of. We only do Tantric AoE: the explosions will be big, but it takes a long time to get there...
Me: Enhancement Shaman know nothing of "quick AOE" you speak of. We only do Tantric AoE: the explosions will be big, but it takes a long time to get there...
Sunday, October 14, 2012
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
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!!!!!!"
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!!!!!!"
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Sunday, September 9, 2012
WoW: Offered WIthout Comment.
Ghostcrawler: More stable slots would be fine to a point. Don't want hunters feeling like they should tame evey pet they see. Taming should be a decision. There are plenty of "collect all" achievements. Hunters aren't crazy cat hoarding ladies.
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
WoW: It's Been a Good Week So Far....
So, doubly good week for me. Doubly bad week for Dragons.
WoW: Saving Azeroth: One Nerf at a Time....
35% Nerf. Two weeks before the next expansion. Fuck it, I don't care; the bast is dead:
Full credit to the guildies who stuck it out through thick and thin and those guilds that came before us. Long, long, before us. Hopefully the next expansion will be more productive.
Monday, April 9, 2012
Friday, April 6, 2012
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.
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.
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Rant: The Raid Finder
A lot of people seem to misconstrue the purpose of this addition for some reason; mostly because they have their own agenda of victimization to perpetuate. For the record, it's not about "catering to the casuals" i.e.: Bads". It's about trying to recreate the far more active raiding scene from Wrath that's largely died out with the launch of Cataclysm for various reasons - primarily the loss of gear prestige from 25 man raiding.
It was that gear differential the encouraged a lot of alt raiding amongst guilds who often couldn't field a second full 25 man roster to attack the raid that week. That lack of personnel "in house" created a whole lot of opportunities for the people with limited play time to simply log in and go hit a raid because Trade would be actively spammed during the evenings. Now, with 25 man raiding diminished and 10 man raiding on the rise there's a lot less action on Trade looking for groups - 'specially once you're off the high pop servers. In addition, a lot of those Trade groups are looking to fill 10 slots, with DPS often filling quick and Tanks/Healers being the only things in demand.
So, the people with no interest in guilding up or unable to meet raid times frequently find themselves locked out; left with little to do once they've Heroic Cap'd and few reasons to log on until the next patch. Raid Finder exists address that need and it's a benefit for everyone. People in your guild who can't make raids for some reason (say, a work schedule shift),now have an avenue to keep up somewhat on their spare time so they're not as far behind when they can come back to the roster. New players get to sample raiding and, perhaps, get an itch to try the full blown thing which brings in fresh blood. Time limited players get their Wrath raiding levels back so they don't walk away and lower your server pop/drive up the economy by stopping to gather things needed for raids.
Someone else can likely come up with more but those alone are reasons that make the RF worth having regardless of your personal stance on who's "wrecking the game".
It was that gear differential the encouraged a lot of alt raiding amongst guilds who often couldn't field a second full 25 man roster to attack the raid that week. That lack of personnel "in house" created a whole lot of opportunities for the people with limited play time to simply log in and go hit a raid because Trade would be actively spammed during the evenings. Now, with 25 man raiding diminished and 10 man raiding on the rise there's a lot less action on Trade looking for groups - 'specially once you're off the high pop servers. In addition, a lot of those Trade groups are looking to fill 10 slots, with DPS often filling quick and Tanks/Healers being the only things in demand.
So, the people with no interest in guilding up or unable to meet raid times frequently find themselves locked out; left with little to do once they've Heroic Cap'd and few reasons to log on until the next patch. Raid Finder exists address that need and it's a benefit for everyone. People in your guild who can't make raids for some reason (say, a work schedule shift),now have an avenue to keep up somewhat on their spare time so they're not as far behind when they can come back to the roster. New players get to sample raiding and, perhaps, get an itch to try the full blown thing which brings in fresh blood. Time limited players get their Wrath raiding levels back so they don't walk away and lower your server pop/drive up the economy by stopping to gather things needed for raids.
Someone else can likely come up with more but those alone are reasons that make the RF worth having regardless of your personal stance on who's "wrecking the game".
Thursday, February 16, 2012
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....
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....
Friday, January 6, 2012
DGtCDB: The Siege of Wyrmrest Temple (LFR Edition)
My Annotated Video Guides to the four Siege of Wyrmrest Temple fights in LFR. I'm undecided if I'm going to do this for the last four. Too much griefing and general bullshit happens back there and I'd rather not have to spend a month chasing clean feeds.
Morchok:
Yor'sahj the Unsleeping:
Warlord Zon'ozz:
Hagara:
Happy hunting folks.
Morchok:
Yor'sahj the Unsleeping:
Warlord Zon'ozz:
Hagara:
Happy hunting folks.
Friday, December 9, 2011
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.
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.
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
WoW: The Great iLvL Escape.
Ghostcrawler poked his head out of the sand last week to address item scaling. In particular, the fact that the exponential growth system currently in use is going to quickly get us into the ludicrous numbers range on our gear and, by extension, what we hit/heal/etc for. Most people have read it and missed one point though: they were obviously looking for feedback, which is why pretty much everyone has treated the discussion as an "either/or" debate between "Mega Damage" and "Item Squish", but they were also looking for other options to attack the issue.
So, I'm going to hit up both feedback and provide a couple other options.
Mega Damage is basically a work around for the reality that, if we were to continue to scale in power exponentially, the engine would need to be reworked to deal with the fact that we're going to be dealing damage in the millions... per hit. For a real world example of where numbers run into display caps, think of how, as you level your Characters in old Final Fantasy's, you'd eventually start hitting for 9999 damage and cap out. Similar restrictions currently exist within WoW (though, obviously at a higher scale), so Mega Damage is less about splashing the term round the screen and more about having to make sure those extreme numbers will display properly and can be processed by system on both ends.
