With the exception of bonus armor, tank stats are basically going away in the next expansion. While tanks previous had dodge and parry to stack up - stats that were undeniably for tanks, and were useful (if not optimal) for every tank (ok, technically parry wasn't useful for Druids) - in the future, we'll be using the exact same array of stats as DPS and Healers.
We'll also be getting new secondary stats: Amplify, Readiness and Multistrike.
There is something a bit problematic with this, though.
Tanks have always geared for survival. While threat was something that one had to work for before Cataclysm (and, to be fair, you still need to put in some effort,) your gearing strategy tended to be focused around surviving the damage taken by the big bad guys.
Tank gear that had avoidance stats, as well as the defunct Defense and Block ratings, was clearly useful in that regard. It used to be that haste or critical strike were utterly pointless for a tank - the best you'd get out of them was a little extra threat, and while that extra threat is by no means unwelcome, it would be ill-advised to focus too much on it.
There is a fundamental, underlying problem that causes this issue, and that is the relevance of throughput.
DPS and Healers grow more effective the greater their throughput is. A Rogue who hits harder with every strike is doing her job better. She is there to reduce the enemy's health as fast as possible, and thus, extra Agility, and therefore attack power, will always make her more effective at her job. A healing Druid, likewise, benefits greatly from having more powerful heals. If his regrowth ticks for twice as much as it did before, that means that he can be more efficient, using fewer heals to keep people alive and also producing greater heals to rescue players from high-damage situations.
Admittedly, a healer's job, much like a tank's is a bit of a binary situation - pass or fail. But a healer can do his or her job more effectively with greater throughput.
In the case of tanks, however, throughput is not really relevant. In an era when tanks are unlikely to lose threat on an enemy once they have them, the need to constantly push their damage-per-second higher diminishes. Sure, it doesn't hurt to have a tank do more damage, but this does not aid them in their primary role.
And that's why stats like Crit and Multistrike are in danger of being junk stats for tanks.
With changes to the Paladin passive skills, Paladin tanks began to benefit from haste - using the reduced cool downs on their main rotational abilities to maximize uptime on Shield of the Righteous. Death Knights benefit from haste as well, as more haste means more Death Strikes. But Warriors are left in the cold, basically only getting to auto-attack more frequently.
Likewise, crit grants essentially no benefit to DK and Paladin tanks.
So how are we going to navigate the brave new world where there are not typically tank stats on gear?
My best solution I can come up with is to tie survival to throughput. Active Mitigation provides a context for this that makes sense. In the case of Druids, for example, one of their passives allows their Maul ability to create a damage shield proportional to the damage done by the attack. Effectively, this means that the stronger that Maul is - and if it crits, it's twice as strong - the greater survival benefit of the tank.
I realize this isn't a perfect solution. Subtractive damage mitigation, like the way that Block originally worked, has always been problematic. It tends to be too powerful against lightly-hitting enemies and not powerful enough against hard-hitting bosses.
But I would like to see the damage a tank does tie into his or her survival. Otherwise, many of the existing stats will not merely be sub-optimal, but actually useless, and that flies in the face of the new gearing philosophy.
Friday, November 29, 2013
Thursday, November 28, 2013
Ghostcrawler to Leave Blizzard
Greg Street, aka Ghostcrawler, Lead Systems Designer for World of Warcraft, has recently announced that he will be leaving Blizzard.
For those of you who are unclear on just what a Lead Systems Designer does, Ghostcrawler was basically in charge of how the game worked. Class mechanics, gearing, all of the ways that reputations and currencies interacted. It may be easier to define his role in the game by what it wasn't. He didn't design the bosses, and he didn't produce the art or write the lore. Pretty much everything else fell within his jurisdiction.
In addition to playing this incredibly demanding role (and also becoming a lightning rod for just about every disgruntled player,) Ghostcrawler had an unprecedented level of back-and-forth communication with the players. More than probably any designer, GC talked to the people. He responded to forum posts, he had an active twitter account full of quick answers, and he also wrote longer blog entries to really unveil the thinking and reasoning behind some of the design decisions that he and his team made.
The WoW community is not without its toxic elements, and sadly I think that a lot of legitimate criticism gets drowned out by doomsayers and the nostalgically deluded. While I won't say I agreed with absolutely everything that has happened under Ghostcrawler's leadership, the vast majority of his contribution to the game has been a positive one.
There was a time, for instance, when nearly one spec for every class was just unplayable, and the attitude Blizzard took was that you would simply have to deal with that and respec. GC took charge during the launch of Wrath of the Lich King, which was the first expansion where they took inter-spec balance seriously for a change. We've also seen every spec given enough attention to have its own identity, and to actually make some kind of logical sense (to give an example, there used to be no Arcane Blast. Arcane Mages would… spam Arcane Missiles? And that was it.)
We don't know for sure who will be replacing Ghostcrawler in this key role. But I think we will be extremely lucky if it is someone who is as innovative and as open with the community as that crazy old spectral crab.
Good luck, Doctor Street.
For those of you who are unclear on just what a Lead Systems Designer does, Ghostcrawler was basically in charge of how the game worked. Class mechanics, gearing, all of the ways that reputations and currencies interacted. It may be easier to define his role in the game by what it wasn't. He didn't design the bosses, and he didn't produce the art or write the lore. Pretty much everything else fell within his jurisdiction.
In addition to playing this incredibly demanding role (and also becoming a lightning rod for just about every disgruntled player,) Ghostcrawler had an unprecedented level of back-and-forth communication with the players. More than probably any designer, GC talked to the people. He responded to forum posts, he had an active twitter account full of quick answers, and he also wrote longer blog entries to really unveil the thinking and reasoning behind some of the design decisions that he and his team made.
