Iggep's Blog

New site address

2010-08-12T16:04:00.000-04:00

I'm in the process of moving the blog to it's new home at http://www.iggepsrealm.com/. The content that is here currently will remain here, although It will be mirrored at the new site as well. But all new posts will only be made at the new address. Please update your bookmarks and thanks for stopping by!

Momma told me there'd be days like this

2010-08-10T12:16:00.001-04:00

I knew this was going to happen when CCP announced their in-game changes to PLEXes. I don't mind a good old sandbox any more than the next man, but when it actually starts costing me real money in real life like that, well that's a whole different story. Stay tuned for more wacky hijinks and the inevitability of this all crossing over into the real world.

Shadow Priest gets better around high 20's

2010-08-10T12:05:00.000-04:00

In between all my PVP and achievement chasing I'm finding some time here and there to level my baby toons. Yesterday I spent some time on my Priest who finally hit level 31. I commented before how dreadful priests were at the early levels and that was by no means a joke. Not only are priests pre-level 20 dreadfully boring but they are also dreadfully mana inefficient. I've played every single other class before and I've never experienced the boredom this class affords anywhere else. Early on your only offensive means are Mindblast, Shadow Word: Pain, your wand, and Smite if you actually decide to use that. You'll usually open up with Mindblast, then Shadow Word: Pain but you'll be bubbling and wanding from there. I found Smite to be of little use and actually do more damage with my wand, plus my wand doesn't cost me mana like Smite would.

As you get higher in level you get a few more toys to play with like Devouring Plague and Mind Flay but if you think you're going to Shadow Word: Pain, Devouring Plague, Mind Blast and Mind Flay mobs while questing then be prepared to sit and drink after probably every fight because the dots eat mana like candy and you still have to add in the mana cost of your bubble. Eventually you learn to save your dots for bosses in instances or elite mobs that might last 10+ seconds and just Mind Blast and Mind Flay, or Mind Blast, Holy Fire, and Mind Flay. Even that requires you to either sit and drink after every couple of fights or if you've outfitted yourself with some heirloom gear that's extended somewhat.

I'm wearing the Devout Aurastone Hammer with +20 spirit, Tattered Dreadmist Robe and Shoulders, and two Discerning Eye of the Beast trinkets so I'm probably a little better off than someone who is just fresh to the game and is playing a priest. I made the mistake of not putting two points into improved spirit-tap initially and I'd recommend you not follow me down that road. With it being tied to crits and me not having a whole lot of that I thought it would be virtually useless. Point in fact it doesn't proc as often as I would like because of my low crit rate but it's also the only bit of additional in-combat mana regen I have until l can start putting points into Focused Mind. My advice to all new Shadow Priests is to put your first five points into Spirt Tap and Improved Spirit Tap. But you won't get Spirit Tap procs unless you get the killing blow. Makes instance runs a real pain, especially pre-level 20 when you'll be spending twice as much time wanding as you will be casting anything. By level 30 it's much better as you'll Mind Blast, Holy Fire, and Mind Flay and will get a good share of killing blows. Improved Spirit Tap comes in very handy as even with 6% crit I see it go off regularly enough in fights for it to matter.

I'm starting to enjoy the class more now that I have some additional tools and I'm starting to get into the talents that increase my offensive abilities as well as decrease their cost. If I had a way to skip over the 40's and 50's and go strait to Outland I would because I know from level 60 is really where this class begins to shine.

Raiding content in WotLK does not represent a failure

2010-08-09T20:14:00.000-04:00

Tobold recently posted an interesting response to a question posed to him regarding how to begin raiding. While I agree with him in that the current implementation of raiding seems somewhat wasteful toward resources as raid instances only receive heavy use while they are the current tier of content in WotLK and then virtually no use after that point, I disagree with his assessment this is a failure on Blizzards part. Today there are actually many people playing that never raided Naaxramus when it was the current tier of content released in its current form less than two years ago at the launch of WotLK in November 2008. But they don't need to now and that is testament to the fact that Blizzard acted on the criticisms it received by many regarding the high cost in terms of time and effort to break into raiding, as well as progression and accessibility issues through the end of BC.

Each new expansion of WoW has brought further openness and greater access to game content for players. Today we have a game that makes it vastly easier to begin raiding and access end-game content than at any other point in the games history and in fact I think we're at a point where we've drifted too far in that regard. It takes virtually no effort on a players part to begin raiding which only serves to engender a mentality of instant gratification. What we see in WotLK today was a result of criticism Blizzard received from players in Vanilla and BC where raiding end-game content was by no means easy to break into and did require considerable time and effort to advance. In BC you absolutely had to raid Karazhan to obtain gear before you could go onto raiding Gruul's and be viable. But you could only reliably raid Karazhan after weeks or even months of funning heroic dungeons trying to assemble your "dungeon set". You then had to continue raiding Karazhan and obtain gear off the final bosses as well as gear from Gruul's Lair before you could reliably raid Magtheridon's Lair and you needed gear from Gruul's Lair and Magtheridon's Lair before you could reliably raid in Serpent Shrine and Tempest Keep. And you had to obtain gear from Serpent Shrine and Tempest Keep before you could reliably raid Black Temple. And finally you needed Black Temple gear before you could reliably raid in Sunwell. Ignoring the key and attunement requirements that were also involved in all this, and that were removed from raiding mid-way through BC, the requirement to raid previous tiers of instances before moving on to the next tier had been a hallmark of end-game since the inception of WoW.

The problem with that then, and remains a problem today is that people who raided the content when it was the current tier of content have little, if any, incentive for going back and raiding previous tiers again after they've moved on. New players found it just as difficult in BC to break into raiding after a certain point as they did in Vanilla. That isn't nearly as much of a problem now as it was in BC as there is an alternate means of gearing up to the current tier of content that largely solves this problem. If this alternate system wasn't in place a players only means of obtaining gear would be through the tiers of raiding content and would require finding groups to raid with who were at the same point in progression. Obviously that was the problem in Vanilla as it was in BC and would continue to be a problem in WotLK as well were things not how they are.

If you were to hit level 80 today and wanted to begin raiding there are a number of ways in which you can quickly get geared to the point where you'd be a viable raid member. But before beginning to raid you have to understand that WoW is a social game and raiding is a team activity. like any group activity such as this you're going to have to accept that your other team mates have expectations of you and of everyone else in the group. Even if you think you are ready to start raiding you might not be accepted into every group based on entirely subjective judgments about your class, spec, and gear. However that being said, getting geared up to the current level of content doesn't take very long at all. Your first option is to obtain craftable pieces (bracers and boots) and purchase BOE pieces like belts and chest pieces off the auction house. Because of the expense this may or may not be a viable option for many. Luckily there are other options for obtaining gear. Any new character should run VOA religiously every week as there is an opportunity to get T10 set pieces like gloves, pants and helm. That alone is worth it's weight in gold as any piece you get there can potentially save you three weeks of running the daily heroic, weekly, and VOA to get your first piece of T10.

Beside earning two Frost Badges from the daily heroic run, and the five you can earn from the weekly there are four heroic dungeons (Trial of the Champion, Forge of Souls, Pit of Saron, and Halls of Reflection) that drop ilevel 232 gear which is plenty good enough to get you into some TOCs if not an ICC-10 where you might be lucky enough to pick up some much needed loot. Even if you didn't earn any loot from a random run the badges would be reward enough because with those come your other T10 tier or off-set pieces. In short raiding progression is currently designed the way it is in WotLK for specific reasons and it will take some level of effort on your part to get ready for raiding. But adequate means are there for you do that if you apply yourself.

Warsong Gulch weekend should occur every weekend

2010-08-08T14:09:00.000-04:00

Two weeks ago I needed 853 WSG flag caps to get to exalted with the Silverwing Sentinels for my Justicar achievement. As of this morning I need 700 and I thank Warsong Gulch weekend for a good chunk of that. With the renewed vigor with which I'm going after Justicar I set a goal of getting 50 WSG flag caps each week last weekend, which I'd gotten this week by Friday. But between Friday afternoon and this morning I got an additional 50 flag caps as WSG matches were queuing in less than a minute. If Warsong Gulch weekend were every weekend I'd be able to finish off the rep grind for the Silverwing in seven weeks or less, instead of three months. Of course I could probably do it faster if I did nothing else but ran WSG matches but I find that if I get that single-minded about something it can lead to heavy burn-out long before I achieve a long term goal such as this.

It might sound like a bit of a stretch to achieve 50 flag caps week after week, yet it's really not a daunting prospect. Three winning matches a day after I get home from work and before my wife gets home and maybe the off flag cap if I still need it. And whatever I feel like doing on off-raid nights is all it takes. I'd easily attained the 50 I needed for this week by Friday which still gives me plenty of time on the weekends to do dailies and continue work toward Loremaster.

Wishing for additional spec slots

2010-08-06T06:00:00.002-04:00

I was talking to a friend yesterday about the horrible predicament I'm in. I have a real desire to start testing kitty DPS again but because of my play style and the limitations of the current talent spec system I'm severely limited in my ability to do that. Unless of course I want to pay 400-500 gold per week for respeccing costs or limit my other game activities so I didn't have to respec as often. I raid four days a week as Balance -- 3 days a week in 25-man and 1 day a week in a 10-man group now, so I have to maintain my main spec as balance leaving me with my off-spec slot to accommodate all my other activities, including PVP, running old content for rep and gold, and raiding with an off-spec talent build. Consequently my second spec is usually whatever I need it to be for periods of time. For a long time my default off-spec was Resto but I would respec to Feral Bear on the weekends to solo BC content for my rep grinds. Recently though my default has been Feral Bear and I've stayed in that and haven't respecced out to something else because of the continuing costs to do that.

For pure DPS classes this probably isn't much of an issue, and probably not even for those hybrid class players who don't play in more than one tree, or even if they do play in two trees, don't pvp. For those that are outside of that mold the current dual-spec talent system is severely limiting and has the end effect of constraining ones game play instead of encouraging the player to tap the full potential of their class. I raid heavily, solo heavily and PVP heavily and I don't do all of that in a single talent spec because as we all know, not every talent spec is competitive or viable for every activity. Running around in Feral Bear spec makes a lot of of my PVP achievement work easier but it doesn't do much for my team that might not have a single healer. Up until a couple weeks ago I would most likely be healing but I haven't healed a single match, a single raid, or a single dungeon since switching my off-spec to what it is now. Cost is the single reason for that. As Bear I can run my dungeons and raids and do my rep grinds and I can PVP but I can't solo content as Resto and can't solo raid content as Balance. I could get a group or another person to help, but as we all know you could sit around in Dalaran for hours or days trying to find someone and never do. So for me, the limitation on two talent specs means I either spend a considerable amount of gold or not access the content at all.

Why the limitation at all, doesn't Blizzard want people to access all the content in WoW? Actually Blizzard has answered this question before. Blizzard has said they want to encourage group participation but still enable players to experience different aspects of their class. They also didn't want to make re-speccing trivial. But they never defined what trivial meant to them, and encouraging group participation is a very nebulous goal. How do you define that exactly? Particularly in a game that not only encourages solo play, but is all but based on it.

I would love Blizzard to revise the current dual-spec talent system to enable us to purchase additional talent slots. Although I've never seen anything from Blizzard that specifically indicates this, the fact that the second talent slot is a 1000 gold indicates it's a gold sink. Removing gold from the economy is a vital aspect of the game so I was thinking yesterday, wouldn't it be wonderful if I could purchase a third slot for say 5000 gold, and a fourth for say 10000 gold? Wouldn't allowing the purchase of additional talent spec slots perform the function of additional gold sinks, and also encourage players to access more content? Looking at my statistics I've respecced a total of 61 times which has cost me a grand total of 2661 gold. 5000 gold for a third slot is very nearly double that amount but it would be hard for me to imagine a great many in the WoW community who wouldn't take advantage of it. I know I'd even purchase the fourth slot without even blinking an eye. Having a third spec right now would enable me to keep Balance PVE as my primary spec, keep Feral Bear as my secondary spec, and to use my third spec for whatever I felt like it needed to be at the time -- in this case, Feral Cat. If I were to have a fourth spec I'd certainly make that a PVP Resto spec.

In as much as I would love to play around with Kitty right now, I guess I'm just not going to be doing it. I do too much PVP and Feral Cat is in no way viable there. I do PVP as Balance in my PVE spec quite a bit, but you can imagine how often I run into trouble doing that. It's fun but some times it just gets old being pasted all over the battlefield. I also do too much older content and raids to stick with Feral Cat. And I'm not going to spend the 400-500 gold each week to play how I really want to play. In the end I'll deal with the limitations and wish Blizzard would come to their senses.

Remembering SWG

2010-08-05T08:10:00.000-04:00

It's not often that I read very complimentary posts about Star Wars Galaxies, but when I do it brings back several positive memories. I did very much enjoy SWG before the Combat Upgrade In March 2005 was foisted on us. Even toward the end when the population had dropped to the point where it was hard to find any fun. And to this day SWG has the best crafting system of any MMO I've yet experienced. Don't get me wrong, I still think SWG had several severe problems that were mostly the fault of the SOE development staff but the game still had a fun factor that in some ways I still miss today. Back in February I took a look at SWG and while I can see the underpinnings are mostly still there from my day, sadly it's a game who's glory days are long past.

SOE and their EQ2 F2P con

2010-08-03T06:00:00.000-04:00

Just when I was thinking that perhaps I should give SOE the benefit of the doubt. It's been five years, right? They had to have learned their lesson about shoddy administration, business decisions and poor customer service, I was thinking. Boy was I wrong.

Yes please hack me

2010-08-02T15:04:00.000-04:00

You know what they say about a fool and their money. Or in this case, their gold and gear. Sad to think people actually fall for this, isn't it?

Clearly there can be more than one

2010-08-02T06:00:00.000-04:00

I can sympathize with posts like this one over at Big Bear Butt as I'm a super alt-a-holilc as well. I used to be much worse than I am right now but going into WotLK I made a decision to play no more than two characters. I benched my Druid that had been my main since Vanilla and decided to play my Shaman and my new DK. The group I was running with at the time needed ranged more than melee so I ended up playing my Shaman as my main initially but switched to my DK when the group composition changed and I played him up until TOC when I switched to my Paladin. It was at this point that I made my Druid my main alt again and as I've recounted here on a few occasions I switched back to my Druid recently making my Paladin my main alt. I intend to go into Cataclysm with my Druid as my main and my Paladin as my main alt, but like Big Bear Butt I have a slew of other alts that I play from time to time and even have a few I've created recently to play around with as projects. The character cap has really crimped my style so I've had to delete a couple that I knew I wouldn't be playing again any time soon, but as things go, you never know, I might have wanted to pick back up at some point.

If you were to look at my character selection right now you'd see:

80 Druid
80 Paladin
80 Rogue
80 Death Knight
34 Hunter
24 Priest
22 Mage
10 Warrior
2 bank toons (one Alliance and one Horde)

I can empathize with Big Bear Butt when I sometimes play some of my alts and have to recall how to play them, but particularly my Rogue who I really only Battlegrounds with. Even worse is trying to remember button placement as I find myself having to look at my keys quite often when I start playing an alt again after an extended break. But as bad as it seems to be now playing alts, imagine what it was like back in Vanilla and to a lesser extent, in Burning Crusade when I would change characters for long periods of time.

Five years ago in Vanilla I started off playing WoW as a Warlock, but ditched and deleted him at level 24 or 25 when I decided I didn't like it. I rolled a Paladin that similarly I only played until about level 25 before deciding I didn't like it and then rolled a Hunter who I actually played for quite a while. While I leveled him up to 60 I also created a Warrior that I would eventually start raiding with. My Hunter was my first level 60 but I never raided on him which is odd, I know. Back in those days, even after several months playing WoW I still hadn't come to grips with the specific focus of the classes I was playing and never got to the deep understanding that each class really requires to be competitively played. I was a noob and played like one doing absolutely silly things with my Hunter like equipping weapons that in very little way buffed my abilities.

I really liked my Warrior but back in Vanilla if you were a Warrior you were expected to tank, but I hated Prot. It was a pivotal period for me as I would eventually get tired of the constant back and forth with the guild and their expectation that I tank instances and raids and retired my Warrior. It was at this point in the months leading up to Burning Crusade that I created my Druid who hit level 60 before Burning Crusade. It's also what caused my wife and I to server transfer the month before Burning Crusade to the server I still play on today. In Burning Crusade I played my Druid as my main throughout the expansion however I had a slew of alts that I played, including my new Shaman, another Warlock, Mage, Rogue, Hunter, a Priest which I ended up deleted and a few others. I even played my Warrior until the mid 60's before he too finally got deleted. Unlike in Vanilla though most of my alts did get leveled to 70 and I did raid on most of them. But throughout it all I always considered myself a Druid player. It might have taken me a little while to finally create one in Vanilla but once I did I've always felt different about my Druid than about all my other characters.

And I think that speaks to the heart of what Big Bear Butt was talking about. It's the identification to the class and the character that drives that insightful and in-depth knowledge. It's made me delve deeper into the class than I have with any other, not because I feel I need to know more than anyone else (I don't) but because I simply care more about this specific character than I do my others. The first year of WotLK I didn't play my Druid at all but when I finally did dust him off it was like riding a bike. I hadn't forgotten how to play him, though obviously there were some considerable changes from BC to WotLK. Cataclysm will be the same way, yet I know I'll chug along leveling from 80 to 85 without batting and eye.

Kitty DPS

2010-08-01T00:15:00.001-04:00

My foray into Feral PVP these past two weeks has me thinking I might be ready to add some Feral Cat play to my raids and heroic runs. I did level from 1 to 70, and 70 to 80 as feral but haven't played cat since last Fall. I had a lot of trouble adjusting to the cat play style as I had been a main tank up to SSC/TK in BC before respeccing to Resto and Balance to finish out my raiding until WotLK. And in WotLK I've only raided as Balance or Resto. Typical cat play style while questing is vastly different from that used while raiding and so I had a lot to learn yet I've long thought about giving it a go. I'd very much like to be able to switch between ranged and melee specs for certain fights and since my Balance and Resto sets are full T10 I've been able to pick up 4 pieces of Feral T10 recently. I still need to upgrade some of the 226/232 off-set pieces but I've got a good enough start to put in some practice soon.

Up until recently (and yes this is the thread I was referring to in my UI post) I had been using the default UI, and although I use several mods I've generally steered clear of using any mods that placed elements in my field of view. My biggest problem was being able to keep all my dots up and maintain enough energy for combo point generation and savage roar but regardless of how much I seemed to try I would let things fall off and suffer the DPS Loss because of it. I read a lot about it at the time and the consensus seemed to be to use those mods that did in fact put elements in your field of view. But as my UI was fairly crowded already I didn't want to go down that road and eventually went back to my more familiar ways of Balance and Resto. I'd decided I didn't want to tank in WotLK but I'm rethinking that at the moment as well.

So now that I've taken the leap and set off down the custom UI path things are a lot cleaner and I have vastly more screen real estate to work with and the elements in my field of view are't so much of a problem they once might have been. I still need a little help with cat abilities however and there are a couple ways I think I could address this, as I believe the issue was more about not having learned the specific timing involved in ability use. I could use Power Auras, which I've started using recently for Moonkin and which does add some elements in my field of view. I've always had trouble seeing when my Eclipses occur when I was in amongst the crowd, and even more so when there was another Moonkin in the group with me. When you have two Moonkins standing near one another in a scrum it's difficult to see right away whether an Eclipse was mine or his. I've begun using Power Auras to give me a better visual. I can use it for tracking my dots and to let me know when specific abilities are require or available but I don't believe, in this case, Power Auras would be the best solution.

A second solution would be to use one of the "move suggesting" mods that are available. I've looked at Feral by Night before but never really like it, and it hadn't been updated in some time. Faceroller: Feral is another of the mods I've looked into recently that looks very promising. Feral by Night was recently updated though so I'll probably end up trying both and seeing which one works best for me. Either mod would be a crutch but they should help me figure out my timing issues and I'd expect that after a while I'd be able to continue on without them.

I've been doing a lot of re-reading Cat threads on the official forum and over at Elitist Jerks and I decided to take the advice of those more knowledgeable and go with the pure DPS cookie cutter build instead of picking up some of the utility talents I probably would have gone with otherwise. I re-spec often enough as it is and don't normally run around with a PVP and PVE spec for each tree. So normally I run around with my PVE Balance spec that I raid and PVP with, and either my PVE Resto spec (raid and PVP with) or the past couple weeks Feral Bear for PVP. Thus my normal inclination would be to include as many utility talents as I can to help with PVP as well as with raiding. In this case I think I'm going to need as much help as possible though so I decided to just go with the power.

Gear wise I do need a little help, but I've got a good start I think. Tosks DPS Gear spreadsheet and RAWR are very good utilities to help with that. While Tosks is very similar to the MAXDPS site I'd recommended some time ago, it's tuned to Feral cat only. RAWR is the better tool, in my opinion, if you want to try out multiple pieces for each slot as unlike Tosks or MAXDPS, the stats are updated in RAWR on the fly. Two of my pieces for my cat set are 226 with all the rest being 232, 245, or 251/264 although one of my trinkets is ilevel 200. Starting Wednesday night I'll be running in a regular 10-man ICC hard mode group so I don't think it'll take me too long to get everything upgraded. Then the fun will begin.

What will SWTOR's end-game be like?

2010-07-29T00:01:00.002-04:00

That is the $64,000 question over the past several days after last week's San Diego Comic-Con when James Ohlen responded to an insightful question:

Q: If a player completes their class story, do you think it's likely that they'll restart as another character to experience another story, or focus on end game content?

A: We really hope that players will go play other classes because otherwise that would be a waste of resources

It's been no secret that many people have been very worried about the prospects of this game being closer to that of an RPG than an MMORPG and answers like this do nothing but feed into that fear. It touched off numerous lengthy threads on the SWTOR forum and to which Bioware never replied to any of them. By some accounts we're less than a year away from release -- the release of Deceived was delayed until Mar 2010, according to the author, to coincide with the release of the game -- and there is still a majority of the game we've heard virtually nothing about, let alone gotten to the specifics of. End-game is one of those topics. Other than a generic statement by Bioware that "there will be an end-game" we know absolutely nothing concrete. During the San Diego Comic-Con we heard that some of the flash-points may be an hour to two hours long, which may in fact be the first examples of the end-game content we can expect.

If Bioware's developmental plans for end-game include starting new characters whenever you complete a class story, I think that idea will simply lend meat to the fears. And I think it would be a terrible mistake. Bioware has touted many times that all the content they've written for SWTOR thus far amount to more than 10 times the amount of content that was found in KOTOR, as if that were to stand as an example of why no one will ever get bored. They didn't actually say that in so many words, but that's the impression I've gotten over the months when I read those answers. If Bioware thinks that 300 or 400 hours of content is going to be enough to keep people satisfied, they are woefully mistaken and naive. That's probably two to three months of play time for most players, although it would probably be several additional months of play time for the most casual of players. So what do they expect those not so casual players to do in the intervening period before Bioware adds more content? I can't tell you that, other than I guess create new characters, but I can tell you what those players will do. They'll get on the forums and bitch up a storm, and will bitch up a storm on their blogs, and anywhere else available to them.

The moral to this story is that Bioware really needs to understand the expectation of their potential customers. They'll be varied, but that will include a vibrant PVP aspect that compliments and coincides with the PVE aspects; a strong crafting and gathering element, and most importantly, a design that doesn't force them to essentially start over when they reach the level cap. Ten Ton Hammmer has a few interesting comments on the matter as well.

Where to indeed?

2010-07-28T14:08:00.000-04:00

It is an interesting question, is it not? It's one that I've thought of in the past and numerous others have commented on the official forum on several occasions. Blizzard's reply is that a certain amount of suspension of disbelief is required. They acknowledge the dis-jointed nature of the story from beginning to end, but that it was a simple reality of an evolving story. Where Larisa is focusing on the dis-jointedness of the story and the fact that we really are looking at WoW 2.0 at this point, I tend to focus my own criticisms at more specific aspects of their game design. I've mentioned before how unsettling I find these complete game mechanic overhauls every 24 months. While I can't dispute that some of that has actually been good for the game, taken on the whole I think it's actually not helped a great deal. Blizzard has not shown that they have a long-term vision for WoW and as a consequence the entire player experience has changed dramatically with every expansion. And here comes Cataclysm with it's dramatic changes, and combat and talent trees that are reminiscent of Vanilla WoW.

So, yes I ask myself where we go from here many times. As far as story goes I can think of many avenues down which WoW could head that would keep up occupied for years to come. Where the development strategy can go from here is an entirely different question.

I'm not playing Star Craft 2 today

2010-07-27T12:37:00.000-04:00

I may be one of the few who isn't, but I made a decision not to buy Star Craft 2 even though I had been looking forward to it. I even got a beta invite that I never used, much to the chagrin of a friend who wanted me to give it to him. I really did like the original and I'm sure I would enjoy the sequal equally as much, but in the end I don't really want to pay $59.99 for a hobbled game. And by hobbled I mean a game that doesn't offer out of the box LAN support, and which doesn't feature campaign modes for all three races. You can't even play it without logging into Battle.Net, which means no stand-alone laptop play or playing directly connected to my son over our home network. "Conicidentally" it also means I wouldn't be able to sell the game after I've played it as it will be tied to my Battle.Net account. In order to sell it to someone I'd have to give them my Battle.Net username and password. I'm sure Blizzard didn't mean to do that as the law allows me to sell my software and Blizzard wouldn't do anything to infringe on my rights, now would they? Forcing me to tether to Battle.Net is only about being able to communicate with my friends wherever they are in Blizzard's gaming network, right?

