With the expansion itself coming very soon, it's perhaps no surprise that the Beta for Warlords of Draenor must inevitably come to an end. I had the privilege to play in the Beta from day one, and it's been exciting to see how things have developed and changed, particularly the garrison system, which is of course the biggest unique Draenor element.
All in all, the changes I saw on the Beta were mostly tweaks. We didn't see anything quite like the overhaul that we saw in the Jade Forest, for instance. Still, we got to see many updates to the character models (Draenei shoulder pads were on a roller coaster, I'm telling you!) and we saw the expansion's initial state unfolding nicely.
I actually think it speaks well of the expansion that they didn't have to do much rebuilding over the course of the beta. The questing is solid, and I think that there's enough flexibility (particularly with the Bonus Objective areas in each zone) that you'll be able to have some nice variations while leveling alts - particularly if you pick different buildings at your Outposts.
Still, we've come a long way from the beginnings, such as when turning in a key quest during the central Shadowmoon Valley chain would briefly shift every single player in the zone into a phase containing no NPCs.
Still, there's little reason to worry - the end of the beta means that the expansion proper is just around the corner, and so if anyone is going to miss Draenor, they'll be back soon enough.
Friday, October 31, 2014
Friday, October 24, 2014
Considerations of Future Visual Upgrades
6.0's biggest feature is probably the model revamps for the vanilla races and Draenei. Some elicit cheers, others tears, but without a doubt, this is one of the biggest visual changes the game has ever experienced. I, for one, am overjoyed by the look of my Human Paladin (though unlike most, I was actually not so bothered by the old human male model. Perhaps it's because I had the goatee facial hair, which had normal-sized eyebrows.) I'm pretty happy with the others - the only one that caused me any trouble was my Male Night Elf, who previously had a very thin face that seemed to be rounded out, but a quick stop at the Barber/Plastic Surgeon fixed that (I'm also waiting for them to fix the Undead Male's eyes where previously there were empty sockets.)
We know that the very next visual change will be an update to the Blood Elves. Both BC races were slated for an update, but Blood Elves have a relatively small presence in Draenor outside of Talador, whereas Draenei are the most central Alliance race in the expansion (no matter how many times I say or write that, it still makes me smile.)
So I expect to see Blood Elves updated as soon as 6.1. What comes next?
First off, while the Cataclysm models are far, far better than the Vanilla and BC ones, some of the facial gesture mapping that came in with the Pandaren is definitely lacking. My Worgen, much as I adore him, can't really make any facial expressions beyond "mouth open" and "mouth closed." I feel like the Goblins are a bit more facially dextrous, but it might be nice to see both of them a little more expressive. Still, unlike the Classic/BC races, I wouldn't go overboard with these revamps. Just do a little work on the faces (and I've heard that a lot of female Worgen would be interested in getting quite a bit more work,) and they should be ok.
Blizzard folks have talked about a few things. Moonkin form remains the only Druid model that hasn't changed since Vanilla (even the new Cataclysm Druid races got palette swap versions of the Night Elf version.) So it looks like these are due for an update. My personal hope is that we get greater racial distinction between the forms, much in the way that the Bear and Cat forms have nice touches that distinguish them. War paint and a mohawk and tusks for Trolls, glowing eyes and perhaps charms hanging from the antlers for Night Elves, etc.
Blizzard has also mentioned that they'd like to add some cosmetic items like quivers for hunters and librams for paladins. I'm not sure that every class has an obvious thing that's missing - for example, Warriors are pretty set (unless you'd like to give them a Blademaster-style war-banner to wear on their backs.)
Another thing that players have been clamoring for for quite a while is racial variations. Implementing Blackrock/Mag'har Orc Skins would be as easy as adding new skin color options. One could also do so with Dark Iron Dwarves (and you could even roll Wildhammer face tattoos in there as well.) Not every race is begging for this kind of variation - Draenei for example can be just about any color from dark purple to porcelain-white, and there's not really anything in lore to justify anything that's not some kind of bluish color, as the only red eredar we see are demons, and decidedly not on good terms with Velen. The Grimtotem Tauren are a similar issue - it's not unreasonable to think of implementing the Grimtotem facial tattoos, but are there any good Grimtotem (the closest we get are a group of them who get support from the Alliance to fight the Horde, but the rest of the tribe is clearly hostile to everyone.) That actually brings up probably the most popular racial-variant option, which is the High Elves. Many Alliance players have been hoping to play High Elves for a very long time indeed, but would this effectively make the Blood Elves a Pandaren-style neutral race, or would they need a whole new starting experience? Or just dump them into Northshire Abbey with the Humans?