The WoW community is not without its toxic elements, and sadly I think that a lot of legitimate criticism gets drowned out by doomsayers and the nostalgically deluded. While I won't say I agreed with absolutely everything that has happened under Ghostcrawler's leadership, the vast majority of his contribution to the game has been a positive one.
There was a time, for instance, when nearly one spec for every class was just unplayable, and the attitude Blizzard took was that you would simply have to deal with that and respec. GC took charge during the launch of Wrath of the Lich King, which was the first expansion where they took inter-spec balance seriously for a change. We've also seen every spec given enough attention to have its own identity, and to actually make some kind of logical sense (to give an example, there used to be no Arcane Blast. Arcane Mages would… spam Arcane Missiles? And that was it.)
We don't know for sure who will be replacing Ghostcrawler in this key role. But I think we will be extremely lucky if it is someone who is as innovative and as open with the community as that crazy old spectral crab.
Good luck, Doctor Street.
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
Medivh's Birthday Bash
Supposedly the data mined phase involving a Karazhan where some of the cobwebs had been cleaned away and some chairs had been set upright has now been renamed "Medivh's Birthday Bash."
This is one of those things where it's certainly possible that we've been reading far too much into what could be a totally inconsequential tweak.
Either way, this rename shows that, yes, Blizzard knows that data miners found it, and they're going to have a little fun with us.
It doesn't rule out the possibility of something happening at Karazhan, nor does it confirm it.
And of course, there's always the possibility that we're going to be throwing a birthday party for Medivh. Sure, he's dead, but that didn't stop him from guiding Jaina and Thrall during the Third War.
This is one of those things where it's certainly possible that we've been reading far too much into what could be a totally inconsequential tweak.
Either way, this rename shows that, yes, Blizzard knows that data miners found it, and they're going to have a little fun with us.
It doesn't rule out the possibility of something happening at Karazhan, nor does it confirm it.
And of course, there's always the possibility that we're going to be throwing a birthday party for Medivh. Sure, he's dead, but that didn't stop him from guiding Jaina and Thrall during the Third War.
Monday, November 25, 2013
Pros and Cons of the Timeless Isle
One of the big messages we got in the announcement of Warlords of Draenor was that they don't plan on having any daily quests whatsoever. (EDIT: Apparently that was exaggeration. There will be some dailies, just nothing on the level of Mists.) Instead, they intend for max-level outdoor content to be more of the Timeless Isle style, with lots of rare mobs and the occasional event that you can take part in.
While I certainly think the front end of Mists was loaded up with way, way too many dailies, I do wonder how they're going to avoid the pitfalls of the Timeless Isle's style of outdoor content.
So before I go into what I'm hoping for in the future, I'm going to talk about the advantages and disadvantages we've seen with the Timeless Isle.
PRO: Do as much or as little as you feel like.
While the Timeless Isle is not entirely perfect in this regard (you need your 50 Epoch Stones and your 50 Lesser Charms every week,) for the most part, the zone feels very freeing. You can kill animals around the Celestial Court if you want an easier time, or, as you get better geared or simply more confident, you can move eastward to the Tigers and the Frogs, and then eventually move on to the Yaungol up on the big bluffs that surround the island (I don't know if many people solo the stuff in the Ordon Sancutary - it's doable, but probably designed more for groups.)
One of the biggest problems with daily quests is that there's a very clear set amount of work to do. Once you've completed the quests for the day, doing any more would simply be a waste. Oddly, this also makes it feel as if you can't just stop in and have a shorter session, because if you don't complete every daily quest, the day is effectively wasted - you can't just catch up later on.
While Shaohao's 20 elites daily quest sort of undermines this benefit to the Timeless Isle style, for the most part, it's a zone that lets you set the pace for yourself.
PRO: Different areas for different strengths.
While Timeless Isle doesn't really have much of a daily structure to it, there's a clear distinction between the different parts of the zone that people of different skills or gear progression should be attempting. For example, my 543 iLevel Death Knight can pretty confidently slash his way through big groups of Yaungol basically anywhere except in the Ordon Sanctuary. Meanwhile, my 495 Monk is probably going to stick to just the ground-level stuff, and possibly just that first Yaungol area.
PRO: Rares and Hidden Secrets provide fun variety.
While a lot can be said about the various rare mobs that pop up, the thing I find much more interesting in the Timeless Isle are the various events. For example, there's a sunken ship not too far from the Gulp Frogs and the pirate ship with a living crew. Occasionally, the ghostly crew of this sunken ship will come under attacks, and you can help fend off the evil ghosts (getting "cursed" with the ability to breathe under water) until their captain shows up.
CON: Lack of clear reward structure.
Unfortunately, everything about your time on the Timeless Isle is subject to RNG. Whether you get your Lesser Charms, or your Epoch Stones, or which buffs you get from the shrines (Chi-Ji's is by far the most fun.) But that also extends to your gear. Getting your Timeless Plate Helm, burning a Burden of Eternity to make it a 535 piece, and then getting dodge and parry when what you wanted were haste and mastery can be a serious let-down, especially when you consider either the immense effort to farm up 50,000 Timeless Coins or the incredible luck to actually see a Burden drop.
Personally, I'd like them to eliminate all forms of randomized-stat gear, but given the way that both Battlefield Barrens and Timeless Isle have worked, I fear that that's the route they want to use going forward. I like being able to work toward a clear goal, and not just have to cross my fingers and hope that I'll get an array of stats that is halfway decent for me.
CON: The return of the true grind.