Sorry, but playing WoW I know how often Battle.Net has issues, and didn't another company find out these sorts of plans have issues recently (more)? Of course a lot of players had issue with the scheme before the game was released too. Did Ubisoft listen? Neither did Blizzard. Blizzard used to be a model company, but in the past year they have started to through around their weight and are now in that transformative period where they are no longer an "us" and are becoming a "them".

SC2 ships with only a single campaign mode -- Terran -- though Blizzard has said they would add campaigns for the Proteoss and Zerg at a later date. Of course that's lead to much speculation about how they'd do that exactly with most people making the assumption that Blizzard will be charging for those updates. Bobby Kotick has made it clear he's going to wring every penny out of the market, which is understandable from a business standpoint, but from a consumer standpoint is something alltogether different. I decided to vote with my pocketbook and not purchase now. I'll wait for the price to drop to $20 in the future and decide then if I'll buy it or not.

DC Universe Online

2010-07-25T13:06:00.002-04:00

You'd probably not know this from my posts here over the past two and a half years but I'm a huge geek. I grew up in the 70's and 80's playing Dungeons and Dragons and I started collecting comic books in 1979. By the time I graduated High School I had about 20,000 comics in my collection but stopped collecting for about 10 years shortly after. I started collecting comic books again in 2001 and stopped again in 2003 or 2004 because by that time they had just grown so expensive and I had philosophical differences with the literary devices creative teams were using more and more often. The dreaded story-arc! A story-arc is usually six issues long and features five issues of dramatic lead-up to the final issue in the arc. The main plot usually climaxes in a finale in just a few pages, which in my mind is a tremendous let down. There's also the issue that creative teams move around entirely too much these days. In the "old days" creative teams would spend years on a title developing the characters and multiple plot lines, but it's not unusual now to see creative teams on one title for as little as four to six months and rarely on the same title for more than a year. It leads to disjointed title and character development as every new team that comes in seeks to put their own spin on things. I really detest it. And I detest even more the cheapness which both Marvel and DC use "death" now. Characters die and the emotion wrapped up in that event is completely lost because we all know they'll be back in short order.

I still consider myself to be a tremendous comic fan, holding Thor, Batman, Daredevil, Iron-man, the X-men (Nightcrawler, Wolverine and Cyclops were always my favorites), and Superman as my favorites but certainly not the only heroes I loved to follow. Suffice to say I'm a huge fan of the genre yet that hasn't exactly carried over into my gaming. I've generally steered clear of super-hero based MMOs and games, having never played City of Heroes/Villains or Champions online (though I did play Champions with paper and pencil back in the day). I have been following, somewhat, the DC Universe MMO and Marvel's deal announced last year but DC Universe Online is only one of the two that is close to release and unfortunately it's been developed by SOE. I've vowed never again play an SOE developed game so despite the awesomeness that is the latest game trailer I'm going to have to put a lot of thought into whether I want to go back on that vow or now before I try DCUO.

So what about the other two best known Hero-based MMOs? Why haven't I ever played those? Hero based MMOs don't follow the typical model found in most Fantasy based MMOs these days. Hero based MMOs feature plenty of PVE but are shy of content that makes the PVP aspects meaningful. Perhaps I'm mistaken but my impression is that PVP in the hero-based MMOs are mindless and really serve no purpose, which I think is a travesty. In any event that's the prime concern I have with DCUO as well. Questing is fine but at the end of the day I get most of my enjoyment from going head to head with others, and I don't really want that to be meaningless. It'll be interesting to see how things unfold as DCUO gets closer to release in November.

Bioware's Comic-Con reveal

2010-07-24T11:21:00.002-04:00

Bioware has been teasing for the past several days that there would be a "big reveal" at the San Diego Comic-Con this weekend, and during their panel yesterday there was. Darth Hater provided a concise roundup so it didn't take us long to learn yesterday that the big reveal was the fact that we'll be able to customize and participate in combat with our ships. Of course there are no details yet about how ship combat will work but it should bring an interesting facet to the game. Other interesting tidbits revealed were that we'll be able to customize our companions with gear and I imagine skills as well. Mythic did the same thing in Star Trek Online so I have some experience with this already and think it's a terrific idea. But the fact that we'll never be able to faction change I think is a mistake. I think limiting choices in that manner only lessons character development and cheapens the entire moral decisions system so I'm hoping the decision to limit faction changes will get changed at some point in the future. In any event the panel seems to have served its purpose well and kept the discussion about SWTOR lively for another week.

Blizzcon 2010 DirectTV stream tickets on sale now

2010-07-24T10:27:00.000-04:00

I figured after the positive feedback from the streaming last year Blizzard would do it again and as luck would have it, Blizzard opened up ticket sales this morning for the Blizzcon streaming. Same price as last year, but this year they're improving the product by enabling us to watch all of the events. I'm still not all that excited to be seeing Jay Mohr again but I'm appreciative that I'll actually be able to see more of the event this time. No word yet on the in-game pet.

We interrupt our normally scheduled content

2010-07-23T23:17:00.000-04:00

I'd been writing a lengthy and detailed post that I was going to post today but quite a bit of it dealt with my UI, it's crowded nature and some mods. Actually the fact that my UI is/was crowded wasn't the main point and only came up indirectly in my writing because what I was writing about sort of forced the confession out of me. So earlier today I decided to tackle the root of the problem and build my very own custom UI. It's actually a pretty big step for me as I've been using the default UI since I started playing WoW 5 years ago. Outside of a few mods that gave me additional information everything on my screen was stock. Which means I've been using the default buttons (four on bottom and two on the right side) too. It really left me very little room on my screen to play with.

I knew generally what I wanted to do in a new UI and I've spent the better part of the afternoon putting it together. It's minimal and I'll most likely tinker with it some more over the course of the next several days or so but I think I'm off to a good start.

The biggest issue was figuring out Bartender4. I've got the top bar set to change with my form, but I do need to figure out why I lose my pre-set key-binds on the bar in cat form while stealthed. Not an emergency but an annoyance and something I definately need to figure out before going too much further. I also still need to set up profiles for my various specs and I'm not quite sure how to do that yet so it looks like I'll be playing Balance only for a bit.

Master of Warsong Gulch complete

2010-07-22T00:01:00.000-04:00

I did make some additional progress this week toward Justicar and Battlemaster so I think my plan to put the normal things I'd do during the weekdays off until the weekends will work out for me over the long term. Most of the achievements I have left for Battlemaster aren't that difficult, but are time sinks. And of course the remaining rep I need for Justicar is all about time but I can deal with that. It's all about setting intermediate goals for the Battlemaster achievements and earning the rep for Justicar in blocks. Of course a fair bit of luck is involved with some of the individual battleground achievements though, not to mention the fact that some of them are just downright impossible in the "wrong spec". Up until this past weekend I had been doing everything as either Resto or Balance, but it's hard to return flags in WSG as either of those. Switching to Feral for BGs made a lot of this easier but you still end up having to be in the right place at the right time and hope that no one else is gunning for the same achievements.

Take for instance the Frenzied Defender achievement in WSG. I just had that and Persistent Defender left for Master of Warsong Gulch as of this morning. While I might have eventually earned Persistent Defender as Resto or Balance, I was never going to get Frenzied Defender in either of those specs. Since the weekend I've been able to return the 12 additional flags for Persistent Defender, including the 5 I needed for Frenzied Defender today finally finished Master of Warsong Gulch achievement. I was seriously wondering if I'd ever be able to get Frenzied Defender however as the enemy flag carrier is usually swarmed with mad clicking skillz going on. I'd get 2 or 3 returns in a match and the match would end. When I hit 4 in an match earlier I was starting to get a little edgy and was like a fiend on the flag carrier. When his health would drop to 5% or so I'd start clicking like mad on the screen and voila.

I'm all for making achievements challenging but they do tend to limit ones choices and I have a hard time seeing how certain classes and specs would be able to do these outside of a pre-made group. Which is perhaps the answer but if anyone is having better luck at finding regular pre-made groups these days you need to tell me your secret. Incidentally, 853 more flag caps required for rep.

Change 2 to Eclipse

2010-07-21T06:00:00.002-04:00

Last Friday Blizzard held another dev chat on Twitter and one of the questions answered was regarding the current beta implementation of Eclipse. I blogged earlier in the month what I still saw as the short falls about the current implementation but Lissana and Graylo went further and spoke a little more eloquently than I on the matter. Luckily for us Blizzard seems amiable to making changes reflected at the criticisms lobbed at Eclipse. The next iteration of Eclipse will see a 45-second effect window that certainly answers the movement problem but I don't know enough yet about the linear casting problem yet. I'm still hoping for a random "charges" system that keeps some of the randomness of our casting routine now. I can live with a linear casting system like we had in BC but if at all possible I'd like to keep more of what we have now than what we had in BC.

Q: Moonkin: What are your plans for Eclipse, and why does it infect so many of our talents? What are your plans to make Moonkin fun?
A. The model we are trying now lets Solar and Lunar Eclipse procs last for about 45 seconds, and each spell of the appropriate type that you cast moves the bar back closer to the middle again. The buff is canceled by reaching the middle. This should let Moonkin "hold" the buff for short periods of time when they need to move or get out of the fire.

Lissana has a lengthy post on the announced changes, which my question about the randomness is based on. When she talks about 10 or 5 casts she's surmising but that's the point. We haven't seen any information (yet) that Blizzard intends to introduce a random element to how much power each cast might use so I'm left to believe we'll have a strict linear system.

38 Studios project mercury coming to fruition

2010-07-20T15:38:00.000-04:00

I read about this in USA Today earlier this morning, so I was looking for a little more information. Leave it to Gamasutra to deliver. Curt Schilling made quite a stir when he let it be known a couple years ago that he was an avid WoW fan, and that he had founded a company and would be publishing games of his own. Glad to see his hard work is finally coming to fruition and looking forward to learning more about this first game.

Rated battlegrounds should create a more beneficial PVP setting

2010-07-20T06:00:00.010-04:00

I’ve been working on my Justicar and Battlemaster achievements for quite a while now, so when we have a weekend like this weekend, where the battleground is Arathi Basin, I spend most of the weekend PVPing. I do the same thing when it’s Warsong Gulch weekend as well, but otherwise I’ll get a number of random battlegrounds in before moving on toward working on Loremaster or putting some time in on an alt. On the positive side of things I made great progress this weekend on the rep I need for AB but find myself still shy of Revered. To be honest I haven’t been focusing as much as I should, outside of the AB weekends toward gaining the rep so I’m significantly behind where I should be right now. Same with WSG rep. The negative side of things is that I played in more battlegrounds this weekend than I have in a while and having to deal with the magnitude of AFK’ing and bad play really irritated me as the weekend wore on. Several of the battlegrounds I ended up losing were a result of being undermanned because of AFK’ers and because people were being silly – not defending after a cap, fighting on roads and away from flags that were easily ninja’d, and by people participating in PVE gear. These are the weekends I would particularly like to participate in pre-mades but since the two I was able to find a couple weeks back I haven’t been able to find any since.

The AFK’ing and bad play is driving my desire for Rated battlegrounds, which Blizzard has announced for Cataclysm. Arenas will become just one avenue for obtaining arena points – called Conquest points in Cataclysm, and pre-mades will become as big a part (bigger) of PVP play as it was in the Burning Crusade days. Eventually regular PVP’ers will find regular groups to participate with and those teams will eventually graduate to the top of the rankings. I haven't arena played because to me those are just structured duels and aren’t true PVP. Well, okay, it is player-vs-player, but in my mind PVP is defined as “warfare” and not as dueling. In my mind Battlegrounds and open world fighting are the only true form of PVP. There might be some level of structure in battlegrounds, but a fight can break out anywhere and at any time in them and fights will almost never be fair. It’s the need to adjust to the constantly changing nature of the fighting and the circumstances at hand that make battlegrounds so fun to me and why I spend so many hours every week doing it. It’s the competitiveness without the stark limitations of the arena system. Through the rating structure each of the teams will be pitted against other teams in the same bracket which will also mean, over time, the intensity of the battles will grow as well. Also, I won’t continue to be penalized from obtaining the best PVP gear for not participating in arena play. I’ll be able to access the full gambit of PVP gear in Cataclysm by doing nothing more than what I love to do right now. Win – win in my opinion. Most importantly, I’m hoping that de-emphasizing arena play will also alleviate the constant class changes and tweaks to suit arena play that impact my PVE play. That’s a particular irritant of mine and another reason why I’ve refused to play in arenas thus far.

Players will participate in rated battlegrounds by forming their raid group prior to joining the queue.
You will only face off against other rated groups.
Each week the format for rated battlegrounds will be different. It will rotate between 10, 15 and 25-player battlegrounds.
Rating loss will not exist until after a certain threshold.
Conquest points will be rewarded for winning rated battlegrounds.
There will be a limitation on the number of Conquest points you can earn each week to prevent feeling like you must participate in both arenas and rated battlegrounds.
There will be end-of-season rewards for rated BG teams similar to arenas:
- The classic Honor titles will be coming back and rewarded to the top teams each season.
- The "Gladiator" equivalent teams will also receive epic ground mounts. Ground mounts because they want to reward something you can ride in the battleground and be proud of / show off.

There is one aspect to rated battlegrounds that I don’t think is well understood by many people yet. Similar to the current system of personal and team arena ratings, players will have a personal and team rating in rated battlegrounds as well. As we have not yet seen how this is to be exactly implemented, as anyone can form ad hoc teams on the fly how will “team” ratings be generated, tracked, and controlled? But more importantly how will one’s personal rating fit into the mix? If your personal rating is as important to you in rated battlegrounds as it is in arena play, then will it also mean you will be more careful with your choices on which teams you play? In other words, will it mean your choices will be limited to only those players with similar personal ratings? If that’s the case it would tend to severely restrict when and how you’ll be able to participate in rated battlegrounds. It probably won’t matter if you find a static team to participate on, but if you are someone who just wants to jump onto any team that is forming whenever you feel like PVPing if could. It’ll be interesting to see how those details are worked out.

In the mean time I’m going to continue working toward Justicar and Battlemaster. I usually have between one and two hours after getting home from work and dinner during which I run my daily heroic and do my dailies. I’m thinking my time might be better spent if I just run my daily heroic and save the dailies and work toward Loremaster for the weekends. I don’t really need the gold but I do really need the rep and the battleground achievements. For WSG I’m still somewhere north of 850 flag caps worth of rep, 12 total flag returns, and the 5 flag returns in one battle shy to meet all my Justicar and Battlemaster requirements. And for AB I’m still at least 220 AB matches of rep, and a handful of AB achievements, including winning 1600 – 0, shy of all my Justicar and Battlemaster requirements. If I focus my weekly PVP attentions toward WSG and AB I should be able to finish Justicar and hopefully Battlemaster by the end of the year. Cataclysm will bring its own slew of battleground related achievements and I’d like to be able to focus on those when the time comes.

Feral PVP

2010-07-19T06:00:00.000-04:00

I don't normally PVP as feral, or at least haven't done it in quite a while. Most of my PVP is on my Druid and most of that is either in Resto or Balance spec. But every once in a while I like to really shake things up and this weekend I decided to go back to my Feral roots and PVP as Feral. I've done it in Cat spec in the past, which I wouldn't really recommend but PVPing in Bear spec is great fun. You might not have the total burst DPS as the few Cat talents assist with but you are infinitely more survivable. Especially from Rogues who always seem to be my nemesis where ever I go. Even in a mostly Furious set with Relentless off-pieces I can survive a fearful beating and still dish out a fairly significant amount of punishment myself. I've seen other Ferals in BGs from time to time but most Druids I see are like me, either Resto or Balance. Most of those Ferals I have seen have absolutely torn people up (including me). Looking at their gear they're typically fairly well off gear wise which has me looking forward to some upgrades.

I already started replacing my Relentless off pieces with Wrathful last night but I still have several to go, and then I have to worry about starting to replace the Furious main set pieces with Relentless. I still have one Furious piece to replace with Relentless on my Resto set but I might just forgo that at this point and concentrate on my Feral PVP set instead. I already do very well PVP healing as my set is the one Furious piece and all the remainder are Relentless/Wrathful at this point. Since I don't Arena play that suit is good enough, especially as I'm actually very mana efficient. Either way at 25 arena points a day I have a good while before I need to commit as I currently have only 280 arena points.

So, a few observations about Feral PVP. First, choose your battles wisely and Pounce is your friend. Second insta-Cyclone's are the bomb, and third I LOL a little when a Rogue vanishes on me after a CoS and I Demoralizing Roar him. Hello little Rogue. Warlocks are a hoot as well, after they figure out they can't fear chain me. Open up with Pounce, Mangle and Tiger's Fury before unloading under Berserk. I haven't seen a Lock yet today who has been able to teleport away in time. It is super annoying however to have every DK in the Battlegroup that feels the necessity of standing 20 yards away from fights and using Deathgrip to pull an enemy to them when they can clearly see it's already being fought by others where it was. Deathgrip a fleeing enemy back to you, yes. Deathgrip an enemy out of the middle of others fighting him, no. Thus concludes today's lesson in DK etiquette 101.

Mimiron 1 - Me 0

2010-07-18T11:29:00.000-04:00

Ever had one of those nights of raiding where you feel like you either ran strait into a brick wall, or got hit by a big truck and not quite sure which it was? That's how I feel last night after 11 rounds with Mimiron and Firefighter. Last night was our nightly foray into Ulduar and while I knew Firefighters wasn't exactly easy I had no idea it would be the giant obstacle it appears to be right now. After the first several attempts we hadn't even made it into phase 2 and figured out we wouldn't be able to two heal the encounter as the occasional tick of fire and the dot from the napalm was a great deal to heal on top of keeping the tank up. We had several people die from the Napalm alone while the rest of the raid was being healed. Which means we hadn't quite gotten the swing of exactly how much we needed to spread out. We also were having trouble with the fire filling up too much of the room because people were spreading out too much and not keeping the fire controlled in parts of the room. We ended up needing a third healer and once we got her to switch to her healing spec we had enough healing and eventually started getting into phase 2 with very little trouble at all.

But phase 2 continued to be a big problem for the remainder of the evening. We did get into phase 3 a few times but too many were dead because our inability to control the fire well enough presented too many problems to keep everyone healed. At one point I had no choice but to cross through a couple lines of fire because the tank and several others were actually out of healing range, and it was a problem we didn't correct for the rest of the evening.

I was greatly surprised by just how difficult Firefighter still was. It clearly wasn't a DPS issue as we did eventually establish we could burn through phase 1 very quickly. The health of the stages isn't the issue so it boils down to the human performance issues. It's the mechanics of the fight that continue to make Firefighter extremely difficult -- even in 251/264 gear. I don't mind a challenge; in fact I like challenges very much so I'm looking forward to the next go around with Mimiron. Obviously we'll need to discuss the fight and make sure everyone is crystal clear how they need to react to and control the fires. Because once we do that I think we'll get past this fight and be able to move on to the General.

Ruby Sanctum - accomplished

2010-07-16T07:28:00.000-04:00

Unlike last week where we had a bit of guild drama and a late start, we were firing on all cylinders last night. This time through we knew exactly where to stand and how the tank would need to adjust during phase 2, so we promptly came, saw, and conquered. One-shotting Halion felt pretty good to be honest, even if I did lose my bracers to another Druid.

So unenthused by the new Balance tree

2010-07-14T16:28:00.000-04:00

Blizzard's released the new 31-point talent trees they've been commenting on the past couple weeks. I'm so very un-enthused by the balance tree. I know these will probably change at least a few more times (I hope!), but you can see where they're thoughts are regarding Balance. They've said as much but it's something all together different to actually see it. We're going to be Moonfire spamming while moving.

I seriously hope Blizzard throws away everything they're thinking currently and goes back to the chalk board. They need to rethink the whole package at this point.

Elite versus casual explained in real terms

2010-07-14T12:12:00.001-04:00

I felt really bad for some of my friends in my old guild last night. In my old guild we’d never extended our raid lock out up to the point I joined my new guild but they’ve now started doing that as of last night in an effort to get to the Lich King. My old guild starts their raids at 7:30 and my new guild starts at 8:30 so I was chatting at a few of them while they were raiding and I was standing around in Dalaran. They were working on Dreamwalker, which we had only downed twice before and ended up spending the entire evening on her, and never did finish the fight. The Blood Queen, Sindragosa, and the Lich King are also still standing, none of which have ever been killed. The frustration was very evident in the whispers I was getting and I felt more than a little guilty for jumping ship. Then we started our raid at 8:30 and had cleared up to Putricide in a little more than an hour and ended up clearing up to Sindragosa by the end of the night, having one-shot every boss. Point of fact I do still have characters in my old guild so it’s not a situation where I’ve abandoned them entirely, but I can’t help but feel that way at times like last night. I doubt my presence would have changed matters for them which is why I ultimately made the decision to switch back to my Druid as my main now instead of in Cataclysm and to join him to another raiding guild. In the end I made a conscious decision that I wanted to experience the end-game content I was unlikely to experience in my old guild.

It occurred to me last night that this situation accurately exposes the differences between what I like to think of as elite players and casual players. In my mind the difference between elite and casual is not entirely about the number of hours one plays. I don’t consider myself elite at all but I play WoW 4-5 hours every day during the week and all day Saturday and Sunday unless I have chores or other things to attend to. In my mind the difference between casual and elite is more accurately tied to motivation. Casuals are more social in nature and form attachments (AKA loyalties) whereas elites are tied more to personal benefit and advancement. You can have motivated and competitive casual players, but you can’t have an elite player who isn’t motivated and competitive. Many casual players will forego goals for the group but an elite will almost always place themselves first and foremost. To them the ends justify the means, whereas with the casual player that almost always isn’t the case. Casuals might leave guilds and join new guilds, like I did, but not for the same reason as an elite player would. For an elite player the guild is simply a means to the end they seek – progression. Whereas I’ve declined raid guild invites from two of the top raid guilds on our server because while I’m interested in progression it isn’t the totality of the experience I’m seeking. For me, and for casuals in general, the other factors of the guild are as important as progression. It’s why I feel guilty for leaving my other friends in my old guild to join a friend in my new guild.

It just so happens that we lost six players on Sunday because they wanted to work on Heroic ICC but because of the normal attendance issues that all guilds undergo during the Summer, the raid leader is having to recruit new players and gear them up. Instead he’s emphasizing integration of the new players (myself included) into the raid and ascertaining the raids performance issues before moving into the harder content. Of course there is the issue that we have yet to kill Lich King on 25-man either. So those players left in a huff, putting their individual desires well ahead of the raids, even though they’ve all killed Lich King on 10-man and have been working through the 10-man heroic achievements. In my mind I say good riddance even though they were all very capable players. Their capabilities simply aren’t enough to overcome the drama they introduce into the guild. Instead of sticking it out and continuing to work on Lich King phase 3 with the rest of us they chose to strike off on their own and in setting up their own guild will have to contend with others of their like that will probably abandon them for greener pastures at the earliest opportunity. I’m so glad that has never, and will never, be me.

Pondering fate

2010-07-13T19:54:00.000-04:00

Ruby Sanctum

2010-07-12T10:29:00.001-04:00

Believe it or not last night was my first foray into the Ruby Sanctum. I haven’t done the 10-man version so I jumped right into the fun in 25-man. We had a fair bit of guild drama late yesterday afternoon so we got started late and didn’t down Halion, but I was thoroughly entertained. Blizzard created a challenging instance and the Halion fight itself was very nicely done. At this stage of raiding in WotLK everyone is used to over-powering trash but it’s highly unlikely that most, if any, raids will be doing that much here. The initial trash packs on either side of the portal are AOE trash but the other trash packs that wander around require CC and focus targeting. That was a welcome change from the typical raid experience.

The Halion fight was great fun and really not all that difficult to follow. Despite that we had several wipes that occurred mostly from mistakes with the beam in phase 2. Once we got specifics figured out about where to best stand and how the tank will maneuver Halion during phase 2 we got into phase 3 and our last attempt got Halion down to less than 1 million health. My biggest challenge was being able to stand still long enough during phase 2 at the dragon’s back left leg while the tank maneuver Halion so that I could take advantage of my Eclipses and not get singed by the beam. I had one death from a shadow void being dropped under me and then immediately getting tail slapped and stunned to death. It happened rather quickly so I didn’t feel much – that was until my body materialized back in the material world and I got tea-bagged by the main tank.

I can imagine after a couple weeks we’ll have everything down pat and will be clearing the place in an hour or so every week. It’s hard to think that the learning cycle we’re going through now was where we were at on Obsidian Sanctum in the early days of WotLK too. Will RS be as easy as OS is now in a few months?

