Misdirection; The New Races Leaked?!?

SPOILER ALERT; ONLY READ IF YOU ARE INTERSTED IN THE MOST RECENT RUMORS CONCERNING THE EXPANSION

Holisky over at wow.com recently posted they had sources inside Blizzard who have confirmed both the name of the expansion, and the new playable races. Cataclysm will be the expansion name, and goblins for the Horde and Worgen for the Alliance are the playable races.

Am I the only one who thinks it would be great it the report were true based on the sources and totally false at the same time?

We all know wow.com has sources inside Blizzard. Hell, Sacco used to be a blue. We all understand that some of their writers are highly respected within the community. Remember that the crab himself commented on the Allison Robert piece on the new crushing blows.

I am unable to find the source post, but there was also a time when wow.com was convinced GC was a female. Do you know when? Right before BlizzCon last year. The best I can find is the post where he was introduced at BlizzCon and some of the comments ask, “and who was it at WoWinsider that convinced everyone that he was a girl?”

Let’s recap on the facts…

• 1. We know the Blizzard loves their secrets.
  
• 2. We know that wow.com has inside sources and that many of the Blizzard staff read wow.com
  
• 3. We know that Blizzard conveniently chose not to squash the GC is a girl rumor that started circulating before BlizzCon last year
  
• 4. We also know that Blizzard loves playing jokes on the community. Anyone remember the bogus achievement data mined in the 3.2 PTR?

Blizzard loves jokes, and they love the idea of outsmarting the entire community. Why is it so farfetched to believe some of the confirmed information is a red herring that would make Agatha Christie smile?

All of the events leading up to the leak and BlizzCon being just a couple weeks away make everything just so perfect, maybe just a little too perfect. I am not saying the leaks aren't completely accurate, but wouldn’t it be great if Blizzard was able to pull off one hell of a misdirect and shock the masses at BlizzCon?

-Rhab

Nice Pick-Up!

I have been absolutely bored with WoW since I know the patch is close. I can’t justify leveling anything in Northrend anymore because I want them to do it with not only flying mounts, but faster flying mounts, so I have been playing both the druid and the paladin so much that I’m sure at the login screen they are both thinking, “oh shit, he’s gonna pick me isn’t he.”

Things have gotten so bad that I have done the unthinkable and started to level fishing. A profession I berate people for and tell them if they are that bored they need to turn off the damn game and do something productive. In my defense, we have one car, and the better half has been taking it to work in the evenings, so I am actually stranded at home. My something better to do has included, but is not limited to, watching entire collections of The West Wing, Friends, seasons 1-5 of Will and Grace (that’s all we have at the moment), and The Big Bang Theory, doing the laundry and actually folding all the socks. I am even simultaneously reading one book on Bill Clinton, someone I love, and another on Roger Clemens, someone I despise. Talk about being confused during congressional hearings. Cigars and intravenous needles were going where?

Last night I decided to try and level fishing on my shaman. He has no suga’ mama paladin to finance his every desire because he is on the old server I called home. I just joined LFG for Violet Hold and then sat in Dalaran fishing up trash. After getting an invite, I joined the group and a level 80 tank volunteered. Now, I am in no way bashing this tank because he had respectable gear. He had my favorite shied, a T7 piece, and even some 213 epics. He was still wearing the ring from reg Gun’Drak, but it was a regular VH run so I wasn’t scared. I was tanking that place with 15K health; a level 80 could handle it with 25K easy. Lesson number 1 from this experience is that gear and achievements don’t always tell the whole story.

He had some issues getting to portals, and picking up the split portal that opens up right in front of Zuramat, the voidwalker. It wasn’t anything we couldn’t handle, and again, he wasn’t a bad tank, but you could tell he wasn’t a polished tank either.

On one of the split portals, he went running up the Erekem platform and lost 2 of dragons as they trailed down the other side. I chain lighting’ed them and then drug them over to the consecration. Our healer was a real healer, and definitely knew what she were doing but because of the beating I was taking the priest was being focused with an arcane stream and losing health. Inside all of that mess, I decided to drop a healing wave on the priest to buy the time for the healer to save my stupid ass since I knew I was in range of a chain heal.

After the portal closed, the healer said, “nice pick up Nio.” I thought she were getting onto me for being dumb and grabbing the mobs, so I apologized and said I was trying to get them to the tank. She then said, “no, on the heal.”

I realized right then, I’m not a DPS, no matter what I think. Most of my early WoW days were spent as a lock, and I loved topping damage meters, but somewhere in TBC I leveled the both the paladin to tank and the druid to heal and I lost my original focus.

Now, even as DPS, I am constantly looking at health bars, watching threat for another player who might want a little extra oomph applied to the tank with an MD, and generally more aware of my surroundings. Some of you might think this makes me a good DPS, but it is just the opposite. I’m no longer good at it. I can’t stop playing babysitter in groups or raids long enough to fully meet my damage potential.

I have heard, even made, some of the arguments for hybrid taxes and have always understood them, but hybrid taxing is only important in a subpar group. If the group of players you are running with are all competent and capable, there is little for a hybrid to contribute outside of their intended role. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you will, or even should. Lesson number 2 from this experience is hybrids may be valuable for what they can do, but they never shine when everyone is on their A game.

Taxing a class for what it might do is as bad as Tom Cruise arresting people in Minority Report for crimes they might commit. Don’t forget that for every story a good hybrid has about saving the day, they probably have countless memories when they didn’t react fast enough to pull off the save. Hybrids are the closers of WoW. When a closer walks up to the mound and gets a save, he gets patted on the ass, but when he blows it, he gets hammered with people reminding him that he has only one job and he managed to fuck it up.

Next time you run with a hybrid that manages to save the day, be sure and throw out a /hug or /kneel and let them know you appreciate what they do. It will make their day, I promise.

-Rhab

The Kobolds Have Me Cornered; Advice for Overwhelmed Parents who don’t Play WoW

Today on WoW, Casually, Robin Torres gave some solid advice on playing with your reading aged child. Interestingly, this weekend on the rawrcast, Stomp and Haf hit on some advice and even solicited some words from the ever popular Totalbiscuit for parents and their kids who play WoW. Whether you are playing with your kids or paying for their accounts, the rules that apply to child rearing in real life are very similar to the ones you would apply in the World of Warcraft. Parents who do give a damn may understand the basics, but not necessarily how to translate it all into WoW-speak.

1. Be Involved

You don’t have to play the game to be an involved parent. If you are one of those people who WoW appeals, then by all means get you an account and play with your kid. It will be the best 30 bucks a month you ever spend.

If you are not one of those parents who can appreciate what WoW has to offer, I would recommend a 30 minute homework session. Wow.com is probably the best place to do your homework. It’s clean and concise and they rarely get to in depth about anything. They are an easy one stop shop to catch up on the events going on in the WoW, and you will find communicating with your child about the game they play is a lot easier when you have a clue what in bejesus is going on.

Being involved could mean knowing what class your kid plays as his/her main or even knowing what a main is. It could mean knowing that the game, like your real life, has drama, or it could mean you are just making an effort to understand a social game.

WoW isn’t like buying them an Atari. They have friends they play with, and they have people they try and impress. WoW is a living breathing world full of people who you would be proud to let your kids hang out with and some you might be depressed if you met in real life. Listen if/when they talk about the game and learn about these other real people on the servers they play on.

2. Talk With Them

After reading up on daily WoW events don’t be afraid to talk to your kid about it at the dinner table, if people even do that anymore. Dinner was at 6:15 every night in my house growing up and my parents used it as the opportunity to catch up on the day’s events with me and my 3 siblings.

No matter how you do it, find the time to talk with your kid. Mute the television or pause the TIVO if you must. If you decide to follow a WoW site and come across something interesting like a player getting banned for pwning bosses with a magical shirt, then talk with them about it. Let them know you are interested in what they are doing. This goes farther than you think it does.

3. Listen to Them

If you are so inclined to start a discussion with them about any news in WoW, be prepared to listen to what they have to say. Talking to them about game ethics will save you a ton in therapy bills and allows you direct access into the psyche of your child.

Adult discussions about WoW topics lets them know you take what they do seriously, and you might even teach each other a thing or 2 after you finish up talking about the “right” things to do in-game. I’d even go out on a limb and say your kids will be relieved to talk about something serious after an evening of dealing with “anal trade chats.”

When talking with them remember Robert Greene’s 1st rule from his book, The 48 Laws of Power and “never outshine the master.” WoW is your child’s domain, and since you aren’t an avid player, you aren’t likely to bring their insight or expertise on any subject matter. Your job is to listen and evaluate what they say and do your best to relate it to real life. Even if you disagree with them, never treat them like their opinion is wrong.

Back when my best friend’s little boy was 5, I was at their place, using the f word, like I’m inclined to do. His son walked up to me and kindly told me, “we aren’t supposed to use that word.” My best friend jumped in immediately and let his son know I was allowed to use that word if I wanted to, but it wasn’t something they wanted him or me to use, but they weren’t my boss. They, kindly, let him know that his thoughts were important and sharing them was ok, but sometimes the same rules don’t apply to everyone.

Listen when your kid talks about WoW. Conversations with your kids will tell you as much about them as it does paladins and murlocs.

4. Take them Seriously and Act Accordingly

My parents were formidable foes growing up. Like Haf mentioned, you can have respect for someone and understand the balance of power. My curfew was and I quote, “don’t be an asshole in the morning.” It meant I was allowed to come home anytime I wanted as long as I called sometime in the evening and told them what time I would be home, but I wasn’t allowed to be a jack ass in exchange for the privilege.