We talk about daily quest reputation grinds, but in truth, they're not grinds, exactly. Shaohao rep, though, is nothing if not a grind. You just have to kill Yaungol after Yaungol after Yaungol to get it. There is no real sense of milestones being reached or any interesting stops along the way (ok, to be fair, he has you summon the Archerius of Flame at Honored.) The grind is also far, far slower than what we've come to expect with our reputations throughout Mists, mainly because it consists solely of killing the same mobs over and over hundreds, if not thousands of times.
I recognize that they wanted this to take longer than, say, Kirin Tor Offensive, but if that's the case, they have even more of a responsibility to make in interesting along the way.
CON: More of a gold sink than a source.
This is probably intentional, actually. Without twenty daily quests to turn in every day, we aren't getting nearly as much gold as we were in the early part of Mists. But then, this might be the best way to deal with gold inflation, so oh well.
IN CONCLUSION:
The Timeless Isle was far more interesting than Battlefield: Barrens, and that gives me a lot of hope. The Timeless Isle was the first time they really built an entire zone around this free-form adventuring, and as such, it can be expected to have a few kinks to work out.
So I have a few hopes for the future: Let's have more fun events, with greater complexity. If we're not going to have quests that involve doing specific, interesting things, then let's have events that stand in for that. Let's have more of a story to the place and more visual variety. Let's also have clearer rewards for our efforts. You can have gear to discover out in the world, but let's also have some vendors that can sell you pieces that you know will be good for you. Especially with reforging going away, it's important that we don't get rewarded for our long efforts with gear that winds up being terrible for us.
And finally:
If this doesn't work out as well as you want it to, don't just throw the whole thing out. Daily quests can work out well. I think we saw that with the Shieldwall/Dominance quests, and also with the Isle of Thunder quests. There is stuff to be salvaged here, and I don't know if eliminating the entire idea of a daily quest was quite called for.
I will be very excited to see how this idea evolves, though.
While I certainly think the front end of Mists was loaded up with way, way too many dailies, I do wonder how they're going to avoid the pitfalls of the Timeless Isle's style of outdoor content.
So before I go into what I'm hoping for in the future, I'm going to talk about the advantages and disadvantages we've seen with the Timeless Isle.
PRO: Do as much or as little as you feel like.
While the Timeless Isle is not entirely perfect in this regard (you need your 50 Epoch Stones and your 50 Lesser Charms every week,) for the most part, the zone feels very freeing. You can kill animals around the Celestial Court if you want an easier time, or, as you get better geared or simply more confident, you can move eastward to the Tigers and the Frogs, and then eventually move on to the Yaungol up on the big bluffs that surround the island (I don't know if many people solo the stuff in the Ordon Sancutary - it's doable, but probably designed more for groups.)
One of the biggest problems with daily quests is that there's a very clear set amount of work to do. Once you've completed the quests for the day, doing any more would simply be a waste. Oddly, this also makes it feel as if you can't just stop in and have a shorter session, because if you don't complete every daily quest, the day is effectively wasted - you can't just catch up later on.
While Shaohao's 20 elites daily quest sort of undermines this benefit to the Timeless Isle style, for the most part, it's a zone that lets you set the pace for yourself.
PRO: Different areas for different strengths.
While Timeless Isle doesn't really have much of a daily structure to it, there's a clear distinction between the different parts of the zone that people of different skills or gear progression should be attempting. For example, my 543 iLevel Death Knight can pretty confidently slash his way through big groups of Yaungol basically anywhere except in the Ordon Sanctuary. Meanwhile, my 495 Monk is probably going to stick to just the ground-level stuff, and possibly just that first Yaungol area.
PRO: Rares and Hidden Secrets provide fun variety.
While a lot can be said about the various rare mobs that pop up, the thing I find much more interesting in the Timeless Isle are the various events. For example, there's a sunken ship not too far from the Gulp Frogs and the pirate ship with a living crew. Occasionally, the ghostly crew of this sunken ship will come under attacks, and you can help fend off the evil ghosts (getting "cursed" with the ability to breathe under water) until their captain shows up.
CON: Lack of clear reward structure.
Unfortunately, everything about your time on the Timeless Isle is subject to RNG. Whether you get your Lesser Charms, or your Epoch Stones, or which buffs you get from the shrines (Chi-Ji's is by far the most fun.) But that also extends to your gear. Getting your Timeless Plate Helm, burning a Burden of Eternity to make it a 535 piece, and then getting dodge and parry when what you wanted were haste and mastery can be a serious let-down, especially when you consider either the immense effort to farm up 50,000 Timeless Coins or the incredible luck to actually see a Burden drop.
Personally, I'd like them to eliminate all forms of randomized-stat gear, but given the way that both Battlefield Barrens and Timeless Isle have worked, I fear that that's the route they want to use going forward. I like being able to work toward a clear goal, and not just have to cross my fingers and hope that I'll get an array of stats that is halfway decent for me.
CON: The return of the true grind.
We talk about daily quest reputation grinds, but in truth, they're not grinds, exactly. Shaohao rep, though, is nothing if not a grind. You just have to kill Yaungol after Yaungol after Yaungol to get it. There is no real sense of milestones being reached or any interesting stops along the way (ok, to be fair, he has you summon the Archerius of Flame at Honored.) The grind is also far, far slower than what we've come to expect with our reputations throughout Mists, mainly because it consists solely of killing the same mobs over and over hundreds, if not thousands of times.
I recognize that they wanted this to take longer than, say, Kirin Tor Offensive, but if that's the case, they have even more of a responsibility to make in interesting along the way.
CON: More of a gold sink than a source.
This is probably intentional, actually. Without twenty daily quests to turn in every day, we aren't getting nearly as much gold as we were in the early part of Mists. But then, this might be the best way to deal with gold inflation, so oh well.