Beyond that, however, there are greater variations in the races. We've now seen two variants on the Tauren - the Taunka and Yaungol. The Draenei have been accompanied by the Broken since BC (though don't expect to see any of them in Draenor, as the Horde rejected Warlock magic in that timeline.) Undead theoretically should be able to include all manner of creatures, from the current zombie-ish guys to skeletons, ghosts, and stuff like that. These variations might be a little tougher to implement. For instance, if you're a Taunka, do you start your adventures in Mulgore, far, far away from your home in Northrend? And does everyone just refer to you as a Tauren as if you were just another member of the Bloodhoof Tribe?
In terms of gear, I don't really think we need model revamps for gear. As much as I'd love to see my 25-man Paladin Tier 8 set updated (particularly to implement the awesome, huge belt buckle from the concept art,) it's probably best that they focus on the new gear models. There's some cool stuff coming in tier 17 (I'm particularly fond of the Rogue set,) and given that there will always be a need for new gear models, I'm happy for them to just work on that stuff.
Actually, to be frank, now that we have transmog for any gear pieces we're less enamored of, I wish that dungeon gear at least was a little more eclectic in look. I miss BC's re-colors of old raid gear. Oh well.
We know that the very next visual change will be an update to the Blood Elves. Both BC races were slated for an update, but Blood Elves have a relatively small presence in Draenor outside of Talador, whereas Draenei are the most central Alliance race in the expansion (no matter how many times I say or write that, it still makes me smile.)
So I expect to see Blood Elves updated as soon as 6.1. What comes next?
First off, while the Cataclysm models are far, far better than the Vanilla and BC ones, some of the facial gesture mapping that came in with the Pandaren is definitely lacking. My Worgen, much as I adore him, can't really make any facial expressions beyond "mouth open" and "mouth closed." I feel like the Goblins are a bit more facially dextrous, but it might be nice to see both of them a little more expressive. Still, unlike the Classic/BC races, I wouldn't go overboard with these revamps. Just do a little work on the faces (and I've heard that a lot of female Worgen would be interested in getting quite a bit more work,) and they should be ok.
Blizzard folks have talked about a few things. Moonkin form remains the only Druid model that hasn't changed since Vanilla (even the new Cataclysm Druid races got palette swap versions of the Night Elf version.) So it looks like these are due for an update. My personal hope is that we get greater racial distinction between the forms, much in the way that the Bear and Cat forms have nice touches that distinguish them. War paint and a mohawk and tusks for Trolls, glowing eyes and perhaps charms hanging from the antlers for Night Elves, etc.
Blizzard has also mentioned that they'd like to add some cosmetic items like quivers for hunters and librams for paladins. I'm not sure that every class has an obvious thing that's missing - for example, Warriors are pretty set (unless you'd like to give them a Blademaster-style war-banner to wear on their backs.)
Another thing that players have been clamoring for for quite a while is racial variations. Implementing Blackrock/Mag'har Orc Skins would be as easy as adding new skin color options. One could also do so with Dark Iron Dwarves (and you could even roll Wildhammer face tattoos in there as well.) Not every race is begging for this kind of variation - Draenei for example can be just about any color from dark purple to porcelain-white, and there's not really anything in lore to justify anything that's not some kind of bluish color, as the only red eredar we see are demons, and decidedly not on good terms with Velen. The Grimtotem Tauren are a similar issue - it's not unreasonable to think of implementing the Grimtotem facial tattoos, but are there any good Grimtotem (the closest we get are a group of them who get support from the Alliance to fight the Horde, but the rest of the tribe is clearly hostile to everyone.) That actually brings up probably the most popular racial-variant option, which is the High Elves. Many Alliance players have been hoping to play High Elves for a very long time indeed, but would this effectively make the Blood Elves a Pandaren-style neutral race, or would they need a whole new starting experience? Or just dump them into Northshire Abbey with the Humans?