It only took once for me to learn my lesson. I came in at like 3 in the morning on a daylight savings time weekend. When I walked in the door, my dad was in his chair and he asked I was late. Having already thought this out, I said, “dad, it’s only 2 after the time changed and I said I’d be home at 2.” He smiled and said, “ok, well we will be cleaning out the shed in 3 hours, no matter who’s time we are on, so you better get some rest.”

That was one of the most miserable days of my life, but I knew to keep my privileges I would have to suffer through it. My dad had a 20x20 shop that he called a shed, so at around 4 in the afternoon that day, we finally had taken everything out, cleaned, and moved everything back inside. There is no governor like a self governor, and believe me I never tried to pull any more shit about what time I would be home again.

In a WoW context, understand your child maybe raiding with 9 or 24 other people. If he has a raid spot, he is valued. Make pacts with your kid about his responsibilities and stick to them. If they expect to raid 2 nights a week and you want certain things to be done, tell him. If he doesn’t comply with your wishes, PLEASE, don’t ever punish them by not allowing them to raid after they have made the commitment. They have made commitments to other people and breaking commitments, no matter the reason, is not, nor will it ever be, a good lesson to teach your child.

Be the patient parent, and hold your tongue. After the raiding is finished, let them know they will need to inform the raid leader as soon as possible they will not be able to attend next weeks raid. This allows the raid leader to fill the spot and it teaches your child that you respect what they do, and they have to respect you as well.

WoW raiding is a team effort, and you wouldn’t punish their baseball team with a forced absence. Respect a raid the way you would any other team effort because, of all the lessons your child will learn from working within a team, the one you don’t want them to learn is it’s ok for them to act selfishly.

The ideas are basic and generic, but I think some parents chalk up WoW as “just a game.” No matter your opinion, I can tell you it is very much more to those of us who play. Respect your kid and you will find they will come to respect you.

-Rhab

Staying the Night at the Hunting Lodge

I recently sent Brigwyn of the Hunting Lodge an email after listening to him on the wow.com podcast. I hit on the hinted overhaul by GC in the hunter Q&A and reached for a little more in the 3.2 patch notes.

Like I alluded to in the email, I think separate trap cooldowns is a step in a direction similar to the rune system of death knights.

I never really considered the runic dumps, and Brigwyn actually came up with a much more sophisticated system than I would have even imagined.

Shots could work like runes, and sticking with the simplicity of the patch notes, hunters would have frost, fire, and nature shots. 6 feels too much like a death knight, but 9 feels like way too many. Depending on the overall cost of the shots, 9 might be an appropriate number.

The runic power bar would be replaced with ammo. The ammo slot on a hunter would then be replaced with a clip or quiver with a certain capacity. The iLvl of a clip would mean more shots in the gun before you would have to reload.

Taking a hunter out of combat for a reload would be similar to a mage who drops valuable seconds of DPS for an evocation. There isn’t a mage alive that likes to have to evocate, but if he wants mana he knows he has to while his diabolical superior, the warlock, can keep casting to his little black heart’s content.

I am excited about the hunter resource news that has been hinted for BlizzCon, and hope it’s as good as the ideas that Briwyn’s been tossing around lately.

-Rhab

Rawrcast Contributions

Stompalina and Hafrot have allowed me to contribute to the Rawrcast, so many of my post will be appearing there from now on.

Please make their site a regular stop of yours as some of the other contributors are quite entertaining.

-Rhab

Respecting a World with Real People

The new piece over at wow.com on drama is absolutely amazing! This week they hit on taking calls or going AFK during a raid, and I was extremely surprised at some of the comments.

For the most part, many of the readers understood the overall feel of the situation. The advice was sound and it really didn’t cover anything most of us with built in respect don’t already know. It’s only the second week, and sadly every piece of advice that has been given reminds me of the golden rule.

Both Lisa and Robin are reminding us that the life lessons we are taught both at home and in grade school are valuable tools is WoW as well. I thought the phone call piece was classic for examining the microcosm that is Azeroth

See, the great irony of an MMORPG like WoW is that every inch popular culture moves towards them as a mass form of entertainment, the more we also move towards being information age lackeys.

Those of us who get the best transfer speeds on our modems and forage the internet for the best addons like we are sophisticated cavemen on a great hunt are some of the same people who become face book freaks with 50K friends and think that our cell phones have to be on us at all times because we never know when we might miss an important call.

Again, I love the column and the perspective, but was saddened by the way some of the commenters twisted the advice.

When I log onto the paladin, if see anyone out in the fighting world, I will bless them. Hell if they are fighting and low on health I will heal them and even if it is a Hordie, I often run in with reckless abandon, though not in the dramatic fashion that some other classes can, and help drop the SOB that is trying to kill them.

Helping people out comes with living in the real world, I just wish more people knew it was part of playing in Azeroth. I hope the drama mamas bring more of the golden rule to the servers in weeks to come.

-Rhab

Petition for Strength Improvements Part 3; Healers

Though this is a subject I have hit on previously, I thought it might be important to round out the petition for strength improvements series by re-examining holy paladins.

Both Brains from Brawn and Light Infused Armor will fix this holy paladin trash clogging up the loot tables.

Brains from Brawn would be a talent in the holy tree to boost a paladin’s intellect. It would ncrease your intellect by 33/66/100% of your str. The only foreseeable problem here is that intellect gear like cloaks could be less attractive to a paladin because they might want the one with equal str if they get bonus from divine str. The spellpower and MP5 on caster cloaks and rings will keep most holies honest though in my opinion. Few are going to pass up a cloak that has intellect and spellpower only for in the intellect bonus they get from strength.

Light Infused Armor would Increases spellpower by 4/8/12% of your armor. A pally with 20K armor would then have 2400 spellpower. Last I checked Degenerus, a holy paladin in my guild, had about 20K armor and 1800 spellpower. That number may need to be tuned down to 3/7/10% of your armor, but it allows a paladin to scale as their gear improves and, in the same vein as punishing the warriors in leather, discourages them from using mail caster gear. Mail will now make paladins feel even more dirty that cloth does on my resto druid. Similar stat itemization or not, a paladin isn’t going to roll on a marginal upgrade that happens to be mail if they are going to lose a significant amount of spellpower due to the drop in armor.

Allowing holy paladins to use dps hear as healing gear will give them same privilege as any other healer. There will still be drops that are obviously useless to a healer. Hit rating is not a healer stat, and any good raid leader is going to know that before they distribute hit gear.

Spellpower plate for tanking and ret paladins is a long lost memory from TBC, and maybe the last remnants of spellpower healing plate should be left in Icecrown once Artha’s is dealt with.

-Rhab

The Elvis of Blues

No, not those kind of blues, the kind we all think of when we hear the phrase “Blizzard Forums.”

In the world of WoW sites, no other man’s appearance on the forums can spark quite a response as Ghostcrawler. He is the Elvis Presley of blues and the Warcraft community swoons like little girls who just saw him shaking his hips on the Ed Sullivan Show. What I don’t necessarily get is why?

It is here that I liken the Ghostcrawler phenomenon to that of Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo. For so long Cowboys quarterbacks have held a mystique. Roger and Troy are the Cher and Madonna of the NFL. Merely uttering their first name is enough. It doesn’t take a Cowboy fan to appreciate the greatness of either of them, but I will admit it does help.

Enter Tony Romo. Cowboy’s fans, like the WoW players, want to cheer for someone. They want to feel after years of mediocre quarterbacks, the answer (no not that answer, geez people work with me) has arrived. Cowboy’s fans have, for better or worse and with the help of Jerry’s money, latched onto Tony Romo because he is the last hope after an entire generation of boys who went from kindergarten to 12th grade and NEVER witnessed a playoff win, much less a Superbowl.

Ghostcrawler, like Romo, is a gunslinger who if I had my guess loves Brett Favre as much as he loves his gin. The problem with gunslingers though is for every great pass zooming pass defensive backs into the hands of your target, there are interceptions that leave your fans in tears, and no matter how much you hope you can’t have both.

You can’t cheer the cerebral Tom Brady and the fly by the seat of your pants Tony Romo. You can’t applaud Kaplan’s work and then worship the great crab. You have to choose your sides. Ghostcrawler is loved by so much of the WoW community for all the reasons teenagers in the 50’s loved Elvis. My question is long after Ghostcrawler has moved on, will we remember the fresh new face that changed our realms forever or will we remember the one whose mystique had cooled into a smoldering pile of bat guano? We will all have to decide just like the USPS made us choose once before.

-Rhab

It’s a Bullshit Encounter

One of my favorite movie scenes of all time is from My Cousin Vinny when Ms. Vito (Marisa Tomei) puts the prosecutor in his place for asking an unanswerable question. I couldn’t find a youtube, but below is the transcript. Believe me it’s a great scene, and reading it doesn’t do it justice.

D.A. Jim Trotter: Now, Ms. Vito, being an expert on general automotive knowledge, can you tell me... what would the correct ignition timing be on a 1955 Bel Air Chevrolet, with a 327 cubic-inch engine and a four-barrel carburetor?

Mona Lisa Vito: That's a bullshit question.

D.A. Jim Trotter: Does that mean that you can't answer it?

Mona Lisa Vito: It's a bullshit question, it's impossible to answer.

D.A. Jim Trotter: Impossible because you don't know the answer!

Mona Lisa Vito: Nobody could answer that question!