IN CONCLUSION:
The Timeless Isle was far more interesting than Battlefield: Barrens, and that gives me a lot of hope. The Timeless Isle was the first time they really built an entire zone around this free-form adventuring, and as such, it can be expected to have a few kinks to work out.
So I have a few hopes for the future: Let's have more fun events, with greater complexity. If we're not going to have quests that involve doing specific, interesting things, then let's have events that stand in for that. Let's have more of a story to the place and more visual variety. Let's also have clearer rewards for our efforts. You can have gear to discover out in the world, but let's also have some vendors that can sell you pieces that you know will be good for you. Especially with reforging going away, it's important that we don't get rewarded for our long efforts with gear that winds up being terrible for us.
And finally:
If this doesn't work out as well as you want it to, don't just throw the whole thing out. Daily quests can work out well. I think we saw that with the Shieldwall/Dominance quests, and also with the Isle of Thunder quests. There is stuff to be salvaged here, and I don't know if eliminating the entire idea of a daily quest was quite called for.
I will be very excited to see how this idea evolves, though.
Sunday, November 24, 2013
Moving The Story Forward
I don't know what the general reaction was when Chris Metzen began to talk about the "biggest badasses in Warcraft history" coming back (ahem, Lothar was more badass than all of them combined, but that's another argument,) but I had to stifle a groan. Partially, it was another big old splash of fuel on the fire of how Metzen is obsessed with the Orcs and the Horde, and has little interest in the rest of the wide-ranging Warcraft universe, following up an expansion that built up to us fighting a Horde that had reverted to its old-school ways with… fighting the old-school Horde.
But the bigger worry I had was that this didn't feel like it was moving the story forward.
There is a ton of interesting stuff going on in Azeroth, from the upheaval within the Horde, to the burgeoning power (and scariness) of the Forsaken, to the reformation of Dwarven society, to the bitter guerrilla war being fought to free Gilneas.
We seem to be getting a lot of messages from Blizzard that are meant to be reassuring - that the Iron Horde is not going to change our history, and that it will be a self-contained adventure within this alternate Draenor. But you know what? That's the opposite of reassuring to me.
Big changes are good for a game that is designed around a vibrant, living world. We want to see those changes reflected in the world and our experiences. I realize we can't have a Cataclysm-style revamp every expansion (in fact, I think it would probably be wiser to never do such a thing again,) but it adds weight to our actions when, for example, the bitterly won victory over the Scourge has nevertheless cost Stormwind a huge portion of its treasury, which inadvertently led to the (admittedly short-lived) resurgence of the Defias.
So when they say that the Iron Horde will not have much of an impact on our Azeroth, I worry that this undercuts the stakes of the entire expansion. With no new race or class added to the mix, I would say they have even more of an obligation to make the story hit us, and hit us hard.
They don't have to do it in a time-travel sort of way, though. In fact, I think that most of the "reassurances" have mainly been about that aspect of the story. As I said before, time-travel is the origin of the Iron Horde, and not the key to its nature.
So while we're going to fight Grommash, Blackhand, and all those dudes, they aren't truly the people from our past. They're duplicates.
But for this expansion to have any serious impact, we need to see their interaction with our people, if not with our world. We know that Thrall's going to meet the father he never knew (and presumably his mother… hey Blizz, how about some focus on female characters?) But I think that the villains of WoD need to be fleshed out too. It won't be all that interesting to just see Blackhand again, or just see Kargath again.
Here's what I think Blizzard needs to do as a kind of ignition point to make the story relevant: the Warlords, at least some of them, need to find out about our universe.
Consider, for example, that Ner'zhul discovers what his fate was in the main timeline. How might that change the way that he views us? Gul'dan has been unable to convince the Iron Horde to drink the blood of Mannoroth, but that might not be necessary. After all, his entire goal was to use the Horde to clear the way so he could pillage the Tomb of Sargeras. Might he find the wider, more chaotic world of today an easier place to slip through and reach his goal (knowing, also, the fate of his doppelgänger and thus potentially being better prepared this time?)
It's very important to me that we get to see what the Alliance and Horde themselves are up to in the aftermath of the Siege of Orgrimmar. I want to see Vol'jin wrestling with his new responsibilities, and I want to see Varian making good on the promises he makes in Garrosh's throne room. These things don't need to be the focus of the expansion, but what we do need to see is how the struggle against the Iron Horde affects these ongoing plots.
There is some reason for hope, though. While I know plenty of people had a pretty serious negative reaction to the Pandaren, I think that the story of Mists actually integrated far better into the overall Warcraft narrative than I could have imagined. I had been worried, when I first came to Pandaria, that this would all be a fairly isolated story, and that the villains we fought would be totally self-contained, and never really mentioned again.
And to an extent that was true. I don't think we'll ever fight the Mogu or Mantid in any serious way again. But these figures nevertheless left their mark on Warcraft lore. The Mantid gave us a far greater insight into the minds of the Aqir than ever before. The Mogu showed us that, yes, sometimes the creations of the Titans, without any Old God or demonic taint, will still turn evil, and that perhaps we should not be so quick to trust that the Titans have our best interests at heart.
In fact, Mists of Pandaria had perhaps the biggest developments ever in the ongoing story of the Old Gods, even more than in Cataclysm, which was ostensibly the most Old-God-themed expansion. Not only did we discover just why the Titans were unwilling to kill the Old Gods, but we also discovered that the Titans had been wrong in their assessment of the situation. We've beaten C'thun and Yogg-Saron, but not truly killed them. But with the destruction of the seven Sha and the utter draining of the Heart of Y'shaarj (Garrosh's inadvertently positive contribution to the world, even if he did so with the absolute wrong intentions,) we have actually managed to totally purge one of the Old Gods from Azeroth for good.