Beyond the fact that I'm pretty sure Palladium Books has a registered trademark on that (which, given the state of the pen + paper RPG industry, may be questionable to tempt), GC's basically hit all the major roadblocks here: it's awkward and will eventually run into the real limitations of computing power - both locally and server side. The reality is that, as much fun as it may be, letting our numbers scale into infinity is going to make encounters look really, really strange.
I say that because there will eventually come a point when we're going to be standing in front of a boss with 999 Billion health (or more) and start pounding on him for 100 Million DPS/Player under this situation and that's just boggling.
Item Squish basically says we're going knock the exponential growth out from under the player at the end of each expansion, place all gear before the current/upcoming expansion back on (relatively) linear growth, and thus attempt to reset the curve such that we have more room to breathe. There are a few glaring problems with it:
1) Players potentially go from hitting for 40K DPS at the end of Cat to hitting for 4K DPS heading into MoP (for pure example: there are no hard numbers as to where we'd be), so you're likely going to log in one day and feel like you've been hit with the nerf stick; hard.
2) In scaling everything - gear, bosses, mobs - down, every single mob and dungeon encounter currently in the game is going to have to be rebalanced and tested against the new status quo because it very rarely turns out that you can simply "decrease by x" significantly - which is what would be required to get us all back to iLvL 200 gear by the start of MoP - without having any consequences to the encounter design. This is going to be a pile of work I'd really rather dev time not be wasted on or, worse, the Devs might handwave simply because its primary effect will be to screw up legacy content. Admittedly, this only needs be done once (theoretically), and then only for each expansion at the end.
3) It doesn't permanently fix anything; it just buys time as the high end of the curve gets pushed further out.
I can see why, in the either/or discussion, people prefer Item Squishing because it results in less obscene numbers in the end (for a bit), and that screenshot for Mega Damage is pretty dumb, but maybe it's time to consider other options as well.
Half way between Item Squishing and Mega Damage lies the idea that maybe, just maybe, we can allow gear to continue scaling but at a less obscenely fast rate. For example, maybe MoP gear only goes up by 600 Points in the primary stat slot by 5.3 instead of ~2100 points as per GC's example:
I like to call this the Rule of 600 (although, the number is flexible TBH), in that basically we're looking for non linear growth within a defined window of 600 points . You'd want a curve that backends most of the points while still seeing to it enough points are on the front end to encourage swapping out gear as people level. Although, with the addition of iLvL restrictors to the game, it's worth considering that there are other mechanics to incentivize gear swapping now. The big problem with this is that, in being a half way solution, it doesn't delay the scaling as fast as the Item Squish and still requires some attention to the Mega Damage problem. As well, the question is whether or not this will be considered "enough" of a "power increase" for people used to stupid levels of scaling - especially as a percentage of total increase/tier.
While the later problem is going to be somewhat subjective - though not to the math nerds - the primary benefit is that it would be hard to argue you got nerfed under this system because power would continue to increase; just at a slower rate.
If you wanted to absolutely clear the table though, there's a tried and true method for this in RPG's: The Hard Reset. Not so much from a: "It's time to have WoW 2.0* and put everyone back to level one", stand but more from a: "The Mists of Pandaria corrode/disables/etc your puny Azerothian gear. Replace it", position. This would attempt to replicate those situations where you'd go into zones ("Hell" zones are good examples of where you might need specific gear), and your gear just wouldn't work or the GM decides (preferably in consultation with the players), that you've accumulated too much Wealth/Power and it's time to have your ship get hit by a typhoon and you to wake up soggy in your nightclothes on a distant shore or an "enemy" gets the upper hand and strips you of your gear/position/power to try and bring some balance/challenge/strife back to the game.
This is the hardcore Item Squish in that, for the sake of argument, you'd basically want to do something like: "Azerothian gear is weakened to 10% of it's normal levels", and then build from there by replacing that gear with the gear you'd find in Pandaria that would scale from the new baseline. This is a bit awkward, in that it essentially creates a whole second "class" of gear and you'd likely want to swap back to pre-MoP gear to run old instances/raids. Running through pre-MoP quest zones is less of an issue because, though this is a bit easier for casters than weapon users, a Level 85 can still kill most 85 mobs naked if they're on their game. The solution to those issues may lie in the Challenge Mode Dungeons as it could also be theoretically possible to apply its normalization mechanic outside the dungeons to have MoP gear normalize to a fixed Level 85 equivalent set on legacy content. Considering that, the Hard Reset does offer some benefits:
1) The gear reset can be to any point Blizzard is comfortable with and scale as high as they want within an expansion in the same sense. This makes the Hard Reset the most effective permanent solution because, when we wander off to fight Sargeras + the Burning Legion in 6.0 his demonic realm can functionally do the same thing to our puny MoP gear, or not. It all depends on how often you want to wield the axe and how hard. Long term, this gives you the most flexibility because you're no longer delaying the inevitable, you're creating a mechanic and tools to prevent it.
2) You can also now consider other ways to scale the player under the new gear system or even from expansion to expansion; from enchants, raw player stat increases as the character levels, or even the addition of new kinds of gear slots and the like because you've now more space to shift power elsewhere.
3) You never have this awkward intermediate stage where you're fighting Deathwing one week doing 40K dps, then the 4.4 patch hits to push down the MoP changes and now you're feeling like you're back in Kara doing 4K because, under the Hard Reset, it's arriving on Pandaria that presents the issue and not a retune to the game. In other words, you don't need to deflate every character and pre-MoP encounter in the game to ensure damage in MoP doesn't scale out of control.
The downside? Most definitely a nerf to start at least. How much of a nerf depends on how you want to work this: is your Hard Reset going to basically just upend the status quo and set things up so you've room to breathe for another 5 expansions, or do you want to do something like a 50% debuff on prior gear every expansion so that you can do something like this:
and tighten up your growth rate by nerfing power at the start, while still letting everyone be more powerful by the end than they were in the prior expansion. The problem with doing it the later way though is that players will likely begin to feel Yo-Yo'd.