D.A. Jim Trotter: Your Honor, I move to disqualify Ms. Vito as an expert witness!

Judge Chamberlain Haller: Can you answer the question?

Mona Lisa Vito: No, it is a trick question!

Judge Chamberlain Haller: Why is it a trick question?

Mona Lisa Vito: 'Cause Chevy didn't make a 327 in '55, the 327 didn't come out till '63. And it wasn't offered in the Bel Air with a four-barrel carb till '64. However, in 1964, the correct ignition timing would be four degrees before top-dead-center.

D.A. Jim Trotter: Well... uh... she's acceptable, Your Honor.

As of a couple days ago, Stars, a Chinese guild who rerolled on Taiwanese servers so they could play WotLK, took down Yoggy with 0 watchers.

What’s most interesting about the encounter is when last we heard Exodus had been punished for using a bug to exploit the encounter. Ensidia had insisted they used a bug because by all accounts, the encounter was mathematically impossible. Ensidia has long snagged world firsts, and according to even Michael Sacco over at wow.com, who used to be a blue, they have a close relationship with some developers at Blizz. He made some pretty vague comments recently on their podcast, but the gist of it is pretty basic. Yes, Ensidia uses bugs in the programming, and yes, Blizzard listens to them. This makes the Exodus 72 hour ban even more disgusting when the developers are playing favorites, but it has allowed an even greater irony.

See up until now, Ensidia has been the Marisa Tomei of WoW guilds. Blizzard puts them on the stand, and they cry out, “that’s a bullshit encounter.” Somewhere along the way Blizzard made a fatal error and instead of cross examining them they decided to make them their very own expert witness. It’s great for Ensidia, but bad for WoW. Now when they cry out that an encounter is mathematically impossible, everyone, including the devs, all tend to agree. Blizzard isn’t morally against making guilds bang their head against an encounter that’s impossible. If you listened to Sacco on the podcast, you even get the feeling that they revel in it, and I think it’s commendable.

It has been a way of pushing players to theorycraft and then implement ideas that have never been used before. There, according to Blizzard’s recent action, has always been a difference between exploiting a bug compared to exploiting a failed game mechanic. Mob evading vs spellstealing is a good example, and though none of us really understand Blizzards rationale, I’d hope they have enough internal protocols that whether I agree with the Exodus punishment or not, Blizzard’s big men are able to sleep at night not because of their pillows made of real world gold but because they treat their player base fairly.

Top end guilds are the checks and balances for the developers. Just like any system with a similar mechanic, whether it is a government or a financial hierarchy, the system will fail if those that monitor another are compromised. Ensidia has become that compromise. When your developers’ greatest adversary then becomes their lapdog, it hardly suggests a system where one is trying to expose the other. When did Ensidia stop being Marisa Tomei (if they ever really were) and start becoming the star expert witness?

Well, it doesn’t really matter anymore now does it? While Blizzard was busy making a star, there was another star for the players being made in Asia. Who would have thought that a guild of Chinese players would defect to Taiwanese servers level all the way to 80, organize their guild to get the 2nd Mimiron hard mode achievement and then devise an ZOMFG plan to take down Yogg?

If you read their strategy, you can’t help but be in awe. That is some serious scheming and they didn’t do it with some of the questionable techniques that Sacco suggests of Kungen in the podcast.

My only remaining question is what becomes of Stars now? Everyone who saw the summer games in Beijing knows there is an enormous amount of national pride among the Chinese. Everyone who sees the hero that Yao Ming is to his people also understands this. I can’t help but wonder if and when the Chinese government learns and understands the scope of Stars kill and just how is has put Ensidia in their place as a Chihuahua to the Paris Hilton that is Blizzard if they might work to get their people WotLK and subsequent expansions sooner. The Chinese government, despite what anyone may think of them, aren’t likely to pass up on an opportunity for such national pride long term, especially when their biggest rivals are a euro guild adored by the prince of Dubai and Americans.

-Rhab

A Serious Talk about Faction Changing

So after some serious thought, I have decided that faction changing sounds absolutely amazing. I do get the picture of the Sneetches in my head, but I have been playing the same toons for about 2 years now, and the only reason I rolled a gnome lock over a troll mage was the intel bonus and the free mount.

I love the trolls, and have always thought they had the most kick ass mounts. After that decision, the choices seemed obvious since I had a high level toon that could bankroll all of the alts. Once you have more than one 80 (70 at the time) it becomes increasingly more difficult to roll a Hordie, since you have to start with nothing.

The choices would be easy if I did faction transfers…

Gnome Lock -> Undead
NE Druid ->Tauren
NE DK -> Tauren
Draenei Shaman -> Orc
Dorf Hunter ->Troll
Gnome Mage -> Troll
Draenei Priest -> Undead
NE Rogue ->Orc

And the one that would break my heart…

Dorf Pally -> BE

As you can tell from all of my toons, there is a race missing from my Alliance toons. Humans…I can’t stand them. I hated them before Variann returned and now have an even greater disdain for them than I did previously.

The only problem is that the race I hate more than the humans is the Blood Elves. The crack addicts of Azeroth who stole the power of the light and twisted it to learn to harness the powers of a paladin.

If the time ever came and I was faced with seriously considering changing factions, I really think that the BE I would have to make the paladin would break my heart. She would be the reason I couldn’t change factions. The thought of taking my dorf and turning her into some bulimic whore willing to slob a knob in Undercity for a taste of arcane goodness is just too much to bear.

If only there was an alternative for my little fat girl that tanks.

-Rhab

“We think talents probably account for too much of a character's power already.”

At the end of a shadow priest Q&A, GC closes with those words. It appears as though Blizzard is weary about raising the talent tree bar every time they release an expansion. It’s a fair concern. How many times do we feel we need the 51 point talent to do our job? Can someone say Hammer of the Righteous, Riptide, Haunt? The problem arises when the general philosophy of the community is they do need the 51 point talent and then Blizzard doesn’t deliver. Leveling a frost mage, I have completely ignored the 51 point talent (Deep Freeze) only because I have enough control over encounters. I will admit than when you look over at the other trees, frost mages have to feel cheated when they see Living Bomb and Arcane Barrage. When you enjoy playing frost, but know that you are cheating your groups at level 80 if you stay frost, it only adds insult to injury when your 51 point talent doesn’t do ANY damage.

I would have personally been happy with a 51 point talent that provider a better spell coefficient (over the 14.29%) of Ice Lance, or to allow ice lance to proc a deep freeze than even an entirely new spell. If the flat multiplier increase and a chance to stun, say 20%, ice lance becomes a lot more appealing, and doesn’t feel that OP since you aren’t using it all the time, and you aren’t getting the stun all the time either. Not a sexy solution, but at least it could boost damage for a frost mage.

I’m digressing now, but ultimately what does Blizzard expect? They set the general rule that each talent point should be worth 1% dps. They are the ones facing more levels and probably 10% more damage from talent points alone with every expansion. Sometimes I wonder if with all the changes to make leveling easier, if Blizz wishes they had maybe released vanilla WoW with 30-40 levels and then applied 5 with every expansion instead of the 60+10 format they are using now.

Numbers wouldn’t be so inflated and the old world wouldn’t be quite as abandon as it is now.

-Rhab

The Sneetches, WoW style!

With the news of incoming faction changes, the only thing that I could think of was Dr. Seuss.

One of the earliest stories I remember reading is that of the Sneetches. The gist, for those of you that don’t know, is there are 2 kinds of Sneetches, those with stars on their stomachs and those without. The ones with stars look down on the ones without to create a separatist culture. A machine that adds stars becomes available and the story takes off from there. If you have never read or seen it, please take the time to do so. Seuss was a genius and much of his work will live forever.

I am still in awe at how Dr. Seuss was able to hit on timeless social issues and do so without children knowing they are being subjected to commentary.

At the end of the story, the Sneetches are all confused as to whether they started with stars of not, and learn a valuable lesson about judging those that are not like you.

Anyone else think that after changing factions, learning you may have liked your old faction more, then changing back, the only thing we will be left with is an empty wallet from the charge of faction changing and maybe the knowledge that there are elitist pigs that play for the Alliance, and some immature jack asses that play for the Horde?

Seriously, how different can the factions possibly at this stage in the game?

-Rhab

Bernie Madoff, Exodus, and their respective Fjucked up Justice Systems

First off, Bernie Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison, and all I can say is who the hell cares. It is hardly a fitting punishment for a guy that stole billions of dollars. If I had my way, and I was forced to recognize the eighth amendment, I would have happily sentenced him to spending the rest of his days in nursing home with his less affluent peers and working as a door greeter at Wal-Mart. Even that right wing GW pawn whack job John Roberts would have little say on the punishment. It would be tough to convince anyone that such a sentence could be cruel or unusual when we subject many of our seniors to such a lifestyle everyday. Instead, Madoff will serve a 150 year sentence like he’s going to live as long as Abraham in the Old Testament, and his wife is working on keeping enough money to maintain her current lifestyle.

Oh ya, this is definitely justice.

In WoW related news, Exodus has been given a 72 hour ban for what Blizzard has deemed a cheat. Exodus has released an official statement on their site. Now, there have been several reports that Exodus remained silent about the bug, but the official statement say that a ticket was in fact submitted. If Exodus is to be believed, and there is little evidence to suggest otherwise, then the accusations of “bad form” are completely unfounded. Let’s assume for a second that they bug report never happened, then yes, Exodus is indeed guilty of bad form. The problem is that bad form doesn’t violate the ToS. If it did, every jack ass in trade spamming Obamanation, hitting people with their STFU truck, or begging for runs through DM would receive 72 hour bans.