Beyond that, however, there are greater variations in the races. We've now seen two variants on the Tauren - the Taunka and Yaungol. The Draenei have been accompanied by the Broken since BC (though don't expect to see any of them in Draenor, as the Horde rejected Warlock magic in that timeline.) Undead theoretically should be able to include all manner of creatures, from the current zombie-ish guys to skeletons, ghosts, and stuff like that. These variations might be a little tougher to implement. For instance, if you're a Taunka, do you start your adventures in Mulgore, far, far away from your home in Northrend? And does everyone just refer to you as a Tauren as if you were just another member of the Bloodhoof Tribe?
In terms of gear, I don't really think we need model revamps for gear. As much as I'd love to see my 25-man Paladin Tier 8 set updated (particularly to implement the awesome, huge belt buckle from the concept art,) it's probably best that they focus on the new gear models. There's some cool stuff coming in tier 17 (I'm particularly fond of the Rogue set,) and given that there will always be a need for new gear models, I'm happy for them to just work on that stuff.
Actually, to be frank, now that we have transmog for any gear pieces we're less enamored of, I wish that dungeon gear at least was a little more eclectic in look. I miss BC's re-colors of old raid gear. Oh well.
Thursday, October 23, 2014
LFR to Have Unique Set Bonuses
In a move to separate traditional raiding from LFR, and certainly to encourage people to try out the former, Blizzard announced a while ago that Warlords' LFR setting would use different gear than the other difficulties - separated not just by color scheme and item level, but giving us totally different models and pieces. Additionally, to make sure that traditional raiders didn't feel they needed to run LFR to get important pieces of gear, they also simplified gear in LFR - making sure trinkets had either flat stats or very simple procs, and none of the kind of transformative pieces like Unerring Vision of Lei Shen or Rune of Reorigination. Likewise, LFR will not drop tier-set pieces, meaning that if you want the awesome set bonuses (and they are pretty cool,) you'll have to do the "real" raiding.
Still, gear sets are fun, and they don't want to make LFR feel totally unlike real raiding. Thus, there will be effectively "LFR tier" sets. These are not class-specific. Instead, there will simply be a set for each armor class and the roles those armor classes can perform. Presumably, like the normal Warlords tier sets, these sets will also change bonuses depending on your spec, so that you only have to collect a single set of them on your character.
I really wonder how raiding will work out in Warlords. Mists largely carried over the problem that had begun in Cataclysm. By merging the raid sizes with regard to difficulty, they effectively got rid of the 10-player normal mode that had made raiding so popular in Wrath of the Lich King. Flex mode helped, but a lot of guilds were broken in the intervening years. My personal hope is that, with "flex" as the new normal difficulty, we'll see guild raiding become more prominent again. For anyone who wasn't playing during Wrath, it was quite amazing - a huge portion of the game's players did actually run raids, long before LFR was a thing.
I definitely think LFR should remain, but I think it's all right if it becomes the super-easy version of the raid. LFR had a strange line to straddle during Mists. For most players, it was the only way that we would really be able to access Mists' raids (and without new dungeons, raids were really the sole path in PvE.) As a result, I think that they erred on the side of retaining a great deal of the raids' complexity (that said, some fights, like Elegon, became far simpler,) which is unfortunately torturous in a group with 24 strangers.
My hope for LFR is that it will be primarily a confidence-booster - a raid difficulty that lets you see the place and encourages you to try it out on a higher difficulty. If you can't manage to get a guild or a PUG to run the raids, at least you'll be able to see the fights, but I think it would be ideal for LFR to serve as a stepping stone into raiding, and not the primary challenge of the expansion itself.
Still, for those who stick to LFR, these sets will give them some incentive to collect gear there, and I think that's a good thing.
Still, gear sets are fun, and they don't want to make LFR feel totally unlike real raiding. Thus, there will be effectively "LFR tier" sets. These are not class-specific. Instead, there will simply be a set for each armor class and the roles those armor classes can perform. Presumably, like the normal Warlords tier sets, these sets will also change bonuses depending on your spec, so that you only have to collect a single set of them on your character.
