My main, Jarsus, is a Protection Paladin. I leveled him up from 1 (well, ok, 10, because he had no talents before then) to 80 as Protection, and he always tanks. Going Retribution on him is always weird, and it feels wrong to see him on the log-in screen without his good old sword and board (or mace and board,) so I'll sometimes switch specs and gear before logging out even if the next thing I intend to do with him is run some dailies.
With Jarsus, there's never a question when it comes to gearing. Do I prioritize tank gear or dps gear? Always Tank. If I ain't tanking, I ain't on Jarsus.
However, my "Vice Main," or "Primary Alt" or whatever, the Death Knight, Oterro, is a somewhat different story. I leveled up Oterro as Blood dps originally (best leveling spec the game has ever seen, by the way) and liked it so much that I actually hit 80 on him an hour before I did on Jarsus. Over the course of Wrath, though, I became interested in trying out tanking on other classes. Wrath was kind of a golden age of tanking in my (admittedly rose-tinted) eyes. Tanking was fast-paced and demanded a lot of attention to maximize threat on lots of targets. Without reliance on Crowd Control, and without the enormous band-aid of Vengeance, you had to fight your dps tooth and nail to keep up in threat (with none of this "Active Mitigation.") So Oterro became the first tank convert. It was actually quite useful, because I settled on Blood as my tanking spec shortly before they announced that Blood was going to be the tanking spec.
The elimination of Blood dps forced me to look into the other specs for Oterro's soloing spec, and so I got into Frost (I'd originally created Oterro as a lookalike of Uterro, my Draenei Shaman, and in terms of role-play, I consider them to be the same person, especially given that Uterro was deleted to make room for Oterro - so being a master of at least one element seemed thematically appropriate. I also just prefer the reactive gameplay of Frost over Unholy.)
Cut to today. While tanking is still fun, and it's actually a lot easier to adjust to Mists-era Blood than Mists-era Protection, I am finding myself drawn to Frost dps more and more. (It doesn't hurt that apparently dps doesn't have to wait through the hour-long queue for Raid Finder that I encounter when queueing on Jarsus.) Blood is still a lot of fun (again, I prefer "reactive" over "active" mitigation) but it's also not hard to like gigantic Obliterate crits and the huge explosion of damage caused by Howling Blast.
So, I'm currently in the process of re-alligning Oterro to be primarily Frost. This is proving somewhat slow.
Part of it is just unlucky drops. I ran four dungeons on him today (I rarely do more than one) and saw only one drop (ironically, I actually wound up getting two pieces of tank gear, owing to well-geared or leather-wearing tanks.) Oterro's dps gear is actually pretty crappy, most of it left over from Townlong Steppes, as I prioritized tank gear in Dread Wastes. While I'm doing fine damage in the 40k range (I think Frost might be a little overpowered at the moment, given my mix of gear,) the barrier to Raid Finder is still quite far away.
I should say now that I'm not really offering many suggestions, but here's one: Blacksmiths can currently make iLevel 450 tanking gear. They can also make both Strength and Intellect PvP plate at the same iLevel (the recipes cost Spirits of Harmony, so it's not super easy to get them all.) I realize that this does kind of complete the plate trifecta, but it seems to me that it might have been nice to provide PvE Blacksmith gear for level 90 people that isn't some reputation-bound epic piece. Blacksmithing, and indeed all the armor professions, are fairly limited in scope at the moment. They can make 384 greens (useless once you're out of Jade Forest) that sometimes grant 414 blues (that get outdated once you're out of Kun Lai.) Leveling the professions is somewhat easier than it has been in the past, but there's really nothing useful from the trainers at level 90.
Given that you may have used up your Dread Wastes quest rewards on tanking gear, it does make the transition a little bumpier. Granted, there is JP gear, but this requires quite the grind, and of course only satisfies certain slots.
Frankly, I think the real blame for this issue (and yes, I realize I very well may be making a mountain of a mole hill here. Forgive the rant. This is the internet, after all) is the new quest reward system. Before Mists, each quest had an odd assortment of items - a hunter weapon, a priest belt, a rogue chest piece, and a tanking shield, for example. Enough quests would offer rewards that you would often be able to, in each zone, get a nearly-full set of tanking and dps plate (the two were often not rewarded by the same quests) at that zone's iLevel.
Actually, this also lends some support to the notion of getting rid of tank gear altogether. Guardian Druids and Brewmaster Monks, after all, can use their gear as quite decent Feral or Windwalker sets. While they may have different stat priorities, for the most part they're using the same stuff. If this were true of plate tanks, all they would need to collect for a separate dps set would be a two-handed weapon (Blood would already be there. And if it was a Warrior, they could just use two tanking weapons, given that we don't seem to be seeing any dodge or parry on 1-handers anymore.)
Oddly, the shift in Mists has been somewhat toward greater specialization, via quest rewards and the LFR loot system, all at a time when tank dps while soloing out in the world is back to Burning Crusade-level wimpiness. (I miss my Sacred Duty, damn it!)
So, it will be an interesting process. The challenge, of course, will be to maintain the Blood set after I start building up the Frost.
/End Rant
Sunday, November 4, 2012
Saturday, November 3, 2012
Memory Lane: Reagents
Mists of Pandaria brought a lot of changes to the way our classes worked - the old talent trees were totally eliminated, divorcing your specialization from your talent choices, with the (fairly successful, I'd say) goal of truly making talents choices, and not simply having a "right way" and a "wrong way" to assign talent points. This change simplified things quite a bit, getting rid of any of the "10% more haste" and that sort of thing.
Another change was that it finally put the last nail in coffin for reagents. Today, the only things Reagent vendors sell are the Glyph/Talent reassignment items. So, in the interest of nostalgia, I figured I'd look at all the crap that we had to carry in our bags to function back in the day.
Priests: Honestly, here's where my memory's going to be murkiest, because my Priest only reached 85 when patch 5.0 was already out. He had been the only class I'd never gotten to the level cap (I plan to get at least one of each class to 90 this time around, and while it saddens me to have a level 90 Blood Elf but not an Orc or Goblin, so be it - then again, the Orc Warrior could very well be one of the first "class duplicates" to hit 90, though that will probably not happen for many months.) What I do remember is that they had to buy Holy Candles and Sacred Candles. As I recall, these were used to cast Prayer of Fortitude and Prayer of Spirit, and probably also Prayer of Shadow Protection. Something you'll notice a lot here is that most classes used to have a separate, individual-person buff that was reagent-free, and a raid-wide (or class-wide) buff that cost something other than mana. Today of course, these buffs are always raid-wide.
Warlocks: Warlocks had a ton of stuff. Primarily, they had to keep a whole separate bag for Soul Shards. Soul Shards used to be used for a lot of spells, including summoning your demons. They also did not stack, so you really did want a dedicated bag for them. Indeed, many of the old Warlock class quests, where you would learn to summon a new demon, would grant you a bigger soul bag. Additionally, Warlocks conjured Fire Stones and... there was another one, but I can't remember what it's called. Anyway, they were temporary weapon imbues that would give you a slight buff. Also, Warlocks had to carry around Infernal Stones and Demonic Runes in order to cast the spells that would call down Infernals and Doomguards. In the case of Inferno, to learn it, you had to do a somewhat out-of-the-way quest in Felwood that I had to look up at level 80. Soulstones were also a conjured item, and for a long time could only be cast preemptively.
Mages: Beyond Conjured Food and Conjured Water (and they used to be separate things,) Mages had to carry Arcane Powder in order to cast Arcane Brilliance (the single-person version was called Arcane Intellect) and to conjure Mage Tables. They also needed Runes of Teleportation and Runes of Portal to use their travel spells. This was all true fairly recently, so not much shock to be had, I'd guess.
Druids: Druids only had a couple reagents. In order to cast Gift of the Wild (the raid-wide version of Mark of the Wild) they would need to carry around some sort of store-bought herb (can't recall the name.) In order to use Rebirth, which was at one time the only Druid resurrection spell, you needed to buy various seeds - back when abilities had ranks, you'd need a new seed for each new rank.
Rogues: Oh boy. Not only did Rogues have to carry their poisons on them, they also had to make their own poisons! Rogues actually had two quasi-professions in addition to their other skills. Poisons was a bit like alchemy, requiring you to blend herbs in a vial. However, the herbs were all available from Poison vendors (you might still be able to hear them talking about those herbs in the poison store in Stormwind's Old Town.) These herbs could be found in pickpocketed junk boxes as well. Additionally, in order to pick locks, Rogues needed to have Thieves' Tools, which you'd get for doing one of the class quests or you could just buy them off poison vendors. Additionally, Rogues had to carry Blinding Powder to use Blind and Vanishing Powder to use Vanish. The former was made with the Poison skill while the latter was simply bought. Rogues were always dealing with Poison Vendors.
Shamans: The biggest burden on Shaman inventory space was, of course, their totems. Up to level 30, you'd get a quest at every tenth level to get another totem. This was an actual, physical thing to stick in your backpack that was required to cast totem spells. It was less of a reagent than a tool, as the totems would of course never be consumed, but it did mean that four inventory slots were locked down on Totem duty (though Ancestral Recall meant you could get rid of your Hearthstone if you so wished.) Reincarnation used to cost an Ankh, which was simply bought from Reagent vendors. Now, Water Walking and Water Breathing (the latter now dearly departed) took Fish Oil and Shiny Fish Scales. If you don't play a shaman, you might have wondered why the hell you kept finding those things at every damn level. These otherwise vendor trash-like items were actually used as reagents for these spells. If a shaman wanted to cast them, they had to farm them (or buy them from other players.) Good riddance, I say.