Ulduar group

2010-07-11T13:07:00.000-04:00

When I started the Ulduar-10 hard mode group I was expecting that we'd be done in a couple weeks. Three at the most, but the attendance problems have resulted in us being able to go three times in about six weeks and I've had to replace several people from the original roster. I've also had to switch specs myself so I'm healing instead of DPSing. Still, it's been entertaining and fun. When we have gone we've only been able to raid about two and a half hours a night so we were finally able to clear up to Freya last night with everything up to her having been pretty easy, except for Steelbreaker. Initially we didn't have anyone that could dispell Fusion Punch so you can imagine how fun that fight was at the time. One good Pally tank later and we voila. We did actually also have some difficulty with Freya however as we had only two healers and just couldn't keep the Tanks and the entire raid up. We ended up having the Elemental Shaman switch to her healing off-spec after several attempts with two healers, and that ended up being just enough to down Freya.

If we can get our night in next Saturday we'll start off with Mimiron and Firefighter. I know the last three achievements are the hardest but I can't help but look forward to the challenge. If nothing else we'll certainly see who is up to the challenge and who isn't. Since we'll out-DPS the fight it'll boil down to those personal performance issues of good flame management as well as avoiding the other insta-gib mechanics.

That project is proving to be a bit harder than I had thought

2010-07-10T16:22:00.003-04:00

I got bored with my Shaman again. In fact it was the third strike with him so I took the extreme measure by deleting him entirely yesterday along with my Warlock who I was absolutely certain I would never be playing again. This go around with the Shaman was much like the previous lengths of play and boiled down to the fact I just was not at all enamored with Elemental. It's fun for a bit but it's just not all that interesting. Although I do like Enhancement. Enhancement is what I played until the end of BC but I didn't keep up with all the changes to the tree and the playstyle in WotLK and at the end of the day I simply didn't want to put in the work to go back and totally re-gear him. Much the same with my Warlock. I was never very enamored of the Warlock to begin with but at the time I started it I wanted to try another pet class that didn't require me to pay to DPS. Read that to mean I was replacing my hunter, yet I always disliked the Affliction tree and never quite got the hang of Destruction either. I liked the Demonology tree but not enough to ever play the Warlock longer than a few days.

Since I had a full slate of characters on the server already deleting those two opened up two valuable slots for me. I made a baby Mage and Hunter to fill them. Those were on top of the Priest I made a week ago and have now leveled to 22. Of all the classes Priest is the only class I'd never leveled before so I was excited to try it out, but my lord is it boring. Dot and mind-flay, or dot and wand to death depending on mana issues. Mana isn't really a problem while questing but it sure is in instances where I rarely get a Sprit Tap proc. I'll end up leveling all three and see which one I ultimately want to play. Knowing me I'll probably play all three.

I haven't played a Mage since the Karazan days in BC. I remember leveling my original Mage and really hating the mana inefficiency that forced me to sit and drink after every couple fights. Those days are largely in the past though, but some of that is probably attributable to the fact he's fully decked out in heirloom gear. I'll level as Ice as figure out what I want to do when I grow up when I get there.

It's also been about three years since I played a Hunter. My Hunter was actually my first level 60 but a lot has changed since then. I haven't paid all that much attention to Hunters generally and haven't paid any attention to what's in store for the class in Cataclysm but I do know that the resource mechanic is changing to "focus" from "mana" and I'm kind of anxious to do some research to see what the current and future lay of the land is and will be.

I'd forgotten just how easy it was to level a hunter, even without the pet which I don't have yet. I'm only level 9 at the moment but doing quests is like walking through the park and it'll only get easier once I have my pet. The Mage is only slightly more difficult in that I do actually have to sit and drink every few fights, depending on whether I stick with Frostbolts of not. If I start popping off with Arcane Bolts I use more mana and end up having to drink a bit. My Priest is the least fun to me but it's getting a bit better once I figured out I can be a little more offensive with my mana usage if I picked up two of the spell power heirloom trinkets. I don't have to wand so much as my I get mana back from those after every kill and my Spirit Tap always procs. The down side is that on dungeon runs it doesn't and I still have to wand a lot on those. If I can wait it out and get through the lower levels I know things improve markedly. Looks like my Summer will be extremely busy between chasing achievements on my Druid, and leveling these three new characters.

Yes, they heard you

2010-07-09T16:00:00.000-04:00

Mike Morhaime stopped by the official forums to beat a retreat from their announcement Tuesday regarding using RealID on the WoW forums. Instead of real names we'll instead continue posting with your character name, but also with a unique "character code". Meaning of course, that people will still be able to link "trolls" to "mains" unless you don't post on your main in the first place.

While I'm happy Blizzard saw the error of their ways I'm not sure Blizzard will ever regain the level of trust they had with me up to this point. I've never previously felt that Blizzard was "committing evil" but now that I thoughts have drifted to that extreme I'm not sure they could ever drift back where they were. And I doubt I'm the only one left feeling this way either and that bespeaks darker days ahead for a company that heretofore has had a storied history.

RealID - Do you hear them now Blizzard?

2010-07-08T19:54:00.001-04:00

Now isn't this interesting? Of course the blogger is correct, as all he did was use Google, Facebook, and used (it appears) a few publicly available internet databases. That he searched for information on people who's names we already know is irrelevant to his point that others will do exactly what he did for the people in game they've had issue with at some point. If you think this doesn't happen then you need to climb back in that hole you've been living in for the past decade. I have a Facebook page but I have the privacy policies set tightly so that my information is only shared with a small number of friends. But you know, that was my choice. And choice is what Blizzard seems to not be getting here.

Except they do get it. They've said as much.

We have been planning this change for a very long time. During this time, we have thought ahead about the scope and impact of this change and predicted that many people would no longer wish to post in the forums after this change goes live. We are fine with that, because we want to change these forums dramatically in a positive and more constructive direction.

It’s been very obvious over the last few years that the forums are an exceptionally valuable source of information both for players and for us to gather feedback. There are many threads on this forum now, and over the last few years, that people have been constructively discussing many aspects of the game. They’ve received new wisdom and have then been able to go back to the game and enjoy it further with the new knowledge acquired through the forums.
These threads, however, can often be lost amongst a great deal of other threads that are basically filled with trolling, name calling, flaming, off-topic conversations and that’s just a small amount of some of the content that has been found in these forums over the years. We don’t want that anymore, and we believe the Real ID change will bring about a lot of the improvement that we are hoping for.
There’s a lot of scare-mongering going on about the change, but there seems a need to make something very clear. The forums have always been an optional extra — something you can choose to participate in if you wish to. With our Real ID changes for the forums, this is still the case. The only difference will be, if you do choose to participate in the forums, then you will do so by using your real name. But only after you’ve been warned and accepted this in advance.

And

A lot of legitimate and understandable concerns are being raised. It would be hard for myself or any caring individual to not empathise with the fears and concerns people have. But amidst these concerns there is also a bit of something going on that I can’t easily describe with other words, but I’ll try.

Posting on the forums with your real name will be optional — yes, in the sense that the options are simply post and show your real name, or do not post and you keep it confidential. If people are happy to post and do not feel intimidated by this, then great — hopefully they will also post constructively (though it’s fair to say, this isn’t a given). It might be scary to consider posting with your real name, in which case it might be advisable simply not to post in these forums. There’s a whole load of other forums across the internet where you’ll be able to post in a more anonymous way, and maybe you will make a useful and constructive contribution there instead.

If you really do read all posts in this thread and others, like we are doing, then you will see some examples of what I was meaning by “scare-mongering”. There are posts from some people who are either confused by the changes or generally uncertain, and they are getting understandably scared and then posting in a way that scares other people in the process. With such a change as we have outlined, it is completely understandable that people can and do feel this way. Describing the process of scaring others and raising the level of general fear as “scare-mongering” does not in any way diminish people’s validity in doing so, nor does it dismiss the usefulness of anyone expressing themselves in any way, including in a way I might describe as “scare-mongering”; the term simply describes it for what it appears to be.

You see? Anyone with trepidation or outrage over this upcoming policy change is simply fear mongering. While many are indeed completely naive about the information available about them, they are protected by obscurity. In the IT field that's called security by obscurity, which of course is no real security at all. But it works in that no one know to look for you specifically. Run your mouth on the forum, or piss someone off in game -- hey that bastard keeps undercutting my auctions (just go read Gevlon's blog for the hate mail he gets regularly) -- and you might just find out how far some people are willing to take things. They only have your name right? Ever hear of social engineering? Look it up some time. Google is as much your friend as it will be for that special someone looking for you too.

Using social engineering skills to locate you physically is the extreme (I hope). But don't think for a moment that it's the only possible action that can transpire out of all of this. Imagine all of those embarrassing bits of information out there that you'd rather keep separate from your gaming persona. Instead they'll be be posted and brought to the attention of those folks you raid with three times a week. And don't think that THE GUILDS won't be using Google as a further tool to see if you are GUILD material. Hey, the sky's the limits baby.

For a major company Blizzard and Activision sure seems to have completely missed the boat on this one. And on the heels of very public melt-downs by Facebook over nearly the same issues. When Blizzard would have desired the coverage about RealID to be positive it's instead virtually unanimously negative. That sort of thing goes viral very quickly and will only leave a lasting, nasty, black-eye on a company that here-to-fore had a very good reputation. Of course we know what and who is driving this (cough Bobby Kotick) but it's Blizzard that's going to pay the price.

Blizzard eats even more of that bowl

2010-07-07T16:20:00.001-04:00

Could this possibly be correct? I can't vouch for this obviously, but if true shows exactly what many people have said would be happening. Blizzard apparently recognizes that their employees lives would or could be subjected to harassment but it's also apparently fine to allow that for the gamers who lavish the company with billions of dollars each year.

Irony, it seems, is not without a sense of humor. BTW, Scott Jennings had even more to say.

Possibly the dumbest thing I've ever seen Blizzard do

2010-07-07T00:30:00.001-04:00

No, I do not like the current implementation of RealID. But instead of taking those privacy concerns I and many others have stated repeatedly, they decided to eat a heaping bowl-full of dumbass. Coming to the WoW forums near you -- Posting that identifies you by name only!

Recently, we introduced our new Real ID feature - www.battle.net/realid/ , a new way to stay connected with your friends on the new Battle.net. Today, we wanted to give you a heads up about our plans for Real ID on our official forums, discuss the design philosophy behind the changes we’re making, and give you a first look at some of the new features we’re adding to the forums to help improve the quality of conversations and make the forums an even more enjoyable place for players to visit.

The first and most significant change is that in the near future, anyone posting or replying to a post on official Blizzard forums will be doing so using their Real ID -- that is, their real-life first and last name -- with the option to also display the name of their primary in-game character alongside it. These changes will go into effect on all StarCraft II forums with the launch of the new community site prior to the July 27 release of the game, with the World of Warcraft site and forums following suit near the launch of Cataclysm. Certain classic forums, including the classic Battle.net forums, will remain unchanged.

The official forums have always been a great place to discuss the latest info on our games, offer ideas and suggestions, and share experiences with other players -- however, the forums have also earned a reputation as a place where flame wars, trolling, and other unpleasantness run wild. Removing the veil of anonymity typical to online dialogue will contribute to a more positive forum environment, promote constructive conversations, and connect the Blizzard community in ways they haven’t been connected before. With this change, you’ll see blue posters (i.e. Blizzard employees) posting by their real first and last names on our forums as well.

We also plan to add a number of other features designed to make reading the forums more enjoyable and to empower players with tools to improve the quality of forum discussions. Players will have the ability to rate up or rate down posts so that great topics and replies stand out from the not-so-great; low-rated posts will appear dimmer to show that the community feels that they don’t contribute effectively to the conversation, and Blizzard’s community team will be able to quickly and easily locate highly rated posts to participate in or to highlight discussions that players find worthwhile.

In addition, individual topics will be threaded by context, meaning replies to specific posts will be grouped together, making it easier for players to keep track of multiple conversations within a thread. We’re also adding a way for Blizzard posters to “broadcast” important messages forums-wide , to help communicate breaking news to the community in a clear and timely fashion. Beyond that, we’re improving our forum search function to make locating interesting topics easier and help lower the number of redundant threads, and we have more planned as well.

With the launch of the new Battle.net, it’s important to us to create a new and different kind of online gaming environment -- one that’s highly social, and which provides an ideal place for gamers to form long-lasting, meaningful relationships. All of our design decisions surrounding Real ID -- including these forum changes -- have been made with this goal in mind.

We’ve given a great deal of consideration to the design of Real ID as a company, as gamers, and as enthusiastic users of the various online-gaming, communication, and social-networking services that have become available in recent years. As these services have become more and more popular, gamers have become part of an increasingly connected and intimate global community – friendships are much more easily forged across long distances, and at conventions like PAX or our own BlizzCon, we’ve seen first-hand how gamers who may have never actually met in person have formed meaningful real-life relationships across borders and oceans. As the way gamers interact with one another continues to evolve, our goal is to ensure Battle.net is equipped to handle the ever-changing social-gaming experience for years to come.

For more info on Real ID, check out our Real ID page and FAQ located at http://www.battle.net/realid/ . We look forward to answering your questions about these upcoming forum changes in the thread below.

And:

One important point which I don't believe has been relayed yet is that the switch to showing RealID on the forums will only happen with the new forum systems we're launching for StarCraft II shortly before its release, and a new forum system for World of Warcraft launching shortly before the release of Cataclysm.

All posts here on the current World of Warcraft forums, or any of our classic Battle.net forums, will remain as-is. They won't (and can't) automatically switch to showing a real first and last name.

All posts in the future on the new forum systems will be an opt-in choice and ample warning will be given that you're posting with your real first and last name.

I absolutely will not use RealID as it is currently instantiated. So I guess that now means I also will not longer be able to post in the WoW forum once that goes live. Scott Jennings pulls few punches about it himself.

I have a feeling I'm not much longer for healing

2010-07-06T13:12:00.000-04:00

I've made various comments in-game in the past that I was anxious about the changes to healing and mana regeneration. Continued comments like this do not make me any easier. Healers already have a difficult position and don't even get to participate in the same raid as everyone else. For a healer their raid is is always the raid frame they are assiduously glued to, while everyone else is staring at the content and the creatures running around through it. It was the same in Vanilla and BC too, except in Vanilla and to a lesser extent, in BC as well they also had to worry about mana and would often go OOM. Blizzard wants to bring those days back apparently.

Prior to LK, healers could run out of mana, and for the most part it worked. They didn't just use their efficient heals, because sometimes their group would die if they did. They didn't just use their big heals though, because they'd run out of mana (and then the group would die).

I think of healing like a cross-continental road race. If you go too slow, you'll lose the race, but if you just floor it the whole itme, you'll run out of fuel a lot and waste time stopping to fill it up again. There is a happy medium somewhere in between. However the encounter specifics push you out of that medium, sometimes asking you to choose big numbers over efficiency and sometimes vice-versa.

I know it sounds like we are picking on healers all the time, but once you can run out of mana again, I think everything will just feel better, your choices about what spell to cast next become more compelling, and the healing game overall will be more engaging.

When I healed in BC I hated the fact that my HOTs were so underutilized, as they were often quickly over-written by faster direct heals. I wasted my mana but then the Priests who were busy COH healing would always ask (demand) my Innervate on top of it all. The situation was only fixed when I would be asked to tank heal where I'd keep HOTs ticking on the tank but would be using Healing Touch most of the time. In WotLK the situation was much relieved. While my HOTs are still often over-written the "wasted" mana is much less of a concern to me as I have sufficient mana regen to ignore the situation. Regardless I still do considerable healing because I can keep Rejuv and Wildgrowth flowing throughout the raid. In Cataclysm it doesn't sound like I'm going to be able to do that.

I can certainly understand the underlying rationale for wanting to change the dynamic, however I think Blizzard has some gaps to bridge in their rationale and our experience. First, how does any of this change the current healing dynamic where I see virtually nothing but raid frames? I'm able to survive because of raid warnings that tell me to get out of goo and my eyes are constantly moving but that is not much fun at all. I'm not watching the encounter, I'm watching my feet and my raid frames. And it's very much more stressful than either a DPS or Tanking role -- I've done all three.

If there is going to be ample time in combat for these types of decisions to be made, then would this not also necessarily mean that fights are going to be much longer and become more tedious? Doesn't sound much fun to me either. Ask yourself the same questions about PVP and the question just becomes more murky.

All of my questions harken back to what I've said about Blizzard in the past -- that I'm not greatly heartened by the decision making process I've seen Blizzard use over the years. They've implemented too many things to change them too much later on. They've introduced, pulled back, reintroduced and made everyone's head spin in the process. As it is we are to expect almost completely changed game play every 18-24 months and changes that also make such vital roles as healing much more difficult are not welcome in my opinion.

Moonkin PVP movie

2010-07-04T09:33:00.000-04:00

I watch videos all the time, but don't often link to them. Moonfury is just one such of those that I feel compelled to do so though. Not only does he appear to be a very good PVP'er, and for a Moonkin that is saying quite a lot, but he's also an artful and masterful video editor. The video is as striking as it is beautiful and his music selection is very complimentary. Ivan's made one of those videos that you tend to remember, and when we are swimming in a sea of videos that is also saying quite a lot.

Eclipse update from Cataclysm Beta

2010-07-03T06:00:00.001-04:00

There's a very interesting thread that was recently highlighted over at MMO-Champion concerning how the new Eclipse mechanism works. First, understand what the Eclipse problem (and especially) is, then you can look at Blizzard's solution and begin to make some informed opinions about it. I don't have exact figures but I wouldn't be jesting by any means if I were to say my DPS is boosted by 1500-2000 DPS by Lunar Eclipse. It's a huge percentage of my overall damage figures, so any movement or wasted portion of Lunar Eclipse severely gimps me. Making the matter worse is that my Eclipse effects are already largely at the mercy of RNG. Despite that I've come to like the randomness of Eclipse. Ignoring the mana efficiency issue that was a hallmark for Balance in BC, the strict spell rotation made it somewhat boring to play. While I know what my immediate opening is in any fight in WotLK, a quick Lunar Eclipse immediately changes things up for me. The randomness brings just the right hint of reactionism to the mix. Yet with that does come the perplexing problem of how to retain the oomph of the Eclipse while forcing movement at the same time.

Blizzard indicated they understood the problem and had a plan to fix it. But after reading how that plan is currently implemented I'm not certain they have. In fact I think they've taken a bit of a step back toward BC. Currently each spell gives a certain amount of Eclipse power and will move a scale from the Lunar to Solar end and vice versa. I don't like the fact that our casting rotation seems to be becoming formulaic again. And the 15 second Eclipse window also doesn't seem to solve the problem of movement. It's still a massive considering no other caster class receives such a big portion of their DPS from a proc mechanic. Instead of the 15 second window I think I'd rather like to see a "pool" of Eclipse power become active, from which either Starfire or Wrath will pull from. Each cast would draw a "random" percentage with a specified range of the power, and after the power is depleted you'd begin to work up to the opposite side of the Eclipse scale. Having a pool available would retain the Eclipse effect, despite movement, until a range of casts had been made. And just to ensure an advantage wasn't retained over others, you could clear the effect upon end of combat.

Unfortunately Blizzard doesn't seem to be thinking along this line at all:

Here are a few clarifications on Eclipse and Balance intent is general. As you probably guessed, part of what you're seeing is a work in progress.

On Eclipse -- Currently Eclipse has a 30 sec cooldown on its proc, so it may be beneficial sometimes to say proc Lunar, go almost halfway to Solar but then just go back and proc Lunar again depending on the situation. In an upcoming build you cannot proc Lunar unless you proc Solar, and visa versa.

Eclipse’s “predictability” -- A new talent is being added that if taken will make lunar/solar energy gain a little more random, so as to make Eclipse less predictable.

You can currently re-proc a specific Eclipse effect but they intend to fix that; a fix that will force you to proc the other Eclipse effect before being able to re-proc the Eclipse effect that just did. And they intend to introduce some measure of "randomness" to the equation again by making the amount of power you receive from each cast somewhat random. But that's only window dressing. Instead of 5 Starfalls, 10 Wraths, 10 Starfalls, etc, it'll be something like 4-7 Starfalls, 8-14 Wraths, etc.

Graylo over at Gray Matter has even more to say on the matter.

Troll and Worgan Druid forms

2010-07-02T11:07:00.000-04:00

I wondered when we'd see these. Started seeing them discussed on the forum yesterday but Blizzard was all over those threads, deleting any links to them for some reason. No, these are not the final forms (we believe), but I still get annoyed when Blizzard acts like a total tool. People will talk about what they want to talk about Blizzard.

Thanks to Big Bear Butt I was able to see these. And all I can say is uggh. The Worgan models aren't too bad, but the Troll versions are simply horrible.

Cataclysm alpha is ended and the closed Beta has begun

2010-07-01T12:01:00.001-04:00

That Alpha really didn't last very long but Blizzard announced yesterday that the closed Beta has officially begun. And unlike in previous years, they immediately dropped the NDA. Which means we'll begin to get a flood of information and it won't be taken down at the insistence of Blizzard lawyers -- Cough MMO-Champion. According to various reports beta invites have begun to trickle out. I doubt I'll get one, but I'm honestly not all that excited about getting one this go around in the first place. It's enough for me to be able to read about the changes and report on what I feel needs to be discussed. Other than that I'm only concerned about the release date, which still hasn't officially been released, but which I'm anticipating to be in November or December.

Switching gears

2010-07-01T09:36:00.000-04:00

It was a very difficult weekend. After a long talk with one of the officers and after talking to the GM on Monday I decided to leave my Paladin in the guild, but step back from raiding on him and instead focus on my Druid. I had already made plans to refocus on my Druid and make him my main again in Cataclysm, but I've accelerated that plan now. I've been looking at various guilds but decided to take my friend up on his offer from a few weeks ago. After I joined my new guild I had a bit of a long talk with my friend about what took me so long. He hadn't been in the previous guild all that often whereas I'd been in it for a year and a half, so he perhaps didn't have the personal connections to the guild and the people in it like I did. But the conversation also focused on the difference in motivation. A lot of people are singularly focused on raiding, and those folks are the ones I consider to be truly elitist. In other words, motivations like friend ship and the pleasure of just doing things with folks you hang out with aren't the driving factors for them. They want progression above everything else and when that is stymied they will typically hop to another guild that can provide it for them. For them all other motivations are either non-existent or so far removed from the top of the priority list that they might as well be.

While I want progression as well, it isn't the sole motivating force for me. I enjoy running through older content and completing achievements as much as I do killing a progression boss. In fact I'm just as happy running through a series of 5-man dungeons with friends as I am raiding. That's what kept me in my old guild so long and why it was a very hard decision for me to "move on".

24-hour maintenance

2010-06-29T10:12:00.000-04:00

Today is the day I dreaded. Today is my 24-hour maintenance day, so I won't be able to log into my main characters today at all. I have other characters on other servers, but they're all relatively low level.

Pre-mades

2010-06-29T10:10:00.000-04:00

Do you know how often I find PVP pre-made groups these days? I tried for weeks to find one and then gave up a couple months back. I decided just to take my lumps and suffer through the typical PUGs. But then this weekend happened. Not only did I find my first pre-made in ages, but it was Warsong Gulch weekend and we stomped face. I also found a pre-made again last night, so I've been running in full Resto mode all weekend. Some might ask why I'm all that concerned with pre-mades as there really is no over-arching reason for them at this point. It's because I'm still working toward my Justicar and Battlemaster achievements (and). Progress is painfully slow in typical pugs. But in a pre-made the equation is usually completely different. In a pre-made you are usually with competent PVP'ers and you usually win most of your matches, so not only do you accrue a lot of honor but in the case of WSG and AB I get a lot of the rep I need.

Which is funny because I was just looking at it last night and I still needed the equivalent of 890 flag caps in WSG to get to exalted with the Silverwing. I hadn't figured out exactly how many "ticks" I needed in AB, but as I'm only about half way through honored, it probably amounts of a "lot". Almost undoubtedly I'll still be working toward these achievements when Cataclysm is released, but I'm hoping that pre-mades become much more common with the news of how rated battlegrounds will work. Running in regular pre-mades will speed up progression toward Justicar and Battlemaster considerably.

It's official

2010-06-28T06:00:00.001-04:00

I don't know exactly when, but the doldrums have officially started for the year. I see it daily with many guilds recruiting in trade chat, on the forums, and anywhere else they can find players. And I see it in my own guild as well where we have attendance problems to the point we're often limited to raiding to just once a week. Between the doldrums and the group frustration with progression many people have stopped attending on our Thursday and Monday night raids, which lead me to form a 10-man group about five weeks ago. I figured if I can't actually work through the progression we're should be working through right now I might as well to go back into Ulduar and work on something I wanted to work on back then but couldn't. In the last five weeks we've been able to go exactly once and I'm sincerely hoping that pattern changes very soon -- otherwise it's going to be a very long Summer indeed.

Legendary items don't suck

2010-06-26T19:29:00.000-04:00

I disagree with gray that Legendary items suck. But I do agree with him to the extent that Blizzard's implementation has something to be desired. It's certainly not how I would be designing acquisition of these types of weapons. I like the idea of legendary weapons being the result of truly epic quest chains but I don't like the idea that they are tied solely to raiding, and I definitely don't like the idea that they are so easily outstripped by higher ilevel weapons. If I had my way in this I'd instead make legendary weapons truly legendary, starting with making them all exceedingly rare. Quest chains for legendary weapons in my WoW would begin with random drops that start a year long or more chain of events that require some group activity but which mostly would require a lot of solo effort. And my legendaries would upgrade over time, similar to the heirloom gear now. Perhaps not automatically but there should be a means to upgrade them for each tier.