So what did Exodus do wrong? Well they exploited an in game bug. To some people, like the Ensidia fanboys, this is different than exploiting a game mechanic. Freya trash for Hodir is ok because, well, that was a coding error that allowed mages to spellsteal a buff and pump out nasty DPS that wasn’t intended to happen. Using an evade mechanic, well that’s not ok because it wasn’t intended to happen. HUH? It becomes even more confusing if you believe that Exodus did in fact report the bug to Blizzard.

Though I have yet to see how Ensidia knew about the bug and was able to call out Exodus on it when Exodus had not released any information about the kill, one of the most basic conspiracies is that someone at Blizzard tipped off Ensidia. This, of course, then reinforces the idea that Exodus has the integrity to report the bug. I know, I know, they had the integrity after they “exploited” the bug, but that is not uncommon in the World of Warcraft firsts, so get off my ass because that is as much integrity that is ever expected from the world’s top guilds. Can anyone else hear Ice-T? “Don’t hate the playa, hate the game.”

Ensidia has become my little sister. She constantly annoys you, and does things you know that you know if you were caught doing, you would have the shit knocked outta you, but you don’t go whining to mom and dad because snitches are even more annoying. When you finally do something of a similar nature, she goes running to mom and dad and you get in trouble. I, for one, am completely elated that Blizzard has decided to treat Ensidia like a 7 y/o little girl who gets upset and cries and whines. They have, essentially, knocked the shit out of Exodus, then turned around, put on their happy face and patted Ensidia on the head and said, “there, there, you will get the world firsts, don’t you worry.” I can only imagine how they plan to handle Ensidia when they are old enough to start menstruating. Let’s hope Blizzard knows what PMS on an overly spoiled 14 y/o is like, and if they don’t, well all the better.

Oh ya, this definitely justice too.

I can’t wait until daddies little girl Ensidia breaks papa Blizzards heart when she decides to start dating boys. Anyone else think she has her eye on a certain maturing Old Republic?

-Rhab

Petition for Strength Improvements Part 2; Tanks

Does anyone remember the old BoS? It used to provide a flat damage reduction of x every time you were hit (this includes blocked hits). There were several ranks and each added more damage reduction. Though as I describe it now, it sounds somewhat like a cool talent, you can see just how useless it actually was if you don’t remember.

Back in WotLK beta, it was changed, and subsequently went live with 3.0 to what we know and love today. The 3.2 patch notes have it getting a major buff so that it will also increase stamina by 10% but the stamina buff will not stack with BoK.

The major change is it reduced all damage taken by a flat 3%. On trash this could or could not have been a nerf, but on bosses it was all out buff. Now every block would reduce damage taken by 3% for a pally that was block capped. All other attacks would either miss, be dodged, or parried. It would also reduce all incoming damage to others who were blessed, but we aren’t really worried about them at the moment.

The sanctuary change was a move in the right direction, and it if implemented correctly is the change block needs.

Currently BV is a raw number, but instead of making it a value make and calling it block value, turn it into a rating system and call it BVR, or block value rating. Paladins (and warriors too I guess) will still have block rating, but they could use BVR instead of block value.

BVR could work off strength the way BV does, but it could provide a percentage damage reduction based on the rating. The rating could also be added to the block on shields and as an additional stat on gear. It doesn’t change the itemization we have now; it only allows block to be more valuable. Health pool could remain unique. Any pally tank who has been around can tell you they have had at one time or another had to defend their HP pool. That won’t happen anymore and in the process you could allow a break from all tanks having to look the same. The great druid health nerf could have been avoided, the incoming DK health nerf could have been avoided, and all you had to do was change block to do what it was supposed to do.

Imagine a pally tank with 5k less health than a DK, but who is going to take 5-25% less damage based on his BVR. Warriors would still need to remain higher than paladins because they can’t reach the block cap anymore (or I have not seen one anyway). Druids and DKs would still have to fight it out over who gets the most health, and I am sure that savage defense would have to see some changes, but taking less damage should be the purpose of block.

While we are changing block, can we all admit that block can reduce magic damage? If a mage sends a frost bolt headed my way and I throw up my shield and the bolt hits my shield and not my head, then my arm is going to probably be really fucking cold from the transfer of cold from the bolt, to the shield (probably made of metal and has a low specific heat), to my arm (that is holding the shield), but it is going to reduce the damage that I would take. If I am standing and get caught in a cone of shadow damage and it moves around my shield and into my personal space, I will have taken much less damage than had I not used the shield to, well, shield me. What fantasy world is Azeroth in that shields cannot block magic? I don’t expect shields to block the kind of magical damage that they do for physical attacks, but I do expect it to block some of it, and I expect it to do it when I need it most, when some big billy bad ass in end game wants to put me on my back and send me home in a body bag.

Think this is such a ridiculous claim? Why in the world is a warrior in his 4 piece T8 set allowed to eat some of the magic damage? Hello, because shields can eat some of the magic damage!

If GC and company do have plans for changing block, my only hope is they do so while still allowing paladins to reach the block cap.

-Rhab

Petition for Strength Improvements Part 1; DPS

As always, this weeks Care and Feeding of Warriors always has me wishing I actually enjoyed playing a warrior. Rossi hit on a few things, but mostly his comments about making strength a more valued are what hit home.

I know he probably wouldn’t be completely excited that a paladin is screaming the same thing, but the reality is that str needs some work. Most mail has multiple stats on it. Agility, intel, stam for main stats and some combination of hit, crit, attack power, and armor pen for secondary stats. Why in the world do plate wearers get screwed on stats? On top of agility doing double duty by providing AP and crit for mail wearers, I don’t know a single enhance shammie or hunter that doesn’t have int perform double duty and offer more resource as well as talent to allow it to bump AP.

Str needs buffed and it can do so in ways that it will bump some secondary stat while not making it OP. See the glory of talents is they can be tuned to correctly provide Blizzard’s intended benefit. Too high and the talent can be tuned down, too low and it gets turned up, just right and Goldilocks falls asleep in your bed (if you know what I mean).

In today’s DK Q&A, GC stated that the devs liked variety in plate gear and it was ok for one spec to value things like armor pen, haste, and crit over other specs, so why not fold the stats they want you to have into something you already stack? And what do plate wearers stack? Well DPS plate wearers are stacking STR. You could probably find a warrior, 6 dk, and 3 pallies in the dark corners of Ironforge performing certain favors for shady jewel crafter willing to make them Bold Scarlet Rubies if you look hard enough.

I AM NOT ADVOCATIONG MORE PLATE DROPS! There is enough shit in the loot tables that cause enough people to raise and eye brow and say, “WTF” already. Last night after downing Auriaya the Archaedas' Lost Legplates dropped and no one really knew who they were intended for. They have some pretty nice tanking stats but I don’t know many tanks that can afford some legplates with NO defense on them. They are lacking any of the real DPS stats for the other plate wearers and so everyone was trying to figure out why no one else wanted them. What I am advocating is allowing talents to boost the secondary stats that each spec wants.

Make deep tree talents that look like “increases armor pen by x/y/z of your strength.” It can be done effectively with all the DPS trees and though they run the risk of all looking alike, who the hell cares. They would be raw stat boosting talents, and you could either attach them to more class specific talents so things don’t get watered down, though there is little evidence to show that Blizzard isn’t already watering down the classes. To those who will ask how someone who complains about the homogenization of classes advocate more of it, I will answer, “if you can’t beat’em, join’em, and hope they do it right.” This will help with cluttered loot tables and holding DKP until you get the one drop that’s really worth its dps boost for you. Leave the 6 stat gear to the mail wearers, but let the plate wearers get more stats for their iLvl buck.

-Rhab

Lumberjack Rogues Huh?

After reading Chase Christian’s Encrypted Text column, I have to say there are far larger ramifications for one handed melee classes.

Look, I think axes are great, but as a pally dorf chick, they just seem a little sleek for me. I have always been disappointed in the lack of tanking maces, and in my opinion, tanks should have a good mace. They are head bashing and brutal, none of this slice and dice shit like rogues do. They unforgiving and face smashing, and what better way to return the favor of getting your faced smashed in than with a little quid pro quo?

Axes look good on shaman, they look good on deathknights, they look good on hunters and as far as rogues using an ax, well, I tend to agree with GC when he says they are likely to “pick up anything in a fight.” They are sneaky resourceful bastards who would shank you in the big house if you didn’t let them call you Sally and dress you pretty.

So now axes are a pretty inarguable DPS weapon. This leaves swords and maces as the other 1 handers of choice. Maces and swords will remain healing and dps weapons respectively, but they are also the tanking weapons. Paladins feel more true to lore when swinging a mighty mace and slamming their holy shield into the face of foes. Swords are great, and I have no doubt there will continue to be tanking swords at every corner, but I am hoping that the fallout from the ax change leaves more maces with tanking stats for all the paladins out there.

-Rhab

On Epic Phailure and Being a Kid Again

So I took the plunge and changed guilds. I only did so with Rhab because there is little opportunity to gear up 10 toons with raid gear. You have to focus on one, and the paladin has been my favorite since she was about level 40 and I got holy shield and could AoE grind my way to victory.

So last night I was trying to get into Blackwing Lair after soloing Onyxia because I decided that I really want my T2 set. It’s the most bad ass pally set in the game, and really sets you apart from the other classes. On my way to Blackrock Mountain, I got a tell from Devine asking my tanking stats and if I wanted to OT Ulduar.