Hunters: Much as Warlocks had to dedicate a bag slot to Soul Shards, Hunters used to have to carry around quivers and ammo pouches for their ammunition. While a Warlock who was very good at keeping their pets alive could potentially get away with no soul bag, Hunters absolutely needed their ammo bags. The bags themselves actually provided a 15% haste buff, and provided a very generous amount of space for ammo, which we should remind you, was consumed by every single attack. It did stack to 100 (or maybe 200...) but you would definitely need to keep your arsenal full, especially before a big raid. Ammo would also vary in strength, so you'd want to upgrade it as you leveled up or went from tier to tier. Additionally, this made switching from Guns to Bows or Crossbows a bigger burden, because they used totally different ammo that required totally different bags. And that's before we even talk about the Pet leveling and ability-learning system. I won't go into that much, but one aspect was that you had to keep your pet happy in order for them to do their maximum damage. To do this, you had to carry around food that they would like. For example, Wolves only like meat and fish. Bears will eat nearly anything.
Warriors: Warriors didn't have to carry a god damned thing. Screw those guys.
Paladins: The Blessing System, as recently as Wrath of the Lich King (though far more so earlier) was batshit insane. Paladins used to have far more blessings that did much more specific things. Starting I believe in BC, they were given "Greater Blessings," which would affect the target and everyone of the same class that was in the Raid. Combining this with the fact that there were far more blessings to give out (four in Wrath of the Lich King, and many more earlier, though some of those were situational blessings that became Hands) meant that A: you had to coordinate big time between the Paladins in the raid, and B: You had to carry a whole lot of Symbols of Kings, which were required for each cast of a Greater Blessing. Additionally, Paladins had to carry around Symbols of Divinity. Paladins used to have an ability called Divine Intervention. What this did was the Paladin would sacrifice him or herself (though this did not incur durability damage, which was a big incentive to use it) to remove the targeted ally from combat, preventing them from moving or using any abilities for three minutes. This was a wipe-recovery move. If a fight was going south fast, you'd cast this on a healer and let everyone die. Because the target was forced out of combat, the boss would reset, and if the target was not too close, you could immediately begin resurrecting people. Obviously you never wanted to use this if there was a chance you could actually beat the boss, but it was a nice way to save two raid members their repair costs and get people off the ground quicker.
Death Knights: Yes, even Death Knights used to have reagents to carry around. They only had one, which was Corpse Dust. Corpse Dust was only situationally required, and if you did not use Raise Dead very often, you did not need it. Corpse Dust was only required if you wanted to raise a ghoul but had no humanoid corpses nearby to do so. Actually, Raise Dead used to be a weird and cool ability. If cast on a humanoid npc corpse, you'd simply get a normal ghoul. But if you cast it on a fellow player (there was not Raise Ally back then,) the player would actually become a ghoul, getting totally different abilities to use. There was even an Unholy talent back in Wrath that caused the Death Knight to come back as one of these ghouls for 30 seconds or so after they were killed.
So: Reagents. We used to carry a lot of crap around with us just in order to function. Inventory space has always been at a bit of a premium in WoW, but you can be very thankful that at least we don't have to lug all this stuff with us.
Another change was that it finally put the last nail in coffin for reagents. Today, the only things Reagent vendors sell are the Glyph/Talent reassignment items. So, in the interest of nostalgia, I figured I'd look at all the crap that we had to carry in our bags to function back in the day.
Priests: Honestly, here's where my memory's going to be murkiest, because my Priest only reached 85 when patch 5.0 was already out. He had been the only class I'd never gotten to the level cap (I plan to get at least one of each class to 90 this time around, and while it saddens me to have a level 90 Blood Elf but not an Orc or Goblin, so be it - then again, the Orc Warrior could very well be one of the first "class duplicates" to hit 90, though that will probably not happen for many months.) What I do remember is that they had to buy Holy Candles and Sacred Candles. As I recall, these were used to cast Prayer of Fortitude and Prayer of Spirit, and probably also Prayer of Shadow Protection. Something you'll notice a lot here is that most classes used to have a separate, individual-person buff that was reagent-free, and a raid-wide (or class-wide) buff that cost something other than mana. Today of course, these buffs are always raid-wide.
Warlocks: Warlocks had a ton of stuff. Primarily, they had to keep a whole separate bag for Soul Shards. Soul Shards used to be used for a lot of spells, including summoning your demons. They also did not stack, so you really did want a dedicated bag for them. Indeed, many of the old Warlock class quests, where you would learn to summon a new demon, would grant you a bigger soul bag. Additionally, Warlocks conjured Fire Stones and... there was another one, but I can't remember what it's called. Anyway, they were temporary weapon imbues that would give you a slight buff. Also, Warlocks had to carry around Infernal Stones and Demonic Runes in order to cast the spells that would call down Infernals and Doomguards. In the case of Inferno, to learn it, you had to do a somewhat out-of-the-way quest in Felwood that I had to look up at level 80. Soulstones were also a conjured item, and for a long time could only be cast preemptively.
Mages: Beyond Conjured Food and Conjured Water (and they used to be separate things,) Mages had to carry Arcane Powder in order to cast Arcane Brilliance (the single-person version was called Arcane Intellect) and to conjure Mage Tables. They also needed Runes of Teleportation and Runes of Portal to use their travel spells. This was all true fairly recently, so not much shock to be had, I'd guess.
Druids: Druids only had a couple reagents. In order to cast Gift of the Wild (the raid-wide version of Mark of the Wild) they would need to carry around some sort of store-bought herb (can't recall the name.) In order to use Rebirth, which was at one time the only Druid resurrection spell, you needed to buy various seeds - back when abilities had ranks, you'd need a new seed for each new rank.
Rogues: Oh boy. Not only did Rogues have to carry their poisons on them, they also had to make their own poisons! Rogues actually had two quasi-professions in addition to their other skills. Poisons was a bit like alchemy, requiring you to blend herbs in a vial. However, the herbs were all available from Poison vendors (you might still be able to hear them talking about those herbs in the poison store in Stormwind's Old Town.) These herbs could be found in pickpocketed junk boxes as well. Additionally, in order to pick locks, Rogues needed to have Thieves' Tools, which you'd get for doing one of the class quests or you could just buy them off poison vendors. Additionally, Rogues had to carry Blinding Powder to use Blind and Vanishing Powder to use Vanish. The former was made with the Poison skill while the latter was simply bought. Rogues were always dealing with Poison Vendors.
Shamans: The biggest burden on Shaman inventory space was, of course, their totems. Up to level 30, you'd get a quest at every tenth level to get another totem. This was an actual, physical thing to stick in your backpack that was required to cast totem spells. It was less of a reagent than a tool, as the totems would of course never be consumed, but it did mean that four inventory slots were locked down on Totem duty (though Ancestral Recall meant you could get rid of your Hearthstone if you so wished.) Reincarnation used to cost an Ankh, which was simply bought from Reagent vendors. Now, Water Walking and Water Breathing (the latter now dearly departed) took Fish Oil and Shiny Fish Scales. If you don't play a shaman, you might have wondered why the hell you kept finding those things at every damn level. These otherwise vendor trash-like items were actually used as reagents for these spells. If a shaman wanted to cast them, they had to farm them (or buy them from other players.) Good riddance, I say.
Hunters: Much as Warlocks had to dedicate a bag slot to Soul Shards, Hunters used to have to carry around quivers and ammo pouches for their ammunition. While a Warlock who was very good at keeping their pets alive could potentially get away with no soul bag, Hunters absolutely needed their ammo bags. The bags themselves actually provided a 15% haste buff, and provided a very generous amount of space for ammo, which we should remind you, was consumed by every single attack. It did stack to 100 (or maybe 200...) but you would definitely need to keep your arsenal full, especially before a big raid. Ammo would also vary in strength, so you'd want to upgrade it as you leveled up or went from tier to tier. Additionally, this made switching from Guns to Bows or Crossbows a bigger burden, because they used totally different ammo that required totally different bags. And that's before we even talk about the Pet leveling and ability-learning system. I won't go into that much, but one aspect was that you had to keep your pet happy in order for them to do their maximum damage. To do this, you had to carry around food that they would like. For example, Wolves only like meat and fish. Bears will eat nearly anything.
Warriors: Warriors didn't have to carry a god damned thing. Screw those guys.
Paladins: The Blessing System, as recently as Wrath of the Lich King (though far more so earlier) was batshit insane. Paladins used to have far more blessings that did much more specific things. Starting I believe in BC, they were given "Greater Blessings," which would affect the target and everyone of the same class that was in the Raid. Combining this with the fact that there were far more blessings to give out (four in Wrath of the Lich King, and many more earlier, though some of those were situational blessings that became Hands) meant that A: you had to coordinate big time between the Paladins in the raid, and B: You had to carry a whole lot of Symbols of Kings, which were required for each cast of a Greater Blessing. Additionally, Paladins had to carry around Symbols of Divinity. Paladins used to have an ability called Divine Intervention. What this did was the Paladin would sacrifice him or herself (though this did not incur durability damage, which was a big incentive to use it) to remove the targeted ally from combat, preventing them from moving or using any abilities for three minutes. This was a wipe-recovery move. If a fight was going south fast, you'd cast this on a healer and let everyone die. Because the target was forced out of combat, the boss would reset, and if the target was not too close, you could immediately begin resurrecting people. Obviously you never wanted to use this if there was a chance you could actually beat the boss, but it was a nice way to save two raid members their repair costs and get people off the ground quicker.