As much as I would love Shadowmourne right now on my Paladin (I'll never see it), it saddens me that in just a few months better weapons will be available anyway.

Blizzard's RealID and the privacy violation it represents

2010-06-24T12:56:00.000-04:00

I don’t normally like to pile on. I’m not one to follow the crowd or entertain fads and so I found myself this week not really wanting to talk about Blizzard’s new RealID system as virtually everyone else was. But in all the articles I’ve read about it this week not one has really said the things I would say. So despite my natural inclination to not pile on, I’m going to do so. In short I am not in favor of RealID and will not be using it in its current form. I can, however, see the attraction for Blizzard as they seek to tap the social networking aspect of the technology as common feature in al their current and upcoming games. The ability to communicate with friends across games and platforms natively is indeed a strong draw, but the current implementation is deeply flawed.

First, Blizzard created the system with absolutely no way to “opt out”. If you do not wish to participate in the RealID system you must “ignore request” from every user who sends you a friend request. You’ll get a popup notification when you receive the friend request, which will reappear every time you log in until you either accept or ignore it. The notification will also periodically reappear while playing. This is the first flaw in the system as I believe there should be a global option to ignore all requests for those of us who do not plan on using it at all. I think it’s obvious that Blizzard made a decision to not add this simple feature so as to add pressure to users to adopt it over time. That’s a strategic decision and one I find to be extremely arrogant.

Secondly the RealID system will identify you by your full name as recorded in the Blizzard billing system. Blizzard includes a warning to players that the system is meant only for real life friends, but they also enable friends of friends to see that information as well. In the end people I may not even know will be able to see my full name and be able to tie that name to my characters in all the games that uses the RealID system. You aren’t afforded an opportunity to use a screen name alias. As one who values personal privacy I don’t feel Blizzard should be “outing” anyone in this manner. My feelings would be somewhat different if there were a means to use a screen name and have a more granular ability to limit just how far my information could be shared. But as it stands now Blizzard’s ham-handed implementation forces you to share your information with who eventually will be virtually everyone, or not use the system at all.

Third, there have already been reports on the forum that various guilds are making RealID mandatory. Obviously this is a user problem and a guild has no right to mandate use of a system such as this. But we all know that peer pressure will often cause people to do things they wouldn’t normally do otherwise and so the pressure to comply with the mandate in order to remain in the guild will be strong to a lot of people in this circumstance. It’s an abuse of the intention of the system and will become an invasion of privacy. Mandates such as these will make playing on unguilded characters impossible to hide and as someone who has many alt, most of which who are unguilded, I can sympathize. Some times you want to play on a character where no one knows you and just play. Some times you don’t want to be bothered by friends or have to deal with guild business. Guilds who will mandate RealID use should be kicked to the curb, but will they be by all those being forced to use it?

As I said, I can see the allure of the system for Blizzard. And I do not begrudge them the opportunity to capitalize but I would like to see several modifications. Foremost is the global setting I mentioned earlier. I’d like to be able to “opt out” and not be bothered with requests at all. I’d also like the ability to set a screen name or Alias and limit the extent to which my information can be shared. As my information is shared with friends of friends I can see that over the course of a year or more my information being shared with many people I don’t know, who would also then know my specific characters in Blizzard’s various games. That sort of information should be limited to specific people I choose to allow it be displayed to, and certainly not hundreds or thousands of people I don’t even know.

Until those sorts of changes are put into place I will no be using RealID.

What is it that disturbs me about SWTOR?

2010-06-21T06:00:00.000-04:00

It's been no secret that I've been a bit on the misgiving side regarding SWTOR. I'm excited by the prospect that a truly great Star Wars franchise is in the offing but have been somewhat tepid regarding the news that has been released about it. The news that so much instancing would be used in SWTOR threw me off for a bit as what I really have hoped for was a MMORPG that was completely open, featured strong world PVP (though instanced battlegrounds are fine if they are in addition to that as well), strong crafting and gathering, and plenty of PVE content. We've been getting a clearer picture of the general structure of SWTOR from Bioware over the last several months and I think we finally have a clear enough picture after E3 to understand where they're going with it all. What we seem to be getting is at least close to what I had hoped, but not as open as I probably had hoped for. The PVE side of the game will focus on "stories" -- which is to say quest chains and will be heavily instance.

Each player will have an individual class "story" that they will work through and which will be accomplished solo, although companion characters will play various parts in that as well. As you move through the class "story" you will visit various planets where "planet stories" can also be found. The planet stories can be mostly solo'd or accomplished in groups if you want to play with others but Bioware has said that you don't absolutely need to group to accomplish most of it. If you even want to accomplish any of it at all as none of the stories are required.

Aside from the PVE content Bioware has again reassured us that the "open" portion of the game will contain a crafting and gathering system, described as "WoW like" and will also feature PVP. Thus far we've only heard about PVP taking place in "war zones" however I'm still holding out hope there will be substantial world PVP as well. How strange would it be to walk by an enemy faction player in a city and not be able to attack them? I'd be fine with it if there was a way to flag or not flag for PVP as long as there was at least an ability for those of us who wanted to participate in world PVP to actually do so without having to venture into battlegrounds only.

Of course if you read the official forums -- and I highly recommend that if you do, you do so only irregularly -- this all points to the end of the world. I've been giving a lot of thought myself to how things seem to be shaping up and I'm of the vein that I think things could be fine. What is being described to us in regard to SWTOR game play is much akin to how I play WoW. I'm primarily a solo player who values achievements and content so the fact that I'd be soloing content in the form of my class story doesn't bother me. I already do that now, and in fact I think most WoW players do that when they're leveling a character. Nearly everyone solo's quests and only groups up with others on particularly hard quests. In SWTOR we'll have our companion characters who will take the place of others as needed in solo content, and can supplement groups on those group content quests in the planet stories. And as Bioware has said their will be raiding that certainly fills the end-game content requirement I think most of us hold for the game.

Which just leaves PVP and crafting/gathering. The PVP question has been partly answered and sounds very much like WoW's Wintergrasp or instanced Battlegrounds. Or similar to WAR's system, but leaves open completely how "world" PVP will be implement -- if at all. All in all it sounds remarkably like the general implementation found in WoW if you ignore the fact that the class story at least is played in instances. I don't feed on the mantra that this game will suck because it sounds like WoW so none of this bothers me what so ever. In fact after a lot of thought throughout E3 I'm beginning to look more forward to SWTOR than I think I was previously and don't think the use of so much instancing throws me as much as it did. But the devil is always in the details so I need to see what the plans are for the open portions of the game before I can get a real sense whether this game will be something I try out and shelve or whether this is a game I can spend 5 years or more playing.

So what disturbs me about SWTOR? Less than what disturbed me about it a week ago.

It took a little work

2010-06-18T06:00:00.000-04:00

I was able to shed enough hit to get me back down to the 10% I need for Boomkin, but there is just no way I could shed enough haste to get anywhere near the 400ish recommended. In fact I recently won Dislodged Foreign Object which puts me at 639 haste. It gets much worse. Despite my efforts to shed haste along with hit I'm now over the soft crit cap as well so I have absolutely no where to go with my gear except gain more spell power. But along with that additional spell power from heroic level gear will also come additional haste and crit meaning I'm on a virtual plateau gear progression wise and have just two pieces of ilevel 277 gear -- one trinket and my boots.

While all that Boomkin goodness sure does produce some spectacular results what I'm really focusing on now is finishing ICC and earning achievements. It's also situations like these why I wish there was a little more sandbox to WoW. I need something solid to work toward and there just isn't a lot of that left in WoW right now.

Darthhater Interview with Daniel Erickson

2010-06-17T14:50:00.000-04:00

One of the best interviews to come out of E3 in regards to SWTOR this year was had by Darthhater. It's lengthy at 17 mins but well worth the viewing.

SWTOR moral choices

2010-06-17T06:00:00.001-04:00

One of the facets of SWTOR that I've been most excited about are the possibilities behind the moral choices system. From what I've been able to glean the system that is currently planned is relatively benign and really just a superficial representation of what moral choices really are. In other words they have no greater impact on game play other than the standard reputation impact. But what if the moral choices system could be much more than that? What if the moral choices system were given some teeth? What if it was given real impact and instead deeply affected game play?

The force and it's light-side and dark-side are central themes to SWTOR and I think a players class and faction choices should be central to how you play. What I envision for a moral choices system would in fact be a true alignment system and would bring a form of role-playing without forcing players to act and speak in the traditional role play sense. Currently the plan would accrue light side or dark side points to your character depending on story choices your character makes. The number of points you accrue over time would effect the characters ability to access certain content and would cause specific NPCs to either really like you or really dislike you. But instead of this system what I'd like to see are those light side and dark side points actually cause you to change factions and thereby class. At least for the four Jedi classes this type of system would be most in tune with.

To me, it makes little sense to have a light-side aligned Imperial Spy or Bounty Hunter. If the classes are being tied to specific factions, as they are in SWTOR, then you have to accept that every player that plays those classes have a like-minded philosophy. So how can you have a Bounty Hunter that actually believes in the good in things? How can you have a Imperial Spy that doesn't adhere to the teachings of his faction? And most importantly how can you possibly have a light-sided Sith Warrior that isn't deeply in tune with the dark side? It's positively ridiculous in my view. If a player constantly makes choices in game that increase his light-side alignment then he should, over time, become a Jedi because he most certainly is not a Sith.

This type of dynamic brings about a very deep character development aspect and forces the player to make real choices about their character. In other words, to act in character instead of the more typical devoid manner in which players usually play in MMOs. Now wouldn't that be something?

Married or fooling around?

2010-06-16T06:00:00.000-04:00

Tobold asked this question a few days ago and I had meant to reply but was busy with PVP over the weekend. First and foremost I'm a player. Not in the sense of the title to this post, but in the sense of how I interact with MMOs. I'm not one to "shop around" and play test every game that is released because unlike Tobold I do like to accomplish things. He doesn't believe you can actually accomplish anything in a game but I disagree. Accomplishing specific feats in an MMO is the same as completing, or "winning" an RPG or RTS in my view.

And my Bartle score indicates that. Incidentally I'm not sure why it indicates I took the quiz on the 15th as I actually took this last Fall. In any event I'm an A.S.E.K. which means I look goals as my primary form of entertainment and motivation. I'm systematic whereas someone like Tobold is more of a socializer or explorer. I find a game I like and I tend to spend all, or the vast majority of my time playing it. I may try out other games from time to time but unless they offer me something more than the game I'm currently playing I won't stay very long. Case in point, I love Lord of the Rings and have read not only the Trilogy but also the Silmarillion and other assorted Tolkien related books many times but have never once played LotRO. I simply wasn't all that attracted to the game description. Likewise I've read every Conan book ever published and consider myself a tremendous fan of the story yet I've never played AoC. It's not that I wasn't interested to try it out, but rather that I've simply been too busy playing WoW.

So in the sense that Tobold asks the question, I'm the "married" type. I find what I like and I stick with it. I'm the long term, immersive player.

New SWTOR cinematic trailer offers "Hope"

2010-06-15T09:40:00.000-04:00

Taking place prior to the "Deceived" trailer, "Hope" is just another fine example of what Bioware can produce to awe us. This is a stunningly fantastic trailer with glimpses of what I hope are the strengths of the various classes. The female Jedi (Consular) uses dramatic acrobatic abilities to weave through several Sith Warriors before finally confronting Malgus. She has fantastic light saber ability but can clearly see she's out-stripped by Malgus when she finally unleashes her best ability -- control of the force. No mean feats those! Anyway, enjoy.

Personal space ships and instanced PVP for SWTOR

2010-06-15T09:21:00.002-04:00

E3 has started and new information about some of our most anticipated games is starting to trickle out. I was eagerly awaiting new information about SWTOR and we've gotten two bits of information. The first that there will be "player housing" in SWTOR in the form of a personal space ship. But for me more importantly I was eagerly awaiting information about PVP. Unfortunately I was a bit disappointed as I got to 1:20 in the video and heard that battles occur in warzones. Which most likely means no, or extremely limited open world PVP.

I hate to use SWG as an example of anything but my fondest memories of that game are always about the PVP that was had in it. Even with the debilitating lag that large battles caused the mid to small scale was fantastic. Even the large scale battles were great in the sense of what you eventually could accomplish. Being able to "claim" territory by placing and defending bases was a central focus of the warfare and I had hoped something similar would be brought to SWTOR. If nothing else being able to change alignment of towns and quest hubs that would in turn offer bonuses and additional content to the controlling side. While we have very scant information to go from the specific words of "In the Old Republic players battle it out in war zones" does not evoke the sense with me Bioware must have hoped it would. I'm still waiting to hear how this game is an MMO and the announcement of instanced PVP certainly doesn't tell me that.

[edit]
Bioware later clarified the situation through additional interviews to say that the warzones are "zones" but that decisions about how players will access them hasn't yet been made. Specifics about what is actually meant by zone wasn't given so it's not known whether they are "zones" like the WoW battlegrounds which are instanced, or more akin to Wintergrasp.

Blizzard's press event

2010-06-14T06:00:00.006-04:00

Saturday was a busy day as far as Blizzard is concerned. They treated the "press" to an event and leaked some tid bits of new information -- not all of which were good news. In fact most of the news was related to what they were trimming from Cataclysm rather than what they were adding. Path of the Titans is being removed and consequently Archeology is being gutted and being turned into a cosmetic secondary profession that deals with the game's lore. Also the guild talent and guild currency system that was announced at last years Blizzcon are gone as well. But the biggest news as far as I was concerned is that they were redesigning Inscription and Glyphs. I'd said last year it needed to be redesigned and I'm happy to see Blizzard acknowledges that, but how they're going about it boggles my mind. There's practically no after-market for glyphs now, so I fail to see how making glyphs a one-shot learn will make that better.

Blizzard is wont to do what Blizzard is wont to do, but I'm really kind of sad to hear about the early demise of the Path of the Titans. Although we didn't get a great amount of detail about the system it was beginning to sound like it would have been a very nice addition to the game. Ah well, such things will happen when a game is in beta.

Things got better

2010-06-13T22:08:00.000-04:00

I have no idea what was up with Friday but things got markedly better for me PVP wise since then. While I still lose my fair share of matches it hasn't been quite so lopsided as it was that day. In fact I think I've actually won more than I've lost between yesterday and today which is a good thing because I was going out of my mind on Friday. You can usually tell right off whether it's going to be a good match or not. If you see groups run to DR and MT that's a good thing. But if you see a group run to mid instead of pushing on toward either BE or FRR that's a bad thing because mathematically towers are more valuable than flags are. In fact you never need the flag unless you can only take and hold two towers.

I've tried for weeks over a period of several months to find myself a pre-made group and in all that time I've found exactly one team that runs on either Saturday or Sunday starting at 5pm EST until about 7pm EST which is my dinner and family time. So I struggle along in the BG PUG group system and take my wins and losses as they come. But new news on Saturday about the upcoming Cataclysm rated battleground system makes me think pre-mades will be a lot easier to come by in the months to come.

Some additional info thanks to World of Raids:

Players will participate in rated battlegrounds by forming their raid group prior to joining the queue.
You will only face off against other rated groups.
Each week the format for rated battlegrounds will be different. It will rotate between 10, 15 and 25-player battlegrounds.
Rating loss will not exist until after a certain threshold.
Conquest points will be rewarded for winning rated battlegrounds.
There will be a limitation on the number of Conquest points you can earn each week to prevent feeling like you must participate in both arenas and rated battlegrounds.
There will be end-of-season rewards for rated BG teams similar to arenas:
- The classic Honor titles will be coming back and rewarded to the top teams each season.
- The "Gladiator" equivalent teams will also receive epic ground mounts. Ground mounts because they want to reward something you can ride in the battleground and be proud of / show off.

Very hard to fathom

2010-06-11T11:19:00.000-04:00

Anyone reading my blog for a period of time will know that I love to PVP. I PVP daily and on most weekends I spend hours doing it. So perhaps you can understand the frustration with how often I lose random battlegrounds. Some people might say that Horde winning most battlegrounds is a myth, but it's easy to prove one way or the other. Simply open your achievement tracker, then click on the statistics tab, then select the Player vs Player category. You can further filter the results by also selecting the battlegrounds category. Doing all that you can see precisely how many battlegrounds you've won and lost. Overall I've won slightly more thab 50% of my overall battlegrounds -- 50.3% to be exact, but that is only because I've won an abnormally high number of Alterac Valley matches.

I've won 62.3% of my AV matches, 41.9% of my AB matches, 48.4% of my EoTS matches, 46.6% of my SoTA matches, 38.3% of my WSG matches, 55% of my IoC matches. If I were to remove the AV matches as an outlier I'd be experiencing a 47.9% winning percentage and that because I've won 55% of my Isle of Conquest matches.

It's perfectly understandable that in random BG's you're going to have less coordination than you would in pre-mades, and that you are likely to have a wide swath of experience and inexperienced players. It isn't this that constantly frustrates me but rather the unwillingness of most players to listen to clear instruction and understand the strategies involved which each of the battlegrounds. EotS for instance. As it's the weekend for EotS I'd like to be in there right now accomplishing achievements and earning honor but I've lost every single EotS match I've participated in today for no other reason than most of the players have no idea what they are doing, or what they should be doing. Despite clearly telling everyone repeatedly that towers are vastly more important than capturing the flag you see about half the raid always heading immediately for the flag spawn and fighting in the middle. I won't even speak about those who tend to love fighting on the roads.

EoTS is very easy to understand. You want to grab at least three towers and hold those. You earn more points per tick with three towers than the opponent does with one tower and constantly capping the flag. If you can only take and hold two towers then you also want to grab the flag. Opinions vary on what to do with it under those circumstances -- you can either repeatedly cap the flag if you hold the middle or you can hold the flag defensively at one of your towers so the opponent doesn't get it and keep pressure on one of their towers. If you can't hold middle I personally think it's obvious that you'd not want to cap the flag and would want to defend it at one of your towers.

Inexperience is fine. Not being able to use deductive reasoning and observation over time in order to learn from mistakes is not.

Treeform is getting the heaveho, so why not Moonkin too?

2010-06-11T06:00:00.001-04:00

So asks Happytreez. I agree with the logic as the difference between Moonkin form and Tree form is nill. Treeform provids buffs to healing that could easily be imparted without a form at all. And the current plan for Cataclysm is to do just that by removing permanent Tree form and instead turn it into a short term buff that has a cool down.

Tree of Life is changing from a passive talent to a cooldown-based talent, similar to Metamorphosis. Mechanically, it feels unfair for a druid to have to give up so much offense and utility in order to be just as good at healing as the other classes who are not asked to make that trade. We are exploring the exact benefit the druid gets from Tree of Life. It could strictly be better healing, or it could be that each heal behaves slightly different. You also will not be able to be banished in Tree of Life form (this will probably be true of Metamorphosis as well). Additionally, we would like to update the Tree of Life model so that it feels more exciting when you do decide to go into that form. Our feeling is that druids rarely actually get to show off their armor, so it would be nice to have at least one spec that looked like a night elf or tauren (and soon troll or worgen) for most of the time.

Moonkin form also imparts buffs that could easily be imparted in caster form. And like Tree form, Moonkin form has certain limitations placed on it in regard to what spells can be used while in the form. I'd like to see Moonkin given the Tree of Life treatment and turned into a short term buff with a cool down and let us run around in caster form.

Cataclysm - when is it coming and what will you be playing when it does?

2010-06-10T06:00:00.002-04:00

It’s that time of the year when people are beginning to seriously ponder when Cataclysm will be released. I’ve actually seen people argue that it’ll be released prior to Thanksgiving, which I feel might be stretching it a little. Blizzcon isn’t until October 23-24 and Cataclysm would have to be virtually completed by then in order to be released in November. Remember, while patches can still be developed the physical media has to go gold and they have to have the required time to burn enough to fill all the orders. I think it’s a safer bet to assume Cataclysm will be released near Christmas or in January. Since we all have absolutely no real information to go on there are other questions one can focus on right now. Like what your character plans for the next expansion might be. That’s a question I’ve been giving much thought to lately.

The characters I’m playing now are not the characters I started off playing when WotLK released. But they are the characters I enjoy the most and so I’m virtually certain they will be the two characters I continue to play on into Cataclysm. My Druid was my main in Vanilla and BC though I’ve been playing him as an alt during the past year and didn’t play him much at all prior to that back to the end of BC. But more and more lately I’ve been pondering whether I should play him as my main again. I enjoy playing Balance and Resto immensely and as a hybrid class I regularly respec into either Feral bear or Feral cat to complete content or change up my play style for a bit. I have the same ability to do that with my Paladin as well but PVP is a big deal with me and I generally like to PVP On my Druid more. I actually spend more time on my Druid – much more – than I do on my “main”. The fact that my Paladin is my “main” is really because I progression raid on him instead of my Druid whom I only pug with. The more I think about the situation the more inclined I am to play my Druid again as my true main and play my Paladin as my alt.

The allure of the Worgen class isn’t that high for me. I may race change at some point, but I won’t roll a new character just to play a Worgen.

Following up on the Balance and Elemental comparison

2010-06-09T06:00:00.003-04:00

Following up on Monday’s post regarding Elemental versus Balance inequities lets look at just one common example that I see regularly involving a Rogue. On my Druid in Balance PVP with 1000 Resil I’ll ride up in a group to the lumber mill and hang back a bit so I’m not immediately focused. I’ll drop into cat form near the top of the road up so I can track humanoids and see how many Horde are coming, but more importantly to see if any disappear which would indicate either a Rogue or a Druid. Some times I see dots disappear but other times I don’t. If I do I’m careful to stick close to the largest group otherwise I give myself a little more latitude. I’ll choose a target – normally a caster or healer – and open up with IS and MF and begin casting Wrath. But many times a Rogue is there and I just didn’t see him and as I’m often the focus target for stealthers it usually doesn’t take very long before I find myself in trouble.

A Rogue will always open with Cheap Shot, with it’s automatic stun. My first reaction is to pop Barkskin for the 12 seconds of damage reduction and then wait for the kidney punch. When I see kidney punch I’ll use my trinket and start running, hitting Nature's Grasp and then dropping into travel form to give me some distance. If I’m facing a not so well geared Rogue, or for whatever reason didn’t take all that much damage in the opening I have the option to drop into bear form and use bash before switching to travel form and getting some distance. If I’m lucky and the Rogue didn’t have Cloak of Shadows, Sprint or their trinket on cooldown I can usually get enough distance so I can pop out and throw on some heals and then root and hit him with IS/MF or dropping back into travel form and putting more distance between us if I feel its necessary. If he’s stealthed again I won’t stand still long enough to find out if he’s still gunning for me (of course he is), instead I’ll be running until I’m out of combat and then stealthing myself. On the occasions when he apparently doesn’t have any cool downs available and is still rooted I can usually nuke him easily enough but how often does that happen? Not all that often.

My issue is that a lot of the time I never survive long enough to get away. My 12 seconds of Barkskin is often not long enough to get me through the encounter, and it’s irrelevant if my trinket is on cooldown. I have no innate damage reduction whereas an Elemental Shaman can easily get 30% damage reduction from talents that applies passively whenever stunned, feared, or silenced. That’s pretty powerful considering a Balance Druid has to pop Barkskin and then hope he doesn’t need it again before the cooldown is up and Elemental shaman have the same mechanism to root a player and then also use travel form to get distance.

Using the same example, with my much undergeared Shaman, once I see kidney punch I’ll trinket out then immediately hit Thunderstorm and drop my earth bind totem. Thunderstorm knocks back further than Typhoon does but doesn’t daze so the Rogue will be back on me in little time. Except I’ve already started running and cleansing before dropping into Ghost wolf form for more distance, and the Rogue has to run around or through my earth bind. If he doesn’t have cloak of shadows or sprint available I’m gone and can turn around to flame shock then hit him with lava burst and drop my elemental for additional damage if necessary.

If you look at this dispassionately I think the Elemental Shaman has the slight advantage for escapability under these circumstances. Especially in that the earth bind totem is a powerful ranged root that even if it doesn’t root someone still can act as an obstacle that has to be avoided or destroyed. But I think the Druid has the decided advantage from range. I don’t think Druids have quite the burst DPS as an Elemental Shaman but they have ranged, spammable roots and have a pretty nice burst AOE spell in the form of Starfall that can be used while on the move and can heal and remove debuffs with travel form. It’s darn nigh impossible to stop a Druid – you either kill him or he gets away generally.

This to me is definitely the way to look at things. Standing back and comparing two not entirely similar classes isn’t easy. But when you look at things situationally they become much clearer and put things in proper context. For me the ultimate consideration in any battle ground is being able to pick and choose my fights. As a Druid I can stealth. I can ambush or flee entirely hidden from view but I can’t as a Shaman. As a Shaman I’m at all times viewable while at the same time not being able to see those who aren’t. A lot of time I don’t have the option to decide whether I want to engage or not as I can only escape once in combat through my ghost wolf form and can be ridden down. I never have the option to run away and vanish. Even with the perceived disadvantages I still prefer my Druid over the Shaman.