I really wonder how raiding will work out in Warlords. Mists largely carried over the problem that had begun in Cataclysm. By merging the raid sizes with regard to difficulty, they effectively got rid of the 10-player normal mode that had made raiding so popular in Wrath of the Lich King. Flex mode helped, but a lot of guilds were broken in the intervening years. My personal hope is that, with "flex" as the new normal difficulty, we'll see guild raiding become more prominent again. For anyone who wasn't playing during Wrath, it was quite amazing - a huge portion of the game's players did actually run raids, long before LFR was a thing.
I definitely think LFR should remain, but I think it's all right if it becomes the super-easy version of the raid. LFR had a strange line to straddle during Mists. For most players, it was the only way that we would really be able to access Mists' raids (and without new dungeons, raids were really the sole path in PvE.) As a result, I think that they erred on the side of retaining a great deal of the raids' complexity (that said, some fights, like Elegon, became far simpler,) which is unfortunately torturous in a group with 24 strangers.
My hope for LFR is that it will be primarily a confidence-booster - a raid difficulty that lets you see the place and encourages you to try it out on a higher difficulty. If you can't manage to get a guild or a PUG to run the raids, at least you'll be able to see the fights, but I think it would be ideal for LFR to serve as a stepping stone into raiding, and not the primary challenge of the expansion itself.
Still, for those who stick to LFR, these sets will give them some incentive to collect gear there, and I think that's a good thing.
Adventures in Old-School Legendaries
The Stat Squish brought with it a new buff for running old-school raids. While I think the main intention was to account for the smaller difference between, say, level 90 gear and level 85 gear, it seems to have more than compensated, such that it's actually not too hard to solo even Cataclysm content.
I have three goals: Shadowmourne, Dragonswrath, and the Fangs of the Father. (Also the single achievement I have left for Glory of the Icecrown Raider 10-Player, "Been Waiting a Long Time For This.")
Fangs of the Father:
This was where I hit my first hurdle. I went into Dragon Soul on my Undead Rogue. While Morchok's abilities that split damage proved a little tough to deal with, I eventually powered through, killing the boss quickly enough to avoid most of these. From there, it was pretty much cake to get to Hagara, who you need to pickpocket in order to get the first quest item. (I actually had Glyph of Disguise as well, so I wound up looking like a giant Orc shaman lady for a few minutes after that.)
The only real wall I hit was that it costs 10,000 gold to decrypt the decoder ring. With a new expansion on the horizon, and the fact that my Horde characters have way less disposable money, I decided to table this for a bit.
Dragonswrath:
After killing either Cho'gall, Nefarian (85,) or just the first Molten Giant in Firelands, casters can get a quest to get this legendary staff. Simply going down to the Caverns of Time, Anachronos will give you a little cutscene and then send you to collect items off the bosses in the Firelands. It's a 100% drop rate, but you need 25 off of the seven bosses in there, so it's something that will take a few weeks anyway.
Soloing Firelands on a Mage is not trivial, but with decent gear and some judicious use of cool downs (it also helps that as a Draenei, I have Gift of the Naaru) you can get most of them. I had better luck last week, clearing all but Ragnaros, but this week I got stuck on Shannox, so I've only got nine of these embers. Still, at 100 this should all be very easy. For this stage, at least, it's really just about diligence.
Shadowmourne:
Being an expansion behind the other two, it's rather trivial killing things in ICC these days. Shadowmourne requires you to run the instance on 25-player, but this shouldn't be too difficult, as it doesn't scale up enough to become much of a problem. The one sticking point for a while was, ironically, the Gunship battle, but this week they fixed it so that the cannons scale with your item level. Now it's likely you'll take down the enemy ship before the opening dialogue can even begin.
I was able to get much farther in this chain than in the other two. The first step requires you to collect quest items off of Festergut and Rotface, as well as 25 Primordial Saronite (which you can buy for gold off the Legacy Justice Vendor inside the instance - it'll come to a couple thousand.) The final piece of the puzzle is Light's Vengeance, Arthas' old hammer from his Paladin days, which can be found in Frostmourne Cavern in Dragonblight. Arthas will show up there and summon a big swarm of ghouls as well as a Var'gul guy. You'll have to wade through the ghouls (which is absolutely trivial at 90) and get to where he threw the hammer. The hammer will then start destroying the ghouls with the Light, as well as killing the Var'gul. However, when you try to pick it up, the Var'gul's skeleton will arise and you'll have to kill him as well. Again, this is really simple (I did it at 80 back in the day without too much trouble on my Paladin's off spec.)