That said, I'm honestly of the opinion that maybe the Hard Reset is the way to go because, as GC noted, sometimes it's best to just rip the bandaid off and this bandaid? It's the biggest one to yank by far.
* Folks, Cataclysm is WoW2.0
So, I'm going to hit up both feedback and provide a couple other options.
Mega Damage is basically a work around for the reality that, if we were to continue to scale in power exponentially, the engine would need to be reworked to deal with the fact that we're going to be dealing damage in the millions... per hit. For a real world example of where numbers run into display caps, think of how, as you level your Characters in old Final Fantasy's, you'd eventually start hitting for 9999 damage and cap out. Similar restrictions currently exist within WoW (though, obviously at a higher scale), so Mega Damage is less about splashing the term round the screen and more about having to make sure those extreme numbers will display properly and can be processed by system on both ends.
Beyond the fact that I'm pretty sure Palladium Books has a registered trademark on that (which, given the state of the pen + paper RPG industry, may be questionable to tempt), GC's basically hit all the major roadblocks here: it's awkward and will eventually run into the real limitations of computing power - both locally and server side. The reality is that, as much fun as it may be, letting our numbers scale into infinity is going to make encounters look really, really strange.
I say that because there will eventually come a point when we're going to be standing in front of a boss with 999 Billion health (or more) and start pounding on him for 100 Million DPS/Player under this situation and that's just boggling.
Item Squish basically says we're going knock the exponential growth out from under the player at the end of each expansion, place all gear before the current/upcoming expansion back on (relatively) linear growth, and thus attempt to reset the curve such that we have more room to breathe. There are a few glaring problems with it:
1) Players potentially go from hitting for 40K DPS at the end of Cat to hitting for 4K DPS heading into MoP (for pure example: there are no hard numbers as to where we'd be), so you're likely going to log in one day and feel like you've been hit with the nerf stick; hard.
2) In scaling everything - gear, bosses, mobs - down, every single mob and dungeon encounter currently in the game is going to have to be rebalanced and tested against the new status quo because it very rarely turns out that you can simply "decrease by x" significantly - which is what would be required to get us all back to iLvL 200 gear by the start of MoP - without having any consequences to the encounter design. This is going to be a pile of work I'd really rather dev time not be wasted on or, worse, the Devs might handwave simply because its primary effect will be to screw up legacy content. Admittedly, this only needs be done once (theoretically), and then only for each expansion at the end.
3) It doesn't permanently fix anything; it just buys time as the high end of the curve gets pushed further out.
I can see why, in the either/or discussion, people prefer Item Squishing because it results in less obscene numbers in the end (for a bit), and that screenshot for Mega Damage is pretty dumb, but maybe it's time to consider other options as well.
Half way between Item Squishing and Mega Damage lies the idea that maybe, just maybe, we can allow gear to continue scaling but at a less obscenely fast rate. For example, maybe MoP gear only goes up by 600 Points in the primary stat slot by 5.3 instead of ~2100 points as per GC's example:
I like to call this the Rule of 600 (although, the number is flexible TBH), in that basically we're looking for non linear growth within a defined window of 600 points . You'd want a curve that backends most of the points while still seeing to it enough points are on the front end to encourage swapping out gear as people level. Although, with the addition of iLvL restrictors to the game, it's worth considering that there are other mechanics to incentivize gear swapping now. The big problem with this is that, in being a half way solution, it doesn't delay the scaling as fast as the Item Squish and still requires some attention to the Mega Damage problem. As well, the question is whether or not this will be considered "enough" of a "power increase" for people used to stupid levels of scaling - especially as a percentage of total increase/tier.
While the later problem is going to be somewhat subjective - though not to the math nerds - the primary benefit is that it would be hard to argue you got nerfed under this system because power would continue to increase; just at a slower rate.
If you wanted to absolutely clear the table though, there's a tried and true method for this in RPG's: The Hard Reset. Not so much from a: "It's time to have WoW 2.0* and put everyone back to level one", stand but more from a: "The Mists of Pandaria corrode/disables/etc your puny Azerothian gear. Replace it", position. This would attempt to replicate those situations where you'd go into zones ("Hell" zones are good examples of where you might need specific gear), and your gear just wouldn't work or the GM decides (preferably in consultation with the players), that you've accumulated too much Wealth/Power and it's time to have your ship get hit by a typhoon and you to wake up soggy in your nightclothes on a distant shore or an "enemy" gets the upper hand and strips you of your gear/position/power to try and bring some balance/challenge/strife back to the game.
This is the hardcore Item Squish in that, for the sake of argument, you'd basically want to do something like: "Azerothian gear is weakened to 10% of it's normal levels", and then build from there by replacing that gear with the gear you'd find in Pandaria that would scale from the new baseline. This is a bit awkward, in that it essentially creates a whole second "class" of gear and you'd likely want to swap back to pre-MoP gear to run old instances/raids. Running through pre-MoP quest zones is less of an issue because, though this is a bit easier for casters than weapon users, a Level 85 can still kill most 85 mobs naked if they're on their game. The solution to those issues may lie in the Challenge Mode Dungeons as it could also be theoretically possible to apply its normalization mechanic outside the dungeons to have MoP gear normalize to a fixed Level 85 equivalent set on legacy content. Considering that, the Hard Reset does offer some benefits:
1) The gear reset can be to any point Blizzard is comfortable with and scale as high as they want within an expansion in the same sense. This makes the Hard Reset the most effective permanent solution because, when we wander off to fight Sargeras + the Burning Legion in 6.0 his demonic realm can functionally do the same thing to our puny MoP gear, or not. It all depends on how often you want to wield the axe and how hard. Long term, this gives you the most flexibility because you're no longer delaying the inevitable, you're creating a mechanic and tools to prevent it.