Let the guild poaching begin

2010-06-08T17:13:00.000-04:00

I've got a friend that used to raid with us and was actually really good. When we transitioned from Ulduar to TOC he left the guild and joined another guild and ended up becoming the raid leader. They're not the top progression raid guild on the server but they're very respectable and are well into heroics at this point. In fact that 10-man heroic I ran last week was his group and I ended up running the weekly with him and a couple 5-mans on my Druid and afterward I got the "you should leave xxx guild and come raid with us". I laughed, but not because I thought it was funny. I laughed because I've thought about joining them many, many times over the last few months. I stayed in my current guild because of the core. I like the guild leader and the officers a great deal and they've always been strait by me and I like that feeling of not just being a body. I might have to accept that I will probably never get to do everything I want to do but some times you have to give up something to get other things you want more.

Now this isn't what I'd really consider being guild poaching, but it's a good enough example to speak about something that has been going on for as long as there have been MMOs and if anything, intensifies during the summer doldrums. Guild poaching is the act of actively recruiting another guilds members, and usually the better geared or better playing members. To make matters worse, it's usually done by top progression guilds who treat the smaller or less progressed guilds as a minor league whom they can farm talent from at will. Most of the time these guilds are trying to replace retiring players, but just occasionally the tactic is used offensively to halt or stymie progress in competing guilds.

No one can make anyone leave a guild and join another, but if the price is right they usually will given the chance. And personally I'm not in favor of that sort of thing. I have no beef with someone leaving a guild of their own accord, but I do with another guild actively recruiting players out of someone else's raid.

24-hour extended maintenance for many today

2010-06-08T07:51:00.002-04:00

Today is not just any maintenance Tuesday. Today is the mega-maintenance day in which Blizzard will be performing maintenance on select realms for at least 24-hours. While they don’t tell us these things, one can only assume they’re performing hardward replacement and network upgrades, along with the normal maintenance that happens on Tuesday. Blizzard performed similar maintenance prior to Burning Crusade and as far as we know haven’t significantly upgraded the servers since. I’m simultaneously happy my realm isn’t on the current list to be upgraded today, and dreading the fact that that day is coming in the future because 24-hours is a very long down time and Tuesday is a prime raiding night for us.

Elemental vs Balance inequities

2010-06-07T10:09:00.003-04:00

I really enjoyed my day of Elemental Shaman PVP yesterday and it’s made me all the more interested in gearing up with better gear. And if anything it’s also given me insight into the class inequities between the Balance Druid and the Elemental Shaman. I say inequities specifically because now that I’ve taken my head out of the sand and started PVPing as Elemental I can already see several instances where Blizzard hasn’t balanced out these two hybrid classes well enough. I survived several fights yesterday as Elemental I know I would have died in as Balance and I’m wearing Hateful/Naax-10 gear on my Shaman and wearing Wrathful/Relentless and a couple pieces of Furious on my Druid’s Balance suit. Being able to drop a rooting earth bind totem, drop a trailing Grounding totem to suck up any spell if necessary, and insta-ghost wolf is pure win. Tremor totem is just the icing on the cake because I can’t even begin to tell you how annoying having a Lock or Priest come in and fear me about until I’m dead. Obviously I can’t avoid all of that but having Tremor totem available in addition to my trinket helps out tremendously.

Druids are more mobile, and travel form break all roots with the exception of two whereas Ghost wolf doesn’t. But Elemental Shaman lose no offensive capabilities when having to heal whereas the Balance Druid does. A Balance Druid has to drop out of Moonkin form in order to heal, losing 5% crit, additional spell power conversion, and armor. Elemental Shaman have much higher burst DPS as well with the synergy between Flameshock and Lavaburst. Balance Druids have to front load their DPS with IS and MF before beginning casts of Wrath hoping for an early Lunar Eclipse. My problem has always been that I don’t normally ever stand around in one place long enough to use Lunar Eclipse. I rarely use Starfire unless I’m in a big group. When I’m on my own or in a small group I’m casting Wrath and moving as much as possible. And all that movement severely restricts access to my Eclipse effects. As no other class’s DPS is boosted to the extent Eclipse does for Balance Druids that requirement for movement impacts them much more than it does Elemental Shaman. Elemental Shaman need only stop, cast Flame Shock then follow up with a Lavaburst before moving on. Casting Lightning bolt or Chain Lightning are incidental really.

There are so many additional factors I could talk about and maybe I’ll do that in a series of posts rather than make this one too long. But I did want to mention just one final factor in this post regarding the differences between Thunderstorm and Typhoon. I’m going to have to check the tooltips, but my observations are that the knockback from Typhoon are more limited than those I see from Thunderstorm. I have absolutely no trouble blowing people off the cliff at the AB lumber mill with Thunderstorm but I do with Typhoon. One of my favorite tactics yesterday was to run with the crowd to the lumber mill and hang back just a little so I can come in behind the scrum around the flag and use Thunderstorm to clear the area. It’s very funny to watch bodies flying through the air off the cliff. Thunderstorm is uni-directional while Typhoon is mono-directional so the least Blizzard could do is fix Typhoon so that it works at least as good as Thunderstorm does.

It's time for a new project

2010-06-06T22:27:00.000-04:00

I like achievements but some times I get a little burned out pursuing them. That isn't to say that I won't continue to peck away at various achievements on my Paladin and my Druid but during those times I'm just not feeling it I need something else to do. Normally I PVP but I've got a a near full Wrathful/Relentless on my Ret Paladin and have a full Wrathful/Relentless Resto suit, a partial Wrathful/Relentless Balance suit, and a partial Wrathful/Relents Feral suit on my Druid. All the upgrades I need on either character will only come with arena points now, and as I'm already doing the daily pvp match most of my honor just goes to buying gems. And frankly I don't need any more gold. What I need is another character to play with.

I have my 80 Rogue but I just never really did get into him. He's fun to play around on every once in a while but if I'm going to take on a project I want it to be thoroughly enjoyable. Not just fun every once in a while. I also have a 77 Warlock that I could never get into, my 80 DK, and my 80 Shaman. The lock falls into the same category as my Rogue and quite frankly I'm over my DK. I still like the class but I grew tired of the constant major changes every patch. It's why I switched mains to my Paladin in the first place last Summer. So I find myself playing on my Shaman who I haven't played on since the beginning on WotLK. He was the character I was playing at the start of WotLK and who I had to bench to play my DK when the raid needed additional melee. I intend to gear him out first as Elemental, then dual-spec him and get him geared for either Enhancement which I haven't played since BC.

I have to say I'm having a bit of fun doing this. Didn't have much experience in PVP on my Shaman, but I can remember when I played him at the beginning on WotLK how frustrating it was to play him in any BG. I was always so easily killed and I felt very tied to a point on the ground where I dropped my totems. This time around I was determined to figure out what I was doing wrong because I see Elemental Shaman in BGs all over the place. And I see them rockin the world. Right off the bat I can see I should treat Storm, Earth and Fire and Improved Ghost Wolf talents as essential. Dropping an Earthbind totem that can root and instant cast Ghostwolf form are keys to mobility. And mobility is the key to survival as Elemental on the battlefield.

Now all I have to do is get some better PVP gear. Right now I'm wearing a mix of hateful and Naax-10 gear. I don't currently strike much fear in any BG but given a week or two I'll be changing that.

LOTRO going F2P

2010-06-05T11:19:00.001-04:00

Apparently business has been good enough for Turbine's DDO in the past seven months for them to also make the jump for LOTRO as well. You just know many other developers are watching this closely. I'd still like to see the financials for DDO, but Turbine wouldn't be making the change unless it made true business sense at this point. I never played LOTRO and never played DDO, but once it goes F2P I just might try out LOTRO. I've always been a tremendous Tolkien fan but was never entranced enough about LOTRO to pay a monthly subscription. Now that that impediment is being removed I just might give it a look, though I do still have misgivings about the F2P model. You will always be second guessing the developers why specific development decisions are being made, and why game play is exactly as it is. Are game decisions being made to force you into paying for items from the cash shop (of course they are) or not? You can play the game free, but is it unnecessarily grindy because they want you spending money in the cash shop? I tend to not like that very much.

Haste, oh how I hate thee

2010-06-04T17:02:00.000-04:00

delving back into progression raiding on my Druid again brings up some very painful choices for me. Previously I only ran a weekend ICC-25 and we generally killed the same bosses every week, so the only upgrade I really expected or desired was the token off Saurfang. Having three Sanctified pieces now, I actually had very little that I was looking for outside of the badges themselves. But the 10-man progression raiding I've gotten back into changes that a bit. Seeing new bosses and doing heroic content means I now have access to new gear and can improve. The problem is if I stick with my T10 pieces, all the off-tier pieces have hit, crit, or haste on them. And I'm already over budget on hit and haste. additional haste is bad. Horribly bad for me as my current raw haste (424) and my talents combine to make a problem casting Wrath when Heroism is used. My Wrath casys are .7 or .8 seconds under Heroism and depending on lag can cause me to actually miss casts as I have to contend with GCD. Starfire is another matter as Heroism drops my cast time from 2 seconds to 1.6 seconds, but whether I'm under Lunar Eclipse or not is completely at the mercy of RNG.

So, needless to say I can afford little additional haste, and I generally won't even consider pieces with haste on it. The problem is that as 3 of my 5 tier pieces have haste on them and the other two have hit. Unless I want to replace my tier pieces, losing the set bonuses, I have an extremely small number of off pieces I can choose from. Cataclysm is reportedly going to fix the situation yet that's months away. What's a poor Moonkin to do before then? Not a whole lot, it appears.

10-man ICC progression

2010-06-03T11:27:00.000-04:00

Ahh, the feeling of progression! I had gone through a bit of a rut the past several weeks where I essentially stopped caring about raiding and about progression. I’d grudgingly accepted that I’d seen about as much of the end-game as I was going to see and that was that. However, the past two weeks I’ve begun aggressively seeking out additional raiding opportunities on both of my main characters and it’s paid off quite well so far with my Druid. I hadn’t been running 10-man’s for quite some time but last week I started looking for solid, static, 10-man teams I could join. I was able to join a group over the weekend on my Druid that was trying to finish up. All that was left was Sindragosa and the Lich King. We killed Sindragosa and got a few attempts in on the Lich King as well. Then a friend came through with a raid invite last night and I finally got into some heroic content. We cleared the first wing by one-shotting the first three bosses then killing Saurfang on the third attempt. We also one-shotted Festergut and Rotface before I finally had to leave. There was a lot of talk about people wanting to stabilize the group as there had apparently been quite a few people switched in an out, kill Arthas on normal mode as only one person in the group had actually done that, and get back into heroic mode on those farm-status bosses for the better loot. Hopefully I’ll be part of that as I was number one on the over-all DPS and always placed highly on the individual boss kills. Not to mention I bring the combat rez. I’m scheduled to join a 10-man group on my Paladin starting Friday night as well, so it looks like I will be seeing some much desired progression on them both in the coming weeks.

What's a little 5% worth anyway?

2010-05-30T09:56:00.000-04:00

Perhaps a great deal actually. This week Blizzard increased the passive buff an additional 5% to 20% in ICC. Between that, and a new strategy on Putricide we finally downed him Thursday night. And as luck would have it, we also then went on to "kill" Dreamweaver as well. Nearing the end of our raid time we wanted to get in an attempt or two on Sindragosa to see what that fight was all about but it was pretty clear on the first attempt that very few actually knew anything about the fight. Thursday night was a good night but unfortunately the guild needed me to DPS on the Putricide fight, so I didn't get my Unholy Infusion for my Shadowmourne quest chain completed.

It would have been interesting to have thought of our new strategy and tried it out before the 5% increase. I'm pretty sure we have the DPS to have done it without the additional buff as our problems with Putricide have always been about people dieing to the Maleable Goo. Some of that can't be avoided, like when you're targeted by the green sludge and Maleable Goo is thrown at or near you. Having the goo go off near you and being hit by the green sludge will almost always kill you, but outside of that people continue to be hit and killed by the Maleable Goo which is nothing more than an indication of them not paying attention.

What we changed is that during phase 1 and 2 no one stands in the center. During phase 1 and 2 the ranged and healers stand in a group on the table side of the room and Putricide is tanked near where the green sludge spawns. When he's about to throw out choking gas bombs the tank will kite him into the middle where they can be dropped safely. The melee remain where Putricide was being tanked and can resume DPS as soon as he's brought back. During phase 3 the ranged all move into the center and Putricide is kited from as near his table along the outer wall and around to the entrance as slowly as possible. The only thing that has to be reacted to during phase 3 is the RNG part of where he throws the slime puddles.

Sith Warrior Vignette released

2010-05-29T10:40:00.001-04:00

I do so love these vignettes Bioware has been releasing the past few months. While short, this one gives flesh to what we've already known about the Sith Warrior class. And as a bonus, adding to it is more detail about the sub-specializations -- the Marauder and the Juggernaut! The Marauder would be synonomous with WoW's Fury Warriors and the Juggernaut is the tank.

I am really that old

2010-05-24T17:14:00.000-04:00

Not only did I see The Empire Strikes Back when it originally hit the theaters, but I also saw the Star Wars when it hit the theaters in 1977 as well. To commemorate me being that old Bioware is bringing Hoth to a SWTOR near you!

Frustration, your name is Professor Putricide

2010-05-23T15:51:00.001-04:00

I've lamented on many occasions my guilds systemic progression problems but had resigned myself to the fact I'm unlikely to see Arthas let alone get any further. After today however, I'm boiling over with frustration. I've had a great deal of trouble with keeping my alt-a-holism, but for the most part I play just two characters -- my Paladin as my main and my Druid as my alt. I raid regularly on my Pally but only PUG a 25-man raid on my Druid on the weekend in a semi-permanent group. In that raid there's a static core with probably half the raid being PUGS (friends and whoever). Today we killed the first four bosses in an hour flat, then went on to one shot Festergut and Rotface and kill Putricide in three attempts. And it only took three attempts because the first attempt ended in a wipe when someone new cleansed the Abom (twice!).

I play Boomkin on my Druid and this was only the second time I've seen Putricide on him. The first time was months ago in another PUG, and as I'm normally melee in this fight all I had to do differently was to make sure and duck the maleable goo. Zero problems with that. And I don't even use AVR which is why I'm so frustrated right now because our casters getting hit and killed by the goo are the only reason we haven't killed Putricide yet.

WTB casters that actually have some situational awareness!!

Jay Mohr at Blizzcon 2010

2010-05-22T15:46:00.000-04:00

I met this news with a bit of trepidation because I truly felt he was horrible last year. Not only was he not funny last year but you could plainly see he wasn't the least bit interested in being there. His entire routine was delivered with a deadpan voice and without much visible emotion. He was bored and his routine reflected it. And to reward him Blizzard brings him back.

./golfclap

Doldrums or something else entirely

2010-05-16T16:32:00.000-04:00

I'm still not completely convinced the "doldrums" have begun this year, but I have noticed a very distinct and deep dissatisfaction with the state of the game percolating among segments of the player population. You can read it on the forums, see it in the people who have gone missing, and hear about it trade and general chat. Whether it's boredom or dissatisfaction with the direction the game has taken, clearly something is going on. I'm experiencing some of that myself. I've mentioned many times that I've been put off by the constant changing nature of end-game raiding, not to mention my own guilds systemic problems with progression. Outside of raiding the only options for entertainment are PVP, socializing (pay $15 a month to sit around and do nothing but talk to people?), and questing/achievements. I PVP with great regularity, though my interest in PVP ebbs and flows. And quite frankly there just isn't a great deal for me to do in PVP right now, other than complete remaining achievements on my Druid and my Paladin, and upgrade the last few pieces of their suits to Relentless pieces. I do my daily PVP matches on both characters and maybe a few additional to earn honor for gems, but that's about it these days.

While I tend to chase achievements, a lot of other people aren't all that interested in doing that. Where I have objectives in game to occupy my time, others get restless and despondent and stop playing. And usually before they get to that final point they express their boredom and displeasure on the forum or in chat. Fortunately for me, WoW is a theme-park and offers developed content. If this were a fantasy skinned version of Star Wars Galaxies I'm sure I'd have been gone long ago too. Though I still like WoW very much, like many others, it is getting old for me. I've noticed myself being restless from time to time and I have been giving a lot of consideration to other games. Star Trek Online didn't pan out but I'm sincerely hoping Star Wars: The Old Republic does. When the time comes I'll most likely play it along side WoW if I don't change up out right. In the mean time I'll fill in those hours of play time with more achievement hunting and continue to develop my Horde Druid.

Green Proto-Drake

2010-05-11T15:07:00.000-04:00

I never thought I'd get this. My weekly egg hatching had become one of my most detested chores. It surprised me this week.

That's going to leave a mark

2010-05-10T20:35:00.001-04:00

Remember Derek Smart (and)? Well he stepped in some poo over the weekend when Massively ran an embarrassing article about him. But you know you are truly sunk when Lum starts talking smack about you.

Cataclysm Alpha

2010-05-09T19:25:00.000-04:00

We knew it would be soon, and the friends and family alpha is upon us. Earlier in the week we started to see the odd leak or two, but then MMO-Champion unleashed a wave of information on us. Boubouille has always been a font of knowledge in regards to WoW, but I don't recall him ever getting this much information this early in the development cycle before. He's evidently cultivated some very "profitable" relationships with some Blizzard employees. He also had the talent trees up a few days ago but I can't locate those at the moment. Suffice to say that they were very interesting!

PC Games I'm looking forward to this year

2010-05-04T17:10:00.000-04:00

I don't play a lot of PC games these days. But just occasionally there are some that I can't wait to pick up. Including Starcraft 2, which is one of the most anticipated releases that I can ever remember. The original Starcraft has attained something close to legendary status. It's still, a decade later, still a staple in the gaming industry and is all but a national past time in South Korea. A lot is riding on this release.

A lot of people are impatiently waiting it and I'm one of them. The release of Star Craft II which was finally announced yesterday would be released on Jul 27th.

Another game I'm anxiously awaiting is Star Wars: the Force Unleashed 2 which was announced today as being released on Oct 26th! Force Unleashed 1 was a terrific game with stunning visuals and hours of fun game play. Looking forward to playing its sequal.

That Infinity Ward mess is overblown!

2010-05-03T16:45:00.000-04:00

Wedbush's Michael Pachter believes that the Infinity Ward drama has been overblown in the press, creating a media climate that sees the company as "the Evil Empire, with contentious dealings between the company and employees the norm."

Nah, Activision couldn't possibly have done wrong in this case. Of course not. After all, they're the agrieved party here and lost one of the largest money making teams in their empire. Oh, and the'll probably make a cool $500-600 million in the first three months from Star Craft 2.

Children's week 2010

2010-05-02T23:04:00.000-04:00

Last year when I did Children's Week it was on my DK who was my main at the time. I only bothered to get the free pet from Dalaran on other toons. I made a few salient points last year by what I felt was an unfair achievement, and all the same complaints I had then remain today. Blizzard didn't change a single aspect of Children's Week for 2010 other than to roll the Dalaran portion of it into its proper week. Except that's broken at the moment. So Children's Week still asks people who may never have even stepped into a Battleground before to not only do that, but to achieve very specific objectives in them on top of it. It's simply not very fair to ask that in my opinion.

As I said, last year I did it on my DK but I was determined to complete Children's week on my two main characters this year -- my Paladin and my Druid. Children's Week was my final world event for What a Long Strange Trip it's Been for him and I was able to complete Children's Week, and the year-long meta achievement today. I was also able to complete Children's Week on my Paladin, however he still has the MidSummer Festival to complete for the year-long meta. If Children's Week is so hard how was I able to fully complete two characters in a single afternoon? Simple. I'm a heavy PVP'er, know my way around all of the battlegrounds, and I knew specifically where to go to achieve the battleground objectives easiest. It also helped that there were actually some flag/tower trading going on today, though I doubt that will continue indefinitely.

If you know what you are doing, AV isn't bad at all. Skip the first tower completely at IB and go for TP or run all the way to Frost Wolf. Most people will stop to fight Galv or take IB tower or Tower Point automatically removing some of your competition. That may, or may not be enough though if you take a less efficient route or get stuck on obstacles along the way. AB is only slightly less easy as your best bet is to run strait for the Stables flag. But as most people will probably be doing that as well you can head for the mine or the lumbar mill instead. If you see no opponents at your location it boils down to whoever is fastest to the flag. But if you do have opponents it boils down to whoever can sneak off to the flag first. If you can stealth do it. Wait for an opportune moment and sneak into the flag when others are fighting, or wait to recap it if it's taken by the other side and no one is looking. Whatever you do, just make sure you have your orphan out when you do it otherwise you won't get credit.

EotS and WSG are going to be the hardest of the four to complete, with WSG possibly being the toughest. If you can find a match where a nice opposing member will pick up the flag and then drop it for people to return and who also won't be killed by an over zealous team mate, you're in like Flynn. Otherwise you have to do it the hard way by actually killing the flag runner and then being in the right place to return the flag once it's dropped, and be the quickest to do so. EotS is just slightly less annoying, except there's one central location to get the flag and everyone trying to get it all at once. Unlike WSG where there just might be a little team work going on with the opposing side, there is no such thing going on in EoTS. Its every man for himself and everyone out for himself all at once. Good luck being the lucky one standing mid-field trying to grab the flag, avoiding area damage, and being quicker than everyone else.

In relation to other battleground achievements during world events where they generally only require you to obtain X number of honorable kills, this world event requires you to obtain specific objectives that are many times more difficult. We can discuss the specific difficulty of the achievement, but when you compare it against all the others and against the back drop that the meta takes an entire year to complete in the first place, doesn't it seem very out of place? Not to mention just a little bit inappropriate considering much of the audience?

Activision finally does evil

2010-04-29T13:33:00.000-04:00

Things sure have been getting interesting at Activision lately. Weeks ago we saw word that Activision fired their shining stars at Infinity Ward – developers of the wildly popular Modern Warfare series. And in recent days we’ve seen a flurry of accusations regarding intrusive and abrasive interrogation sessions where Activision sequestered the leaders and threatened to fire them for insubordination if they didn’t answer the questions or left. They also reportedly threatened to fire them if they attempted to answer the questions naturally put to them from their other staff members about the happenings. Activision, reading reports by Infinity Ward staff, created an atmosphere of uncertainty, fear, and worry throughout this period and wielded that atmosphere like a club. In fact Activision must have known their actions would result in the resignations of many of the staff because they changed their bonus policy during this time so that any who left would forfeit their earnings from the Modern Warfare 2 release.

Although details are sketchy it does sound as if Activision had at least a modicum of justification to go after as they were reportedly shopping their talents around to other publishers. Apparently wanting to work on new IP when your current publisher only wants you to milk the existing IP. Activision isn’t interested in a project unless it’s something they can release annually and will generate at least $100 million dollars. There is something to be said for the boss calling the shots, so to speak. But individuals have the right to decide for themselves where they will work and in this case Activision apparently found out their shining stars were casting glances abroad and created an incident in order to justify keeping millions of dollars that they would otherwise have had to pay to the Infinity Ward staff. Of course the plan seems to have backfired as all but 12 of the Infinity Ward staff have left Activision, and at least some of the remaining 12 may have already, or are in the process of leaving too. Of course the end result is Activision sueing Infinity Ward and Infinity Ward sueing Activision.

What is Activision to do when one of their big profit meal tickets jump ship? Find a new meal ticket apparently. News comes today that Activision has inked a 10-year deal with Bungie to develop new projects. Bungie will remain independent, with Activision serving as publisher/distributor. While the court battles between Infinity Ward and Activision will roll along for years, Activision is showing that to them Infinity Ward was so “yesterday”.

Latest developer blog highlights combat in SWTOR

2010-04-28T14:52:00.002-04:00

Last week Bioware released a surprise developer video showcasing information about combat in SWTOR. The video included scenes we’ve seen previously but it did include a handful of scenes that we hadn’t yet seen, including one of a Sith Warrior fighting two Jedi and using an explosive Force Push to propel the two Jedi off a ledge. That was truly magnificent and made me laugh as visuals swam through my mind of Shaman and Druids using the same sort of mechanics to propel attackers and defenders alike off the cliff in AB and off the land bridge in EoTS in WoW. I can see how that might be a very fun ability in SWTOR as well. While much of the developer video illustrates information we already knew it was still interesting to hear them discuss the ideals behind the combat system and then see a few select scenes highlighting specific abilities of the classes.

Of course my favorite was the scene with the Sith Inquisitor using a devastating Force Lightning area attack to kill three attackers. But next on my list was a dervish ability used by a Jedi Counselor to ward off attacks by two Sith Warriors. That looked truly amazing and made me realize all the more there is still so much about the classes that we don’t know. Bioware has said they want to veer away from the holy trinity of classes and we’ve now seen several instances of classes using specific abilities that lends some credence to them having done exactly that. In typical MMOs the holy trinity of healer, tank, and dps classes creates relationships between the classes as no one class can do everything. Players are thusly encouraged (required) to group and play with others for mutual benefit. But that works best in a more open, traditional MMO whereas SWTOR is expected to be more attuned to individual game play and will be highly instanced.