When I first heard about Mists of Pandaria, I was concerned that what we did there wouldn't really matter in the grand scheme of things, but the truth is that I couldn't have been more wrong.
And that's why I'm hoping that, as the greater story of Warlords of Draenor gets revealed, the trajectory for the story of Warcraft will grow clearer.
But the bigger worry I had was that this didn't feel like it was moving the story forward.
There is a ton of interesting stuff going on in Azeroth, from the upheaval within the Horde, to the burgeoning power (and scariness) of the Forsaken, to the reformation of Dwarven society, to the bitter guerrilla war being fought to free Gilneas.
We seem to be getting a lot of messages from Blizzard that are meant to be reassuring - that the Iron Horde is not going to change our history, and that it will be a self-contained adventure within this alternate Draenor. But you know what? That's the opposite of reassuring to me.
Big changes are good for a game that is designed around a vibrant, living world. We want to see those changes reflected in the world and our experiences. I realize we can't have a Cataclysm-style revamp every expansion (in fact, I think it would probably be wiser to never do such a thing again,) but it adds weight to our actions when, for example, the bitterly won victory over the Scourge has nevertheless cost Stormwind a huge portion of its treasury, which inadvertently led to the (admittedly short-lived) resurgence of the Defias.
So when they say that the Iron Horde will not have much of an impact on our Azeroth, I worry that this undercuts the stakes of the entire expansion. With no new race or class added to the mix, I would say they have even more of an obligation to make the story hit us, and hit us hard.
They don't have to do it in a time-travel sort of way, though. In fact, I think that most of the "reassurances" have mainly been about that aspect of the story. As I said before, time-travel is the origin of the Iron Horde, and not the key to its nature.
So while we're going to fight Grommash, Blackhand, and all those dudes, they aren't truly the people from our past. They're duplicates.
But for this expansion to have any serious impact, we need to see their interaction with our people, if not with our world. We know that Thrall's going to meet the father he never knew (and presumably his mother… hey Blizz, how about some focus on female characters?) But I think that the villains of WoD need to be fleshed out too. It won't be all that interesting to just see Blackhand again, or just see Kargath again.
Here's what I think Blizzard needs to do as a kind of ignition point to make the story relevant: the Warlords, at least some of them, need to find out about our universe.
Consider, for example, that Ner'zhul discovers what his fate was in the main timeline. How might that change the way that he views us? Gul'dan has been unable to convince the Iron Horde to drink the blood of Mannoroth, but that might not be necessary. After all, his entire goal was to use the Horde to clear the way so he could pillage the Tomb of Sargeras. Might he find the wider, more chaotic world of today an easier place to slip through and reach his goal (knowing, also, the fate of his doppelgänger and thus potentially being better prepared this time?)
It's very important to me that we get to see what the Alliance and Horde themselves are up to in the aftermath of the Siege of Orgrimmar. I want to see Vol'jin wrestling with his new responsibilities, and I want to see Varian making good on the promises he makes in Garrosh's throne room. These things don't need to be the focus of the expansion, but what we do need to see is how the struggle against the Iron Horde affects these ongoing plots.
There is some reason for hope, though. While I know plenty of people had a pretty serious negative reaction to the Pandaren, I think that the story of Mists actually integrated far better into the overall Warcraft narrative than I could have imagined. I had been worried, when I first came to Pandaria, that this would all be a fairly isolated story, and that the villains we fought would be totally self-contained, and never really mentioned again.
And to an extent that was true. I don't think we'll ever fight the Mogu or Mantid in any serious way again. But these figures nevertheless left their mark on Warcraft lore. The Mantid gave us a far greater insight into the minds of the Aqir than ever before. The Mogu showed us that, yes, sometimes the creations of the Titans, without any Old God or demonic taint, will still turn evil, and that perhaps we should not be so quick to trust that the Titans have our best interests at heart.
In fact, Mists of Pandaria had perhaps the biggest developments ever in the ongoing story of the Old Gods, even more than in Cataclysm, which was ostensibly the most Old-God-themed expansion. Not only did we discover just why the Titans were unwilling to kill the Old Gods, but we also discovered that the Titans had been wrong in their assessment of the situation. We've beaten C'thun and Yogg-Saron, but not truly killed them. But with the destruction of the seven Sha and the utter draining of the Heart of Y'shaarj (Garrosh's inadvertently positive contribution to the world, even if he did so with the absolute wrong intentions,) we have actually managed to totally purge one of the Old Gods from Azeroth for good.
When I first heard about Mists of Pandaria, I was concerned that what we did there wouldn't really matter in the grand scheme of things, but the truth is that I couldn't have been more wrong.
And that's why I'm hoping that, as the greater story of Warlords of Draenor gets revealed, the trajectory for the story of Warcraft will grow clearer.
Saturday, November 23, 2013
The Future of Secondary Stats
One of the most interesting announcements to come out of Blizzcon was that the hit and expertise, as well as dodge and parry stats would be going away. While dodge and parry were kind of in a death spiral (I think they were favored by Warrior tanks only, and tolerated by DKs and total reforge-aways for Paladins) throughout Mists, hit and expertise were just as relevant as they've ever been.
The idea behind these stats was to make you do something other than just pick out your best stat and stack it to the rafters. It did accomplish that, but it was also another way to prevent getting a new piece of gear from feeling good. You might get an awesome new shoulder piece, but before you could equip it, you'd need to reforge that crit into expertise.