With these components, you can create Shadow's Edge, which is the axe that will eventually become Shadowmourne. Unfortunately, while it was an amazing weapon back in the day, it's not that special now, but you'll have to use it in a number of quests that follow.
The first requires you to collect fifty souls with it. I could have sworn this used to be a thousand, but I'm not complaining. To do so, you need to strike enemies in ICC with the weapon (and it has to be a melee strike or auto-attack. Howling Blast does not count.) When the enemy dies, you get the soul. Easy peasy. I managed to get this just by fighting up to the Valithria Dreamwalker fight (which is tough for a class without a healing spell - read: impossible - but you can skip it.)
With the 50 souls, you'll then set about getting the blade infused with Unholy, Blood, and Frost. You start with Unholy.
To get the Unholy Infusion, you have to fight Professor Putricide and use a new special option when transformed into an abomination. This can be a little tough for soloing, as the abomination's health does not scale up with level. What I did (after reading it as a suggestion online) is to go as Blood (healing myself with Death Strikes against the gas and ooze adds he summons) and get him to about 75% health. When his slime puddles were big enough, I cast Army of the Dead and then ran to his desk, transforming into the abomination. While he was distracted by the ghouls (they can't taunt him, but it seemed my aggro was reset when I went abomination) I simply went to the puddles and scooped up as much as I could. When you get a full bar of slime-fuel, you can do the infusion. I then let Putricide kill the abomination-shell and then defeated him the ordinary way, which was enough to get me credit for the quest.
The next step is where I've hit a bit of a dead end. This requires you to get the Blood Infusion by fighting Lana'thel and biting three other players while vampirized. This would seem to be completely impossible while soloing, so I'll have to put this off until later.
Old School Running:
There are a handful of abilities that seem to remain unsquished, but Blizzard has been implementing hot fixes a lot lately to squish them. With the between-expansion lull, it's a great time to go back and see how well you can do soloing old content. There are titles and mounts to be had, and a huge slew of transmog gear as well. I've personally finally gotten a full set of Paladin tier 8/25 and an Azure Drake mount. Anyone at level 90 should have a pretty easy time with Classic, BC, and Wrath content (Yogg-Saron might still be a bit of a challenge, given the whole Sanity mechanic,) and with a little skill and gear, much of the Cataclysm content is also relatively easy to solo (I've killed 6/7 of the bosses in Firelands on a Mage, the king of squishy classes, so it must be doable.)
I have three goals: Shadowmourne, Dragonswrath, and the Fangs of the Father. (Also the single achievement I have left for Glory of the Icecrown Raider 10-Player, "Been Waiting a Long Time For This.")
Fangs of the Father:
This was where I hit my first hurdle. I went into Dragon Soul on my Undead Rogue. While Morchok's abilities that split damage proved a little tough to deal with, I eventually powered through, killing the boss quickly enough to avoid most of these. From there, it was pretty much cake to get to Hagara, who you need to pickpocket in order to get the first quest item. (I actually had Glyph of Disguise as well, so I wound up looking like a giant Orc shaman lady for a few minutes after that.)
The only real wall I hit was that it costs 10,000 gold to decrypt the decoder ring. With a new expansion on the horizon, and the fact that my Horde characters have way less disposable money, I decided to table this for a bit.
Dragonswrath:
After killing either Cho'gall, Nefarian (85,) or just the first Molten Giant in Firelands, casters can get a quest to get this legendary staff. Simply going down to the Caverns of Time, Anachronos will give you a little cutscene and then send you to collect items off the bosses in the Firelands. It's a 100% drop rate, but you need 25 off of the seven bosses in there, so it's something that will take a few weeks anyway.
Soloing Firelands on a Mage is not trivial, but with decent gear and some judicious use of cool downs (it also helps that as a Draenei, I have Gift of the Naaru) you can get most of them. I had better luck last week, clearing all but Ragnaros, but this week I got stuck on Shannox, so I've only got nine of these embers. Still, at 100 this should all be very easy. For this stage, at least, it's really just about diligence.