Healers are highly defensive in the sense they can heal themselves or shield themselves from damage but generally have limited offensive abilities. They’re primarily responsible for healing others in a group. Tanks are highly defensive in the sense their abilities are generally aligned to reduce or shield themselves from damage, but have limited offensive abilities and usually have no or limited means to heal themselves. DPS classes are typically all about offense and have limited defensive capabilities and either no, or limited means to heal themselves. Many MMOs have what are called hybrid classes, which do not fit any one of the typical roles in the holy trinity, but rather have abilities pulled from two or all three of the roles. Balance is maintained (arguably) by limiting the abilities to some level shy of a corresponding ability in a pure class. Blizzard calls it the “hybrid tax” in WoW. Bioware appears to be developing classes to be all hybrids, which really isn’t as much of a stretch in MMO development as many people took their statement to believe, not realizing there really isn’t anything new under the sun in terms of class role creation. When you shear away all the fluff from a class there truly is only three things you can do with it. Tank (absorb damage and shield others from it), Heal (self explanatory), or DPS (also self-explanatory).

Hybrid classes are terrific in enabling a more solo-istic game play style, and removes many of the requirements that force group or cooperative play. It’s a theme we’re seeing more and more often in recent MMOs as developers are coming to grips with the real desires of those playing MMOs. Players, by and large, want a world where they can group with others and play cooperatively, but do not want to be hobbled and required to do so at all times. Bioware is simply following the trend. I’d expect content to be the determinant in regards to group cooperative play being required or not. The class story will probably be mostly solo-able as will much of the planet and other story-arcs. But there will be content that you will need to group for.

In the case of the video we see a DPS class (Sith Warrior) using a decidedly defensive ability that I can only assume will have some kind of stun or root mechanic appended to it. When coupled with the known force rush ability and strong offensive attack abilities can be used to effectively deal with multiple attackers quickly. The class also has defensive capabilities like parry and dodge that are MMO combat mechanic staples and can only assume the class will have other niche abilities. And we can assume the Jedi has the same abilities, though perhaps presented differently. What isn’t known yet is the level to which each class can heal itself.

In the case of the Jedi Inquisitor, we see what has been called a ranged/support class, use a strong defensive melee ability (dervish). In another scenes we also see a Jedi Counselor use a force push ability to debilitate an attacker by raising him in the air and slamming him back to the ground. If we assume the Counselor and the Inquisitor are roughly analogous to each other we have two support classes that have a bevy of defensive and offensive abilities available to them but we have not yet seen their healing abilities though Bioware has indicated they will have them. The classes are primarily ranged so you’d expect these classes to be standing in the back either attacking or healing their party members.

Much the same for the remaining four classes – Imperial Agent, Bounty Hunter, Smuggler, and Republic Trooper. Each has been shown to have a bevy of offensive and defensive abilities but information on their individual ability to heal themselves is yet to be known.

Right now is a very trying time in the MMO development cycle. The marketing machine is in full swing, creating hype everywhere it can get its message out to; the “community” is in overdrive attempting to find out more about the game and in discussing the pros and cons of various game elements; and the developers are still working on key aspects of the game and will be able to release details only slowly. We’re still undoubtedly about a year away from release, so the beta period probably won’t even begin until some time this Summer when we could expect to start hearing a little more about abilities, mechanics, and game play.

Blizzard releases raiding and emblem plans for Cataclysm

2010-04-27T12:00:00.000-04:00

Blizzard released a bit of new news regarding raiding in Cataclysm yesterday, along with information about how “emblems” will be handled. After having digested the news regarding raiding I’m going to have to come down on the side of disappointment. Blizzard seems to be addressing in a roundabout way, problem with current 25-man raiding when you can’t gather enough people. But as the 10 and 25-man content will share raid lock outs what they’re actually doing is scuttling options and limiting the number of “emblems” you can earn in any given week. Here is the Blizzard plan regarding raid content:

We're continuing to refine the raid progression paths in Cataclysm, and we'd like to share some of those changes with you today. Please enjoy!

The first of the refinements being made is that we're combining all raid sizes and difficulties into a single lockout. Unlike today, 10- and 25-player modes of a single raid will share the same lockout. You can defeat each raid boss once per week per character. In other words, if you wanted to do both a 10- and 25-person raid in a single week, you’d need to do so on two different characters. Normal versus Heroic mode will be chosen on a per-boss basis in Cataclysm raids, the same way it works in Icecrown Citadel. Obviously the raid lockout change doesn't apply in pure Icecrown terms though, as this change goes hand-in-hand with a few other changes to raid progression in Cataclysm.

We're designing and balancing raids so that the difficulty between 10- and 25-player versions of each difficulty will be as close as possible to each other as we can achieve. That closeness in difficulty also means that we'll have bosses dropping the same items in 10- and 25-player raids of each difficulty. They'll have the same name and same stats; they are in fact the exact same items. Choosing Heroic mode will drop a scaled-up version of those items. Our hope is that players will be able to associate bosses with their loot tables and even associate specific artwork with specific item names to a far greater extent than today.

Dungeon Difficulty and Rewards
10 and 25-player (Normal difficulty) -- Very similar to one another in difficulty; drop the exact same items as each other.
10 and 25-player (Heroic difficulty) -- Very similar to one another in difficulty; drop more powerful versions of the normal-difficulty items.

We of course recognize the logistical realities of organizing larger groups of people, so while the loot quality will not change, 25-player versions will drop a higher quantity of loot per player (items, but also badges, and even gold), making it a more efficient route if you're able to gather the people. The raid designers are designing encounters with these changes in mind, and the class designers are making class changes to help make 10-person groups easier to build. Running 25-player raids will be a bit more lucrative, as should be expected, but if for a week or two you need to do 10s because half the guild is away on vacation, you can do that and not suffer a dramatic loss to your ability to get the items you want.

We recognize that very long raids can be a barrier for some players, but we also want to provide enough encounters for the experience to feel epic. For the first few raid tiers, our plan is to provide multiple smaller raids. Instead of one raid with eleven bosses, you might have a five-boss raid as well as a six-boss raid. All of these bosses would drop the same item level gear, but the dungeons themselves being different environments will provide some variety in location and visual style, as well as separate raid lockouts. Think of how you could raid Serpent shrine Cavern and Tempest Keep separately, but you might still want to hit both every week.

We do like how gating bosses over time allows the community to focus on individual encounters instead of just racing to the end boss, so we’re likely to keep that design moving forward. We don't plan to impose attempt limitations again though, except maybe in cases of rare optional bosses (like Algalon). Heroic mode may not be open from day one, but will become available after defeating normal mode perhaps as little as once or twice.

In terms of tuning, we want groups to be able to jump into the first raids pretty quickly, but we also don’t want them to overshadow the Heroic 5-player dungeons and more powerful quest rewards. We’ll be designing the first few raid zones assuming that players have accumulated some blue gear from dungeons, crafted equipment, or quest rewards. In general, we want you and your guild members to participate in and enjoy the level up experience.

We design our raids to be accessible to a broad spectrum of players, so we want groups to be able to make the decision about whether to attempt the normal or Heroic versions of raids pretty quickly. The goal with all of these changes is to make it as much of a choice or effect of circumstance whether you raid as a group of 10 or as a group of 25 as possible. Whether you're a big guild or a small guild the choice won't be dependent on what items drop, but instead on what you enjoy the most.

We realize that with any changes to progression pathways there are going to be questions. We're eagerly awaiting any that we may have left unanswered. To the comments!

Here are some clarifications to a few common questions we're seeing.

Regarding how the raid dungeons will share the same lockout. This means that you cannot do separate instances in the same week. If you defeat an encounter in 10 player normal mode then you are locked to the 10 player mode of that dungeon for that week and can flip between 10 player normal and 10 player heroic on a per boss basis (assuming heroic is available). In this scenario you cannot do the 25 player version. Is this correct?

Correct. There should be no circumstances under which you kill a boss more than once per week on the same character. However, in the same way that you can decide on a per-boss basis whether to try normal vs. hard mode, we might allow you to change between 10 and 25 on a per-encounter basis for additional flexibility. If you started a raid in 25-player mode and then found that you couldn’t get everyone together later in the week, you might be able to downsize the next few bosses to 10-player.

Will legendary items be available through 10 player dungeons? How about special mounts like Invincible?

In some of these specific cases, the answer is that we just don’t know yet. We’re going to have to walk a fine line between dropping the same items in both 10- and 25-player modes, versus still offering something extra for the 25s. If we over-reward the 25s, then players who like 10-player raiding will still feel compelled to find more warm bodies. If we don’t provide any extra incentive for 25s, then some players may stop playing with their friends in order to avoid the extra organization required for a large raid.

Overall, our goal is that you make the decision between whether to raid with 10 players or 25 players based on what you find fun and not because of the reward structure.

For perspective, it might help to look back at how we changed lockouts and hard modes on every single raid tier of Wrath of the Lich King to see what felt right and try to fix problems that arose from previous tiers. After seeing the first tier of Cataclysm raiding, we may decide to adjust our design for the next tier.

How many pieces of loot will drop for 10 and 25 player modes respectively?

When we say “25 should drop more loot,” we’re just sharing a philosophy. You shouldn’t assume that this means that 10-player modes will drop 1 item or that 25-player modes will drop 6 items, or whatever. We haven’t finalized how much loot will drop, but our general goal is that 25s should drop more to help make up for some of the logistical cost.

Will achievements be broken down by 10/25 modes? Will realm first achievements/titles be only for 25s? Will meta-achievement mounts be available for both versions still?

There will just be raid achievements, not 10- vs. 25-player versions in most cases. The achievement won’t care if you complete it in 10s or 25s. If we do meta-achievement mounts, it’s possible we’d still have different colors of mounts, or maybe even different mounts; but for some players that might mean that 25s feels mandatory again, which would be a potential problem. This is the kind of thing we’re going to have to consider carefully, and again, we might try a few different implementations before sticking with something we like.

We’re also not sure about realm first achievements or titles. We don’t want to encourage, say, 25-player focused guilds to run a 10-player raid instead because they think that will get them the ream first title faster. One potential solution is you can earn a realm first title in 10 or 25, but not both. These types of achievements also serve as great content for guild achievements.

10 and 25-man content will share the same weekly lockout, meaning you could move back and forth between 25-man and 10-man raids and be at he same point. The intent seems to be to give options to guilds that might have trouble with raid attendance during the week. If you raid on a Tuesday night, but then are missing a few people on Thursday you’d have the option of continuing on in 10-man instead. The problem with this is two-fold – the excess players that were on the 25-man run would be saved and wouldn’t have the option of running a new 10-man that week. Their progression would effectively be over for the week. And secondly I believe the effect on raiding will be to kill 25-man raiding and make the new default the 10-man runs. Blizzard more or less acknowledged this by saying 25-man raids will be more “lucrative” than the 10-man raids as the bosses will drop more gold. The bosses in 25-man will drop more loot quantitatively, but not qualitatively. Depending on how much more loot they drop exactly, this may or may not be true in a real sense, but if it takes just as long in 25-man to obtain loot that isn’t much of an incentive to over come the problem regarding the lockout timers. In WotLK it’s become a normal activity to run a character through 10-man and 25-man runs each week, at least until the character gets to the point where they no longer need any additional emblems and have obtained enough 25-man loot. That will no longer be case in Cataclysm.

Of course the discussion regarding raiding would not be complete without also understanding Blizzard's plan for emblems in Cataclysm:

We're continuing to refine the badge/emblem and PvP point systems in Cataclysm and we'd like to share some of those changes with you today. Please enjoy!

Our primary goal when approaching badges in Cataclysm is to address a lot of the confusion that comes with these currency systems. To that end we're changing badges to a more straightforward point system, similar to the ones we've used for a while for Arenas and Battlegrounds. There will be a total of four types of points you can earn in Cataclysm (two for PvE and two for PvP), and these will remain the same even as we introduce new content.

Here's the breakdown:

PvE

* Hero Points -- Low-tier, easier-to-get PVE points. Maximum cap to how many you can own, but no cap to how quickly you can earn them. Earned from most dungeons. (most like the current Emblem of Triumph)
* Valor Points -- High-tier, harder-to-get PvE points. Maximum cap to how many you can own, as well as a cap to how many you can earn per week. Earned from Dungeon Finder daily Heroic and from raids. (most like the current Emblem of Frost)

PvP

* Honor Points -- Low-tier, easier-to-get PVP points. There will be a maximum cap to how many you can own, but no cap to how quickly you can earn them. Earned from most PvP activities.
* Conquest Points -- High-tier, harder-to-get PvP points. There will be a maximum cap to how many you can own, and a cap to how many you can earn per week. Earned from winning Rated Battlegrounds or Arenas. (currently called Arena Points)

When a new tier of raiding gear is released or a new PvP season begins, your higher tier of points will be converted into the lower tier. For instance, if a new tier of raid gear is released, your Valor points will be converted to Hero points, and similarly if a new PvP season begins your Conquest points will be converted to Honor points. Of course that means with these new releases you'll always begin without any of the higher tier of points, and thus be unable to stockpile them.

As noted for Conquest points, the Rated Battlegrounds and Arenas will be sharing this same point type. Because of that, it will in fact be possible to get the best PvP items without setting foot in Arena; however, more powerful armor and weapons will of course require more Conquest points, so players who win their matches more often will still gear up faster. We're removing personal rating requirements on almost all items; they're definitely removed for weapons. We might offer a few items to the absolute best players based on personal rating, largely as cosmetic or 'bragging rights' type items. And you'll have the option of purchasing the previous season's gear with the more readily available Honor points.

We do plan to have a way to convert Honor points (PvP) into Hero points (PvE), and vice versa, at a loss. The conversions will be possible, but it won't be a 1:1 rate, and you'll have fewer points after the conversion process. We won't allow the higher tiers to be exchanged for each other, however.

To explain the reasoning for the weekly cap on points for the higher tiers, this is to provide flexibility in how players choose to earn the points without feeling like they have to do all of the content as often as it is available. If your Valor income from raiding is sufficient, you may not feel the need to run Dungeon Finder every night, or perhaps even at all. Likewise, a PvP player could choose to participate in a lot of Rated Battlegrounds but no Arenas, or focus on both, and still be able to earn the points they want.

We realize that with any changes to progression pathways there are going to be questions. We're eagerly awaiting any that we may have left unanswered. To the comments!

I'm happy to see that Blizzard is finally fixing the complicated emblem mess they created in WotLK, but the involuntary caps that are ostensibly being put into place for flexibilities sake are ridiculous. The end effect between the raid content changes and emblem changes is an additional level of gating that will occur on a progression based game. It will all act as a sea-anchor that will slow down completion of content. The problem is we don't know what Blizzard will be introducing to replace that ability to access and complete content. As WoW has become a very regimented form of progression theme-park you can't take away something without replacing it with something else. Otherwise the masses will grow even more restless than we see today and that would seemingly be the opposite of Blizzard's intention with these changes to begin with.

Druid 60-70

2010-04-26T11:39:00.000-04:00

If I had just one thing to say about the level 60 to 70 bracket it would continue to be that Death Knights should not be allowed to tank until at least level 70. And quite possibly not even then. I did hit level 70 yesterday morning but there were times along the way from 60 to 70 where I was seriously questioning whether I would ever see 70. While I did quest over the weekend in Hellfire Peninsula (I never made it out of the zone before 70), the dungeon finder would pop quickly enough that I'd rarely get to finish one quest and move onto another before I'd be pulled into a group. Which is pretty awesome in and of itself, but one thing it opened my eyes to was the amount of people who have recently created DKs. I'm not normally one to generalize about a class like this, but I can definitely see the point many people have long been making about the class now. Starting at level 58 and then generally moving strait into Outlands does not give you the time it takes to really learn how to play your class. At that point in your play you really only know the generalities of the class and its rotations and you aren't in a position to tank well. Which of course isn't to say I didn't actually see a couple good DK tanks here and there, but most of what I saw was just abysmal.

My general dungeon experience over the weekend was that I had a DK on about 60-70% of my runs, with a majority of those not being able to hold agro on groups. A great many of them didn't drop Death and Decay or use Pestilence to spread their diseases and I'd end up healing most of the party. I got through it, but what particularly galled me was that most of these tanks were so completely oblivious to anything but themselves that they wouldn't pay attention to my mana situation and would run off to the next group while I was still drinking. In a lot of those situations I'd be able to catch up in time and blow a swift mend cool down in time and give myself an opportunity to heal them up. But on many other occasions it would result in a wipe and despite my stern lecture to many of these tanks to pay attention to the healers mana they'd generally do whatever it was they felt like doing regardless. It didn't help matters that of all the tanks, DKs tend to take more damage and require more healing that others, so needless to say it was a relatively stressful leveling experience over the weekend.

It was strange because all of my experiences prior to this character were leveled without the benefit of the new LFG system. So I have general expectations that I should be in a particular zone by a specific level. I found it very interesting that I was level 68 and still in Hellfire Peninsula. Between dungeon runs and battlegrounds I earned so much XP that it simply didn't matter whether I moved on or not. Completing quests, I think, is now more about earning gold than earning XP and in that light it's probably better to hold off on completing quests until level 80 (if you can) when the pay outs for the quests increases.

In so far as tools go, Feral has everything it needs by level 60 to be quite successful, whether you pick up Berserk or not. I didn't, and chose to put my points in elsewhere as I feel Berserk is best left for level 80. All of my talent points post-level 60 went toward gaining additional damage, so I filled in a few talents in the feral tree, but also putting points into the Resto tree as well. Feral has always been the best leveling spec - as far as I'm concerned - but from level 60 on it truly shines. A great ability to dish out DPS, stealth, heal, and greater movement speed all add up to a great package. And the gear you generally get in Outlands only makes it all the better. Being able to now fly in Outland immediately at level 60 makes questing and leveling fantastically easier as you can avoid agroing everything while traveling from one area to another by simply flying over their heads. Simply fly to where you need to go, then drop down near your target and immediately fight. Of course this depends on whether you've put points into Furor or not. If you did you'll switch into cat form and have a full energy bar, otherwise fighting like this will become a bit tedious.

Level 60 is also the beginning of the best period for Resto spec as well. At level 60 you get Wild Growth, which makes healing runs tremendously easier. The only healing tool left to learn that you won't at level 60 is Nourish. Which isn't a big deal as you can just continue to use Regrowth as you've been using it since your earliest levels. From level 60 on all of your talent points should be making individual heals better or cost less mana making you an incrementally better healer. But you can and will run into mana trouble if don't continue to exercise the healing discipline I've mentioned previously. Generally if you only have to heal the tank and use wild growth to heal intermittent group damage you should use very little mana at all. Mana problems, and by that I mean getting down to 50% or so, should only happen if you have to use several regrowths on multiple group members, and also rejuvs and wild growth during any fight. Even on those fights where I was having to heal everyone because the tank couldn't keep agro I was able to keep up my healing throughput and never ran out of mana. When Innervate was available I'd use it and keep on moving with the group, but I would have to drink every now and again under those conditions. My experience might be different from others however, as I already have another Resto Druid and have had years of raid and dungeon healing experience. So I'm fully aware of the stats I need to pay attention to. I carefully weighed all of my upgrades to maximize my spell power and mana regen. If you were in similar situations as I found myself in but hadn't paid all that much attention to your mana regen you might find yourself running out of mana, or not able to keep heals up on everyone during chaotic fights.

Once I hit level 70 I abandoned the Outlands and moved on to Northrend, where I now get to figure out the new quests all over again.

Derek Smart vs. David Allen rd 2

2010-04-23T15:00:00.011-04:00

If there's one thing I've come to expect about the tiff between David Allen and Derek Smart, it's continued drama. Derek Smart certainly delivered over the weekend and I enjoyed reading his public response to the latest bomb from David Allen. I literally couldn't stop reading this last night while I was supposed to be leveling and healing. I found myself HOT'ing up the tank then alt-tabbing out to read another sentence or two before I'd tab back into WoW. I was just that enthralled by the drama. The only thing I was lacking was a good tub of lightly buttered popcorn and some iced tea.

To be honest I really don't know what to think about the dueling accusations. All we have are the competing statements with no real facts, but if things keep heading in the direction they seem to be heading, those will come in time in the form of publicly accessible information submitted to the court. I will say this however; I'm amazed - no, UTTERLY AMAZED - that professionals would be airing all this dirty laundry to the public like this. That Derek Smart is doing it so well, and with such relish, leads me to make assumptions that he is being nothing but truthful. It's the detail he's releasing which makes me think he's more credible than David Allen and keep in mind I don't know either of them. Until now my only real knowledge of Derek Smart was my remembrance of his first game 3000AD back in the 90's. I followed news about it while it was still in development but I never actually played it. I did have a friend that played it and really loved it, and I can recall having enough interest in it that I actually have strong recollections of it today. But I don't remember who the developer(s) were and so I'm not certain if I ever even heard the name Derek Smart until just recently. I've also never heard the name David Allen but a cursory reading indicates he's been associated with at least three melt-downs now. My assumptions lead me to believe that if Derek were saying the things he's saying about David Allen right now, and wasn't being completely honest and forthcoming that his career in the industry would be severely damaged.

Aside from the excoriation of David Allen personally, what I found most amusing in Derek’s posts was about the technologies. Its rare to see a company President cast aspersions about the company’s IP, regardless of whether or not he had a hand in actually creating it or not. That IP has value to the company, yet we see Derek Smart basically saying it’s crap. It would be hard, having said all that, for me to envision much of a future for technologies that millions have been now spent in creating. Which essentially telegraphs that QOL would have to completely start from scratch if they somehow survive their immediate situation and seek to develop new projects in the future. That of course means millions of additional dollars would have to be invested that otherwise might have had to been the case. Derek’s assessment could, probably more realistically, be the nail in the coffin for QOL indicating the real outlook here is to recoup as much of the investment capital as possible and then bail. Not a very encouraging prospect for what I’d assume QOL would like to see – players.

Druid 50-60

2010-04-22T15:28:00.001-04:00

I am amazed at how the LFG system has changed the face of leveling. Normally the 50 bracket was dreadful and the bracket I least enjoyed. It also seemed to take twice as long as any other bracket to complete because of all the travel. Perhaps it's me and simply psychological, but as I've done the leveling thing numerous times in the past It's an opinion I've come to over a long period of time. I hit level 50 Saturday morning and was already level 59 by Monday. While I did complete several quests in the Hinterlands from level 50 to 52, most of my XP came strait from dungeons. I completed other quests in Felwood, and Western Plague lands but all of those combined probably didn't even account for a single level. And I find that just incredible. LFG is, without a doubt, the best update to WoW Blizzard has done. I simply loved it when it was introduced and I was running my two mains through it, but I have a much fuller appreciation of what it's really done for the game.

The Juxtaposition of the level 50 bracket is that you've gotten some incredible new abilities at level 50 if you put your talents in to take advantage of those options, so the play experience for your class is revitalized somewhat. In the case of Feral (cat) I finally got Mangle, which is a huge upgrade over Claw. And in proceeding levels I put talent points in to reduce the energy cost of it, so it became an even better option for me. If you get Mangle at 50 you quickly see that if you were still using Rip, you won't any longer. Rip should be an ability you use only in dungeon runs on bosses, or on elites while questing. Instead you'll quickly find that most mobs will die with Mangle > Mangle > (Mangle >) FB. So not only do you continue to have the lack of downtime while questing, but the speed at which you can kill mobs vastly increases. It's a wonderful time, but truly at level 50 you're just on the cusp of the true experience that is to come. As Resto I got tree form, which gives a nice little buff to my healing ability, but if you were leveling as Balance you got Moonkin form with it's crit buff.

As I said, I hit level 50 Saturday morning and by Monday evening I was level 59. I didn't play on my Horde Druid Tuesday but I hit level 60 yesterday. While I was still doing various quests in Western Plague lands up to level 58, I moved immediately into Hellfire Peninsula at level 58. Incidentally I had forgotten just how much of an item inflation there was on Outland gear. The stats from green quest items I started to pick up in Hellfire Peninsula were 2 to 3 times higher than gear I was wearing from Azeroth. It's an artifact from Vanilla days when Blizzard needed to bring the masses that didn't have access to the restrictive system of raid content at the time, up to par with those who did. That tremendous leap in itemization will undoubtedly be smoothed out in Cataclysm but since that's months away I found myself gleefully taking advantage of it. I also found the questing in Hellfire Peninsula to be quite interesting. I'd done it so many times on Alliance characters that there was a certain amount of novelty doing it now as Horde. Especially on those quests which are diametrically opposed to the Alliance equivalents like the quests to destroy the cannons. I've destroyed the four Horde catapults so many times that it was fun to have to now destroy the two Alliance cannons. Hellfire Peninsula is the first place where you actually being to feel there is a real war, outside of the battle grounds.

I know from extensive prior experience that the leveling experience in Outlands is vastly better than in Azeroth. Even without the LFG system I would expect a much quicker leveling experience. As I recall on my last character I'd leveled through Outlands (my Paladin) I actually hit level 68 in Terrokar Forest, and I'm wondering right now if I'll even make it to Terrokar by level 68 this time around. I'd already hit level 62 last night after only 6 or 7 quests completed in Hellfire Peninsula and an a number of dungeon runs. I still have 10-12 quests in my log from the first two quest hubs, and I know there are many other quests that I haven't even seen yet in the western half of Hellfire. If I continue to work in the way I've been working, which is to quest while queued in LFG, I should be hitting Northrend this weekend for sure and should be heading there from either Terrokar Forest of Zangarmarsh

WoW, Cataclysm and the continuity factor

2010-04-21T14:19:00.000-04:00

It's beginning to be that time in WoW where we annually lament the affect the good weather has on the end-game. By that I speak of the "Doldrums". I'm not entirely prepared to say the Doldrums are beginning this year or that they're in the immediate offing, but last year they started extremely early and the current state of raiding in WoW has me wondering if they might not start as early this year too. We've been having problems with sporadic raid attendance again lately which has caused a few raid cancellations over the past few weeks. I'm not entirely sure that even if we hadn't had to cancel those raids we'd be any further along in our progression though. We're still 7/12 and working on Putricide.