2) You can also now consider other ways to scale the player under the new gear system or even from expansion to expansion; from enchants, raw player stat increases as the character levels, or even the addition of new kinds of gear slots and the like because you've now more space to shift power elsewhere.
3) You never have this awkward intermediate stage where you're fighting Deathwing one week doing 40K dps, then the 4.4 patch hits to push down the MoP changes and now you're feeling like you're back in Kara doing 4K because, under the Hard Reset, it's arriving on Pandaria that presents the issue and not a retune to the game. In other words, you don't need to deflate every character and pre-MoP encounter in the game to ensure damage in MoP doesn't scale out of control.
The downside? Most definitely a nerf to start at least. How much of a nerf depends on how you want to work this: is your Hard Reset going to basically just upend the status quo and set things up so you've room to breathe for another 5 expansions, or do you want to do something like a 50% debuff on prior gear every expansion so that you can do something like this:
That said, I'm honestly of the opinion that maybe the Hard Reset is the way to go because, as GC noted, sometimes it's best to just rip the bandaid off and this bandaid? It's the biggest one to yank by far.
* Folks, Cataclysm is WoW2.0
Saturday, October 22, 2011
WoW: You've Made Your Bed...
One of the fun recurring complaints you hear from PvP servers is how there's no PvP anymore. Because the faction ratios are 30:1. Frequently because one faction actively went out of their way to run the other off the server by camping them into oblivion and they're damned proud of it.
This is followed by ranting at Blizzard to try and "fix" the issue which is roughly equivalent to the following conversation:
Although I'm sure they'd take the realm change cash, Blizzard is smart enough to know that it's player attitudes towards what's supposed to go on on a PvP server that are causing the issue and not, say, class or faction racial imbalances as the source of this issue. The problem actually comes down to the simple reality that, at some point in time, the PvP community got this idea into their heads that the purpose of a PvP server was not to have a "live" opponent from time to time but, instead, to achieve that ephemeral goal of "Domination" and now that they've achieved that, they don't get their "live" opponents anymore because... well... they've dominated them instead of engaged in some sort of sustainable level of mutual harassment. Blizzard can't program around player attitudes and, lets be honest, if they tried the people who want to play domination are going to transition from whining about having no one to dominate to screaming to high heaven when there are roadblocks placed in their way.
So, until attitudes change, you're likely screwed. Although, maybe they could just let you faction change to the other side on your own server for free for a while. I suspect you guys on the high side are certainly gonna jump at the challenge and extra PvP opportunities that opens up.
Right?
This is followed by ranting at Blizzard to try and "fix" the issue which is roughly equivalent to the following conversation:
Player: "Tom took his ball and went home because I kept kicking him in the face. I demand you find me someone else to kick in the face. With a ball."Reality Check: Blizzard isn't going to "rebalance" your server for the simple reason that there's really no evidence that you're not going to continue to run anyone they move there off and forcing a PvP experience with a mandatory migration upon their customers to appease you that basically involves getting camped until they log in frustration is not really in the company's best interest.
Blizzard: "Um... yeah.... we'll get right on that..."
Although I'm sure they'd take the realm change cash, Blizzard is smart enough to know that it's player attitudes towards what's supposed to go on on a PvP server that are causing the issue and not, say, class or faction racial imbalances as the source of this issue. The problem actually comes down to the simple reality that, at some point in time, the PvP community got this idea into their heads that the purpose of a PvP server was not to have a "live" opponent from time to time but, instead, to achieve that ephemeral goal of "Domination" and now that they've achieved that, they don't get their "live" opponents anymore because... well... they've dominated them instead of engaged in some sort of sustainable level of mutual harassment. Blizzard can't program around player attitudes and, lets be honest, if they tried the people who want to play domination are going to transition from whining about having no one to dominate to screaming to high heaven when there are roadblocks placed in their way.
So, until attitudes change, you're likely screwed. Although, maybe they could just let you faction change to the other side on your own server for free for a while. I suspect you guys on the high side are certainly gonna jump at the challenge and extra PvP opportunities that opens up.
Right?
Friday, October 14, 2011
DGtCDB: Zul Gurub
Boy, this is late in coming but these take significant writing time to do and I've been busy.
Important Trash Note: Utilize your Cauldrons. Green Cauldrons will provide a substantial immunity to Nature damage - handy for fighting certain mobs and passing toxic areas. Blue Cauldrons will give you a buff that freezes and does substantial damage to the first target you hit; they make certain mobs much easier to kill. Red Cauldrons don't really get used much in trash, but cause you to make like a 'lock and start casting a Hellfire equivalent - with the exact same consequences to your health. All three will play in role in one of the later boss fights.
Going to try doing this in a slightly different format than the earlier ones which I've been advised were too "wordy". Sooooo, streamlined it is....
High Priest Venoxis
First boss does a lot of poison/nature damage - much of which is demonstrated by the trash priests on your way to the boss.
Rule One of Venoxis: Don't stand in Green. Repeat: Do. Not. Stand. In. Green. Tanks, please position the boss so that his ass is not facing the green fog on the staircase as you will make it hard for Melee to not violate Rule One; fog damage aura extends further than you think. Likewise, when the boss goes snake and starts spitting bile, get behind it, don't eat it.
Interrupt: Whispers of Hethiss - You'll likely need to rotate on this because it will be cast about every 5-8 seconds
Run Away!: Toxic Link - If this is cast on you, a green line will form between you and another player. You want to get away from that player as quickly as possible in order to cancel out the ability. Ranged and Healers should pre-position themselves in the room so that the ability will fall off immediately to negate it entirely for those players. Think a big triangle with Ranged DPS in opposite base corners and Heals at the tip towards the back alter.