I let him know my stats but that I had never been in there, and that I wasn’t really prepared for any raiding. I need a new headset; I needed to read up on Ulduar fights, hell I didn’t have any flasks. I had signed up to raid Naxx Thursday, and really was going to spend tonight getting all my shit together because last night I was dragging the better half to a midnight opening of Transformers.

All I can is that I should have declined. There is nothing quite so humbling as wiping on a boss 3 times in a row and knowing it is because of you. It became even worse when it is your first time with a new guild and you know they are probably evaluating you. I never come unprepared, even when I suck it up, and I am pretty sure that those all those fucking adds needed on Ignis was a taunt macro. EPIC PHAIL was the only word I can use to describe last night and I was pissed and disappointed that I didn’t have a better first time showing. As much as Ulduar could have ruined my night (though I’m still pretty disappointed in myself), there was little any amount of failure could take away from my excitement for the opening of Transformers.

Growing up, nothing compared to my Transformers. Friends of mine had GI Joe and He-Man toys and they would often be seen shooting them with their BB guns. I was always horrified at this. My Transformers weren’t even really played with. They sat on a shelf, would come down to be transformed, and then I would spend the next 2 hours setting up a diorama of the battle scene in my head. That would usually be seen on my shelf for about 2 weeks and then I would do it again. No one was allowed to touch them, my little brother is 7 years younger than me and the minute he graduated from the crib in my parent's room to my room that we shared until I left for A&M, he was given a quick lesson in how bubba would kick his ass if he touched the Transformers.

I remember the original animated Transformers movie being the first real movie that I wanted to go see in the theater, and like would be expected, I remember tearing up when Prime died. All of those feelings came back again last night. I was a little kid in the theater watching Transformers like it was the first movie I had ever seen. I won’t ruin anything for anyone who plans on seeing it, but Michael Bay spared no expense and it shows. It is a live action two and a half hour epic that could be any episode of the original series. Decepticons are after energy, the Autobots have to stop them, and conflict ensues. I have not seen an epic battle scene like the one in Revenge of the Fallen since Braveheart.

After my night in Ulduar, it felt good to be a kid again.

-Rhab

Judgement Day Cometh

HELL YEAHS! A list of preliminary changes for paladins is out for 3.2 and I am extremely excited. Please remember that the one pally spec I do not play is holy, and it looks like they are getting hit pretty hard based on some comments I read, but even some of those changes look to be a bit more advantageous in some situations. I won’t pretend I know jack shit about pally healing and will leave those thoughts to a more qualified individual.

Currently, we think paladin tanks are almost there and that they just need slightly better cooldowns to handle some of the tougher boss fights. Rather than add a new ability that felt like a clone of another class’s ability, we decided to buff an existing talent that was no longer cutting it. Ardent Defender has two important changes. The first is that the damage can no longer “skip over” the 35% health level – it will always be reduced. Secondly, it has a new effect that if a blow would kill you, it instead sets you to 30% health. This portion of the ability cannot occur more than once every 2 minutes. Think of it as a Last Stand that you don’t have to push.

I am reminded of Psalms 75:10 “will cut off all the horns of the wicked, but the horns of the righteous shall be lifted up,” and I hope these change will bring paladin tanks more in line with the others with regard to “oh shit” situations. The best thing about ardent defender is you could save your divine protection until after the proc and use them at the same time. I will be interested to see how exactly it alters paladin tanking, but it looks exceptionally sexy. The auto proc is pretty interesting as well, and I am sure there will be plenty of comments about how paladin tanking is ZOMFG EZ MODE tanking already, but any command that doesn’t have to be sent has both advantages and disadvantages and I will not complain because a perk is a perk.

A second change to Protection is we want to make sure Blessing of Sanctuary is always the tanking blessing of choice. A likely change here is to have it boost stamina as well.

This is a welcome change as well. I know that the general rule has been to run with kings when you are on correct level content and to use sanctuary when outgear the content, but since the beta of WotLK, it was pretty apparent that Blizzard intended for sanctuary to be the tanking blessing, and that it just wasn’t sexy enough with all the perks that kings carried with it.

And now to pat myself on the back a little bit…

If you will note, I previously posted on the forums about potential ret changes and said. “As far as the ret tree goes, isn’t part of the problem compliments provided by a rotation? You specifically pointed to using ice lance after a freeze, or an earth shock (maybe instacast lightning) with Stormstrike. Where are the teases to get ret paladins to work with in what become perk parameters like the previous examples? Maelstrom weapon is a beautiful ability. For numerous reasons, but one of the ones that sticks out is because it allows a hybrid to choose what they will do with their stack. Art of War doesn’t do that. It gives you a free ability that you have to heal with. Shaman get to choose what they are going to do with that stack, and that makes it exponentially more fun. “

LO AND BEHOLD, the incoming change to exorcism…

First, Exorcism has a cast time of 1.5 seconds but can be used on players again. This will let paladins use it in PvP, but not while moving towards a target. Second, we are changing The Art of War to make not only Flash of Light instant, but also Exorcism. Choose healing or damage. Paladins will have to watch for this proc and use Exorcism when it happens. The spell itself is still ranged, but the proc will only occur when the paladin is already in melee.

Looks like some of the fellas at Blizzard understand that combos are fun and that Maelstrom weapon is extremely fun for a hybrid because it allows them to choose which part of being a hybrid is most important in any given situation.

3.2 is looking to be one hell of a patch, and I can’t with until it hits the PTR.

-Rhab

“as if you had consumed an orb”…

Those are the words of every WoW player's favorite marine biologist, and they will change the lives of resto shaman everywhere.

Along with the Nethaera’s news about totem changes, GC released some comments on resto shaman changes headed our way in the next major content patch. One of them revolves around the IWS, and they are alleviating the concern that I expressed in an earlier post about the proc. It will no longer use your water shield orbs, and instead will only proc and act “as if you had consumed the orb.”

No more wasting time with reapplying your water shield, and as long as you don’t burn those charges with incoming damage, you won’t have to worry about keeping it up anymore!

Maybe it’s time to level the shaman to 80, but I have recently fallen in love with DK tanking and have been actively working on my night elf DK to serve as the Arnold Schwarzenegger twin to my Danny Devito paladin.

-Rhab

ALLLLLLLLLLL ABBBOOAAARRRRDDDDD!!!

When 3.2 hits, there is going to be one really nice present for all the lowbies, and it’s a revamped mount system reducing costs and levels required to saddle up and travel around!

I have a secret, and it’s that I’m an alt whore. There is the druid and pally that both started as alts but have transitioned to my mains. There is the 76 lock, the 76 hunter, the 75 shaman, the 69 mage, the 67 (as of this morning) DK, the 66 rogue, and the 55 priest. The other part of that secret is that I just can’t play a warrior. I try and never really can get into it. My warrior is level 20, she’s a dorf chick like Rhab, but there is little chance that I will really actively level her. I don’t know why, but they just don’t seem that fun. Maybe that will change one day, but as it stands, it’s a class I just can’t appreciate playing.

Flying mounts will, undoubtedly, help in Outland, but because TBC was released as a much more refined product, it is really just a perk. If anyone has ever leveled an alliance player in Ashenvale, they can tell you that the quests are quirky and neurotic. Go to one side of the map then back to the town, then to the other side of the map, then travel all the way north along until you hit the cave then travel all the way back to a FP so you can hop back to the middle of the map. IT SUCKS ASS!

The flying around Outland is cool, but it’s not necessary. Anyone with half a brain can quest in Outland and do anywhere from 3 to 9 quests at a time. I had 8 this morning in Zangar that I turned in for the DK between the Cenarion Refuge and Telredor. The zones are set up perfectly and transitioning from one quest hub to the next feels seamless. Blizzard did even better in Northrend than they did in OL, as many of the quests that send you from one hub to the other often do so via a flightmaster. Kudos to Blizz, as I often rip them for being a team of fart smellers and hardly give them credit for the good job they do on a game I thoroughly enjoy.

Earlier ground mounts in the old world is GAME CHANGING. Gone will be the days where a player spends an hour walking from the Barrens to Tanaris for the first time. Best case scenario before you had your first mount, but now when you ding 40 you can fly down there on a speedy ground mount and start questing. No more walking for the alliance player who wishes to get a charity run through SFK all the way from IF through the Wetlands past Southshore and to the keep. The level 52-58 lull that I still seem to get caught in will be much easier as you ride up and down Felwood turning in the quests, collecting meat to level cooking, and ridding the world of corrupted Furbolg while snatching their feathers for rep with the hold.

Azeroth will be a better place for this change and Blizzard should be thanked a million times over.

/thank you

-Rhab

So the Fat Dorf Girls Says to the Spacegoat…

“You complete me”

So the shaman Q&A is out and it has some pretty interesting discussion points in it, but one that really stuck out to me was the shaman paladin dichotomy.

As envisioned from the start, shamans were also the “offensive” hybrid. Things have inevitably blurred a bit since then, but they are still a counterpart and complement to paladins – paladins have cleanse, shamans have purge; paladins will let an ally move freely to escape or catch an opponent, shamans will snare an enemy to let their ally escape or catch him or her; paladins will make sure their allies’ casts aren’t interrupted, shamans will interrupt enemy casts; and so forth.