Death Knights: Yes, even Death Knights used to have reagents to carry around. They only had one, which was Corpse Dust. Corpse Dust was only situationally required, and if you did not use Raise Dead very often, you did not need it. Corpse Dust was only required if you wanted to raise a ghoul but had no humanoid corpses nearby to do so. Actually, Raise Dead used to be a weird and cool ability. If cast on a humanoid npc corpse, you'd simply get a normal ghoul. But if you cast it on a fellow player (there was not Raise Ally back then,) the player would actually become a ghoul, getting totally different abilities to use. There was even an Unholy talent back in Wrath that caused the Death Knight to come back as one of these ghouls for 30 seconds or so after they were killed.
So: Reagents. We used to carry a lot of crap around with us just in order to function. Inventory space has always been at a bit of a premium in WoW, but you can be very thankful that at least we don't have to lug all this stuff with us.
5.x Speculation: What is the Trajectory of Mists?
5.1 is on the PTR. While this is the first major content patch for Mists of Pandaria, it will not include any new dungeons or raids. Instead, what we are seeing is mainly a progression of story, going from 5.0, in which we are one of the very few Horde/Alliance representatives who have arrived on this mysterious continent, to a point where the full force of the two sides' war machines are coming to do battle.
As it stands right now, the Alliance forces are represented by us, the survivors of Admiral Taylor's Fleet (including Aduin Wrynn,) the survivors of the SI:7 mission to bring the prince home (once could arguably count us among them) and a separate expedition of Night Elves who had been searching for the Pools of Youth, as well as the Vale of Eternal Blossoms. On the Horde side, we've got the very small group of survivors from the initial attack force led by General Nazgrim (which we count as,) and the Dawnchasers led by Sunwalker Dezco. That's all going to change when the beaches of Krasarang become home to two major outposts of the battling sides.
So 5.1 is going to be largely about story, told through quests and scenarios, as well as... another daily quest rep grind (yeah, not sure if that's what most players are clamoring for.) Given the various audio files that have been leaked, it looks like we're going to get a good look at how Pandaria manages to really drive Garrosh over the edge into "we actually have to kill him now" territory as well as showing us how Theramore leaves Jaina so distrusting of the Horde that she actually winds up unintentionally ruining Varian's attempt to reach some reconciliation (wow, quite a role-reversal there, am I right?) Not to mention, it appears that Vol'jin will begin to emerge as the leader of the Horde Resistance against Garrosh.
So it's not a small patch, by any stretch.
Still, I am left wondering how the evolution of the expansion is going to work. In each expansion (plus Vanilla) there have been three raiding tiers (other than Wrath, which had four.) In practice, both Burning Crusade and Vanilla can be said to have three and a half, as Ahn-Qiraj and Sunwell Plateau were not really considered to be within the "official" tiers. (Frankly, we could probably just start calling Ahn-Qiraj tier 3 now that Naxxramas-40 no longer exists.)
Cataclysm only had three tiers, but I think Blizzard would agree with most of the playerbase that Cataclysm's end-game content was underwhelming.
So I expect that we will, at the very least, get another large raid tier between now and the Orgrimmar raid. That leaves us with the question: what will it be?
Now, granted, I think very few of us were expecting Trial of the Crusader when we first started playing Wrath of the Lich King, so it's certainly possible we'll get something out of left field. The obvious raid concepts that I can see coming in future would involve the Mogu and the Zandalari. Now, admittedly, we already have a Mogu raid in Mogu'shan Vaults. That said, MSV is both the super-starter raid (it's arguably tier not-quite-14) and deals more with the ancient Mogu and their connection to the Titans (though with tantalizingly little in terms of concrete answers regarding whether they are really Titan constructs - though maybe I'm just looking for a revelation that isn't there.)
We've been dealing with the major Sha throughout questing and dungeons, and we've got the Sha of Anger out in the world as well as the Sha of Fear as the final boss of Tier 14. Might we come across more Sha? Certainly possible, but I doubt we're going to learn much more about them.
The Mogu raid would, of course, have us confront and defeat Lei Shen, the Thunder King. If you haven't done Lorewalker Cho's quests in Kun Lai (and don't mind a bit of SPOILER,) I'll sum it up: You go to investigate the ancient tombs of the Mogu Emperors up in the mountains of Kun-Lai. When you come to that actual Tomb of the Emperors, you are ambushed by the Zandalari trolls, who, according to ancient prophecy and arriving just in time, come take the Thunder King's body away. You follow them north, where they are attacking a village, but by the time you save the village, it's too late. The Thunder King is alive and kicking. It seems inevitable that we're going to have to fight this guy, as well as his armies. If that means more ornate Mogu buildings, I am totally in favor of that.
The Zandalari could be a major recurring villain for future expansions, but one gets the impression (in those same quests in Kun Lai) that they are becoming a bit desperate. One of the major enemies claims that the Cataclysm destroyed their home. Is Zandalar no more? Could this be why they turned so aggressive? It would explain the face-heel turn of the Zandalari if they are now acting out of desperation, and of course it somewhat mirrors Garrosh with the Horde - using this disaster to gain support for military aggression. We still haven't even seen this "Zul" guy who is apparently leading the Zandalari to war, nor have we seen in-game King Rakhastan (or whatever his name is.) It's not unthinkable that we'd have a raid to take down the Zandalari, and given their presence in Pandaria, it gives us a reason.
Dungeons, I would say, would probably simply relate to the various raids. I know they are pushing Raid Finder as the way to "catch up" now, but I love 5-man content, and eagerly anticipate new ones (more Hour of Twilight than Rise of the Zandalari, please.)
Now, that's all fine and dandy, but what about the 5.1 patch? Might we see more of these "moving the story along" patches? I don't know when we're going to see 5.1 hit (I'm guessing in a month, maybe a bit more) but we know Blizzard wants a faster schedule of new content to ship out. Adding in new features (like Brawler's Guild and item upgrading) and alternating with new raid content would be a good way to keep a constant flow of new stuff.
I could imagine a 5.3 or something in which we get to start really working on the Horde Resistance (the Free Horde? The Horde Underground?) and perhaps get the Trials of the High King (glad they're making Varian a more likable leader - still think the Alliance should be less monolithic in its rulers. We don't need a Warchief here, guys.)
We could easily have up to 5.4 then during the expansion's life cycle, and that's assuming only three raid tiers.
As it stands right now, the Alliance forces are represented by us, the survivors of Admiral Taylor's Fleet (including Aduin Wrynn,) the survivors of the SI:7 mission to bring the prince home (once could arguably count us among them) and a separate expedition of Night Elves who had been searching for the Pools of Youth, as well as the Vale of Eternal Blossoms. On the Horde side, we've got the very small group of survivors from the initial attack force led by General Nazgrim (which we count as,) and the Dawnchasers led by Sunwalker Dezco. That's all going to change when the beaches of Krasarang become home to two major outposts of the battling sides.
So 5.1 is going to be largely about story, told through quests and scenarios, as well as... another daily quest rep grind (yeah, not sure if that's what most players are clamoring for.) Given the various audio files that have been leaked, it looks like we're going to get a good look at how Pandaria manages to really drive Garrosh over the edge into "we actually have to kill him now" territory as well as showing us how Theramore leaves Jaina so distrusting of the Horde that she actually winds up unintentionally ruining Varian's attempt to reach some reconciliation (wow, quite a role-reversal there, am I right?) Not to mention, it appears that Vol'jin will begin to emerge as the leader of the Horde Resistance against Garrosh.
So it's not a small patch, by any stretch.
Still, I am left wondering how the evolution of the expansion is going to work. In each expansion (plus Vanilla) there have been three raiding tiers (other than Wrath, which had four.) In practice, both Burning Crusade and Vanilla can be said to have three and a half, as Ahn-Qiraj and Sunwell Plateau were not really considered to be within the "official" tiers. (Frankly, we could probably just start calling Ahn-Qiraj tier 3 now that Naxxramas-40 no longer exists.)
Cataclysm only had three tiers, but I think Blizzard would agree with most of the playerbase that Cataclysm's end-game content was underwhelming.
So I expect that we will, at the very least, get another large raid tier between now and the Orgrimmar raid. That leaves us with the question: what will it be?
Now, granted, I think very few of us were expecting Trial of the Crusader when we first started playing Wrath of the Lich King, so it's certainly possible we'll get something out of left field. The obvious raid concepts that I can see coming in future would involve the Mogu and the Zandalari. Now, admittedly, we already have a Mogu raid in Mogu'shan Vaults. That said, MSV is both the super-starter raid (it's arguably tier not-quite-14) and deals more with the ancient Mogu and their connection to the Titans (though with tantalizingly little in terms of concrete answers regarding whether they are really Titan constructs - though maybe I'm just looking for a revelation that isn't there.)
We've been dealing with the major Sha throughout questing and dungeons, and we've got the Sha of Anger out in the world as well as the Sha of Fear as the final boss of Tier 14. Might we come across more Sha? Certainly possible, but I doubt we're going to learn much more about them.