Bloodvenom Tendrils - the boss will cast this when he jumps back up the stairs. You'll need to run though the green maze of lines on the ground to avoid the AoE damage they will do shortly after spawning so leave yourself a path to run and, if necessary and health allows, don't be afraid to cut quickly across a line if it means being able to avoid the AoE.
Avoid those abilities and Venoxis will likely fall in 1-2 phases.
Bloodlord Mandokir
Straightforward Tank + Spank pretty much. Mandokir will occasionally jump around and instagib someone with Decapitate so be prepared as Tank or Healer to have the other go down from time to time when RNG hates you. Deaths on this fight also cause Mandokir to Level Up - increasing damage by 20% for each one so you're trying to finish him before he simply overpowers you.
Rule One of Madokir: the Chained Spirits are how you get revived from Decapitate. You have 8. Mandokir will (re)spawn his Raptor Ohgan over the course of the fight. If Ohgan is allowed to run freely, he will kill the Chained Spirits. No chained spirits, no rezes. No Rezes, dead party through attrition. You want to control Ohgan with slows or burn him down to prevent this and maximize your Chained Spirits.
Run Away!: Devastating Slam is a conical AoE attack which has a ground effect similar to Earthquake in a big frontal V. Prioritize clearing out because ground spikes will erupt within it and kill you instantly. You don't want extra deaths on this fight - remember each one causes Mandokir to Level Up.
Periodically: Bloodletting will be cast on a player and a red line will link them and Mandokir. They will lose 50% of their remaining health every 2 seconds for 10 seconds up to a minimum of 75K. Healers need be aware of that minimum and also top these players back up after the spell finishes.
Mandokir will enrage at 20% increasing his attack speed by 100%. Survive that and take your spoils.
High Priestess Kilnara
Somewhat of an add fight, the Tank will need to juggle holding agro on Kilnara with pulling kitties to be burnt down by the DPS.
Rule One of Kilnara:: Her kitty adds need to die before she hits 50% health, or else any remaining adds will agro and start chewing on the party.
Interrupt:: Tears of Blood - she will cast this periodically before she goes below 50% and it will do significant AoE damage to the party if left to run it's full course.
Run Away!: Wave of Agony - she will face a random player and create a giant purple wave. Anyone standing in its path will be knocked back and take 70-80K damage when it goes off so clear out of it's path/get behind her before it does.
Dispel: Lash of Anguish is 18-20K damage every 2 seconds for 10 seconds - ~80-100K. If you can dispel magic, take it off, don't heal through it.
Periodically: Wail of Sorrow will damage the party. Heal through it.
At 50% she will turn into a giant cat lady, the roof will collapse dealing AoE damage, and any remaining kitties that weren't killed will awaken and attack the party. Heal through the AoE damage to top everyone back up and then just burn her down before her attack buff builds to the point where she can kill you all.
Zanzil
This is where those Cauldrons we were talking about earlier will come in handy.
Rule One of Zanzil: Use the right cauldron at the right time. Blue to Kill/Control spawned Berzerkers, Red to Burn down Zombies, Green to handle Toxic Torment.
Interrupt: Voodoo Bolt as much as possible to minimize Tank damage.
Run Away! Zanzil Fire is a line of fire towards a random target. It is not a buff.
Zerkers will lock on to a random player just like they did on the path up to Zanzil's area. If you can't kill them in an iceblock, the person they target needs to kite while DPS finishes them off.
This entire fight really depends on how much DPS you have. With lots, it's entirely possible to have everyone grab the Fire Cauldron to start, stack on the boss, pop Hero, and heal through the party damage from the Cauldron buff while you try to beat out the Potion timers. At which point, it basically comes down to what you get first. If your first Potion revives a Berzerker, it's best to deal with it. But Toxic Torment, or Zombies? Get the appropriate buff, then stay on Zanzil and burn baby burn! But, if your DPS is low it's going to be 3 phases at least so don't be impatient: take the time to handle them appropriately because the boss really can't kill you if you manage his adds/potions correctly.
Jin'do the Godbreaker
Ahhh, the fight that still breaks many party's backs. Quick and easy done right, brutal wipe fest done wrong.
Phase 1: Above 70% health, Jin'Do will basically use two abilities: Deadzone and Shadows of Hakar.
Targets in the Deadzone take 90% less magic damage, but also cast 90% slower. Tanks want to keep Jin'do out of these so he doesn't get the 90% reduction buff. When Jin'do goes to cast Shadows of Hakar though, the party wants to be inside the Deadzone because the Chain Shadow damage will destroy players otherwise. So basically, you're going to dance in and out of big green bubbles until the boss runs away and starts...
Phase 2: Ahhh.... the phase of mass death. There will be three chains in the room covered by bubbles. To break these, the tank needs to go pull Gurubashi Spirit from the landings below and get them upstairs. The Gurubashi Spirit should not be killed right away; instead the party wants to keep him up until he casts at least one Body Slam on a random player who must be standing near one of the chain bubbles when he casts it in order to break the chain.
Rule One of Jin'Do: Don't miss your Body Slams. The longer this fight goes on, the more adds will spawn in the room and the harder it's going to get. You want your first three Slams to hit the chain bubbles. Also note: the purple circles created by the slams increase all damage done to things inside them by 200% so you really want to take advantage of these and get them placed not just so that they break the chain bubble but that the chain itself is included as well.
Run Away!: Shadow Spike - If there are white puffy clouds below your feet, a large amount of damage is coming your way. Move out of the smoke circle. Note: the damage buff from the purple circle applies to these strikes as well - you really don't want one of these landing on you as Melee while dealing with the chain.
Control: Gurubashi Spirt - Tank and Healer need to communicate to the party how many jumps you want to try and take per Spirit because the longer he's up, the more damage he does. While you don't want him immediately dead, whether or not you're killing one after every shield break, or after two, or going for all three needs to be communicated to the party so your Tank doesn't die.