We all know that paladins and shaman where faction specific classes back in vanilla, but to still maintain the counterpart and complement strategy (C&C), would lead many to believe one of the best 2v2 teams should be a paladin/shaman. C&C would imply that each brings the tools the other needs to really shine. Think Hand of Freedom paired with Earthbind Totem. If Blizzard insists on balancing brackets, they really should start here. With 10 classes, the 2v2 SHOULD work on pairing system. We all know that certain groups dominate arena performance, so instead of pretending like that’s not the case, why not just take the classes and pair them up and work on encouraging players to work with other classes. Team philosophies could extend out to specs, and instead of Blizzard pretending that all classes should have a fighting chance in the arena game that they insist on promoting, they could then center the arenas around class makeups. If you are too stupid to pair up with your correct compliment, then you deserve to die at the hands of an equally skilled team that insured they had the correct makeup.

The “bring the player not the class” can then reach across the aisle from PVE to embrace PVP. All teams need w, x, y, and z. If your pair has all of those, then balance is more obtainable. The biggest complaint about paladins in PVP is what they don’t have. Instead of focusing on what they don’t have for QQ, they should focus on what they are missing to find the best arena partner. Certain teams will always do better against other teams because like basketball, it’s all about matchups. Where things start to get ugly is when some classes have no classes that have no complements.

Once the 2v2 system is fixed, the same design will apply to 3v3 and upto 5v5. Each team needs x and when they stack x at the cost of y and z, they will suffer at the hands of a more balanced team. Each class needs at least one of the recognized tools for arena, whether it’s a gap closer, cc, etc.

Here’s to looking forward to the day that my spacegoat in shining armor rides up on his war elekk.

/raise glass

-Rhab

Resto Shaman Changes on the Way?

According to GC, bundle of changes to resto shaman in 3.2 are headed to the live servers.

I have no idea what this means, and I know the original thread apparently turned venomous against the developers, but I am curious about the incoming changes.

The only thing I hate about shaman healing (and keep in mind my shaman is ele/resto and only level 75 right now) is the mana regen. That may change in end game, but after having a dedicated resto druid, I go absolutely crazy at managing my mana on the shaman.

I don’t think I mastered the art of chain heal yet, but it is one hell of a spell, and fun to use. I love earth shield, and as a druid healer riptide is an awesome spell. I have never really been a fan of the totem mechanic of drop, recall, move, rinse, and repeat, but it’s a class mechanic that brings some kick ass buffs so it something that manageable. VH has to be my favorite place to heal with the shaman if only because I can drop the totems and refresh them every 5 minutes.

Earthshield and riptide give shaman healing a druid feel, and the tree is absolutely amazing! Ancestral awakening has to be the best healing talent in any tree. I love when it procs because it can change entire healing priorities. Nothing, in my opinion, alters a healers life like an ancestral proc because it can mean the difference between losing someone because you don’t have enough GCD’s to save them and buying you all the time you need to take a drink of seagrams and wipe the sweat from your brow.

Improved water shield feels a lot like illumination, but with more management (illumination doesn’t eat the paladins mana regen ability that eventually will have to be recast) and a lesser payoff (illumination works on every flash heal where IWS only procs on 60% of lesser healing wave crits).

I am sure that the developers have balanced IWS with illumination and the shamans “oh shit, I’m outta mana” ability Mana Tide Totem, with things like Innervate and Divine Plea but when healing it just doesn’t seem to compare to a druid.

Overall, the tree is fun to play, but I am curios to the incoming changes and hope they make managing mana just a little easier.

-Rhab

Hardly Vindication for the Vindication Change

The incoming vindication hotfix that is on it’s way to live servers is obviously getting mixed responses from the community, and all I can say is WHAT THE FUCK!

I don’t mean it because the talent was so great in a PVE setting, or because Blizzard has arrived at the conclusion that it creates and inherent imbalance in their quest to balance PVP (which will never be balanced), but because paladins are still left with little direction that the other classes seem to be at least somewhat impervious.

First there was the exorcism nerf in PVP and not PVE, and now there is this. Add that Blizzard understands that their model to make paladins the smooth damage eating tanks and robbed us of some of our ability to keep up with all the magic damage in WotLK. The philosophy is that we should ideally be able to eat more damage because we can become block capped, and thus avoid/mitigate more damage so we don’t receive the kind of HP pools that DKs and druids have. In an interview this week on the rawrcast, some members of Exodus, one of the top raiding guilds in the world said they preferred DK and druid tanks because of those health pools alone. Couple that with the admitted failed block mechanic and the fact that paladin tanks need another cooldown and it is evident that Blizzard sure as hell doesn’t mind nerfing ret paladins in PVP, but insists on overanalyzing prot paladins in PVE before they are really willing to help them. In that same rawrcast, members of Exodus also said that DK’s could chain their cooldowns for hard mode encounters.

So, we have one of the top guilds in the world admitting that DK’s are superior tanks, and we have Blizzard admitting that paladins need some love, and in response, rets get nerfed in PVP?

That’s one hell of a class balancing agenda if I do say so myself.

-Rhab

Emblems Schmeblems

After reading up on Shamantics impression of the new badge system, I must admit that I think Blizzard missed the boat.

There is an entire contingency of players who will say, “ZOMG, STFU and L2Play noob instead of hoarding 5 man badges,” but that obviously isn’t the real reason Blizzard has implemented the new system.

They say that they don’t want guilds skipping tiers of content and grinding heroics for a month to get into the current tier, but that is BULL SHIT! If it were true, Blizzard would not have made some Ulduar recipes with if not BiS, then amazingly good in slot, craftable BoE items. Basically, they are willing to let Runed Orbs hit the AH for ridiculous amounts of gold, and let a player get some high end gear. I know this doesn’t mean that tiers can be skipped, but it can help with getting to the next tier a little faster. Not exactly the same, but the gear helps to serve the same purpose. Less time in tier x of content to get to tier y.

I would also ask why this is such a terrible situation anyway. With server transfers, rerolls, alts, and real life interruptions, would it be so terrible to help guilds get to the current tier of content? Good guilds can skip a tier and survive, not because they farmed heroics, but because at their core, they are good guilds. If all those heroic runs result in a guild skipping Naxx for Ulduar, the strength is in the guild, not in what is seen as the exploitation of the badge system. If you combine a ragtag group of 5 manners and put them in the proper gear, there is no proof that they are going to become a good progression guild. That distinction is still reserved for guilds that have great players, good leadership, and the knowledge and ability to execute encounters.

The most glaring mistake in multi-tier badges, is that in their attempt to push content and allow more players to see Naxx, Ulduar, 3.2, and Icecrown, they are also killing content much faster. If the entire expansion had one badge system, like TBC, then the 5 man heroics would be more than rep grinds and charity runs. So much of what Blizzard does is awesome; I have no idea why they insist on killing content at every turn. TBC killed progression in vanilla wow, and Lich killed progression in TBC…this is understandable to a degree, but why have your major content patches kill content for the last one? Why make it even harder for newly minted 80’s to hop on the progression wagon by reducing the reward available to guildies or friends to do a few heroics with them a week? Having 2 toons who have absolutely nothing to gain from running a heroic 5 man, I will admit that a chance at a frozen orb and the love of 5 mans is all I have left to gain.

-Rhab

The Unitarian Universalist Healers

After a comment left by Skraps about where shaman fit into my religious examples for druid and paladin healers, I started to try and put together some ideas.

I have always thought that both druids and shaman were more like eastern religions. The balance in druids has always led me to think of them as Buddhists, and I had never really considered where shaman fit in. He suggested that shamans are Unitarian Universalist’s. If you Wikipedia Unitarian Universalist you will find the phrase “free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” Having only played an Alliance shaman, this is probably a pretty accurate description. I think the lore that is set up for Draenei shaman is great. Former followers of the light who feel that the light has somewhat abandon them searching to discover the answers to their confusion. Velen’s gift of prophecy and openness to accept what he saw as Nobundo fullfilling the prophecy of a broken who would rise to power, illustrates that it is not only the shaman who are in constant pursuit of enlightening. A leader for thousands of years could have scoffed at the idea of an education that relied on the elements instead of the light, but his acceptance would fuel Draenei shaman who would study under Nobundo.

Draenei shaman all carry with them the Gift of the Naaru, a reminder that even in their quest to learn to harness the power of the elements, the light itself still accompanies them. Draenei shaman are the epitome of openness who only use that to perpetuate their knowledge. As a druid, I have always felt a closer connection to the shaman than the priest or paladin healers, but where a druid uses his connection with earth to cultivate a healing philosophy, shaman seem to jump straight to the source, water.

Water is fierce and unforgiving. It can annihilate an entire city with one tsunami and yet in all that destruction bring opportunity for new life as well. Druids use patience to heal their allies, but shaman would prefer to hit them with a wave.

Beyond the powers themselves lie the philosophy. Thrall is a shaman who is a fierce fighter, and I have as much respect for Thrall as I do not have for Varian because he is, like all shaman should be, a healer. He has united the races under the horde, and in two of those four races that have joined his orcs, he found other shaman. He knows no matter how someone learns to commune with the elements, that each are linked in the ability. What he lacks in abilities to prophesize, Thrall makes up for it with vision. Even when the races that joined the horde didn’t share his shamanistic views, he does know that what everyone seeks is inner peace. Sylvanas and the Forsaken may only find it when the Lich King falls. The Blood Elves, like many addicts, may never really find peace but they will search for the strength to fight their urges for greater magic pulsing through them. They search for a peace like the orcs and trolls who have been driven from their homes, or the Tauren who were forced to retreat to Thunderbluff. It is Thrall’s vision and understanding, or his “free and responsible search for truth and meaning,” that has united the Horde.