The Mogu raid would, of course, have us confront and defeat Lei Shen, the Thunder King. If you haven't done Lorewalker Cho's quests in Kun Lai (and don't mind a bit of SPOILER,) I'll sum it up: You go to investigate the ancient tombs of the Mogu Emperors up in the mountains of Kun-Lai. When you come to that actual Tomb of the Emperors, you are ambushed by the Zandalari trolls, who, according to ancient prophecy and arriving just in time, come take the Thunder King's body away. You follow them north, where they are attacking a village, but by the time you save the village, it's too late. The Thunder King is alive and kicking. It seems inevitable that we're going to have to fight this guy, as well as his armies. If that means more ornate Mogu buildings, I am totally in favor of that.
The Zandalari could be a major recurring villain for future expansions, but one gets the impression (in those same quests in Kun Lai) that they are becoming a bit desperate. One of the major enemies claims that the Cataclysm destroyed their home. Is Zandalar no more? Could this be why they turned so aggressive? It would explain the face-heel turn of the Zandalari if they are now acting out of desperation, and of course it somewhat mirrors Garrosh with the Horde - using this disaster to gain support for military aggression. We still haven't even seen this "Zul" guy who is apparently leading the Zandalari to war, nor have we seen in-game King Rakhastan (or whatever his name is.) It's not unthinkable that we'd have a raid to take down the Zandalari, and given their presence in Pandaria, it gives us a reason.
Dungeons, I would say, would probably simply relate to the various raids. I know they are pushing Raid Finder as the way to "catch up" now, but I love 5-man content, and eagerly anticipate new ones (more Hour of Twilight than Rise of the Zandalari, please.)
Now, that's all fine and dandy, but what about the 5.1 patch? Might we see more of these "moving the story along" patches? I don't know when we're going to see 5.1 hit (I'm guessing in a month, maybe a bit more) but we know Blizzard wants a faster schedule of new content to ship out. Adding in new features (like Brawler's Guild and item upgrading) and alternating with new raid content would be a good way to keep a constant flow of new stuff.
I could imagine a 5.3 or something in which we get to start really working on the Horde Resistance (the Free Horde? The Horde Underground?) and perhaps get the Trials of the High King (glad they're making Varian a more likable leader - still think the Alliance should be less monolithic in its rulers. We don't need a Warchief here, guys.)
We could easily have up to 5.4 then during the expansion's life cycle, and that's assuming only three raid tiers.
Monday, October 29, 2012
Demon Hunters: Speculation on Illidan's Return
All this way-too-early talk about a new expansion, coupled with the fact that I just completed Blasted Lands on my Monk (sadly, I don't think Zen Flight goes as fast as a normal flying mount, but it'll be good if I don't have to go far, or decide to jump off a cliff or something,) got me thinking about Demon Hunters.
Like Death Knights, Demon Hunters are one of those obvious options for a new class, such that it would be kind of sad if we never got to play as them.
Death Knights, of course, have been around for roughly four years, and I think they were a great success. With Mists of Pandaria, we got a second new class: the Monk. The Monk is quite different from the Death Knight. It's not a hero class. Despite some visual differences and its own "class home" (complete with daily quests that make leveling go way faster,) Monks begin at level 1, and are just ordinary folks who choose a particular way to kick ass.
If Demon Hunters are introduced, I think it would make the most sense for them to be the game's second hero class. Demon Hunters are invariably badasses who have gone through very tough training, and also all seem to have had their eyes ritually removed and replaced with demonic magic - allowing them to see what others do not see, namely demons.
There are two major obstacles to the Demon Hunter class that the Death Knight did not have to deal with (as much.) One is that Demon Hunters are obviously a leather-wearing class (the Cursed Vision of Sargeras, which is the most Demon-Hunter-appropriate piece of gear that is not the Twin Blades of Azzinoth, is Leather.) With the introduction of Monks, we now have three Cloth, three Leather, and three Plate classes. Introducing yet another class to compete with Rogues and Druids while there are still only two Mail classes might make things a little painful.
The other issue is that all of the Warcraft 3-era Demon Hunter abilities already belong to other classes - particularly Warlocks. Metamorphosis, which is one of Illidan's signature moves, is now the centerpiece of the Demonology Warlock's rotation.
That said, I don't think this is a dealbreaker. Death Knights, after all, had a lot of totally new concepts built into them that were not from Warcraft 3 at all. Death Grip? Diseases? Runes and Runic Power? Totally new. Blizzard is pretty good at what they do, so I could imagine them coming up with something.
Also, we should remember that there's other sources for Demon Hunter abilities. We fought Illidan, as well as Leotheras the Blind, and any of their abilities could potentially be scaled down to be used as player abilities.
Demon Hunters, as I see it, would fit well as tanks, melee dps, and caster dps. I always thought it was a bit of a missed opportunity that Unholy Death Knights were not ranged (and another class that could have used Intellect Plate.) As Demon Hunters are also quite magic-based, it stands to reason they could be ranged.
Now, all the nitty-gritty of actual class design is something I'm not really suited for. What I can come up with here (not that I work for Blizzard - this is a pure exercise in fun speculation) is the backstory and starting experience for Demon Hunters.
If 55 were chosen as the "standard hero class starting level," you could begin in Blasted Lands, but if they're willing to let us skip Outland leveling, there's another option:
You begin at 65 in a specially phased/instanced version of Shadowmoon Valley. You are a powerful adventurer who has been drawn to Outland by rumors of great power and hidden secrets. It would seem that Illidan Stormrage's body has been recovered. You make contact with a group of Demon Hunters (Feronas Sindweller, from Felwood, may be among them) who seek to resurrect Illidan. However, the body is in the possession of the Ashtongue Deathsworn.
The Deathsworn are hunting down all the Demon Hunters in the ruins of the Black Temple, and you must fight them off. In the meantime, you discover that agents of the Burning Legion are attempting to take Illidan's remains for their purposes, and have infiltrated Akama's forces. You battle your way through the Black Temple and use your powers as a Demon Hunter to locate and dispatch the demons possessing the members of the Deathsworn.
Having proven yourself, you ascend to the top of the Black Temple and begin the ritual to return Illidan to life. Meanwhile, there is a great battle as demons pour in from the Twisting Nether to stop you. When you finally achieve victory, Illidan is brought back, and grants you great power in return for your deeds.
Much as the Knights of the Ebon Blade served a pivotal role in defeating the Lich King, this new group of Demon Hunters could serve as the "darker and edgier" side of the conflict against the Legion (with Velen's Army of the Light taking the Argent Crusade's role.)
I realize that all this speculation is a bit early. That said, we tend to get the announcement for each expansion about a year before it comes out - which means about a year after the current one launches. That means we're a 12th of the way to finding out what the next expansion will be!
Like Death Knights, Demon Hunters are one of those obvious options for a new class, such that it would be kind of sad if we never got to play as them.
Death Knights, of course, have been around for roughly four years, and I think they were a great success. With Mists of Pandaria, we got a second new class: the Monk. The Monk is quite different from the Death Knight. It's not a hero class. Despite some visual differences and its own "class home" (complete with daily quests that make leveling go way faster,) Monks begin at level 1, and are just ordinary folks who choose a particular way to kick ass.
If Demon Hunters are introduced, I think it would make the most sense for them to be the game's second hero class. Demon Hunters are invariably badasses who have gone through very tough training, and also all seem to have had their eyes ritually removed and replaced with demonic magic - allowing them to see what others do not see, namely demons.
There are two major obstacles to the Demon Hunter class that the Death Knight did not have to deal with (as much.) One is that Demon Hunters are obviously a leather-wearing class (the Cursed Vision of Sargeras, which is the most Demon-Hunter-appropriate piece of gear that is not the Twin Blades of Azzinoth, is Leather.) With the introduction of Monks, we now have three Cloth, three Leather, and three Plate classes. Introducing yet another class to compete with Rogues and Druids while there are still only two Mail classes might make things a little painful.
The other issue is that all of the Warcraft 3-era Demon Hunter abilities already belong to other classes - particularly Warlocks. Metamorphosis, which is one of Illidan's signature moves, is now the centerpiece of the Demonology Warlock's rotation.
That said, I don't think this is a dealbreaker. Death Knights, after all, had a lot of totally new concepts built into them that were not from Warcraft 3 at all. Death Grip? Diseases? Runes and Runic Power? Totally new. Blizzard is pretty good at what they do, so I could imagine them coming up with something.
Also, we should remember that there's other sources for Demon Hunter abilities. We fought Illidan, as well as Leotheras the Blind, and any of their abilities could potentially be scaled down to be used as player abilities.
Demon Hunters, as I see it, would fit well as tanks, melee dps, and caster dps. I always thought it was a bit of a missed opportunity that Unholy Death Knights were not ranged (and another class that could have used Intellect Plate.) As Demon Hunters are also quite magic-based, it stands to reason they could be ranged.
Now, all the nitty-gritty of actual class design is something I'm not really suited for. What I can come up with here (not that I work for Blizzard - this is a pure exercise in fun speculation) is the backstory and starting experience for Demon Hunters.
If 55 were chosen as the "standard hero class starting level," you could begin in Blasted Lands, but if they're willing to let us skip Outland leveling, there's another option:
You begin at 65 in a specially phased/instanced version of Shadowmoon Valley. You are a powerful adventurer who has been drawn to Outland by rumors of great power and hidden secrets. It would seem that Illidan Stormrage's body has been recovered. You make contact with a group of Demon Hunters (Feronas Sindweller, from Felwood, may be among them) who seek to resurrect Illidan. However, the body is in the possession of the Ashtongue Deathsworn.