Twisted Spirits - will spawn from shadow portals and harass the party in increasing numbers as the fight goes on. Ranged should make a best effort to control these as they will beeline for your Healers otherwise and do significant melee damage. Failure to control these often ends up in dead Healers which often means wipe time. It's best for the Ranged to stay near the healer so that they can camp a Chain together as mobs rush in instead of run all over the room and be out of position for a Body Slam.
Control the adds, break the bubbles, and destroy all three chains and you'll be free to go.
Yes. I know there're 4 random archaeology bosses. There are also almost no people who've done the prof to spawn the boss sooo I'm not bothering.
Important Trash Note: Utilize your Cauldrons. Green Cauldrons will provide a substantial immunity to Nature damage - handy for fighting certain mobs and passing toxic areas. Blue Cauldrons will give you a buff that freezes and does substantial damage to the first target you hit; they make certain mobs much easier to kill. Red Cauldrons don't really get used much in trash, but cause you to make like a 'lock and start casting a Hellfire equivalent - with the exact same consequences to your health. All three will play in role in one of the later boss fights.
Going to try doing this in a slightly different format than the earlier ones which I've been advised were too "wordy". Sooooo, streamlined it is....
High Priest Venoxis
First boss does a lot of poison/nature damage - much of which is demonstrated by the trash priests on your way to the boss.
Rule One of Venoxis: Don't stand in Green. Repeat: Do. Not. Stand. In. Green. Tanks, please position the boss so that his ass is not facing the green fog on the staircase as you will make it hard for Melee to not violate Rule One; fog damage aura extends further than you think. Likewise, when the boss goes snake and starts spitting bile, get behind it, don't eat it.
Interrupt: Whispers of Hethiss - You'll likely need to rotate on this because it will be cast about every 5-8 seconds
Run Away!: Toxic Link - If this is cast on you, a green line will form between you and another player. You want to get away from that player as quickly as possible in order to cancel out the ability. Ranged and Healers should pre-position themselves in the room so that the ability will fall off immediately to negate it entirely for those players. Think a big triangle with Ranged DPS in opposite base corners and Heals at the tip towards the back alter.
Bloodvenom Tendrils - the boss will cast this when he jumps back up the stairs. You'll need to run though the green maze of lines on the ground to avoid the AoE damage they will do shortly after spawning so leave yourself a path to run and, if necessary and health allows, don't be afraid to cut quickly across a line if it means being able to avoid the AoE.
Avoid those abilities and Venoxis will likely fall in 1-2 phases.
Bloodlord Mandokir
Straightforward Tank + Spank pretty much. Mandokir will occasionally jump around and instagib someone with Decapitate so be prepared as Tank or Healer to have the other go down from time to time when RNG hates you. Deaths on this fight also cause Mandokir to Level Up - increasing damage by 20% for each one so you're trying to finish him before he simply overpowers you.
Rule One of Madokir: the Chained Spirits are how you get revived from Decapitate. You have 8. Mandokir will (re)spawn his Raptor Ohgan over the course of the fight. If Ohgan is allowed to run freely, he will kill the Chained Spirits. No chained spirits, no rezes. No Rezes, dead party through attrition. You want to control Ohgan with slows or burn him down to prevent this and maximize your Chained Spirits.
Run Away!: Devastating Slam is a conical AoE attack which has a ground effect similar to Earthquake in a big frontal V. Prioritize clearing out because ground spikes will erupt within it and kill you instantly. You don't want extra deaths on this fight - remember each one causes Mandokir to Level Up.
Periodically: Bloodletting will be cast on a player and a red line will link them and Mandokir. They will lose 50% of their remaining health every 2 seconds for 10 seconds up to a minimum of 75K. Healers need be aware of that minimum and also top these players back up after the spell finishes.
Mandokir will enrage at 20% increasing his attack speed by 100%. Survive that and take your spoils.
High Priestess Kilnara
Somewhat of an add fight, the Tank will need to juggle holding agro on Kilnara with pulling kitties to be burnt down by the DPS.
Rule One of Kilnara:: Her kitty adds need to die before she hits 50% health, or else any remaining adds will agro and start chewing on the party.
Interrupt:: Tears of Blood - she will cast this periodically before she goes below 50% and it will do significant AoE damage to the party if left to run it's full course.
Run Away!: Wave of Agony - she will face a random player and create a giant purple wave. Anyone standing in its path will be knocked back and take 70-80K damage when it goes off so clear out of it's path/get behind her before it does.
Dispel: Lash of Anguish is 18-20K damage every 2 seconds for 10 seconds - ~80-100K. If you can dispel magic, take it off, don't heal through it.
Periodically: Wail of Sorrow will damage the party. Heal through it.
At 50% she will turn into a giant cat lady, the roof will collapse dealing AoE damage, and any remaining kitties that weren't killed will awaken and attack the party. Heal through the AoE damage to top everyone back up and then just burn her down before her attack buff builds to the point where she can kill you all.
Zanzil
This is where those Cauldrons we were talking about earlier will come in handy.
Rule One of Zanzil: Use the right cauldron at the right time. Blue to Kill/Control spawned Berzerkers, Red to Burn down Zombies, Green to handle Toxic Torment.
Interrupt: Voodoo Bolt as much as possible to minimize Tank damage.
Run Away! Zanzil Fire is a line of fire towards a random target. It is not a buff.
Zerkers will lock on to a random player just like they did on the path up to Zanzil's area. If you can't kill them in an iceblock, the person they target needs to kite while DPS finishes them off.