Shadowmourne:
Being an expansion behind the other two, it's rather trivial killing things in ICC these days. Shadowmourne requires you to run the instance on 25-player, but this shouldn't be too difficult, as it doesn't scale up enough to become much of a problem. The one sticking point for a while was, ironically, the Gunship battle, but this week they fixed it so that the cannons scale with your item level. Now it's likely you'll take down the enemy ship before the opening dialogue can even begin.
I was able to get much farther in this chain than in the other two. The first step requires you to collect quest items off of Festergut and Rotface, as well as 25 Primordial Saronite (which you can buy for gold off the Legacy Justice Vendor inside the instance - it'll come to a couple thousand.) The final piece of the puzzle is Light's Vengeance, Arthas' old hammer from his Paladin days, which can be found in Frostmourne Cavern in Dragonblight. Arthas will show up there and summon a big swarm of ghouls as well as a Var'gul guy. You'll have to wade through the ghouls (which is absolutely trivial at 90) and get to where he threw the hammer. The hammer will then start destroying the ghouls with the Light, as well as killing the Var'gul. However, when you try to pick it up, the Var'gul's skeleton will arise and you'll have to kill him as well. Again, this is really simple (I did it at 80 back in the day without too much trouble on my Paladin's off spec.)
With these components, you can create Shadow's Edge, which is the axe that will eventually become Shadowmourne. Unfortunately, while it was an amazing weapon back in the day, it's not that special now, but you'll have to use it in a number of quests that follow.
The first requires you to collect fifty souls with it. I could have sworn this used to be a thousand, but I'm not complaining. To do so, you need to strike enemies in ICC with the weapon (and it has to be a melee strike or auto-attack. Howling Blast does not count.) When the enemy dies, you get the soul. Easy peasy. I managed to get this just by fighting up to the Valithria Dreamwalker fight (which is tough for a class without a healing spell - read: impossible - but you can skip it.)
With the 50 souls, you'll then set about getting the blade infused with Unholy, Blood, and Frost. You start with Unholy.
To get the Unholy Infusion, you have to fight Professor Putricide and use a new special option when transformed into an abomination. This can be a little tough for soloing, as the abomination's health does not scale up with level. What I did (after reading it as a suggestion online) is to go as Blood (healing myself with Death Strikes against the gas and ooze adds he summons) and get him to about 75% health. When his slime puddles were big enough, I cast Army of the Dead and then ran to his desk, transforming into the abomination. While he was distracted by the ghouls (they can't taunt him, but it seemed my aggro was reset when I went abomination) I simply went to the puddles and scooped up as much as I could. When you get a full bar of slime-fuel, you can do the infusion. I then let Putricide kill the abomination-shell and then defeated him the ordinary way, which was enough to get me credit for the quest.
The next step is where I've hit a bit of a dead end. This requires you to get the Blood Infusion by fighting Lana'thel and biting three other players while vampirized. This would seem to be completely impossible while soloing, so I'll have to put this off until later.
Old School Running:
There are a handful of abilities that seem to remain unsquished, but Blizzard has been implementing hot fixes a lot lately to squish them. With the between-expansion lull, it's a great time to go back and see how well you can do soloing old content. There are titles and mounts to be had, and a huge slew of transmog gear as well. I've personally finally gotten a full set of Paladin tier 8/25 and an Azure Drake mount. Anyone at level 90 should have a pretty easy time with Classic, BC, and Wrath content (Yogg-Saron might still be a bit of a challenge, given the whole Sanity mechanic,) and with a little skill and gear, much of the Cataclysm content is also relatively easy to solo (I've killed 6/7 of the bosses in Firelands on a Mage, the king of squishy classes, so it must be doable.)
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
Passives and the Spellbook
The ability squish that came with 6.0 was pretty wide-sweeping. Some specs lost a very large number of abilities, while some managed to retain most of what they had. The goal of the squish was to cut down on rotational abilities - or to be more accurate, abilities that you would have to save a place for on your hot bars. Getting rid of things like Dark Simulacrum, for example, would not really accomplish their stated goal, because chances are you don't have that hot keyed anyway.
So this is why I'm a little baffled at the way that they have cut down on passive abilities. Previously, most passive abilities, particularly procs, would have their own entry in the spell book. Frost Death Knights had Rime, for example, which is how they would get their free Howling Blasts after an Obliterate (admittedly, it was a little confusing that the buff given by the proc was called "Freezing Fog," even if that does describe roughly what Rime is.) Retribution Paladins had Art of War, which is what caused certain attacks to reset the cool down on Exorcism.