The Deathsworn are hunting down all the Demon Hunters in the ruins of the Black Temple, and you must fight them off. In the meantime, you discover that agents of the Burning Legion are attempting to take Illidan's remains for their purposes, and have infiltrated Akama's forces. You battle your way through the Black Temple and use your powers as a Demon Hunter to locate and dispatch the demons possessing the members of the Deathsworn.
Having proven yourself, you ascend to the top of the Black Temple and begin the ritual to return Illidan to life. Meanwhile, there is a great battle as demons pour in from the Twisting Nether to stop you. When you finally achieve victory, Illidan is brought back, and grants you great power in return for your deeds.
Much as the Knights of the Ebon Blade served a pivotal role in defeating the Lich King, this new group of Demon Hunters could serve as the "darker and edgier" side of the conflict against the Legion (with Velen's Army of the Light taking the Argent Crusade's role.)
I realize that all this speculation is a bit early. That said, we tend to get the announcement for each expansion about a year before it comes out - which means about a year after the current one launches. That means we're a 12th of the way to finding out what the next expansion will be!
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Already talking about a new expansion?
World of Warcraft has been around for eight years, and it is still the largest MMO by a factor of ten over the next guy (if I recall correctly.) So perhaps it is unsurprising that, even though number have not quite bounced back to Wrath of the Lich King levels, they're still planning on keeping this thing going. (10 million subscriptions ain't bad. That's $150 million every month - before you account for people like me who go with the lower, long-term rate, but also before you account for the actual cost of the expansions.)
Rob Pardo, who is Chief Creative Executive at Blizzard, recently made a tweet about how the next expansion is going to be "awesome." This is, as far as I know, the earliest we've heard about a new expansion during the life cycle of a current one. Mists has been out for a mere one month and three days.
Yet it can hardly be shocking that they're planning a new expansion to follow this one. Mists of Pandaria is certainly epic, but it very much has the feel of "settling the accounts." The Alliance and the Horde have been at war off and on for decades. Both have expanded to include people who may have had no reason to fight each other before. For example, the Night Elves and the Tauren, by all rights, ought to be best friends. When new Pandaren character come to talk to their factions' leaders, both are informed that all of a sudden, their old friends who merely decided to check out a different group of people are now their mortal enemies.
I had this realization earlier this week: We are introduced to the Pandaren living in an idealistic, nearly pacifistic lifestyle. Their only soldiers are the Shado-Pan, who "serve so that others do not have to." Being a fighter in Pandaren culture is not something everyone is expected to do, but is a necessary evil that is only done by those who are willing to make the sacrifice, all the while placing their primary focus on controlling their emotions so that they do not become bloodthirsty and thus fodder for the Sha.
Yet as I take my Draenei or my Tauren through there, I think: "You know, my people were just as peace-loving and kind as the Pandaren. What happened?" And the answer is clear: the Alliance and the Horde happened.
Thrall's Horde was founded with noble intentions: to redeem the Orcs and save the world from a demonic invasion. The Alliance was founded to save the world from the Blood-crazed Old Horde during the second war. Both want to be the good guys, but by polarizing the world with a "you're either with us or against us" attitude, they take noble, kind people like the Tauren, Draenei, and Pandaren, and turn them into racially-motivated killers.
SPOILERS FOR 5.1 - ASSUMING THE AUDIO FILES ARE CORRECT AND WE DON'T HAVE AN "ALLIANCE NAVY INVADING TWILIGHT HIGHLANDS" SITUATION AGAIN.
The factions as they stand are crumbling. Well, more the Horde than the Alliance. The Alliance has mostly stuck to the mission statement. People like Garrithos are more the exception than the rule. As it turns out, Varian Wrynn is reaching out to the Blood Elves. After all, the Blood Elves were originally High Elves, and had a long history of friendship with humanity (that was not without its problems.) As Lor'themar Theron says (holy crap! He's actually getting to do something!) the whole reason they left the Alliance was to avoid being used, their welfare left unconsidered because they were a "lesser race." Yet Garrosh's theories of racial superiority make Theron very concerned. Garrosh could be another Garrithos. Meanwhile, as Garrosh radicalizes, Varian is becoming more moderate, and actually reaching out to the Blood Elves, attempting to get them to re-join the Alliance.
Meanwhile, Garrosh learns about the Sha and begins to experiment to see if it could be harnessed as a weapon. Vol'jin is brought in to look into the Mogu spirit-binding magics and Zandalari voodoo, but it becomes clear to the player and to him that it is actually a trap to assassinate him. 5.1 is where Horde players will finally be able to join the resistance. Vol'jin is almost killed, but manages to survive, and then makes the player his personal agent to keep tabs on the maniacal Warchief.
END SPOILERS
So if Mists ends with a reckoning of sorts - the Alliance molds itself into what it needs to be while the Horde purges itself of the cancerous growth that is this literal second Hellscream - it stands to reason that the next expansion is going to raise the stakes, big time.
Admittedly, it'll be a bit harder to raise the stakes higher than they were in Cataclysm (the whole world is literally going to explode!) but I think we've been getting hints here and there that that nasty old Burning Legion, they of the green fire, are almost done regrouping and recuperating from their defeat at Sunwell Plateau. Is this to be the final confrontation with the Burning Legion? Perhaps not. Kil'jaeden was defeated, but not killed at the Sunwell, and for all we know, Sargeras may still be using a light touch/being an incorporeal presence in the Twisting Nether to run the show.
But with the Warlock quest chain and Wrathion's image of green meteors coming down to destroy Azeroth, you do begin to suspect that we might have some demons to deal with.
Where might this expansion take place? A full-scale invasion of Azeroth would be very hard to pull off, and would likely require a huge amount of effort to re-work existing zones (something I think they're probably very hesitant to do after having to focus so much on the revamp for Cataclysm.) What I can imagine is that we might head out into space again. Outland was a pretty cool setting, after all. It would stand to reason that other fragments of Draenor might exist. We could see more of the ancient Orcish homelands, or perhaps some of the other Draenei cities. Then, of course, there's also Argus.
The homeland of the Draenei - who were then called Eredar - is either a burnt-out husk or a major base of operations for the Burning Legion. It would be fascinating to get some insight into what Eredar culture was like before Sargeras came. Obviously, the Eredar were not evil to begin with (despite what you might read in a Warcraft 3 manual,) but they also weren't devout followers of the Light either. What we do know is that they were a people who were so skilled at magic that, of all the races in the universe, Sargeras came to them for spell-casters. One has to imagine that the Eredar capital of Mac'aree would make Silvermoon look drab and mundane by comparison.
Anyway, Mists is kind of an interesting story, because it turns the focus back onto us. It's not really a "small" story, per se, but the focus is inward. However, assuming we do achieve some degree of self-growth, we'll gain the strength we need to face this gravest of threats.
Rob Pardo, who is Chief Creative Executive at Blizzard, recently made a tweet about how the next expansion is going to be "awesome." This is, as far as I know, the earliest we've heard about a new expansion during the life cycle of a current one. Mists has been out for a mere one month and three days.
Yet it can hardly be shocking that they're planning a new expansion to follow this one. Mists of Pandaria is certainly epic, but it very much has the feel of "settling the accounts." The Alliance and the Horde have been at war off and on for decades. Both have expanded to include people who may have had no reason to fight each other before. For example, the Night Elves and the Tauren, by all rights, ought to be best friends. When new Pandaren character come to talk to their factions' leaders, both are informed that all of a sudden, their old friends who merely decided to check out a different group of people are now their mortal enemies.
I had this realization earlier this week: We are introduced to the Pandaren living in an idealistic, nearly pacifistic lifestyle. Their only soldiers are the Shado-Pan, who "serve so that others do not have to." Being a fighter in Pandaren culture is not something everyone is expected to do, but is a necessary evil that is only done by those who are willing to make the sacrifice, all the while placing their primary focus on controlling their emotions so that they do not become bloodthirsty and thus fodder for the Sha.
Yet as I take my Draenei or my Tauren through there, I think: "You know, my people were just as peace-loving and kind as the Pandaren. What happened?" And the answer is clear: the Alliance and the Horde happened.
Thrall's Horde was founded with noble intentions: to redeem the Orcs and save the world from a demonic invasion. The Alliance was founded to save the world from the Blood-crazed Old Horde during the second war. Both want to be the good guys, but by polarizing the world with a "you're either with us or against us" attitude, they take noble, kind people like the Tauren, Draenei, and Pandaren, and turn them into racially-motivated killers.
SPOILERS FOR 5.1 - ASSUMING THE AUDIO FILES ARE CORRECT AND WE DON'T HAVE AN "ALLIANCE NAVY INVADING TWILIGHT HIGHLANDS" SITUATION AGAIN.
The factions as they stand are crumbling. Well, more the Horde than the Alliance. The Alliance has mostly stuck to the mission statement. People like Garrithos are more the exception than the rule. As it turns out, Varian Wrynn is reaching out to the Blood Elves. After all, the Blood Elves were originally High Elves, and had a long history of friendship with humanity (that was not without its problems.) As Lor'themar Theron says (holy crap! He's actually getting to do something!) the whole reason they left the Alliance was to avoid being used, their welfare left unconsidered because they were a "lesser race." Yet Garrosh's theories of racial superiority make Theron very concerned. Garrosh could be another Garrithos. Meanwhile, as Garrosh radicalizes, Varian is becoming more moderate, and actually reaching out to the Blood Elves, attempting to get them to re-join the Alliance.