The pervasive progression problems (never finished Ulduar on regular mode or accomplished any of the second half hard-modes, and never finished Heroic TOC-10, and didn't get past the first boss in Heroic TOC-25) has me contemplating my future in WoW at the moment. I haven't accomplished all my current goals on my two main characters (Paladin and Druid) but I'm mostly biding my time by leveling my Horde Druid. I'm not sure I have much more in mind with him other than to PVP and do the occasional raid so I fully expect that even pushing forward full bore with him I'll be back in my current state of mind again later in the Summer. At the end of the day raiding is really the reason why I'm still playing WoW, and as I've come to expect little in that regard I've been casting about longingly looking for alternatives to WoW. Unfortunately for me none of the others I've tried in the recent past have met my satisfaction. I've been looking at Age of Conan but I'm not certain I like the combat techniques and given that reticence I haven't been willing to even give it a shot. Which just leaves SWTOR at this point and that isn't expected until some point next year. Ignoring all the open questions I and others still have about it.

Factoring into all this is the news trickling out about Cataclysm. I'm looking forward to Cataclysm and trying to imagine what play will feel like them. Hard in that we have so few real details but one thing I know I'm definitely worried about is the state healing will be in. I don't have enough to go on right now, but various comments Ghostcrawler has made about healing have me wondering if healing will actually become factually harder than it is today. Ghostcrawler has indicated Blizzard wants mana to become an issue for healers and wants to introduce some level of thought into the process. As tanks will generally have more health and heals will generally do less healing than they do today I'm guessing Blizzard expects some level of coordination amongst the healers in how they heal in a raid environment. I'm just not seeing how Blizzard will make that easier or alleviate the concerns healers have today - they play an all together different game called whack-a-mole. As I really enjoy healing, and particularly in PVP, its one of the aspects I'm most interested in.

Most people dislike change, and myself in particularly, but another aspect of consideration is the appearance I've spoken about often regarding Blizzard's lack of long-term planning. Every two years the game changes drastically. Core mechanics are added and removed; classes are almost completely redesigned, or at the very least are modified to great extent that it's almost like playing a completely new game. I understand that developers need to adapt to changing circumstances but from my vantage point what we're seeing is chaos. Blizzard is purposely developing for Cataclysm in direct opposition to the development they completed for WotLK. Ghostcrawler couches replies to this sort of question as "changing their minds", but I'm not as certain that what we're seeing is a change of mind so much as what we're seeing is a complete rethinking entirely.

Just look at the Druid and Paladin classes as examples of this. In Vanilla Druids were essentially healers only. In BC they became amazing and as healers they were given the terrific new spell Lifebloom. Lifebloom and Rejuvenation were the primary healing tools used on 5-man runs and raids alike, with Regrowth filling the role of primary go-to heal but also using Healing Touch to some extent. However Blizzard completely neutered that healing style by nerfing Lifebloom and then greatly increasing it's mana cost so that it could no longer be used as it had during the whole of BC. Until now it's used only as a niche tool and mostly in PVP. During WotLK Resto Druids heal primarily through Rejuv and Wildgrowth and using Regrowth or Nourish as the primary heal and never using Healing Touch at all. With the odd additional spell like Nourish or Regrowth, the tools are largely the same but the way you use them are as different in WotLK as it was in BC when compared to Vanilla. Now we're being lead to believe that the way Resto Druids will heal in Cataclysm will be completely different again. There's very little continuity between the expansions and it's just not the one class that this can be said about. Paladins are in the same boat, but so are most other classes as well.

Ignoring the class continuity issues you can look at the emphasis of the game in general and say the same things. Blizzard has continuously experimented with end-game development throughout the entirety of WotLK so that the raiding experience has not been the same for more than one tier of content. As we haven't gotten any detail of how they intend to handle end-game content in Cataclysm we're left to wonder if we can expect the same treatment in Cataclysm or whether we'll actually settle down into a predictable experience. A lot of people are complaining about the lack of challenge in the current end-game content (clearly they aren't talking to the vast majority of guilds that are seeing that challenge) which has me wondering how Blizzard will address the issue. Blizzard addressed the mass complaints about end-game raiding in Vanilla by developing content in BC that was somewhat more accessible at the initial stages but then went further by removing key requirements and by eventually developing content in WotLK that is immediately accessible to all and introducing the hard modes/heroic raids as the "real challenge". I'm seeing as much complaining about the current state of end-game raiding as I was in earlier years. What a dilemma! Makes me really pine for some sand-box elements like being able to plop down a fort, take territory, and attack/defend.

And I think that is really what I'm hoping SWTOR will be like. In WoW you have either instanced PVP (or Arena) and raiding as the end-game content and little else. If you are like me -- beating your head against content and getting precious little progression to show for it - then you might wish there were other options to waste some hours on. In WoW there simply isn't and I go through cycles where I become motivated to finish quests I've haven't completed yet or run more dailies or do nothing but PVP. But on the opposite side of those cycles I sit look for something else to do that simply isn't present. In SWTOR I'm hoping there is end-game raiding, PVP and a system of world-PVP where we can conquer territory. Players need a system of progression. In the case of WoW that is a stark option between PVP tiers or from end-game raiding. As I'm in that part of my cycle where I'm not getting that and not really motivated to do anything else I can't but wonder if I want to continue on into Cataclysm or whether I seriously need to find something else to do. SWTOR needs to hurry up and get here!

Low level DK tanks and the DPS meeting that kettle

2010-04-20T09:53:00.000-04:00

If there was just one thing I wish I could change in WoW right now, it would be to ensure Death Knights couldn’t queue as tanks in LFG until at least level 70. That’s a somewhat flippant (okay, really flippant then) observation on my part as I’ve come to experience first hand what all the “lawls” have been about regarding newly minted Death Knights trying to tank. As the healer in level 50ish content (I hit 59 last night) I’m seeing a lot of DK’s now, and they all want to tank. The problem is that not a lot of them have any tanking experience as far as I can tell, and thus far I haven’t seen any that actually have a good grasp on the mechanics of their class. How could they, having only been playing the class for a few hours by this point? It’s been my observation that most people don’t actually research a class fully before they play it, so their knowledge tends to come from testing and experimenting on their own.

While I generally have no problem keeping a DK tank healed, the real issue is with the other players who don’t realize what I do – that they are creating the problems on the runs with these inexperienced DK tanks. The reason I wanted to dual-spec in the first place was because of the total lack of cat form AOE at the lower levels. I’d mentioned that if you were one to watch the meters you’d see the AOE classes far out and ahead of everyone else, which is a good indication that everyone that could AOE has been AOE’ing by this point for a good long time now. It’s ingrained into these players by this point and they aren’t going to stop, even though a real good player would observe a few things on these runs. If a DK tank isn’t using pestilence, or Death and Decay to grab area agro, it will probably mean you as an AOE’er will grab agro from several mobs as you AOE. Instead of having to heal just one or two people on a run, I’m now finding I’m having to heal 3 or 4 people more and more often. And when the DPS players throw out comments to the tank that he’s terrible they aren’t realizing they’re the ones that are actually doing something wrong. Yes the DK should be using Pestilence and Death and Decay, but it’s the DPS’s task to make sure they aren’t pulling agro. And that’s what they aren’t even attempting to do. As the healer it’s left to me to “save the day” regardless, or else I get the angry comments. And never mind that the group might run off to the next fight while I’m still sitting and drinking, or not. The total lack of any skill or any thought on runs is becoming more of an issue as we go, though it’s not really what I’d consider an emergency yet. At this point I’m actually wondering what the Outlands content will be like.

What I think I would generally like is some reintroduction of thought into runs. Blizzard has indicated they'll be creating the necessity for CC again, but I hope that means that while they're designing Cataclysm they take the time to introduce that at mid-level content as well as at the top level of content as well. I'd think the need for various mechanics like CC should be phased in around level 40ish, but not make it too drastic. Just enough to make groups understand they need to vary their approach to content and not just blindly AOE every group down regardless of the situation. I don't however, want to make runs longer to any great extent or make fights some complicated or complex that groups will grow despondent over tedious content. Regardless, either this needs to be done, or DK players need to have a tutorial added to their starter zone teaching them how to actually tank.

Celestial Steed = End of the world!

2010-04-17T16:23:00.000-04:00

Thursday Blizzard added two new items to the Blizzard store, including the Celestial Steed. By the many threads on several of the official forums you would have though the end of the world was nigh. Many were outraged that Blizzard would dare sell something that was actually usable, such as a mount whereas most agreed that non-combat pets were just fine. I personally don't have any problem with what Blizzard did. After all, the mount gives you no advantage over anyone else in the game and it's not needed in any way. Thus it comes to down to personal choice. If you want the mount you have an option to buy it. If you don't want the mount, no one is making you.

Druid 40-50

2010-04-17T10:15:00.000-04:00

Having raiding attendance problems (already/again) gave me considerably more time during the week to level and so I actually hit level 50 first thing this morning. All in all it only took a few days, spending a couple hours here or there as dual-speccing has really paid off for me. Being able to quest as feral, with the extremely limited down time, and then queue as healer with the reduced made the 40-50 bracket go by in a blur. Previously by the time I hit level 40 I would be jumping around completing quests in the Hinterlands and traveling to other regions to grab as many quests as I could. But this time I was just beginning to quest in Stranglethorn Valley and finally finished my last quest by traveling to the Hinterlands and picking up bottles along the beach. Which is a pretty good indication of the synergies between the new dungeon system, heirloom items, and how the dual-spec system can allow you to tap the best leveling spec (even if it's not always the best dungeon spec). In the past I’ve commented on how I felt the leveling experience in the old world was just abysmal but things are very much improved if you can tap the heirloom items and use LFG extensively.

The 40 to 50 leveling experience is very much like the 30 to 40 experience questing wise. As Feral I still have the same tools I had 10 levels ago, though they’ve all been refined through period updates. Claw remains the primary attack in cat form, but I already knew what awaited me at level 50 (Mangle) and how incredibly better things were going to get relatively soon. A lot of Ferals might be attempting to spread their wings a bit and use Ravage or Pounce, but most of the time I ignored them both. For me speed was everything so I’d agro a mob with feral fire and build up 3-4 combo points with claw and rake, then finish them off with a ferocious bite. And immediately move onto the next mob.

I'm still lamenting the lack of any true feral cat AOE at this level so I did all my dungeon runs as Resto. Which I'm very happy to report is every bit as capable of healing a dungeon run at this level as they are at level 80. Even without my favorite healing spell -- Wild Growth. Even having to heal virtually everyone in the party on multiple runs (Black Rock Depths) with everyone AOEing and pulling agro off the tank, I was still able to heal adequately without running out of mana. In fact on no run I've been on yet have I come close to running OOM wearing the heirloom shoulders, chest, and main-hand weapon. Everything else is either a quest reward or something I picked up on a run. And I haven't been all that worried about replacing anything either. If I see something on a run and win the roll, fine, but otherwise I just go on with what I already have. Where I've mentioned having to exercise healing discipline at level 80, I can't stress enough how important that is at level 40 or 50.

If you’re using the LFG like it’s going out of style – as I did, then you’ll undoubtedly find as I did there was a reason why I hardly ever ran Muradon. Actually the final wing wasn’t so bad, but Purple and Orange were something I always avoided if possible. Unfortunately I got them both all too often these past few days. I guess I actually didn’t mind Purple all that much as it was relatively short and sweet, but Orange was very annoying with all the knock down effects. I found I could out-range the knock down and still heal effectively, but it was something that took me a bit of a while to judge properly before it stopped being a problem for me. Also, Orange isn’t the wing you want to run with an obnoxious tank. On more than one occasion I found myself having to heal tanks that love to jump around and kite the oozes and who ended up getting creamed as they were repeatedly hit in the back. I left more than one group this week because of that. I can certainly understand wiping because weird things happen, but to have to eat repair bills because someone is intentionally being an idiot is something all together different. I wasn’t seeing any of this in the lower level brackets but I began to see more and more of it as I got closer to level 50. Should be quite interesting to see if it continues in the 50 to 60 bracket.

Cataclysm Druid class review (Part 2)

2010-04-15T12:23:00.000-04:00

From the Balance perspective I'm pretty happy with what we're seeing thus far in the Druid class preview. While there is still some vagueness in the Eclipse mechanic and how it works with the newly announced Nature's Torrent, and I’m not entirely certain Moonkin are getting the buff in burst DPS they require, I’m optimistic in what we’ve seen thus far. The Eclipse mechanic issue, haste issue, and burst DPS issue were the three biggees on my radar as well as others, and it looks like at least one of them is definitely being addressed head on. The announced change to the Eclipse mechanic sounds like it does exactly what we were hoping it would do -- Removes some of the randomness, and lessens the detrimental impact of movement during an Eclipse. Given the change in the nature of Eclipse, which is essentially creating charges, that sounds exactly like what we need right now. Eclipses become more predictable, and movement will not have such a detrimental impact on DPS. However, it does perhaps indicate that much of DPS will remain tied up with Eclipse. As long as the mechanic is predictable, and no longer penalizes us to such a degree because of movement I’m okay with that.

I was already pretty happy with the state of Balance right -- outside of the Eclipse problem – so I'm looking forward to Balance in Cataclysm. What isn’t yet known are the specific changes to the talent trees. The question all Balance players have on their minds right now is how will Blizzard change the trees to shed all that haste? I love 1.6 second Starfires, but hate the .5/.6 second Wrath casts during Heroism. I actually hate when Heroism is called for when I’m raiding on my Boomchicken because the extra haste causes me casting issues. And all that isn't to say there still aren't other problems with Balance in areas like PVP, but I always PVP as Resto anyway so I don't focus on that myself.

Lastly I’m waiting on more information regarding our new level 85 spell – Wild Mushrooms. As it was particularly marketed for Balance, it’s of great interest to me. I’ve made up entire scenarios in my mind where I’m able to inundate a chokepoint on some battle ground with my invisible mushrooms, which utterly decimate an invading Horde mob. Yet I know that would probably never happen as being able to have multiple mushrooms out at the same time would probably be OP. Which leads me to believe that this will be strictly a situational tool. I guess on PVE fights with multiple targets and requiring movement this might be something I’d want to use, but other than that I’d probably stick with Hurricane and Starfall. Also seems to be something I could use in PVP but that might depend on how it treats stealthed opponents. As I would primarily look to use it as a sort of early detection system, if it didn’t have an ability to detonate off stealthed individuals I’d probably find this to be a very situational tool in PVP as well.

Paladin Cataclysm preview

2010-04-14T17:10:00.001-04:00

Today Blizzard released the Paladin class pre-view. I want to digest these a little bit more before I comment more than the few brief comments I already have planned. So expect more from me on this over the next few days.

In short I like the three new spells the class is to receive, however I'm guardedly neutral on the overall class changes that were announced today. From previous comments by Ghostcrawler I'm expecting that some miner Protection nerfs are coming in Cataclysm but this preview doesn't give us any glimpses of what form that might take. From discussions about the other healing classes, healing in Cataclysm in general, and specifically in the Resto Druid healing threads I know that healing will look and feel quite a bit different in Cataclysm. Blizzard wants mana to be an issue for healers and slow down the pace of healing a bit. And you can certainly see that again in the Holy Paladin portion of the preview. Gone will be the days of Beacon bombing, and the utter mana efficiency and I'm not sure I'm really going to like that. In general the Holy changes we're seeing here are yet another near total mechanic revamp and it really makes me wonder anew what kind of decision making process Blizzard has in place when they decide on such things. Beacon of Light was all the rage when Blizzard announced it two years ago, and now all of a sudden they dump all over it. I'll reserve final judgment until we see a bit more on the planned changes, but again, I find all of these deep class changes to be quite annoying. And lastly, they're going to make the Ret "rotation" less forgiving by introducing some risk into the mix? You mean, like they did with the Feral Druid cat rotation? The one they made completely too complex and unforgiving and allowed to remain so for two years before finally announcing plans to ease the situation? Blizzard, please don't screw up Retribution like you did Feral cats.

New Paladin Spells
Blinding Shield (level 81): Causes damage and blinds all nearby targets. This effect might end up only damaging those facing the paladin's shield, in a manner similar to Eadric the Pure's ability Radiance in Trial of the Champion. The Holy tree will have a talent to increase the damage and critical strike chance, while the Protection tree will have a talent to make this spell instant cast. 2-second base cast time. Requires a shield.

Healing Hands (level 83): Healing Hands is a new healing spell. The paladin radiates heals from him or herself, almost like a Healing Stream Totem. It has a short range, but a long enough duration that the paladin can cast other heals while Healing Hands remains active. 15-second cooldown. 6-second duration.

Guardian of Ancient Kings (level 85): Summons a temporary guardian that looks like a winged creature of light armed with a sword. The visual is similar to that of the Resurrection spell used by the paladin in Warcraft III. The guardian has a different effect depending on the talent spec of the paladin. For Holy paladins, the guardian heals the most wounded ally in the area. For Protection paladins, the guardian absorbs some incoming damage. For Retribution paladins, it damages an enemy, similar to the death knight Gargoyle or the Nibelung staff. 3-minute cooldown. 30-second duration (this might vary depending on which guardian appears).

Next you will find a list of some of the paladin spell and ability changes, followed by our intentions for improving each talent tree for the release of Cataclysm. There will be further changes, but those revealed below should offer some insight into our goals.

Changes to Abilities and Mechanics

Crusader Strike will be a core ability for all paladins, gained at level 1. We think the paladin leveling experience is hurt by not having an instant attack. Retribution will be getting a new talent in its place that either modifies Crusader Strike or replaces it completely.
Cleanse is being rebalanced to work with the new dispel system. It will dispel defensive magic (debuffs on friendly targets), diseases, and poisons.
Blessing of Might will provide the benefit of Wisdom as well. If you have two paladins in your group, one will do Kings on everyone and the other will do Might on everyone. There should be much less need, and ideally no need, to provide specific buffs to specific classes.
Holy Shock will be a core healing spell available to all paladins.

New Talents and Talent Changes
We want to ease off the defensive capabilities of Retribution and Holy paladins slightly. We think the powerful paladin defenses have been one of the things holding Retribution paladins back, especially in Arenas. One change we're considering is lowering Divine Shield's duration by a couple of seconds. Having said that, Retribution does pretty well in Battlegrounds, and Battlegrounds will be a much bigger focus in Cataclysm since they can provide the best PvP rewards. Furthermore, the healing environment of Cataclysm is going to be different such that a paladin may not be able to fully heal themselves during the duration of Divine Shield to begin with, so this may not be a problem.
We feel Retribution paladins need one more mechanic which involves some risk of the player pushing the wrong button, making the rotation a bit less forgiving. In addition, we want to add to this spec more PvP utility. Right now the successes of the Retribution paladin in PvP seem to be reduced to either doing decent burst damage, or just being good at staying alive.
We want to increase the duration of Sacred Shield to 30 minutes and keep the limit to one target. The intention is that the paladin can use it on their main healing target. That said, we would like to improve the Holy paladin toolbox and niche so that they don't feel quite like the obvious choice for tank healing while perceived as a weak group healer.
We want to add to the Holy tree a nice big heal to correspond with Greater Heal. Flash of Light remains the expensive, fast heal and Holy Light is the go-to heal that has average efficiency and throughput. Beacon of Light will be changed to work with Flash of Light. We like the ability, but want paladins to use it intelligently and not be constantly healing for twice as much.
Holy paladins will use spirit as their mana regeneration stat.
Protection paladins need a different rotation between single-target and multi-target tanking. Likewise, we're looking to add the necessity to use an additional cooldown in each rotation.
Holy Shield will no longer have charges. It will be designed to improve block chance while active, and will continue to provide a small amount of damage and threat.

Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses
Holy
Healing
Meditation
Critical Healing Effect

Meditation: This is the spirit-to-mana conversion that the priest, druid, and shaman healers also share.

Critical Healing Effect: When the paladin gets a crit on a heal, it will heal for more.

Protection
Damage Reduction
Vengeance
Block Amount

Vengeance: This is the damage-received-to-attack-power conversion that all tanks share.

Block Amount: We want to keep the kit of the paladin as a tank who blocks a lot. So by contrast, the warrior tank will sometimes get critical blocks, but the paladin will absorb more damage with normal blocks.

Retribution
Melee Damage
Melee Critical Damage
Holy Damage

Holy Damage: Any attack that does Holy damage will have its damage increased.

In followup to various healing comments, Blizzard went on to clarify:

Here's a bit more clarification on some of these changes. Also, please keep in mind that this is merely a preview and we'll still have more to go in testing up to and including any other changes that aren't listed here in the preview.

We've updated the Flash of Light reference to make it a bit more clear in the original post as follows.

Flash of Light remains a fast heal, but will be more expensive to justify the cast speed. Holy Light will be the go-to heal that has average efficiency and throughput. Beacon of Light needs to be changed so that its benefit is letting the paladin heal two targets at once, not letting the paladin get two heals for the mana cost of one. It's intended to save GCDs and targeting time, not mana.
In addition we're changing the paladin heal design to match that of the other healers. Holy Light is the middle heal. It's very efficient, but not particularly fast and doesn't have a lot of throughput. Flash of Light will be the faster heal that costs more mana. (Currently paladins sort of flip the model around by having a fast, efficient heal.) Holy paladins can talent into an additional heal that is like a giant Holy Light. It might take three of these big heals (or two crits) to get a tank from death's door back to 100% health.

Currently on live, Beacon of Light is a tool that allows paladins to target more than just the main tank. In Cataclysm if it just doubles their healing, it is going to be overpowered. We have two ways we might handle this and we'll experiment to see which feels better. The first is that Beacon only works on some heals, such as Flash of Light or Holy Light (but not the big one). An alternative idea is that Beacon increases the mana cost of a heal cast on a beaconed target, since you're essentially getting a double heal. Under this model, Beacon itself would cost no mana.

Also on the live realms currently, paladins have huge mana pools and massive throughput. The trade-off is that they are excellent single target healers and much weaker in other roles. We want paladins to be slightly more interchangeable with other healers. In Cataclysm, you should be able to have a Holy priest on the tank and a Holy paladin on the raid. We're not sure we'll back off of the current healing roles completely, but we definitely want to add more breadth to those whose roles are currently too narrow.

As for the Guardian of Ancient Kings. First, it's important to understand that this is not a pet nor does it have a pet bar associated with it. Second, it's also not meant to last for very long. So, it's not a pet in the traditional sense. It's a friend in need when you need it, but not a permanent companion.

Druid 40+ - Dual speccing your way to the top

2010-04-13T11:19:00.000-04:00

As I mentioned in my last post regarding my baby Horde Druid I’m leveling, the best part of hitting level 40 is that I became eligible for dual-speccing. I’d recommended in my posts that players level their Druids as Feral (primarily cat) and that’s how I’ve been doing it myself. Which of course has meant generally longer wait times in the LFG queue as I haven’t attempted to be the tank on any runs yet, though I’ve had to fill in as an ad hoc tank from time to time on various runs. At these lower levels I can tank just fine without any of the bear specific talents, but certainly by the time I hit Outlands I know I’d really want some of those before I attempt to do any tanking there. And as I’m looking to maximize XP gain I’ve also been questing in-between dungeon runs.

Dual-Speccing solves the issues of this dilemma. If you want to maximize XP gain you need to be questing in-between dungeon runs – which means you either need to be feral or balance. Queuing as Feral cat and balance (DPS) in the LFG queue means generally longer queue times, which equates to lower XP gain on an hour by hour basis. You can level as Feral Bear and simply queue as tank, and that might be the simplest solution, but I definitely notice a DPS difference while questing when fighting in cat form with bear talents and when fighting in cat form with cat talents. Perhaps someone else wouldn’t mind, but my ADD screams at me to kill it already! For me the answer is Dual-Spec. One spec Bear (or Resto) and the other spec Kitty or Moonkin. I chose Cat and Resto. I quest as cat and run dungeons as resto maximizing my XP gain as I generally have faster dungeon queue times as Resto than I did as DPS.

It’s certainly something I’d recommend anyone looking at if they can afford the 1000 gold expense and the requirement to obtain two sets of gear (unless you spec Bear/Cat which will use the same set until you hit Northrend). I would think that wouldn’t be an issue for anyone who already had established characters to support the new alt, as it certainly wasn’t an issue for me.

Druid 30-40

2010-04-11T16:21:00.001-04:00

Although the 30-40 bracket is much like the 20-30 bracket, at least you start to get some interesting new abilities like Ravage, Pounce, Feral Regen, Ferocious Bite, Track Humanoids, Dire Bear form, and Innervate. Instead of finishing mobs with Rip you're probably more apt to finish them with Ferocious Bite. And you're probably more apt to open up with Pounce (ignore Ravage all together) instead of Claw and take less damage over all during any particular fight. Especially as Pounce is particularly useful in PVP.