This entire fight really depends on how much DPS you have. With lots, it's entirely possible to have everyone grab the Fire Cauldron to start, stack on the boss, pop Hero, and heal through the party damage from the Cauldron buff while you try to beat out the Potion timers. At which point, it basically comes down to what you get first. If your first Potion revives a Berzerker, it's best to deal with it. But Toxic Torment, or Zombies? Get the appropriate buff, then stay on Zanzil and burn baby burn! But, if your DPS is low it's going to be 3 phases at least so don't be impatient: take the time to handle them appropriately because the boss really can't kill you if you manage his adds/potions correctly.
Jin'do the Godbreaker
Ahhh, the fight that still breaks many party's backs. Quick and easy done right, brutal wipe fest done wrong.
Phase 1: Above 70% health, Jin'Do will basically use two abilities: Deadzone and Shadows of Hakar.
Targets in the Deadzone take 90% less magic damage, but also cast 90% slower. Tanks want to keep Jin'do out of these so he doesn't get the 90% reduction buff. When Jin'do goes to cast Shadows of Hakar though, the party wants to be inside the Deadzone because the Chain Shadow damage will destroy players otherwise. So basically, you're going to dance in and out of big green bubbles until the boss runs away and starts...
Phase 2: Ahhh.... the phase of mass death. There will be three chains in the room covered by bubbles. To break these, the tank needs to go pull Gurubashi Spirit from the landings below and get them upstairs. The Gurubashi Spirit should not be killed right away; instead the party wants to keep him up until he casts at least one Body Slam on a random player who must be standing near one of the chain bubbles when he casts it in order to break the chain.
Rule One of Jin'Do: Don't miss your Body Slams. The longer this fight goes on, the more adds will spawn in the room and the harder it's going to get. You want your first three Slams to hit the chain bubbles. Also note: the purple circles created by the slams increase all damage done to things inside them by 200% so you really want to take advantage of these and get them placed not just so that they break the chain bubble but that the chain itself is included as well.
Run Away!: Shadow Spike - If there are white puffy clouds below your feet, a large amount of damage is coming your way. Move out of the smoke circle. Note: the damage buff from the purple circle applies to these strikes as well - you really don't want one of these landing on you as Melee while dealing with the chain.
Control: Gurubashi Spirt - Tank and Healer need to communicate to the party how many jumps you want to try and take per Spirit because the longer he's up, the more damage he does. While you don't want him immediately dead, whether or not you're killing one after every shield break, or after two, or going for all three needs to be communicated to the party so your Tank doesn't die.
Twisted Spirits - will spawn from shadow portals and harass the party in increasing numbers as the fight goes on. Ranged should make a best effort to control these as they will beeline for your Healers otherwise and do significant melee damage. Failure to control these often ends up in dead Healers which often means wipe time. It's best for the Ranged to stay near the healer so that they can camp a Chain together as mobs rush in instead of run all over the room and be out of position for a Body Slam.
Control the adds, break the bubbles, and destroy all three chains and you'll be free to go.
Yes. I know there're 4 random archaeology bosses. There are also almost no people who've done the prof to spawn the boss sooo I'm not bothering.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
WoW: Enhancement in 4.3
Let's just work through the relevant first set of notes here, linking the co-related together:
This means that in a game where people are already predisposed to hating to have to tasked to interrupt you're now giving proto-Enhancement Shaman 82 levels of excuses not to have to do that job before giving them the option of turning into, arguably, the best interrupting spec in the game. That just seems wrong headed and it's also a hefty nerf to any ES looking to join a Twink PvP or PvE guild focused on sub 85 content because the ranged interrupt they need to be competitive in PvP, or the speedy Interrupt they brought to Raids and Dungeons is now gimped permanently sub 82.
So, in the Cata school that reduction needs to be baked somewhere into the Enhancement Spec or Tree if the goal is to not impact either of the DPS specs with this change and Blizzard needs to put more thought into where that could best be.
The simple solution to that is to trade the Flame Shock for Earth Shock when it's absolutely critical to not cleave because you can't spread what isn't there. The long term solution may be for Blizzard to rename Improved Lava Lash something like "Slashing Flames" and have it turn Chain Lighting into Flame Chain Lightning to spread the Flame Shock dot instead of Lava Lash. In this sense, that part of the talent could function in the same way that Frost Mages see Flame Orb turned into Frostfire Orb to better directly benefit them and have our traditional Cleave do the work we're trying to foist on our primary nuke. I suspect the primary problem with doing that right now - other than making the Art Team cry - is the "those who already have a Flame Shock debuff from the shaman" part which could make Chain Lightning pathing... interesting to code.
Wind Shear now has a 25-second base cooldown, up from 6 seconds.Intended as a nerf to constrain Resto Shaman control in PvP, the proposed implementation has two primary problems with it:
Reverberation now reduces the cooldown of Wind Shear by 10/20 seconds, up from 0.5/1 second.
- Resto can still get it if they really want to.
- Enhancement doesn't take Reverb - the one second really makes no significant DPS improvement - and, furthermore, is now locked to a 25 second cooldown on Wind Shear until Level 82 at the earliest.
This means that in a game where people are already predisposed to hating to have to tasked to interrupt you're now giving proto-Enhancement Shaman 82 levels of excuses not to have to do that job before giving them the option of turning into, arguably, the best interrupting spec in the game. That just seems wrong headed and it's also a hefty nerf to any ES looking to join a Twink PvP or PvE guild focused on sub 85 content because the ranged interrupt they need to be competitive in PvP, or the speedy Interrupt they brought to Raids and Dungeons is now gimped permanently sub 82.
So, in the Cata school that reduction needs to be baked somewhere into the Enhancement Spec or Tree if the goal is to not impact either of the DPS specs with this change and Blizzard needs to put more thought into where that could best be.
Flametongue Weapon no longer increases spell damage. It now increases all non-physical damage done by the wielder by 5%.Death to Spell Power Weapons and Caster Enhancement. As much as that will upset some people, good riddance. There are enough abilities in our priority queue without having to come up with buttons for Lava Burst and other Elemental abilities that periodically came into flavour whenever the theorycrafters were smarter than the designers.