Meanwhile, Garrosh learns about the Sha and begins to experiment to see if it could be harnessed as a weapon. Vol'jin is brought in to look into the Mogu spirit-binding magics and Zandalari voodoo, but it becomes clear to the player and to him that it is actually a trap to assassinate him. 5.1 is where Horde players will finally be able to join the resistance. Vol'jin is almost killed, but manages to survive, and then makes the player his personal agent to keep tabs on the maniacal Warchief.
END SPOILERS
So if Mists ends with a reckoning of sorts - the Alliance molds itself into what it needs to be while the Horde purges itself of the cancerous growth that is this literal second Hellscream - it stands to reason that the next expansion is going to raise the stakes, big time.
Admittedly, it'll be a bit harder to raise the stakes higher than they were in Cataclysm (the whole world is literally going to explode!) but I think we've been getting hints here and there that that nasty old Burning Legion, they of the green fire, are almost done regrouping and recuperating from their defeat at Sunwell Plateau. Is this to be the final confrontation with the Burning Legion? Perhaps not. Kil'jaeden was defeated, but not killed at the Sunwell, and for all we know, Sargeras may still be using a light touch/being an incorporeal presence in the Twisting Nether to run the show.
But with the Warlock quest chain and Wrathion's image of green meteors coming down to destroy Azeroth, you do begin to suspect that we might have some demons to deal with.
Where might this expansion take place? A full-scale invasion of Azeroth would be very hard to pull off, and would likely require a huge amount of effort to re-work existing zones (something I think they're probably very hesitant to do after having to focus so much on the revamp for Cataclysm.) What I can imagine is that we might head out into space again. Outland was a pretty cool setting, after all. It would stand to reason that other fragments of Draenor might exist. We could see more of the ancient Orcish homelands, or perhaps some of the other Draenei cities. Then, of course, there's also Argus.
The homeland of the Draenei - who were then called Eredar - is either a burnt-out husk or a major base of operations for the Burning Legion. It would be fascinating to get some insight into what Eredar culture was like before Sargeras came. Obviously, the Eredar were not evil to begin with (despite what you might read in a Warcraft 3 manual,) but they also weren't devout followers of the Light either. What we do know is that they were a people who were so skilled at magic that, of all the races in the universe, Sargeras came to them for spell-casters. One has to imagine that the Eredar capital of Mac'aree would make Silvermoon look drab and mundane by comparison.
Anyway, Mists is kind of an interesting story, because it turns the focus back onto us. It's not really a "small" story, per se, but the focus is inward. However, assuming we do achieve some degree of self-growth, we'll gain the strength we need to face this gravest of threats.
Friday, October 26, 2012
The Curious and Frustrating Implementation of Vengeance
One of the old problems World of Warcraft has had is that as the tiers go up during the lifetime of an expansion, the dps does far, far higher dps, while tanks just produce somewhat higher threat.
Threat must always outstrip dps, or the whole system falls apart.
Back in Burning Crusade, the main job of damage-dealers was to stay just underneath the threat cap. Hunters could do outstanding dps because Feign Death would wipe their threat. It was simply an accepted fact that if you pulled off the tank, that was your failure, and not theirs (well, ok, if the tank was single-targetting in a group of five and the healer pulled off them, that was their bad.)
Now, a compounding problem back then was that for all three tanks at the time (Warriors, Druids, and Paladins. BC was actually the time when Paladin and Druid tanks started being taken seriously, though the raids were still literally designed around only Warriors tanking the bosses) is that the better geared they got, the less they had to work with resource-wise. Because Warriors and Druids generated Rage mostly by getting hit, and Paladins generated mana via Spiritual Attunement, which gave them a percentage of the healing received as mana (no damage = no healing, and thus no mana.) So once you started to outgear an instance, you had to sit down to take a crit or run without pants to be able to keep up in threat.
One of the awesome things about Death Knights during Wrath was that their Rune system was totally independent of how much damage they were taking, so there was no "Gear Penalty."
Tanks are the only role that can actually suffer from being better geared. The only hazard for dps of being overgeared is that you might out-threat the tank, which is easily remedied through a technique I like to call "just stop for a second." Healers, of course, have no penalty whatsoever from being overgeared (unless they're REALLY overgeared and generate too much threat.) I suppose the only penalty for healers is that they might get bored.
So, you had the problem that in very high-level content, tanks would be desperately pouring out as much threat as they could so the dps did not have to hold back, but on lower-level content they were running on fumes the whole time.
The solution to the first problem that Blizzard came up with was Vengeance. This universal tank passive was weirdly complicated. You would get a percentage of your damage taken as attack power, up to a maximum based on your max health. The idea was that as tanks got better geared, they'd get higher stamina, and thus higher Vengeance. In a sense, it mirrors a Wrath-era Protection Paladin talent that granted spellpower proportional to our stamina. More stamina? More threat.
The problem, though, is the damage-taken part. Another way of putting it is that the problem is that it varies significantly when it really ought to be a static effect.
They of course want us to be the ones getting bashed by the bad guys, but what this leads to is a bunch of other issues.
1. At the beginning of the pull, when everyone is at equal threat (zero,) you have no Vengeance. If an Arcane Mage lights them up with a crit, or a Warrior charges in and Bladestorms, those things are not going to come after you. The pull is when threat matters the most, even before you take fluctuating attack power into account, and this is where Vengeance is non-existent.
2. The Tank-Swap is a tried and true method for Blizzard to give both tanks in a raid something to do without having to come up with two different things for them to do. However, when your AP (and thus threat) is based on how much you've been hit, the guy who's got three stacks of a powerful bleed and has been getting maced in the face for the last 30 seconds is going to be way higher than the guy who's been standing there, waiting his turn, getting little more than the raid-wide aoe damage. Especially in these days of "active mitigation tanking," the first tank is not going to want to stop their rotation when all they're seeing is huge damage pouring in.
3. We're also recreating the old problem with Rage and Mana from BC, but now Death Knights and Monks get to experience it. The better geared you are, the less damage you'll be taking, so your threat will scale inversely with gear. Now, the new Vengeance does say "unmitigated damage," which I hope means that blocks and absorbs (like Blood Shield) are ignored when calculating it. Still, you'll probably be dodging and parrying more as you gear up, so it's still a loss of Vengeance. (Avoidance may actually refresh Vengeance, but if you get "unlucky" and get a string of avoidance after a stretch of low damage or at the beginning of the pull, you're SOL.)
These problems are pretty huge, but there's another which I think is essential to the reason why Vengeance as a mechanic is so deeply flawed:
It does not scale with gear in any positive way.
The whole point of Vengeance, after all, was to allow tanks, who were stacking stamina, dodge, parry, and mastery, to boost their threat against people stacking attack/spell power, crit, haste, and their version of mastery (which is a dps stat for dps characters, obviously.) In Cataclysm, at least, it kinda-sorta scaled with Stamina. However, with the stamina cap gone, the only thing it scales positively with is damage taken from enemies.
So yes, as you go into higher tiers of content, the bosses will probably be hitting harder. The problem is that this makes Vengeance really only useful in content that is cutting edge for you. As someone who might, for example, like to run 5-mans for VP and, you know, fun, you're out of luck.
Going Back to the Drawing Board:
I think we can say that the point of Vengeance is to allow tanks to have their threat scale even as their gearing focus is to focus on defensive stats. Let us consider that the whole point of the passive ability, and rather than just point out what is wrong with the current implementation, come up with a better one.
The question of tank gear itself is kind of an interesting one on its own, and is something I wrote an article about recently. While we're starting to see actual tank stats on Tier gear for Druids and Monks (with the Guardian spec introduced, Druids now have four options for Tier sets, and Monks are new, so they just went with three sets for them,) for the most part the Leather tanks are expected to use standard Rogue-style Agility Leather. Having only played my Druid tank a bit during Cataclysm (and often running him as Balance,) I haven't gotten a great feel for Vengeance on Leather tanks. But it seems like the problem of not having those dps stats to scale up with as you go from tier to tier should not be an issue. Sure, Mastery's going to be defensive, but you get the full benefits of all the crit and haste on your gear.
Plate tanks, on the other hand, have historically not gotten any crit or haste (current Paladins and Blood DKs' weapons being exceptions) on their gear. In fact, even given the prevailing wisdom about Paladin gearing, the automated loot in LFR that gives me "appropriate to my spec gear" will, I assume, never give me Mastery/Haste gear. With plate tanks, tank gear is tank gear.
Now, the one thing that all tanks are going to have a lot of is Stamina. Not only is it buffed by our spec bonuses, but we gear, gem and enchant for it. If you take the original Vengeance, and rather than getting rid of the Stamina part, you get rid of the "damage taken" part, you could just give all tanks an AP bonus based on your stamina (like the old Guarded by the Light, as I referred to earlier.)
This means all tanks get a static AP boost to offset the lack of Strength Gems and Crit enchants. While dps'ers are using those, we put in our blue (or Purple or Green) gems. They go up in equal measures.
1.) If the fear is that tanks will be doing too much dps when they are not really tanking, the solution is easy: we already get 5 times as much threat from our basic tank threat-boosts. Just scale Vengeance to make sure we're doing like a third as much damage as our dps and we'll be fine. No one will go with a tank spec to do dps (even with dps gear, a tank's passives and just their suite of abilities won't be suited to doing dps.)
This would really be my favorite solution. Vengeance would just give X% of your stamina as attack power. Done.