I hope that one day that little orphan girl you escort around for children’s week will study under Nobundo like her letter tells us, and she like her Broken teacher and Thrall will someday become a great healer. Maybe it is in her that the Draenei and the Orcs will look past the wounds that each has caused the other and find peace together.

-Rhab

Varian "W" Wrynn

***Disclaimer: This is a political piece, and links things in Azeroth with events that I think Blizzard, in their quest for commentary and humor, just happened to relate to real world happenings. Please do not read if you expect anything else from this liberal.***

Once again Allison posted a well thought out masterpiece. It was in response to a piece that applauded Varian for his actions. It was a piece that I had little perspective respect for because, though I only play Alliance, I never liked or played a human, and I never thought Varian was a great choice as the anti-Thrall.

I will be quoting her, and just want to reiterate that she is like the warm Ironforge air that enters your lungs at the gates as you retreat from the bitter cold in Dun Morogh.

“With full knowledge of the life of a king and the life of a gladiator, with the dangers and responsibilities inherent to both, Varian chose to return to kingship. He chose to return to a life where his first priority at all times is the well-being and political interests of the Stormwind kingdom.”

Like W, when faced with the choice of life as a gladiator (or business man with little aptitude) or that of president (which mama would do her best to insure, both out of hatred for the Clintons who made her beloved husband a one term wonder, and her desire to win at all cost), he chose president. Almost laughable now to think that Blizzard has given us a king who has no business representing the masses when we did it 8 years ago and then decided to re-crown him 4 years later. Who can blame Varian or W for the choice they made? If provided the same opportunity, I am sure we all would have made a similar decision. The problem with Varian, like W, is that he has no business representing the ideas of the Alliance. Allison made some excellent points on why, and the most important is that we do not even know if he actually represents the views his people. Varian was crowned with little regard to the progress the humans had made in his absence. He is busy representing them with idea and values that are dated at best, and dangerous and vile at worst.

Anyone else think that during the zombie world event, he might have spent a little extra time reading to the orphans in Stormwind instead of mobilizing his forces? In the face of the greatest evil known to the humans, and one of their own abandoning the light for the power of Frostmourne, why would he not work to bridge broken alliances and forge new ones? Why in a time when given the opportunity to forever change the face of Azeroth, he instead chooses to throw sand at people in the sandbox of diplomacy? His diplomacy is hardly a characteristic that defines one of the human racials.

As terror threatens his people’s very existence, he has chosen not to focus his energy on the enemy and march to the gates of Icecrown, but instead to fight both Arthas and the enemies of his father. Instead of acknowledging that old enemies can be forgiven for past transgressions, he chooses to keep them as enemies and battle the new ones. Did a two front war work for Napoleon? Hitler? W?

I love the Dwarves and, like Allison, believe Bronzebeard could effectively represent the Alliance , but unlike her I had hoped that another leader would provide the solution to the ongoing problem, but that is an issue for tomorrow.

Until then…

-Rhab

Even trees need a hug!

Over on the forums, GC wants to know if ToL is fun.

Allison Roberts over and wow.com had a few interesting points. I’d also like to say that both her and Amanda Dean are a refreshing perspective in the World of Warcraft universe (something typically seen as a boys club), and always worth reading, no matter the topic or if you agree with them.

Now to answer the question, is ToL is not fun? Well yes and no…It’s still a great idea, I love being a tree hugging hippie healer. Mochachino and I joke that druids are transcendental liberal new age whacko healers and the paladins are the right wing reactionary Jesus walks with me healers. They are both effective, but paladin and druid healers just see the world differently, and they should. The most interesting and fun thing about druid healing is being proactive and not reactive. Especially now, its about knowing when Lifebloom with explode and not wasting a RG at the same time. Its about watching Loken’s nova cast and timing your WG around it so the group can eat all that damage. Every other healer has to heal after the fact, but druids heal before the damage comes because they can anticipate it coming. Disc has taken a turn to preventing damage, but according to Matticus is still highly misunderstood.

I love healing in tree form, I love that I get a nice boost to my healing, but that’s easily brought by a prot pally with improved devotion. What I love about healing in tree form is the form. I know that people can’t see my cool shoulders or my helmet, and I know that sadly the tree punchers in nexus are so much sexier than me with that silver bark, but unlike any other healer in the game, I wear my form like a badge of honor. There’s no inspecting me like there is a shaman or paladin with a shield to see if I heal. You know when I shift that I’m about to save your ass from anything stupid you might attempt. Stand in the flame walls with Sarth, and it’s my ass you will be kissing when you don’t die. The form idea is sexy, and it’s also a defining druid mechanic. I love the uniqueness of tree healing so much that even though I’m dual specced now, I always hang around town in my resto spec and tree form. It’s nice that I can actually walk around at a decent pace since the pre-Lich patch launched as well.

Now what sucks you ask? Please understand that I think these things make ToL less fun to play, but I still love tree healing, and I give them up every time I step up to heal not because I like to, but because druid healing is different and dynamic.

Offense is spelled HOT. My best opportunity to contribute any damage to the encounter is ZERO unless I pop out of tree, cast a spell, then pop back into tree, and start healing again. That sucks! How is it that a master of nature can heal, but can’t use those same energies to pop a wrath in someone’s ass? The same goes for boomkin. How is it that I am so in touch with nature, I am able to summon treants to assist me, but unable to use that same school of magic to drop a heal on someone just because I’m a giant chicken.

The trees are designed to improve your offense or defense, if you heal as a balance spec, you already are losing mana efficiency, just like any other healing class. The biggest and easiest change is to allow us to use a spell that is not intended for the form. We are punished for doing so with regard to cast time, or mana, and we shouldn’t be doubly punished by popping out of form as well. Is the 5% crit in chicken really going to bring game balance to its knees if the boomkin throws out a RG in a crunch?

The other thing about ToL aura is it’s boring. Why does leader of the pack heal all those melee and hunters when they crit, but there’s no love for the casters? Improved moonkin increases haste, and leader of the pack offers a heal for melee crits. Why is ToL just some improved healing? Please don’t misunderstand, improved healing is nice, but it’s not cool! Hell, if you have a prot pally with improved devotion, you have no reason to even stay in ToL now, and that SUCKS! Give the aura some love! I know this is inconsistent with most of the buff stacking that seems to be the new master plan for Blizzard, but it would be nice if ToL didn’t share a buff with a paladin talent in tier 4 when the ToL is in tier 9.

Ultimately, there are 2 easy things to do for ToL form. First, let trees use their balance spells. Using balance spells comes with a high cost in mana and time not spent healing. It’s something that Blizzard thinks is ok for all the other healers, so let us cast a moonfire if we have the spare time. Second, give ToL aura some love. I don’t really have any ideas about what exactly can be done to make it more fun or desirable, but I'm there are some ideas out there that make sense if they were implemented.

-Rhab

The Uncontrollable Desire to Drive My Mining Pick Through My Skull

I wanted to level professions for my DK Clintonista and after deciding that I was indeed wanting to tank after reading some skeletonjack on the competiveness of blood tanking, I decided, of the gathering skills, the self heal from weed picking and the stamina boost from mining would be the most logical.

I took the professions, and had zero problems getting to 300 in herbalism. I had given up on mining and decided to come back and do it later. After spending some time in Hellfire and passing up some fel iron veins, I decided that I better level mining before I really regretted it.

I grabbed my trusty Mining Pick and set out on what I thought would be a few hours of riding around on my deathcharger.

HOLY FUCKING SHIT! It turned into a weekend+1 project. Even with gatherer, the amount of time it takes to round up all the veins needed to level is insane. The mithril stretch probably had to be the most painful. I rode around the rim of Tanaris what felt like a 100 times. When I finally got to learn smelt trusilver, I bought the trusilver I needed to free skillups and then went back into the field. The one perk is that the trusilver I smelted sold for 3x what I paid for the ore. The bitchiness that overwhelmed me when I bought the ore quickly dissipated when I saw that a buyer had been found for my trusilver bars. I sold 25 bars in stacks of 5 for 50G a stack!

When I finally made it to thorium, I headed to Silithus and rode around grabbing small thorium veins until I could mine the rich veins and then ventured into the tunnels that lie underneath the vast wasteland.

At around midnight Sunday and level 293 mining, I was cruising on my deathcharger, and no I don’t mean the car that helped kill what was left of Chrysler over the last few years, and my mouse stopped working. I thought the battery might be dead; it wasn’t. I though maybe the receiver had popped out of the USB drive; it hadn’t. I thought maybe the mouse had died; it did.

I had decided to go to bed when I hit 300 and now my mouse wouldn’t allow that. I would have ran to wally world and picked up a new mouse if I had my car, but the better half had taken the car to work, so I couldn’t even do that. I was alone in the apartment and pissed as hell. The weekend had seemed tedious and boring since I spent most of it mining and now I couldn’t even reach my goal before I went to bed.

I swear if I had had a real mining pick at that point in the evening, it probably would have gone through a few walls, good thing all I had was a shitty mouse that had no purpose because at least throwing it wouldn’t really hurt much of anything, except maybe the cat (which by the way it never hit).

-Rhab

Decus Praesidium Fallout

Late in the Burning Crusade, I was at the point where WoW was no longer fun for me. Nordrassil was my first server, and it seemed infested with juvenile pricks and morons. I google’d for a guild looking website and came across LookingforGuild.net. It was a great site, and I understand it has recently been updated. I created a toon, DORF girl of course, and /who’d for Decus. I got lucky and just happened to pick Corr, the guild leader, even though the site had a few members as contacts. He and I talked for a few. The first lesson of Decus that I learned is that they like to feel you out as much as I wanted to do to them. They are a guild with more mature members and some of them have extensive experience in classic WoW and even in games prior.