Now, these procs are typically baked into the abilities themselves. Granted, there is some benefit to this - a player can mouse over an ability and get an idea what additional effects could result from its use - but personally, I think it makes figuring out a spec far harder to do. Having the abilities listed, and then the way those abilities interact once you've looked them over, makes a lot more sense to me. When you see those passives, you can immediately take inventory of how many effects you'll have to keep track of.
The other issue is that it makes it harder to notice when an ability changes while leveling up.
I recently started another Monk character (partially just to check out another character model, but also to play through the revamped BFD, RFK and RFD dungeons at the right level) and I have absolutely no idea when I'm going to get the Shuffle passive from Blackout Kick. Previously, at level 40 or something, Brewmaster Monks would get "Brewmaster training," which would have a number of effects, like making Tiger Claw free and Blackout Kick increase your parry and stagger amounts for a few seconds through the buff Shuffle. I know that these effects are still in place, as I've tanked the Headless Horseman on my old Monk, Gaotso. Yet I have no idea how much I will have to level up Icatia before her Kicks start making her tougher to kill.
It would be a relatively minor fix to revert all of this, but I think this is a case of Blizzard just going overboard. Passive effects were far from cluttering action bars. They weren't taking up any space in action bars. And while having a smaller spell book might seem like it would make a class simpler to understand, I think that in this case it's more akin to removing all punctuation and spaces between words.
So this is why I'm a little baffled at the way that they have cut down on passive abilities. Previously, most passive abilities, particularly procs, would have their own entry in the spell book. Frost Death Knights had Rime, for example, which is how they would get their free Howling Blasts after an Obliterate (admittedly, it was a little confusing that the buff given by the proc was called "Freezing Fog," even if that does describe roughly what Rime is.) Retribution Paladins had Art of War, which is what caused certain attacks to reset the cool down on Exorcism.
Now, these procs are typically baked into the abilities themselves. Granted, there is some benefit to this - a player can mouse over an ability and get an idea what additional effects could result from its use - but personally, I think it makes figuring out a spec far harder to do. Having the abilities listed, and then the way those abilities interact once you've looked them over, makes a lot more sense to me. When you see those passives, you can immediately take inventory of how many effects you'll have to keep track of.
The other issue is that it makes it harder to notice when an ability changes while leveling up.
I recently started another Monk character (partially just to check out another character model, but also to play through the revamped BFD, RFK and RFD dungeons at the right level) and I have absolutely no idea when I'm going to get the Shuffle passive from Blackout Kick. Previously, at level 40 or something, Brewmaster Monks would get "Brewmaster training," which would have a number of effects, like making Tiger Claw free and Blackout Kick increase your parry and stagger amounts for a few seconds through the buff Shuffle. I know that these effects are still in place, as I've tanked the Headless Horseman on my old Monk, Gaotso. Yet I have no idea how much I will have to level up Icatia before her Kicks start making her tougher to kill.
It would be a relatively minor fix to revert all of this, but I think this is a case of Blizzard just going overboard. Passive effects were far from cluttering action bars. They weren't taking up any space in action bars. And while having a smaller spell book might seem like it would make a class simpler to understand, I think that in this case it's more akin to removing all punctuation and spaces between words.
Friday, October 17, 2014
Public Service Announcement: UBRS is Not a Mists Heroic
I've run the new UBRS at 90 several times, and I've noticed that people are wiping like crazy. Granted, just being a new dungeon means that people will have to figure the place out - the second boss (whose name I'm sure I'll remember eventually) has some tricky mechanics that force you to attack one target while making sure to interrupt a different one.
But the major reason I think people are having difficulties is that in two years of Mists of Pandaria, we've only had the original dungeons. There has not been 5-man content (outside of challenge modes) that is tuned for anyone over about 450 item level. With a large swath of players nearly 100 points higher than that - and who have been so for over a year - a lot of people are very used to zerging through dungeons even faster than they were by the end of Wrath.
So yes: you'll have to be careful and not over-pull in new dungeons. You'll have to actually pay attention to boss mechanics. You'll have to be patient and let the healer get full mana or top people off before a fight. And yes, sometimes you'll wipe.