If, for some reason, there's a problem with this (and being a total armchair quarterback here, I fully admit there could be something I overlooked, especially if it relates to PvP,) there are a couple other ways you could go:
2.) Get rid of tank gear entirely, and let all tanks benefit seriously from dps stats. You get rid of Vengeance, but you resolve the issue by having tanks stacking the same gems and enchants as the dps. They get their dodge and parry from haste and crit. Their Masteries are reworked to be both offensive and defensive. The only thing differentiating a tank from a super-resilient dps is that your suite of abilities is ill-suited to dealing lots of damage, but AP, Crit, and Haste all go up just as much as they do for DPS.
3.) Make defensive stats offensive. Through passive spec abilities or just reworking things a bit, your dodge and parry and mastery will all now do things that increase your damage. Actually, this is somewhat like the first solution, but would have to be a bit more complicated, given that it's three stats instead of one.
4.) Go back to the Wrath style of tanking. During Wrath (and earlier) threat was not a given by any stretch. The definition of a well-played tank was one who could hold threat. Tanks geared for survival, but they played for threat. In other words, while you were stacking dodge, parry, defense rating (it was a thing,) block rating (it was a thing before mastery,) and block value (blocks used to subtract damage, rather than reducing it by a percentage,) you would let the healers worry about keeping you alive while you tried to spread the threat around frantically. This was the era in which I played a lot on all four tanking classes, so you can probably guess what I thought about this style of tanking.
The thing is, Vengeance as it works right now is really wonky, and frankly, I think it makes tanking less fun. The whole "Active Mitigation" change was to try to make tanking more engaging now that threat is (at least supposed to be) a non-issue. If they really want that to be the case, Vengeance has got to be redesigned completely.
Threat must always outstrip dps, or the whole system falls apart.
Back in Burning Crusade, the main job of damage-dealers was to stay just underneath the threat cap. Hunters could do outstanding dps because Feign Death would wipe their threat. It was simply an accepted fact that if you pulled off the tank, that was your failure, and not theirs (well, ok, if the tank was single-targetting in a group of five and the healer pulled off them, that was their bad.)
Now, a compounding problem back then was that for all three tanks at the time (Warriors, Druids, and Paladins. BC was actually the time when Paladin and Druid tanks started being taken seriously, though the raids were still literally designed around only Warriors tanking the bosses) is that the better geared they got, the less they had to work with resource-wise. Because Warriors and Druids generated Rage mostly by getting hit, and Paladins generated mana via Spiritual Attunement, which gave them a percentage of the healing received as mana (no damage = no healing, and thus no mana.) So once you started to outgear an instance, you had to sit down to take a crit or run without pants to be able to keep up in threat.
One of the awesome things about Death Knights during Wrath was that their Rune system was totally independent of how much damage they were taking, so there was no "Gear Penalty."
Tanks are the only role that can actually suffer from being better geared. The only hazard for dps of being overgeared is that you might out-threat the tank, which is easily remedied through a technique I like to call "just stop for a second." Healers, of course, have no penalty whatsoever from being overgeared (unless they're REALLY overgeared and generate too much threat.) I suppose the only penalty for healers is that they might get bored.
So, you had the problem that in very high-level content, tanks would be desperately pouring out as much threat as they could so the dps did not have to hold back, but on lower-level content they were running on fumes the whole time.
The solution to the first problem that Blizzard came up with was Vengeance. This universal tank passive was weirdly complicated. You would get a percentage of your damage taken as attack power, up to a maximum based on your max health. The idea was that as tanks got better geared, they'd get higher stamina, and thus higher Vengeance. In a sense, it mirrors a Wrath-era Protection Paladin talent that granted spellpower proportional to our stamina. More stamina? More threat.
The problem, though, is the damage-taken part. Another way of putting it is that the problem is that it varies significantly when it really ought to be a static effect.
They of course want us to be the ones getting bashed by the bad guys, but what this leads to is a bunch of other issues.
1. At the beginning of the pull, when everyone is at equal threat (zero,) you have no Vengeance. If an Arcane Mage lights them up with a crit, or a Warrior charges in and Bladestorms, those things are not going to come after you. The pull is when threat matters the most, even before you take fluctuating attack power into account, and this is where Vengeance is non-existent.
2. The Tank-Swap is a tried and true method for Blizzard to give both tanks in a raid something to do without having to come up with two different things for them to do. However, when your AP (and thus threat) is based on how much you've been hit, the guy who's got three stacks of a powerful bleed and has been getting maced in the face for the last 30 seconds is going to be way higher than the guy who's been standing there, waiting his turn, getting little more than the raid-wide aoe damage. Especially in these days of "active mitigation tanking," the first tank is not going to want to stop their rotation when all they're seeing is huge damage pouring in.
3. We're also recreating the old problem with Rage and Mana from BC, but now Death Knights and Monks get to experience it. The better geared you are, the less damage you'll be taking, so your threat will scale inversely with gear. Now, the new Vengeance does say "unmitigated damage," which I hope means that blocks and absorbs (like Blood Shield) are ignored when calculating it. Still, you'll probably be dodging and parrying more as you gear up, so it's still a loss of Vengeance. (Avoidance may actually refresh Vengeance, but if you get "unlucky" and get a string of avoidance after a stretch of low damage or at the beginning of the pull, you're SOL.)
These problems are pretty huge, but there's another which I think is essential to the reason why Vengeance as a mechanic is so deeply flawed:
It does not scale with gear in any positive way.
The whole point of Vengeance, after all, was to allow tanks, who were stacking stamina, dodge, parry, and mastery, to boost their threat against people stacking attack/spell power, crit, haste, and their version of mastery (which is a dps stat for dps characters, obviously.) In Cataclysm, at least, it kinda-sorta scaled with Stamina. However, with the stamina cap gone, the only thing it scales positively with is damage taken from enemies.
So yes, as you go into higher tiers of content, the bosses will probably be hitting harder. The problem is that this makes Vengeance really only useful in content that is cutting edge for you. As someone who might, for example, like to run 5-mans for VP and, you know, fun, you're out of luck.
Going Back to the Drawing Board:
I think we can say that the point of Vengeance is to allow tanks to have their threat scale even as their gearing focus is to focus on defensive stats. Let us consider that the whole point of the passive ability, and rather than just point out what is wrong with the current implementation, come up with a better one.
The question of tank gear itself is kind of an interesting one on its own, and is something I wrote an article about recently. While we're starting to see actual tank stats on Tier gear for Druids and Monks (with the Guardian spec introduced, Druids now have four options for Tier sets, and Monks are new, so they just went with three sets for them,) for the most part the Leather tanks are expected to use standard Rogue-style Agility Leather. Having only played my Druid tank a bit during Cataclysm (and often running him as Balance,) I haven't gotten a great feel for Vengeance on Leather tanks. But it seems like the problem of not having those dps stats to scale up with as you go from tier to tier should not be an issue. Sure, Mastery's going to be defensive, but you get the full benefits of all the crit and haste on your gear.
Plate tanks, on the other hand, have historically not gotten any crit or haste (current Paladins and Blood DKs' weapons being exceptions) on their gear. In fact, even given the prevailing wisdom about Paladin gearing, the automated loot in LFR that gives me "appropriate to my spec gear" will, I assume, never give me Mastery/Haste gear. With plate tanks, tank gear is tank gear.
Now, the one thing that all tanks are going to have a lot of is Stamina. Not only is it buffed by our spec bonuses, but we gear, gem and enchant for it. If you take the original Vengeance, and rather than getting rid of the Stamina part, you get rid of the "damage taken" part, you could just give all tanks an AP bonus based on your stamina (like the old Guarded by the Light, as I referred to earlier.)
This means all tanks get a static AP boost to offset the lack of Strength Gems and Crit enchants. While dps'ers are using those, we put in our blue (or Purple or Green) gems. They go up in equal measures.
1.) If the fear is that tanks will be doing too much dps when they are not really tanking, the solution is easy: we already get 5 times as much threat from our basic tank threat-boosts. Just scale Vengeance to make sure we're doing like a third as much damage as our dps and we'll be fine. No one will go with a tank spec to do dps (even with dps gear, a tank's passives and just their suite of abilities won't be suited to doing dps.)
This would really be my favorite solution. Vengeance would just give X% of your stamina as attack power. Done.
If, for some reason, there's a problem with this (and being a total armchair quarterback here, I fully admit there could be something I overlooked, especially if it relates to PvP,) there are a couple other ways you could go:
2.) Get rid of tank gear entirely, and let all tanks benefit seriously from dps stats. You get rid of Vengeance, but you resolve the issue by having tanks stacking the same gems and enchants as the dps. They get their dodge and parry from haste and crit. Their Masteries are reworked to be both offensive and defensive. The only thing differentiating a tank from a super-resilient dps is that your suite of abilities is ill-suited to dealing lots of damage, but AP, Crit, and Haste all go up just as much as they do for DPS.
3.) Make defensive stats offensive. Through passive spec abilities or just reworking things a bit, your dodge and parry and mastery will all now do things that increase your damage. Actually, this is somewhat like the first solution, but would have to be a bit more complicated, given that it's three stats instead of one.
4.) Go back to the Wrath style of tanking. During Wrath (and earlier) threat was not a given by any stretch. The definition of a well-played tank was one who could hold threat. Tanks geared for survival, but they played for threat. In other words, while you were stacking dodge, parry, defense rating (it was a thing,) block rating (it was a thing before mastery,) and block value (blocks used to subtract damage, rather than reducing it by a percentage,) you would let the healers worry about keeping you alive while you tried to spread the threat around frantically. This was the era in which I played a lot on all four tanking classes, so you can probably guess what I thought about this style of tanking.