I brought over Rhabella to Draenor from Nordrassil, and was immediately welcomed. They had always allianced with a couple other guilds for 25 man runs, and had a solid core for 10 mans. WoW had become fun again. They ran Mech with me everyday until I got The Suneater. I am sure they were feeling out whether I was some dumb ass or someone that can actually tank, but they helped me get the most coveted tanking drop that was available to me after the patch that forever changed a prot paladins gearing priorities. I died a little inside when my account got hacked and they sold my Sun Eater, because of what it meant for me. Oddly, I didn’t get it back in the restoration and since I had no real purpose for it, I didn’t press a GM. Aside from the guild, I found that Draenor was unbelievably better for PuG’ing, and with other toons helping you get crafted items if they had recipes you needed. It’s a server full of gracious people who often bring extra elixirs or pots even to 5 man pugs and offer them to the group. Fish feasts are laid down for no reason, and people pass on shards at the end of a run if they got an upgrade. Draenor served as proof that WoW had players that played the game the way it was supposed to be played and reinforced my decision to change servers.

WotLK came out and the worst thing that can happen to a guild happened, some of us got hit with real life. Our core was made up of a couple couples that played wow together, and from what I have been able to pick up, since I was just learning everyone around the time it happened, is one of the couples had a baby, and as Phaelia has taught us, the time required with a newborn in the house is just too much to try and obligate yourself to a game. The other couple changed moved and changed jobs and had little playtime available as they are pouring their free time into situating their new life. I think the part that sucks the most is there was no drama, there was no bickering because we are a group of adults who understand that life mechanics often dictate game time. We wished them all well, and told them we would be here if they ever found the time to make it back.

As we all leveled through Lich, we all knew the impending outcome. We had lost the most vital positions in our raid setup. Tanks and healers, especially tanks and healers with a good relationship aren’t just something you can recruit on a whim, so we were all hitting 80 and starting to PuG Naxx as we all tried to sort out solutions. The solution for some of us became to accept invites from guilds we were running Naxx with. We lost some of our more dedicated member because they wanted to raid regularly. It’s not something anyone took personal, as again, there is a level of maturity in our guild that is greatly underappreciated. When we did attempt raids, we found we were having to PuG some DPS, and that was with me healing on the druid. One of our tanks didn’t have quite the experience we needed and things got out of hand. There is nothing quite so frustrating as running a raid and healing knowing you could have saved the last wipe had you been tanking and knowing there is jack shit you can do about it because you are needed to heal as well. Believe me when I say this…I’m not the best player in the world, or even close, but I take my responsibilities seriously and its one reason I am an internet WoW junkie. There is never enough information for me. It’s not just WoW, it’s part of my personality, and sometimes it can be a blessing of kings and other times it can be a curse of doom that I know will bring disaster when it finally reaches duration.

The problem now is that we are a good group, but keep losing more and more members because we can’t fill the raid. Losing a member, despite how amicably they leave, means you have yet another spot to fill. The problem snowballs from there. We don’t actively recruit, which I know many will say is a problem, but recruiting means running the risk of players that may or may not subscribe to the philosophy. On the flip side, both Rhabella and Huath are getting invites from guilds that I do raid with, but I just can’t abandon a good group. I have no idea how to balance this out other than to hang out and hope things get better. I’ve never been romanticized by epic lootz, and always thought the social aspect of the game was far more important.

Every day we sit in limbo is one more day it takes for me to boost my stats, and another day of heroics for badge gear that has little use to me. I wish I knew a more efficient way to help build the guilds membership.

-Rhab

The Hybrid Tax

After reading Rossi’s Care and Feeding today, I ran across a comment by Ample Vigour that made reference to the Hybrid Tax.

I have never seen the idea that pure classes should do better DPS than hybrids referred to as the Hybrid tax, but it’s nothing short of brilliant.

The reason Blizzard should recognize it as a tax is because it allows them to mathematically justify reducing a class or even a spec by assigning a percentage tax on the utility. I have never liked the idea of a druid doing as much DPS as a lock or a paladin doing as much DPS as a rogue. Having both an 80 prot pally and an 80 resto druid that only recently took advantage of dual specs, I have to admit that I am a little old school in the idea that if you can tank or heal, you should tank or heal if there is a need. All of the Hybrid jack asses in LGF that say they are only DPS makes me want to throw up. I have recently rediscovered the joy of topping DPS meters with my leveling lock, but I also understand the importance of a healer hybrid as I am also leveling my resto/elemental shaman, both of whom are in the lvl 75 range.

Now, I know GC has made several posts about pure dps classes and how they should be slightly higher than a hybrid, but the real number has never really been decided upon. My other issue in the DPS tax is that no one seems to think that there should be a tax for utility. I know that some utility has always been available to most classes, but the one that comes to mind currently is replenishment. Why is there no tax for replenishment? Shouldn’t destro locks and survivalist hunters be punished with the hybrid tax in a way that is similar but not exactly like other hybrids. Now that replenishment is a required raid buff, shouldn’t there be a price to pay for your raid if they do have it since there is a price to pay if they don’t? From what I have been able to find, thanks to some help over at The Hunting Lodge that survivalist DPS is the best spec for raiding hunters. With the required buff to replenishment and the overall best performance in DPS all hunters HAVE to be survivalist if they want to best contribute to their raid. Shouldn’t the hybrid tax apply to those hunters since the other hunters aren’t bringing that kind of required raid buff?

GC has done a great job in admitting that there is fact a philosophy that hybrids should be taxed, so why in the world is it some phantom tax where only the developers are allowed to know the percentage it is supposed to carry. I say if there is an open tax, then all talents that boost utility can then do so at the cost of DPS. I am not saying it should happen, but if Blizzard is adamant about balancing classes, then allowing us a little closer look behind the curtain could prove to be advantageous to them, even if GC is convinced that the developers have to play their cards close to their chest.

-Rhab

Some More Pets, Even More Mounts, and the Return of Vanilla WoW

I love vanity pets, I love them so much that I’ll drop gold on worthless floating skulls and mana wyrms, and though Blizzard has done a great job of providing more and more unique vanity pets, I am always disappointed that they are often purchased.

Though the Consortium sells the mana wyrm, why didn’t they offer it at the end of a long quest chain? I’m not saying this because I want the wyrm for free, but because it allows a story to unfold that could possibly include the idea of vanity pets from notable NPC’s or factions. Though my lock, my original toon, has the Defender of the Timbermaw it became little more than a vanity item in TBC. Hell I even wear it in towns because people are always inspecting and asking where in the world I got it. It’s a great trinket, but when you are looking at gear that becomes easily outdated like it, wouldn’t it be better to include a vanity item that says, “hey, look how much time I put into something useless?” Achievements lead to titles, and rewards, why can’t long lore driven quest chains? Something like the Hand of A’dal possibly?

Old world factions deserve more than an achievement. I have said countless times that I wish my little gnome could have the title “of the Timbermaw” for his countless months spent farming the rep. Sure the Diplomat is a great title, but I don’t have any kind of connection to the other factions involved. I do wish that Blizzard had added the The Kalu'ak to the title achievement and title. They like, the other 3 factions involved are fighting the evils of the world as it invades their homeland. The Kalu’ak just seem to compliment the other factions with regard to overall story and feel in each of their respective versions of the game.

Along with old world titles, how about some respect for those factions? The Timbermaw could offer a Vanity pet when you do reach exalted, the Thorium Brotherhood could have some dark iron mount for horde or alliance, and the for those people who are crazy enough, why do none of the goblin factions, or when you reach exalted with all 4 offer you some sort of reward? How about a mechanical zeppelin pet?

I know that I have been advocating more pets, but what I would really like are more mounts. I’m not talking skins of mounts, because I think that has gotten out of control. The Argent Tournament is adding even more skins to the same old mounts. Once you have seen one mechanostrider, haven’t you seen them all? Where are the Clefthoofs, the Sporebats, the Shoveltusks, the boars, the rhinos, and the pterodactyl mounts? Mammoths, drakes, proto or otherwise, and bears are cool, but where are mounts that don’t look like rehashed skins of other mounts? Blizzard did a great job with ways to obtain mounts in Northrend, and I wish they would take it a step further and other unique ways to do so. Rep grinds and random hatchlings keep people interested, as do rare spawn killing with super cool lootz, so why not drive lore chains with vanity items that last long after the gear rewards?

There has been talk over at wowinsider about ending vanilla wow, and I would love to see just the opposite. I know some of this has been covered a million times, but dungeons need updated, streamlined, lore driven, and revisited. I’m sure that Blizzard spends countless hours on loot tables alone, and I would guess that remains the biggest issue with vanilla dungeons, but why not just have them scale? I realize we are told encounters don’t just scale because the mechanics of the fight are balanced around classes having certain abilities, but would BoA items be that bad even if they refuse to allow heroic old world dungeons?

I still don’t buy all the crap about scaling anyway. Blizzard proved places can be tuned up and trashed down with the new Naxx. They have taken lots of grief because Naxx was a redo of an old place, and there are many critics that will say that Blizzard was able to rush WotLK because instead of offering an entry level raid, they just retuned an old one. Why not get that retuning department in gear and let them hit up ZF, Mauradon, and Dire Maul?

-Rhab