Mental Quickness has been redesigned. Instead of granting the shaman spell power, Mental Quickness now causes Enhancement shaman spells to behave as though the shaman has spell power equal to 55% of attack power. Enhancement shaman spells no longer benefit from spell power from other sources.
Call of Flame no longer causes Fire Nova to extend the duration of Flame Shock.Death to Tab Target Flame Shock. Fucking A. The only downside to this is that Lava Lash functionally becomes a Cleave by default - as long as you've a Flame Shock on your target it's going to get pushed to the others in the same way Mages can push their dots with Impact. This means you're going to have to be aware of when you're hitting Lava Lash because there tends to be those occasions where to Cleave is bad - think not wanting to pick up all the spiders during the Nightmare Gauntlet in Deadmines.
Improved Lava Lash now causes Lava Lash to spread a Flame Shock debuff from the target to up to 4 nearby targets. This excludes crowd-controlled targets and those who already have a Flame Shock debuff from the shaman.
Improved Lava Lash no longer increases base Lava Lash damage by 15/30%. This increase has been rolled into the base Lava Lash skill.
The simple solution to that is to trade the Flame Shock for Earth Shock when it's absolutely critical to not cleave because you can't spread what isn't there. The long term solution may be for Blizzard to rename Improved Lava Lash something like "Slashing Flames" and have it turn Chain Lighting into Flame Chain Lightning to spread the Flame Shock dot instead of Lava Lash. In this sense, that part of the talent could function in the same way that Frost Mages see Flame Orb turned into Frostfire Orb to better directly benefit them and have our traditional Cleave do the work we're trying to foist on our primary nuke. I suspect the primary problem with doing that right now - other than making the Art Team cry - is the "those who already have a Flame Shock debuff from the shaman" part which could make Chain Lightning pathing... interesting to code.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
WoW: It's not the map, it's you...
Lets get some things out of the way.
If you're getting trained in WSG, it's not because of the map: it's because you're not defending the flag carriers or being aggressive enough yourself.
If you're getting steamrolled in AB, it's not because of the map: it's because you're spread out all over the place and the other side is focusing you down.
If you're getting 4 capped in EOTS, it's not because of the map: it's because you're too damned focused on that distraction in the middle that doesn't matter unless you can control towers.
If you're getting bottled up in the North in AV, it's not because of the map: it's more than likely because you all charged Galv like lemmings and got your asses wiped by defenders backing him up. Which you've been doing for 4 years now because you're too damned stubbornly focused on treating AV like it needs to be attacked in a straight line and on what "gives honour!!!!!".
I'd do the new ones but I burnt out on people doing stupid shit while grinding honour a long time ago.
There's a saying in programming called PEBKAC. It stands for: "Problem Exists Between Keyboard and Chair" - ie: the User. ie: You.
People like to focus on "Win Ratios" and hair brained arguments about the maps to hide this reality because it's more self-gratifying to believe it's someone else who's causing you to fail than to acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, the problem is that you're not doing what needs to be done to win the map. I've played enough BG's to know that's the actual reality. You're not defending ground. You're not countering or adapting to your enemies attacks. For fucks sake, you're standing there wailing on DPS while Healers are behind them laughing at your efforts and keeping them at full. For future reference: Healers die FIRST.
So I'm here for a reality check to tell you to give up the whining because the problem is you. You need to figure out how to attack the maps properly, to deal with your enemies appropriately, and find the capacity to actually work together towards a goal instead of run around the map like you're the avenging angel of God who's going to win it single handedly. I say this because it doesn't matter how amazing you think Blizzard is at making games, the simple reality is that the DEV's just can't fix stupid.
And you are.
Addendum: and hey sometimes they're just simply better than you. Deal with it.
If you're getting trained in WSG, it's not because of the map: it's because you're not defending the flag carriers or being aggressive enough yourself.
If you're getting steamrolled in AB, it's not because of the map: it's because you're spread out all over the place and the other side is focusing you down.
If you're getting 4 capped in EOTS, it's not because of the map: it's because you're too damned focused on that distraction in the middle that doesn't matter unless you can control towers.
If you're getting bottled up in the North in AV, it's not because of the map: it's more than likely because you all charged Galv like lemmings and got your asses wiped by defenders backing him up. Which you've been doing for 4 years now because you're too damned stubbornly focused on treating AV like it needs to be attacked in a straight line and on what "gives honour!!!!!".
I'd do the new ones but I burnt out on people doing stupid shit while grinding honour a long time ago.
There's a saying in programming called PEBKAC. It stands for: "Problem Exists Between Keyboard and Chair" - ie: the User. ie: You.
People like to focus on "Win Ratios" and hair brained arguments about the maps to hide this reality because it's more self-gratifying to believe it's someone else who's causing you to fail than to acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, the problem is that you're not doing what needs to be done to win the map. I've played enough BG's to know that's the actual reality. You're not defending ground. You're not countering or adapting to your enemies attacks. For fucks sake, you're standing there wailing on DPS while Healers are behind them laughing at your efforts and keeping them at full. For future reference: Healers die FIRST.
So I'm here for a reality check to tell you to give up the whining because the problem is you. You need to figure out how to attack the maps properly, to deal with your enemies appropriately, and find the capacity to actually work together towards a goal instead of run around the map like you're the avenging angel of God who's going to win it single handedly. I say this because it doesn't matter how amazing you think Blizzard is at making games, the simple reality is that the DEV's just can't fix stupid.
And you are.
Addendum: and hey sometimes they're just simply better than you. Deal with it.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
TotD: Incoming Baby Boom
If the Night Elf population is in decline, then all these "Very Special Thank You" vouchers I'm building up on my NE Rogue healing female wounded soldiers on the Molten Front are well timed.
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