The class still suffers from a lack of cat form AOE and it shows in dungeon runs. No one is running around at level 35 or 40 watching damage meters, but if you do you can see those classes with good AOE capabilities far out and head of the single target classes -- Cat Druids being just one of them. Boss fights are a different story however. By this point Shred is a staple ability, but the directional limitation is as much of a problem today as it ever was. Particular on movement fights, or where you have a lot of spell effects going off that might obscure the boss if there is just a small amount of movement. Blizzard has said before that the analog for Shred was Back Stab, but no Rogue at this level is running around Back Stabbing and once a Dagger Rogue gets Mutilate they'll never use Back Stab again. Whereas Cat Druids have to use Shred. I see that Blizzard is planning on making Mangle more able to replace Shred so I'll take that to mean they have no intention of removing the direction requirement any time soon. Too bad as strict directional attacks like Shred have high down sides.

The addition of Feral Regen is very nice, and you'll come to appreciate it as most healers on low level dungeon runs are healers in name only and prone to mana issues. On those fights where you end up as an OT or THE tank, Feral Regen comes in quite handy. Being able to pop a health potion in form now is gravy on top of that.

And the best thing about hitting level 40..... dual spec!

Cataclysm Druid class review (Part 1)

2010-04-11T16:05:00.000-04:00

Finally! The Druid class preview is one of the two class previews I had been waiting on and it finally was released late Friday afternoon. Unfortunately for me I wasn't all that excited by it in total, though there were a couple things that I do see as favorable. MMO-Champion has the class preview changes up, along with pertinent quotes from Ghostcrawler all on one page, so I'll link to that.

The Druid class is getting three new class abilities between 80 and 85:

Thrash (Level 81): Thrash deals damage and causes all targets within 10 yards to bleed every 2 seconds for 6 seconds. The intent here is to give bears another button to hit while tanking. Talents will affect the bleed, such as causing Swipe to deal more damage to bleeding targets. 5-second cooldown. 25 Rage.

Stampeding Roar (Level 83): The druid roars, increasing the movement of all allies within 10 yards by 40% for 8 seconds. Stampeding Roar can be used in cat or bear form, but bears might have a talent to drop the cooldown. The goal of this ability is to give both bears and cats a little more situational group utility. 3-minute cooldown. No cost.

Wild Mushroom (Level 85): Grows a magical mushroom at the target location. After 4 seconds the mushroom becomes invisible. Enemies who cross the mushroom detonate it, causing it to deal area-of-effect damage, though its damage component will remain very effective against single targets. The druid can also choose to detonate the mushroom ahead of time. This is primarily a tool for the Balance druid, and there will be talents that play off of it. No cooldown. 40-yard range. Instant cast.

Thrash seems like it would be a good addition to Bear, though at 25 rage it's a relatively high cost ability. In multi-target fights, where you will have virtually unlimited rage generation, I imagine it'll be a staple for threat generation. But I'm having a hard time seeing it utilized in the typical boss fight. Although I will say we haven't seen how rage normalization will work exactly yet. Now we have to be very careful of rage starvation but that might not be the case in Cataclysm. If rage generation is that much easier Thrash might become something of a staple, even on typical single target boss fights.

Stampeding roar, on the other hand, is an ability that I'm not clearly understanding yet in terms of its real usefulness. I have never seen, or heard of anyone asking for an ability such as this and so it's kind of come to us out of left field some where. And the lameness of it is sort of annoying when you look at the abilities the other classes are getting. Feels very much like Blizzard simply didn't have many good ideas to give the Druid class, yet they needed three.

Wild Mushroom is, however, potentially a spell that I think I could like very much. Need being able to see the exact mechanic of how it works yet I could be wrong, but either this will be more of a PVP related spell or will act like the Druid equivalent of Seed of Corruption. Druids really don't need another AOE damage spell. Particularly one that will take attention away from the other two primary AOE spells (Hurricane and Starfall). But I can see situational use for it in PVE, but a lot of PVP uses. Magic land mines ftw! What I'd really like to know right now is how many of them you can have out at a time. is it just the one, or will we be able to seed an area with these? If the answer is we can have many up at a time, then this could be a totally awesome spell! PVP choke points could become a very amusing place indeed!

Rounding out the class preview Blizzard posted a few paragraphs for each of the specs:

In addition to the new abilities listed above, we intend to make changes to some of the other abilities and mechanics with which you’re already familiar. This list and the summary of talent changes below it are by no means comprehensive, but they should give you a good sense of our goals for each spec.

All heal-over-time spells (HoTs) will benefit from crit and haste innately in Cataclysm. Hasted HoTs do not reduce their duration, but instead add additional HoT ticks. Haste will also benefit Energy generation while in cat form.
Unlike the other healers, Restoration druids will not be receiving any new spells. They have plenty to work with already, and our challenge instead is to make sure all of them have a well-defined niche. A druid should be able to tank-heal with stacks of Lifebloom, spot-heal a group with Nourish and Regrowth, and top off lightly wounded targets with Rejuvenation.
We want to add tools to cat form and depth to bear form. If a Feral cat is going to fill a very similar niche to that of a rogue, warrior or Enhancement shaman, it needs a few more tools -- primarily a reliable interrupt. Bears need to be pushing a few more buttons just so the contrast between tanking and damage-dealing is not so steep.
Barkskin will be innately undispellable.
We will be buffing the damage of Mangle (cat) significantly so that when cat druids cannot Shred, they are not at such a damage-dealing loss.
Druids will lose Abolish Poison with the dispel mechanics change, but Restoration druids will gain Dispel Magic (on friendly targets) as a talent. All druids can still remove poisons with Cure Poison and remove curses with Remove Curse.

New Talents and Talent Changes

Tree of Life is changing from a passive talent to a cooldown-based talent, similar to Metamorphosis. Mechanically, it feels unfair for a druid to have to give up so much offense and utility in order to be just as good at healing as the other classes who are not asked to make that trade. We are exploring the exact benefit the druid gets from Tree of Life. It could strictly be better healing, or it could be that each heal behaves slightly different. You also will not be able to be banished in Tree of Life form (this will probably be true of Metamorphosis as well). Additionally, we would like to update the Tree of Life model so that it feels more exciting when you do decide to go into that form. Our feeling is that druids rarely actually get to show off their armor, so it would be nice to have at least one spec that looked like a night elf or tauren (and soon troll or worgen) for most of the time.
We want to make the Feral cat damage rotation slightly more forgiving. We do not want to remove what druids like about their gameplay, but we do want to make it less punishing to miss, say, a Savage Roar or Rake. The changes here will be on par with increasing the duration of Mangle like we did for patch 3.3.3.
Balance druids will have a new talent ability called Nature’s Torrent, which strikes for either Nature or Arcane damage depending on which will do the most damage (or possibly both), and moves the Eclipse meter more (details below). The improved version of Nature’s Torrent also reduces the target's movement speed. 10-second cooldown.
Restoration druids will have a new talent called Efflorescence, which causes a bed of healing flora to sprout beneath targets that are critically healed by Regrowth.
We plan on giving Feral cats and bears a Kick/Pummel equivalent -- an interrupt that is off the global cooldown and does no damage. We feel like they need this utility to be able to fill the melee role in a dungeon or raid group, and to give them more PvP utility.
We want to make sure Feral and Balance druids feel like good options for an Arena team. They need the tools to where you might consider a Feral druid over an Arms warrior, or a Balance druid over a mage or warlock. Remember that the PvP landscape will probably look pretty different for Cataclysm with a focus on rated, competitive Battlegrounds.

Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Balance
Spell Damage
Spell Haste
Eclipse

Eclipse: We are moving Eclipse from a talent into a core mechanic of the class and making it less random. Balance druids will have a new UI element that shows a sun and a moon. Whenever they cast an Arcane spell, it will move the UI closer to the sun, and buff their Nature damage. Whenever they cast a Nature spell, it will move the UI closer to the moon, and buff their Arcane damage. The gameplay intention is to alternate Arcane and Nature spells (largely Starfire and Wrath) to maintain the balance.

Feral (Cat)
Melee Damage
Melee Critical Damage
Bleed Damage

Feral (Bear)
Damage Reduction
Vengeance
Savage Defense

Bleed Damage and Savage Defense: Feral druids will receive two sets of passive bonuses depending on whether the druid is in cat or bear form. Bleed Damage will be improved for cats. Savage Defense is the current bear mechanic for converting crits into damage absorption and will be improved for bears.

Vengeance: This is a mechanic to ensure that tank damage (and therefore threat) doesn’t fall behind as damage-dealing classes improve their gear during the course of the expansion. All tanking specs will have Vengeance as their second talent tree passive bonus. Whenever a tank gets hit, Vengeance will give them a stacking attack power buff equal to 5% of the damage done, up to a maximum of 10% of the character’s unbuffed health. For boss encounters we expect that tanks will always have the attack power bonus equal to 10% of their health. The 5% and 10% bonuses assume 51 talent points have been put into the Feral tree and the druid is in bear form -- these values will be smaller at lower levels. Remember, you only get this bonus if you have spent the most talent points in the Feral tree and are in bear form, so you won’t see Balance, Restoration, or Feral druids in cat form running around with it. Vengeance will let us continue to make tank gear more or less the way we do today -- there will be some damage-dealing stats, but mostly survival-oriented stats. Druids typically have more damage-dealing stats even on their tanking gear, so the Vengeance benefit may be smaller, but overall the goal is that all four tanks do about the same damage when tanking.

Restoration
Healing
Meditation (The amount of mana you regenerate in combat as a function of your Spirit)
HoT Scale Healing

HoT Scale Healing: HoTs will do increased healing on more wounded targets. The mechanic is similar to that of the Restoration shaman, but with HoTs instead of direct heals. In Cataclysm, we anticipate druids using a greater variety of their spells so there is a distinction between healing and HoT healing.

We hope you enjoyed this preview, and ask that you provide your initial thoughts and feedback on what was presented here. Please keep in mind, what you’ve just reviewed is a work in progress and as we move closer to the Cataclysm beta, you’ll see these changes as well as others continue to develop in response to testing and feedback.

Restoration Druids:
I'm extremely happy to see that HoTs will innately benefit from critical strike rating now. And just as importantly haste will continue to decrease the time between ticks but not shorten the length the spell lasts. That in an of itself will have a huge impact on resto healing. Additionally that HoT scaling based on target health is sexy! Efflorescence could be interesting, though they haven't told us enough about it yet. Will Efflorescence be an area heal spell, or will it be single target? If it's single target then I wonder if Living Seed will be left alone, or whether it'll be tweaked or even removed. Because I'd think they'd both be just too similar to have both remaining in the arsenal.

Although I don't think Resto Druids needed any additional spells I am annoyed that for the third expansion in a row the Resto healing experience will be changing considerably. You can read between the lines when they say thinks like:

Unlike the other healers, Restoration druids will not be receiving any new spells. They have plenty to work with already, and our challenge instead is to make sure all of them have a well-defined niche. A druid should be able to tank-heal with stacks of Lifebloom, spot-heal a group with Nourish and Regrowth, and top off lightly wounded targets with Rejuvenation.

HoTs will do increased healing on more wounded targets. The mechanic is similar to that of the Restoration shaman, but with HoTs instead of direct heals. In Cataclysm, we anticipate druids using a greater variety of their spells so there is a distinction between healing and HoT healing.

and most importantly:

We think there will be more reason to cast Healing Touch (perhaps with some number tweaks) for when you need to heal someone who has a real health deficit.

Druids don't have perfect analogs to the priest heals, but you can imagine Regrowth as the Flash Heal, Nourish as the heal, and Healing Touch as the greater heal. Lifebloom is something you'd put on a tank before healing with Nourish or Healing Touch (which might even refresh the stack). Rejuv will still be good for the reason hots are good. Wild Growth is still a group heal. Tranquility is an emergency heal, and we'll change it to act more like Divine Hymn.

and:

Let me know how that Rejuv spamming with WG on cooldown works out for you at 85.

You can see that Blizzard has many changes in mind for how the class will perform--again. And I find that annoying as hell! In Vanilla Resto Druids essentially used one spell -- Healing Touch. They might have used the others to some lesser extent, but the mainstay was the Healing Touch. At the time it was the largest heal in the game and it was used a lot. However, with the extensive Resto make over that came with the Burning Crusade Druids became the uber mobile healers they continue to be today with the additional of life bloom. Life Bloom was really the mainstay heal as you'd keep a rolling stack of 3 Life Blooms on the target, along with a Rejuv. With the addition of Swiftmend you had a second emergency button to push if you needed it, keeping Nature's Swiftness in reserve for a NS > HT combo. I used Regrowth very little, though it would be the "go to" heal if I need to heal someone for more than a pittance or if Swiftmend was on cooldown.

In Wrath of the Lich King healing changed again. Blizzard virtually removed Lifebloom from everyone's healing use by upping the cost of the spell dramatically. Even with a second change that refunded some of the cost after it bloomed it simply wasn't as efficient as it once was and of limited use. Especially in that Resto Druids now had Wild Growth. Today most Resto healing is rolling Rejuvs on multiple players and interspersing Wild Growth when the cool down is up. Regrowth is used as the main heal and virtually no one used Nature's Switness/Healing Touch combos any more. I've even considered dropping Nature's Swiftness and using that point elsewhere as the cool down for Swiftmend is short and it no longer consumes the HoT with a glyph.

But things will be changing again in Cataclysm. Not satisfied that those pesky Resto Druids get off so easy and are so mobile, they're going to make sure we can't simply Rejuv and Wild Growth our way to happiness. Makes me really wonder what Holy Paladin healing will look like. In any case you can clearly see that Blizzard is going to make you want to use other healing spells. The comments about Life Bloom sound like it'll become a staple again, but I wonder how much of our mobility will be impacted by making class changes that favor Regrowth, Nourish, and Healing Touch. Particularly in PVP where a lot of my survivability comes directly from my mobility.

Lastly, the loss of the "tree form" isn't a big deal to me. I really hate the fact that so many of my abilities are unusable in tree form to begin with, and having used any of those, having to use mana to then get back into tree form is an impact on the class that no other healer has to bear. All that being said Blizzard could have easily just allowed the use of all abilities in tree form and been done with it. But they chose not to -- for whatever reason. Turning tree form into a short term "buff" is fine with me though there are many people in the official thread that see it otherwise.

Cataclysm class previews coming

2010-04-06T15:56:00.004-04:00

One of the horrendous restrictions of working in Dilbertville are firewall restrictions prohibiting me from visiting my favorite game sites. Otherwise I would have seen the announcement today that Blizzard is going to start the Cataclysm class reviews tomorrow.

Schedule is as follows:
Shaman - April 7
Priest - April 7
Warlock - April 7

Warrior - April 8
Death Knight - April 8
Rogue - April 8

Hunter - April 9
Druid - April 9
Mage - April 9

Paladin - April 16*

Really looking forward to the Druid and Paladin reviews.

Druid 20-30

2010-04-05T16:37:00.004-04:00

I had an opportunity to hop back on my baby Druid and do some leveling this past weekend, and finally hit that level 30 threshold. I wish I had the option of starting a new character off at level 58 like Death Knights because the under-60 experience is still simply abysmal. Being able to level in dungeons and battlegrounds helps tremendously but most of the pre-60 dungeons are in desperate need of overhaul and the XP earned in battlegrounds can be hit and miss. If you win a match you can earn a worthwhile amount of XP, but if you lose you can leave with virtually nothing for your time and trouble. As I write this I'm trying to formulate a list of dungeons I actually don't mind running and the only one I can come up with is Scarlet Monastery. The rest are long, convoluted messes that are often way more trouble than they're worth. And anyone that already has a high level character and has experienced the content available in Outlands and Northrend makes this lower level experience all the worse.

For much of the 20-30 bracket I ended up finishing up quests in the Barrens then moved north into Ashenvale. While Ashenvale does have two flight paths available (one on either side of the zone), but the zone is so large I really wish they’d add one somewhere in the middle somewhere. As far as the quests go, most of them were completely new for me and they took a little longer than they probably other would have as I had to actually read the quests, and at times had to consult wowhead to figure out where things were actually located. And of course with the large zones comes along the travel. I spent considerable time just running around the zone to complete everything.

It’s zones like Ashenvale that make me even more thankful for cat form. Being able to run just a little faster and being able to kill things just a little quicker takes some of the edge off. A typical fight would see me opening with Claw, then Rake, then applying a 2-CP Rip and either auto-attacking or using Claw again until it dies. On an odd occasion I’d need to change into bear form when I pulled multiple adds, and then it probably wasn’t exactly necessary as I could have simply killed things one at a time. But that highlights the biggest problem with the Druid class at this level, and becomes especially apparent on dungeon runs. Several other classes have AOE attacks by this point, but the Druid’s only AOE attack is Swipe. And that is only available in bear form. On a dungeon run, switching into bear form is often cause for comments by the tank or the healer and explaining that my only AOE attack is in bear form isn’t always enough to calm the storm. When speed is of the essence, and lets face it, when isn’t it; a viable AOE ability in cat form would be very nice.

In terms of PVP ability the class still lags behind many of the other classes at this level as well. It’s virtually impossible to beat a Hunter, Warlock, Shadow Priest, or Paladin at this level as the Druid simply has not counter to many of the abilities these classes have in this bracket. Especially the Hunter and Warlock, so I rarely even try to overcome them any more – Feral Charge (Cat) not withstanding. Having Pounce available at a lower level might help, but short of that a level 20 to 30 Druid has very little in the way of avoiding death to kiting. As the lower level brackets are full of Hunters you should steel yourself for the feeling of frustration. On the flip side the Druid continues to be the best flag carrier in WSG! Although without bark skin or feral regeneration, running flags is necessarily an endeavor in avoiding any opposition. At the higher levels where I have those other tools available I can withstand some abuse, but that threshold to withstand punishment is very thin in my current bracket.

The Gearscore arguement has already hit the SWTOR forum

2010-04-04T14:18:00.003-04:00

I've been spending a little more time in the SWTOR forum these days, which I guess is why I noticed the recent argument about "gear score" that took place there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7myQErCJDTg

Just listen to this narrator, he makes me want to throw up. Sadly this is how far WoW has sunk. This is exactly what we don't need in TOR! It destroys the community, excludes certain players(whom they deem not worthy enough) from in game content, and makes you only a number. Worst addon and MMO community ever!

As you can guess the thread spawned many pages of comments for and against the sentiment. One of which was:

I don't see the big problem. When I played WoW back in BC it was the SAME THING people would inspect you and say w/e. Also in BC guilds wouldn't recruit you if you didn't have the hand of A'dal title or the other title. It's just people assumming since they don't gem/enchant your gear(for optimal dps/tanking/healing) they don't know how to play their class. Most of the time thats true(from all the pugs I was in).

To which I replied:

No, it isn't a big deal. Or, more accurately, it's only a big deal to the kind-hearted souls that don't want people to have self-esteem issues. The kind that don't want winners and losers in little league games because then someone will feel bad about themselves for losing. The kind that doesn't want dodge ball to be played at school, because some poor person will have to be singled out and beaned in the head with a ball.

I can understand where these people are coming from. But I know we live in a world where we're all judged every day in innumerable ways. I'm okay with that. I'm prepared for it and can deal with it either way. I guess, I'm just strong enough to not let what someone else thinks determine how I feel, or what I think.

The reality of the situation is that whether in a game, or not, you will be judged. Some how and in some way. You do not have an option to not be judged. The sooner people come to realize that, the better they'll be for it. Until that happens we'll continue to have these little conversations.

And I consider that the bottom line. Whether you want it or no, there is and always will be an undercurrent of competitiveness in a progression based game. And there will always be subjective judgments made about you whether its in a game, or in real life. You either deal with it or not, and those who complain about this sort of thing are the sort that want option #3 -- not to have to deal with it at all.

Deathwing is just misunderstood

2010-04-03T23:44:00.000-04:00

No really!

Dear Adventurers of Azeroth,

It has come to my attention that certain organizations, who shall remain nameless (Wyrmrest Accord, for one) have (Argent Crusade, too) tried to paint me (the Horde and the Alliance, come to think of it)(you know, I think pretty much everyone) in the worst light possible.

They claim that I will lay waste to Azeroth with fire and FIERY PITS OF LAVA and storms and oh-so-much mayhem and destruction.

Nothing could be further from the truth. I am not a destroyer. I am a creator. You all just happen to be standing on my canvas. I'm sure you can see that, if you just move a few hundred leagues away from your cities and towns, things will work out for both of us.

You will all see. My design is grand, the scope enormous. The world will be a much better place, I am certain, if we just tweak things a little here and there, like a few hundred thousand dragon eggs or the beaches of Darkshore. I mean, you guys wanted some water in Thousand Needles. I'm giving it to you!

If you disagree with my plans, just put a little note in the box. I'll be sure to read each and every one of them. Just don't come pounding on my door and make a mess of things. Don't send your armies against me, don't run screaming to the Kirin Tor. We can all live peacefully, together, in this great new world that I designed.

I will even give you a pony.

Now I shall take my leave of you. You have given me much in these few, short hours, including troll meat, carcasses, and the chance to sing. Until we meet again, brave souls, until we meet again.

Sincerely,
The Artist Formerly Known As The Destroyer

Reassuring words from Bioware

2010-04-02T13:27:00.003-04:00

It's no secret that I've been a bit worried about SWTOR. I've discussed at great length my impression of SWTOR as an RPG with coop play, and despite the prior admission from various developers that MMO elements would be added later I grew even more worried by the interviews that took place during GDC10 that indicated those elements as not even being finalized, let along finished in development. So it's with some satisfaction that I saw for the first time today, someone at the highest level of development, stating in unequivocal terms that missing MMO elements are not only being worked on, but are considered downright essential. Today's blog post gives me much hope that things will begin to look better over the Summer and Fall.

Freedom is a true part of the magic of MMOs, and artificial constraints and mechanics can undermine the fiction and the sense that you are living in the virtual world – and when you have a brand as rich and textured as Star Wars™, the last thing you want to do is undermine it. Even worse, the depth and visual splendor of Star Wars™: The Old Republic would be completely lost if players couldn’t jump off the rails and just live in the space from time to time.

Raid progression update

2010-04-02T08:57:00.000-04:00

I took my Druid out of the other guild, as they were beginning to raid three days a week from 8:30pm EST to Midnight. Raiding six days a week, not including any 10-man adventuring I might want to delve into over the weekend, was just too much. So it’s back to one guild and one “progression” raid. Unfortunately for me that “progression” raid doesn’t have a lot of “progression” in it. We were back in there last night, still trying to kill Putricide. First wing, Rotface, Festergut, and Blood Princes are all on farm status now but Putricide, Dreamwalker, and the Blood Queen are being very difficult. As we now have a handful of people who need the Putricide kill for their Shadowmourne quest chain, we’ve been focusing on him more than the others. And despite the now 10% buff in Icecrown, we can only get down to around 50% before we end up wiping. As with so many fights before this, the root issue to our problem is personnel performance. Too many people are being killed by Malleable Goo during phase 2. And it doesn’t much matter whether it’s a healer or DPS that gets killed. If it’s a healer we slowly suffer, but if it’s a DPS we end up not being able to kill the oozes quickly enough and eventually get to a point where we have two up at the same time. Then it’s over.

As fights go, the Putricide fight isn’t all that difficult – really. Phase 1 is a general tank and spank from 100% down to 80%. But during one ooze alternatively spawns, requiring the DPS to kill it. There is a bit of management required when the boss nears 80% as you generally don’t want to have an ooze up, or spawn when the transition from phase 1 to phase 2 occurs. But once phase 2 does occur the fight remains largely the same, but with the additional element of Malleable Goo thrown in. Throughout phase 2 Putricide will randomly target ranged players and will toss Malleable Goo at them, requiring the player and anyone within 10-yards of that player to move away. If they do not and are struck, the goo will explode dealing substantial damage to that individual and everyone within 10-yards of them. It will also put a negative haste debuff on them for a period of seconds, causing casting time to increase by 200% and running speed to decrease by 50%. Fairly nasty debuff but the direct damage aspect of the explosion is the part that generally kills you and is what keeps causing our wipes. It’s the classic “people aren’t paying enough attention” to what’s going on around them during a fight thing. We have the DPS to finish the fight, but once we start to lose people to the goo or the oozes it simply cascades from there.

I’ve only seen phase 3 on my Druid when I was raiding with him, but phase 3 is all about Putricide. No more oozes, but the ranged still have to worry about the Malleable Goo, and the melee have to contend with slime puddles spawning around the boss. So phase 3 is a movement phase, where the boss is slowly kited around the room.

Perhaps we’ll kill him on Monday night, but if not it’s simply another wasted week of progression and another wasted week toward Shadowmourne. With the Cataclysm beta reportedly starting this month I’m definitely beginning to see opportunity to get the three boss kills I need and then collect the 50 shards I need, coming to an end.

Blizzard strokes the EPEN But Bioware unleashes the Sarlaac!

2010-04-01T13:00:00.001-04:00

Now you really can stroke your EPEEN in WoW. But not to be outdone, Bioware announces today you can play the ultimate class in SWTOR! The Sarlaac! From the "it's April 1st" stack.