In all honesty, the new UBRS is not really any harder than the Mists dungeons were. But it's new and it's actually tuned for the gear levels that a lot of players have reached. So just be careful, and have fun!
But the major reason I think people are having difficulties is that in two years of Mists of Pandaria, we've only had the original dungeons. There has not been 5-man content (outside of challenge modes) that is tuned for anyone over about 450 item level. With a large swath of players nearly 100 points higher than that - and who have been so for over a year - a lot of people are very used to zerging through dungeons even faster than they were by the end of Wrath.
So yes: you'll have to be careful and not over-pull in new dungeons. You'll have to actually pay attention to boss mechanics. You'll have to be patient and let the healer get full mana or top people off before a fight. And yes, sometimes you'll wipe.
In all honesty, the new UBRS is not really any harder than the Mists dungeons were. But it's new and it's actually tuned for the gear levels that a lot of players have reached. So just be careful, and have fun!
Pandaria XP Requirements Nerfed as Far as I Can Tell
There's no official announcement that I've seen, but it looks like the XP required to go from 85 to 90 has been significantly nerfed. I was able to take my Goblin Hunter, Blattz, from 86 to 90 in about a day - only a couple of hours played.
This shouldn't be to surprising - the pattern has been that XP requirements get nerfed each expansion to account for the new level cap. Blizzard's general rule is that getting from level 1 to whatever the current cap is should take roughly the same time regardless of what that cap is. So while in vanilla it took a good long while to get up to 60, it should take significantly less time to do so now with a level cap of 100 on the horizon (approximately 60%, though I imagine less, because the expansion-areas are designed to take a little more time per level than the old world stuff. You should be able to get to level 10 in only an hour or two, but to go from 70 to 80 is a more significant feat that would typically take at least a few days.)
The only reason that this might be seen as odd is that Mists already received an XP requirement nerf some time in the early patches - I want to say 5.1 or 5.2. I had also worried that they might retire this periodic XP nerf in favor of the character boosts. That does not seem to be the case, though I'll have to see how things are working out at lower levels to see what things are like down there (and I'm running out of pre-Outland characters on my main servers.) The only real downside to these constant XP nerfs is that at this point it's impossible to do all the quests in a zone without the enemies being utterly trivial to deal with by the end.
Anyway, the good news is that if you've got a toon to Pandaria, a little diligent questing and dungeon-running will see you leveling up very quickly, ready to either get one last shot at some of the Mists content or ready to storm Tanaan and crush that pesky Iron Horde.
Sidenote: A Murder of Crows is way cooler now! The cool down resets if a target dies while affected by it, which means that when fighting basically anything that isn't a boss, you can have it up pretty much 100% of the time.
This shouldn't be to surprising - the pattern has been that XP requirements get nerfed each expansion to account for the new level cap. Blizzard's general rule is that getting from level 1 to whatever the current cap is should take roughly the same time regardless of what that cap is. So while in vanilla it took a good long while to get up to 60, it should take significantly less time to do so now with a level cap of 100 on the horizon (approximately 60%, though I imagine less, because the expansion-areas are designed to take a little more time per level than the old world stuff. You should be able to get to level 10 in only an hour or two, but to go from 70 to 80 is a more significant feat that would typically take at least a few days.)
The only reason that this might be seen as odd is that Mists already received an XP requirement nerf some time in the early patches - I want to say 5.1 or 5.2. I had also worried that they might retire this periodic XP nerf in favor of the character boosts. That does not seem to be the case, though I'll have to see how things are working out at lower levels to see what things are like down there (and I'm running out of pre-Outland characters on my main servers.) The only real downside to these constant XP nerfs is that at this point it's impossible to do all the quests in a zone without the enemies being utterly trivial to deal with by the end.
Anyway, the good news is that if you've got a toon to Pandaria, a little diligent questing and dungeon-running will see you leveling up very quickly, ready to either get one last shot at some of the Mists content or ready to storm Tanaan and crush that pesky Iron Horde.
Sidenote: A Murder of Crows is way cooler now! The cool down resets if a target dies while affected by it, which means that when fighting basically anything that isn't a boss, you can have it up pretty much 100% of the time.
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