The thing is, Vengeance as it works right now is really wonky, and frankly, I think it makes tanking less fun. The whole "Active Mitigation" change was to try to make tanking more engaging now that threat is (at least supposed to be) a non-issue. If they really want that to be the case, Vengeance has got to be redesigned completely.
Thursday, October 25, 2012
LFR: A Necessary Evil, but an Evil Nonetheless
In theory, I love the idea of LFR.
Before 3.3, which introduced Icecrown Citadel, the Frozen Halls 5-man dungeons, and the Dungeon Finder, putting together a dungeon group meant spamming trade with requests like "LFM VH, need two dps and a healer." You would do this for about an hour (though admittedly, playing a tank made things easier.) Finally, you'd get a group, and you could go run the dungeon. If someone was an asshole and you decided to kick them, you'd have to send someone back to Dalaran (or Shattrath, or Ironforge or wherever) to get a replacement. Having a guild obviously made this easier, but any guild I've been in has people who don't necessarily want to just drop what they're doing to run a dungeon.
The point is: For 5-man dungeons, people ran PuGs all the time. Sure, some of them were brutal (heroics in BC were generally considered harder than Karazhan, the starter raid,) and by no means were there not people who were total jerks, but really the environment did not change much with the introduction of LFG.
Nowadays, running 5-man dungeons is relatively stress-free. Sure, during the era of the Zuls you'd have some people who just couldn't figure out that you had to always stand next to Jin'do's chains - even if you were trying to dps the spirits chasing the healer, but overall, you could often come across a very friendly, sociable group of people that makes the run (even with occasional wipes) a pleasant experience.
I have yet to experience a pleasant LFR run.
Now, ok, once people really knew Dragon Soul, you could get Madness down pretty quickly and get the cool weapons. The thing is, the best you can ever hope for in LFR is a quiet group that is competent.
What you can usually expect are people complaining about low dps (even though we're downing the bosses just fine) or people starting the fight before everyone is there, or people who go AFK after every wipe, or people who just flat-out refuse to resurrect, yet want the people who are running back to be kicked for not being ready for the next attempt.
In short: LFR is a terrible way to experience the content.
Now, I am all for ease and accessibility. I've always been more of a "perfectionist" gamer than a "challenge" gamer. I'll play games on the low difficulty settings, but attempt to pull things off immaculately. In Skyrim, my Argonian assassin only ever got a bounty after killing the cousin of the emperor in the Dark Brotherhood quest chain (I don't know if it's even possible to get out of Solitude undetected.) And that's with both the full Dark Brotherhood chain and the full Thieves Guild chain. I like beating time records on bosses we have on farm. I like smooth runs.
So I have absolutely nothing against LFR as an easy way to raid. That's commendable.
My problem with it is that the anonymity of being in a group of 25 people, rather than a group of 5, allows for some really horrific behavior. I was just in a Vault of Mysteries LFR and we got wiped because someone activated the Will of the Emperor before everyone was there. But with 25 people, it's not easy to tell who did it. So we tried again, and the exact same thing happened. This, of course, after I was forced to stay up to 2:30 in the morning just to get in on a tank.
Honestly, I don't have a solution, other than the general advice of "don't be a dick." LFR was really the only way I got to experience Dragon Soul, as my guild's raiding core has somewhat dispersed since Wrath of the Lich King. I can only hope that we can try to rebuild this time around.
Now here's what concerns me: Blizzard has said that they want to emphasize LFR as the way that alts or latecomers catch up. They feel that the un-randomized grind of currencies makes things a bit too mechanical, and that it allows people to get far more powerful gear than what drops in the less challenging content they are running.
What I take away from that is that they want us running LFR a lot. Respectfully, Blizzard, I'd really prefer not to. Yes, it's true that you could get Firelands-quality gear out of the Hour of Twilight heroics, and that you could get Trial of the Crusader-quality gear out of the Frozen Halls. So yes, you can skip that content. But is that such a terrible thing? During Wrath, we fell into a lull after completing Naxxramas (sadly, Ulduar was the raid we missed out on the most.) We did some Trial of the Crusader, even beating it once or twice, but where the guild began to thrive again was in ICC. We would not have been able to get working on ICC had it not been for the 232 gear in the Frozen Halls.
I've never had as much fun raiding as the ICC days, when we had two full raids running each week: one the "progression raid," which was regularly pushing on the final bosses of the various wings upstairs, and the "Alt raid" that clearing a good half of the instance regularly (the first four plus Rotface/Festergut.) All of this was possible because of the Frozen Halls.
Now, I know the argument is that LFR will be able to provide that booster gear. The problem is that PuGs get exponentially worse the more people are in them. 5 people? You might get a rotten apple, but usually you'll be fine. 25 people? Oh dear lord.
Finally, as another direction to look at this from: Some of us like running 5-man dungeons. While raids are the pinnacle of PvE content, 5-mans have always been the meat and potatoes. Please let there be a progression of 5-man content through Mists!
Before 3.3, which introduced Icecrown Citadel, the Frozen Halls 5-man dungeons, and the Dungeon Finder, putting together a dungeon group meant spamming trade with requests like "LFM VH, need two dps and a healer." You would do this for about an hour (though admittedly, playing a tank made things easier.) Finally, you'd get a group, and you could go run the dungeon. If someone was an asshole and you decided to kick them, you'd have to send someone back to Dalaran (or Shattrath, or Ironforge or wherever) to get a replacement. Having a guild obviously made this easier, but any guild I've been in has people who don't necessarily want to just drop what they're doing to run a dungeon.
The point is: For 5-man dungeons, people ran PuGs all the time. Sure, some of them were brutal (heroics in BC were generally considered harder than Karazhan, the starter raid,) and by no means were there not people who were total jerks, but really the environment did not change much with the introduction of LFG.
Nowadays, running 5-man dungeons is relatively stress-free. Sure, during the era of the Zuls you'd have some people who just couldn't figure out that you had to always stand next to Jin'do's chains - even if you were trying to dps the spirits chasing the healer, but overall, you could often come across a very friendly, sociable group of people that makes the run (even with occasional wipes) a pleasant experience.
I have yet to experience a pleasant LFR run.
Now, ok, once people really knew Dragon Soul, you could get Madness down pretty quickly and get the cool weapons. The thing is, the best you can ever hope for in LFR is a quiet group that is competent.
What you can usually expect are people complaining about low dps (even though we're downing the bosses just fine) or people starting the fight before everyone is there, or people who go AFK after every wipe, or people who just flat-out refuse to resurrect, yet want the people who are running back to be kicked for not being ready for the next attempt.
In short: LFR is a terrible way to experience the content.
Now, I am all for ease and accessibility. I've always been more of a "perfectionist" gamer than a "challenge" gamer. I'll play games on the low difficulty settings, but attempt to pull things off immaculately. In Skyrim, my Argonian assassin only ever got a bounty after killing the cousin of the emperor in the Dark Brotherhood quest chain (I don't know if it's even possible to get out of Solitude undetected.) And that's with both the full Dark Brotherhood chain and the full Thieves Guild chain. I like beating time records on bosses we have on farm. I like smooth runs.
So I have absolutely nothing against LFR as an easy way to raid. That's commendable.
My problem with it is that the anonymity of being in a group of 25 people, rather than a group of 5, allows for some really horrific behavior. I was just in a Vault of Mysteries LFR and we got wiped because someone activated the Will of the Emperor before everyone was there. But with 25 people, it's not easy to tell who did it. So we tried again, and the exact same thing happened. This, of course, after I was forced to stay up to 2:30 in the morning just to get in on a tank.
Honestly, I don't have a solution, other than the general advice of "don't be a dick." LFR was really the only way I got to experience Dragon Soul, as my guild's raiding core has somewhat dispersed since Wrath of the Lich King. I can only hope that we can try to rebuild this time around.
Now here's what concerns me: Blizzard has said that they want to emphasize LFR as the way that alts or latecomers catch up. They feel that the un-randomized grind of currencies makes things a bit too mechanical, and that it allows people to get far more powerful gear than what drops in the less challenging content they are running.
What I take away from that is that they want us running LFR a lot. Respectfully, Blizzard, I'd really prefer not to. Yes, it's true that you could get Firelands-quality gear out of the Hour of Twilight heroics, and that you could get Trial of the Crusader-quality gear out of the Frozen Halls. So yes, you can skip that content. But is that such a terrible thing? During Wrath, we fell into a lull after completing Naxxramas (sadly, Ulduar was the raid we missed out on the most.) We did some Trial of the Crusader, even beating it once or twice, but where the guild began to thrive again was in ICC. We would not have been able to get working on ICC had it not been for the 232 gear in the Frozen Halls.
I've never had as much fun raiding as the ICC days, when we had two full raids running each week: one the "progression raid," which was regularly pushing on the final bosses of the various wings upstairs, and the "Alt raid" that clearing a good half of the instance regularly (the first four plus Rotface/Festergut.) All of this was possible because of the Frozen Halls.
Now, I know the argument is that LFR will be able to provide that booster gear. The problem is that PuGs get exponentially worse the more people are in them. 5 people? You might get a rotten apple, but usually you'll be fine. 25 people? Oh dear lord.
Finally, as another direction to look at this from: Some of us like running 5-man dungeons. While raids are the pinnacle of PvE content, 5-mans have always been the meat and potatoes. Please let there be a progression of 5-man content through Mists!
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