Reforging did serve to allow us to concentrate on our favorite stat, but the biggest benefit to it was making it easier to dance around the hit and expertise caps. But with hit and expertise gone (Casters, including Hunters, and Tanks will just always hit now, and melee will only have to worry about bosses parrying - though frankly, given that melee already has the disadvantage of having to move with the boss, I might just scrap that altogether,) Reforging would really only be to do that stat-maximizing, and while you can get some improvement in performance that way, for the most part Blizzard is happier to just have us deal with the stats that we get.
But with hit, expertise, dodge, and parry ratings gone, and Spirit (which was always in this weird space between secondary and primary stat) moving to healing-only rings, trinkets, necklaces and weapons (Shadow, Balance and Elemental will no longer need the hit rating it provides,) that leaves us with only three secondary stats: Crit, Haste, and Mastery.
Ah, but does it really?
We know that we're going to be getting new Tertiary Stats in Warlords of Draenor. These are meant to be less indicative of the real power of our gear, and more some fun flavor that gives us a small boost. I'm given to understand that the way it works is this:
Blackhand drops, say, the Normal-Mode version of Collar of the Blackrock Chief, a plate piece with Strength (well, actually Strength or Intellect, depending on your spec,) Stamina, Crit, and Mastery. Those four values (along with its armor value) remain fixed. But while it will usually be just those four stats, occasionally, you'll get a drop that's got +400 Lifesteal Rating.
But here's what I'm wondering about:
Blizzard has talked about a few other new stats, such as Cleave, Amplify, and Multistrike. While these could simply be other Tertiary Stats, I actually wonder if, instead, some will become new Secondary Stats - meaning that pieces of gear will be guaranteed to have them on them.
These new stats actually sort of exist in-game already, with the various Siege of Orgrimmar trinkets. For example, on my DK I have Thok's Tail Tip. In addition to a nice Strength proc, it also "amplifies your haste, mastery, spirit, and crit damage by 6%." I'm pretty sure this is just the written-out form of what the future Amplify stat will be.
I would actually love to see a lot of these stats become true secondary stats. Multistrike, for example, works not unlike the Shaman talent Echo of the Elements, which causes your spells to occasionally duplicate themselves (combined with the Elemental Mastery, you could get an absurd number of Lava Bursts off a single cast. You can already get four!)
This would solve a potential upcoming problem, too, which is that, without adding any new ones, we would only have crit, haste, and mastery on our gear. That means a piece of gear would be define more by what it is missing than by what it has (assuming we continue to have most pieces with two secondary stats.)
Amplify could be a good stat for specs that like lots of different things. Multistrike would probably be pretty powerful cross the board, but obviously the numbers would be tweaked in such a way to keep it from being too powerful. Cleave, to me, seems more like a Tertiary stat, given that it's very useful in AoE situations, but useless in single-target - I wouldn't want people to have to switch out gear depending on the fight.
While we learned a lot at Blizzcon, a lot of the more nitty-gritty stuff, such as class changes, remains to be announced. This gear revamp, along with the 91-100 spell bonuses we'll be getting, is something I eagerly look forward to.
EDIT: We'll, apparently I jumped the gun here, because I just found out it's been confirmed that Amplify, Multistrike and a stat called Readiness will all become new secondary stats.
All of these have appeared on trinkets in Siege of Orgrimmar, though the way they work could get tweaked.
Readiness will reduce the cooldown of certain abilities depending on the spec. The abilities will most likely be your long-term cooldowns, as opposed to rotational abilities. So, yes Ascendence, probably not Lava Burst.
Very exciting to see more diversity in stat options, and it will be particularly interesting to see how the interact with each other.
The idea behind these stats was to make you do something other than just pick out your best stat and stack it to the rafters. It did accomplish that, but it was also another way to prevent getting a new piece of gear from feeling good. You might get an awesome new shoulder piece, but before you could equip it, you'd need to reforge that crit into expertise.
Reforging did serve to allow us to concentrate on our favorite stat, but the biggest benefit to it was making it easier to dance around the hit and expertise caps. But with hit and expertise gone (Casters, including Hunters, and Tanks will just always hit now, and melee will only have to worry about bosses parrying - though frankly, given that melee already has the disadvantage of having to move with the boss, I might just scrap that altogether,) Reforging would really only be to do that stat-maximizing, and while you can get some improvement in performance that way, for the most part Blizzard is happier to just have us deal with the stats that we get.
But with hit, expertise, dodge, and parry ratings gone, and Spirit (which was always in this weird space between secondary and primary stat) moving to healing-only rings, trinkets, necklaces and weapons (Shadow, Balance and Elemental will no longer need the hit rating it provides,) that leaves us with only three secondary stats: Crit, Haste, and Mastery.
Ah, but does it really?
We know that we're going to be getting new Tertiary Stats in Warlords of Draenor. These are meant to be less indicative of the real power of our gear, and more some fun flavor that gives us a small boost. I'm given to understand that the way it works is this:
Blackhand drops, say, the Normal-Mode version of Collar of the Blackrock Chief, a plate piece with Strength (well, actually Strength or Intellect, depending on your spec,) Stamina, Crit, and Mastery. Those four values (along with its armor value) remain fixed. But while it will usually be just those four stats, occasionally, you'll get a drop that's got +400 Lifesteal Rating.
But here's what I'm wondering about:
Blizzard has talked about a few other new stats, such as Cleave, Amplify, and Multistrike. While these could simply be other Tertiary Stats, I actually wonder if, instead, some will become new Secondary Stats - meaning that pieces of gear will be guaranteed to have them on them.
These new stats actually sort of exist in-game already, with the various Siege of Orgrimmar trinkets. For example, on my DK I have Thok's Tail Tip. In addition to a nice Strength proc, it also "amplifies your haste, mastery, spirit, and crit damage by 6%." I'm pretty sure this is just the written-out form of what the future Amplify stat will be.
I would actually love to see a lot of these stats become true secondary stats. Multistrike, for example, works not unlike the Shaman talent Echo of the Elements, which causes your spells to occasionally duplicate themselves (combined with the Elemental Mastery, you could get an absurd number of Lava Bursts off a single cast. You can already get four!)
This would solve a potential upcoming problem, too, which is that, without adding any new ones, we would only have crit, haste, and mastery on our gear. That means a piece of gear would be define more by what it is missing than by what it has (assuming we continue to have most pieces with two secondary stats.)
Amplify could be a good stat for specs that like lots of different things. Multistrike would probably be pretty powerful cross the board, but obviously the numbers would be tweaked in such a way to keep it from being too powerful. Cleave, to me, seems more like a Tertiary stat, given that it's very useful in AoE situations, but useless in single-target - I wouldn't want people to have to switch out gear depending on the fight.
While we learned a lot at Blizzcon, a lot of the more nitty-gritty stuff, such as class changes, remains to be announced. This gear revamp, along with the 91-100 spell bonuses we'll be getting, is something I eagerly look forward to.
EDIT: We'll, apparently I jumped the gun here, because I just found out it's been confirmed that Amplify, Multistrike and a stat called Readiness will all become new secondary stats.
All of these have appeared on trinkets in Siege of Orgrimmar, though the way they work could get tweaked.
Readiness will reduce the cooldown of certain abilities depending on the spec. The abilities will most likely be your long-term cooldowns, as opposed to rotational abilities. So, yes Ascendence, probably not Lava Burst.
Very exciting to see more diversity in stat options, and it will be particularly interesting to see how the interact with each other.
Friday, November 22, 2013
The Time-Travel Expansion that Isn't a Time-Travel Expansion
In Warlords of Draenor, we'll be heading back to a Draenor that is 35 years in the past. It's a Draenor that existed before the Alliance or the Horde, and before the First War.
But Blizzard representatives have been emphatic that this is not a time-travel expansion.
Now, obviously, that's not entirely true. For all of this to begin in the first place, Garrosh Hellscream needed to travel into the past to stop the Orcs from drinking the blood of Mannoroth. There is time-travel involved here any way you look at it.
But Warlords of Draenor is most likely not going to explore the deeper, hypothetical issues that arise with time-travel. The alternate universe that Garrosh inadvertently creates with Kairoz's help is separate from ours. What we have is a new threat - a new entity, much as the Lich King was only created after the end of the Second War. Time wonkiness is merely the origin of the Iron Horde, and not the key to its nature.
Thus, I expect that, for the most part, the upcoming expansion will actually have very little of the paradoxes or philosophical quandaries that usually come with time-travel.
Why is Blizzard going with this route?
Well, first let's talk about how the idea evolved. Apparently it has been their plan for many years to have Garrosh rise to power within the Horde, lose his position as Warchief, and then break off to form his own, rival Horde. One of the ideas they were kicking around was having him form the "Mongrel Horde," taking many of the ever-present, but never really focused-on threats of the world and binding them together. Gnolls, Murlocs, Kobolds, Troggs, Centaur. There's even some concept art for this that, amazingly, makes these races seem somewhat threatening.
But ultimately, they instead came upon the idea that Garrosh would much rather find a way to get the figures of legend in the Horde's history to come back. Obviously, the big problem is that they're all dead. So they thought about having him go to Outland to raise them from the dead. That presented some other problems - mainly that they didn't want Garrosh to have an army of the undead (that's kind of stepping on the Scourge's toes.)
So, ironically, this bizarre alternate-universe wound up being the easiest solution for Garrosh to form his own Horde.
Blizzard really wants to focus more on the practical threat that the Iron Horde presents. This isn't Doctor Who territory - the Iron Horde is mainly a physical danger. Worries about breaking the timeline are somewhat pushed to the side. We are reassured that our own history and timeline is still there, and in fact, Outland - the shattered version of Draenor that is roughly in-sync with us in time - still exists.
The cynic in me thinks the reason they're taking this approach is that time-travel stories are hard to write. They're avoiding the brain-bending stuff so that people don't get out the torches and pitchforks.
But the optimist in me thinks that it's because it's just not time for that yet. Blizzard has said that this expansion will lead into the next one (much as Mists led into WoD,) and while that could easily translate into a Burning Legion expansion, what with Gul'dan and what I assume is a very disappointed alternate-universe version of Kil'jaeden, I also think that we could see some big things happening with the way that time works.
When we meet Kairoz, he seems to be a pretty chill guy, like most of the Bronze Dragons. He doesn't seem to be satisfied with the fact that their flight has lost its power, and so he's looking in the Timeless Isle for some way to regain it.
Kairoz talks about the strange power of the Timeless Isle, and how its temporal properties could be used to create entirely new worlds (something Wrathion is excited to hear about, because of his typical Black Dragon ambition.)
Right now, the motivations of Kairoz seem pretty foggy. Why would he help Garrosh unleash the Iron Horde upon the world? Surely, having seen what Garrosh was able to do with the modern Horde, he wouldn't be eager to see more of that.
No, I think that to Kairoz, the whole point of the exercise is experimentation.
The Bronze Dragons were charged by the Titans to preserve the one, true timeline. Aman'thul told Nozdormu that there was only the one, and that it was his sacred duty to keep things going the way they were meant to. Today, Nozdormu even accepts that he will one day die to us mortals within the End Time, transformed into Murozond.
But there's a lot about that that doesn't make sense. The End Time, in the form we saw it, is just plain not going to happen. So when does Nozdormu think he's going to die now?
The Bronze Dragons can no longer see the flow of time as clearly as they once did. The march of events is now clouded to them as it is for all mortals. With the future now a mystery to them, perhaps they feel a sense of relief. Perhaps they will not become the Infinite Dragonflight after all?
But they do remember knowing of that future. Part of them knows that it must come to pass, even if they can't truly see it. How, then, to avert it? How to thwart fate to prevent the downfall of their flight?
Well, one Bronze Dragon got a little inspiration from the disgraced, dethroned Warchief of the Horde and his time on the Timeless Isle. Yes, perhaps fate was immutable - the universe ultimately leading deterministically to a set destination. But if new worlds, or new universes could be created… Perhaps that is how one could escape one's fate.
Yes, in all likelihood, we're going to spend our time in Draenor simply fighting the Iron Horde. But what if the entire upcoming conflict is merely a byproduct of one individual's crucial experiment to save his people?
And, with the ability to pass between alternate universes, perhaps what we're seeing is the very first Infinite Dragon?
But Blizzard representatives have been emphatic that this is not a time-travel expansion.
Now, obviously, that's not entirely true. For all of this to begin in the first place, Garrosh Hellscream needed to travel into the past to stop the Orcs from drinking the blood of Mannoroth. There is time-travel involved here any way you look at it.
But Warlords of Draenor is most likely not going to explore the deeper, hypothetical issues that arise with time-travel. The alternate universe that Garrosh inadvertently creates with Kairoz's help is separate from ours. What we have is a new threat - a new entity, much as the Lich King was only created after the end of the Second War. Time wonkiness is merely the origin of the Iron Horde, and not the key to its nature.
Thus, I expect that, for the most part, the upcoming expansion will actually have very little of the paradoxes or philosophical quandaries that usually come with time-travel.
Why is Blizzard going with this route?
Well, first let's talk about how the idea evolved. Apparently it has been their plan for many years to have Garrosh rise to power within the Horde, lose his position as Warchief, and then break off to form his own, rival Horde. One of the ideas they were kicking around was having him form the "Mongrel Horde," taking many of the ever-present, but never really focused-on threats of the world and binding them together. Gnolls, Murlocs, Kobolds, Troggs, Centaur. There's even some concept art for this that, amazingly, makes these races seem somewhat threatening.
But ultimately, they instead came upon the idea that Garrosh would much rather find a way to get the figures of legend in the Horde's history to come back. Obviously, the big problem is that they're all dead. So they thought about having him go to Outland to raise them from the dead. That presented some other problems - mainly that they didn't want Garrosh to have an army of the undead (that's kind of stepping on the Scourge's toes.)
So, ironically, this bizarre alternate-universe wound up being the easiest solution for Garrosh to form his own Horde.
Blizzard really wants to focus more on the practical threat that the Iron Horde presents. This isn't Doctor Who territory - the Iron Horde is mainly a physical danger. Worries about breaking the timeline are somewhat pushed to the side. We are reassured that our own history and timeline is still there, and in fact, Outland - the shattered version of Draenor that is roughly in-sync with us in time - still exists.
The cynic in me thinks the reason they're taking this approach is that time-travel stories are hard to write. They're avoiding the brain-bending stuff so that people don't get out the torches and pitchforks.
But the optimist in me thinks that it's because it's just not time for that yet. Blizzard has said that this expansion will lead into the next one (much as Mists led into WoD,) and while that could easily translate into a Burning Legion expansion, what with Gul'dan and what I assume is a very disappointed alternate-universe version of Kil'jaeden, I also think that we could see some big things happening with the way that time works.
When we meet Kairoz, he seems to be a pretty chill guy, like most of the Bronze Dragons. He doesn't seem to be satisfied with the fact that their flight has lost its power, and so he's looking in the Timeless Isle for some way to regain it.
Kairoz talks about the strange power of the Timeless Isle, and how its temporal properties could be used to create entirely new worlds (something Wrathion is excited to hear about, because of his typical Black Dragon ambition.)
Right now, the motivations of Kairoz seem pretty foggy. Why would he help Garrosh unleash the Iron Horde upon the world? Surely, having seen what Garrosh was able to do with the modern Horde, he wouldn't be eager to see more of that.
No, I think that to Kairoz, the whole point of the exercise is experimentation.
The Bronze Dragons were charged by the Titans to preserve the one, true timeline. Aman'thul told Nozdormu that there was only the one, and that it was his sacred duty to keep things going the way they were meant to. Today, Nozdormu even accepts that he will one day die to us mortals within the End Time, transformed into Murozond.
But there's a lot about that that doesn't make sense. The End Time, in the form we saw it, is just plain not going to happen. So when does Nozdormu think he's going to die now?
The Bronze Dragons can no longer see the flow of time as clearly as they once did. The march of events is now clouded to them as it is for all mortals. With the future now a mystery to them, perhaps they feel a sense of relief. Perhaps they will not become the Infinite Dragonflight after all?
But they do remember knowing of that future. Part of them knows that it must come to pass, even if they can't truly see it. How, then, to avert it? How to thwart fate to prevent the downfall of their flight?
Well, one Bronze Dragon got a little inspiration from the disgraced, dethroned Warchief of the Horde and his time on the Timeless Isle. Yes, perhaps fate was immutable - the universe ultimately leading deterministically to a set destination. But if new worlds, or new universes could be created… Perhaps that is how one could escape one's fate.
Yes, in all likelihood, we're going to spend our time in Draenor simply fighting the Iron Horde. But what if the entire upcoming conflict is merely a byproduct of one individual's crucial experiment to save his people?
And, with the ability to pass between alternate universes, perhaps what we're seeing is the very first Infinite Dragon?
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