Grumpy Calls One, Predicts Another and Has an Insane PvP Idea

Distracting Shot as a Glyph

I could sometimes swear that the people at blizzard, or at least one of them, reads my blog.  There have been a great deal of times over the past years where I mention an idea and shortly after I hear a blue say something about it even if no one asked or see some patch notes that mention what I mentioned.

I would say it is more likely, as in surely, a coincidence and blizzard is not actively viewing players blogs and taking ideas from them, but you never know.  It does seem strange that I mentioned I thought something would be better implemented another way and then read patch notes and they changed an ability to be exactly what I said it would be better being.

When they posted that distracting shot was back in the game I gave my idea on how abilities like distracting shot, the ones they want to take away but people like, should be handled, instead of just adding them back in if there is enough pressure to do so.  I said they should be added as options in the form of ability granting glyphs.

Even as someone that likes the ability and uses the ability I know how rare it is used and how situational it really is.  So I suggested it be a glyph instead of a base line ability, that way, if we wanted it we could have it but it would not be part of our standard tool box which in turn means fewer buttons, which is the angle blizzard is going for.

As a side note, I personally like the idea of having all those rarely used abilities base line but I understand their desire to limit them.  Just because I think it is cool to have 100 key binds I surely understand how it is not really a good thing for the game.

So back to my idea of them being added as glyphs.  It seems distracting shot is no longer a base line ability (this is all alpha so I might just be reading into this wrong and everything I am writing at this moment can just be throw away) but it is now a glyph that gives you that ability.  Seems blizzard liked my idea.

However, it seems blizzard only read half of my idea and not the whole thing.  The idea was to add the three sets of glyphs back to the game and leave the majors for things that change how major abilities work (like aimed shot) and leave the minors for things that change out minor abilities work (revive pet) or for cosmetic purposes (lesser proportions) and add a new set called ability glyphs where things like distracting shot and fetch could be added.  So we would return to having 9 glyph slots like we had in cataclysm, but slightly different.

Now don't get me wrong, I am glad that distracting shot is back and I even more glad that it is a glyph because it shows they are understanding that they can add optional abilities through glyphs, but without a third set of glyphs any ability glyph is wasting space that many classes and / or specs might end up having required glyphs for.

I do not know if distracting shot will be a major glyph or a minor glyph but I do know that it would be 100 times better if it were an ability glyph, like I suggested.  Just think if you wanted to use the glyph that turns distracting shot into a second taunt for your pet basically, now you need to waste 2 glyph spots.  One to add the ability and one to modify the ability.  There are not exactly enough glyph slots for this.  So a third set of glyphs, called ability glyphs, would really fill the void.  Unless of course they are going to add two different distracting shot glyphs, one that send a mob to your pet and one that sends a mob to you.  That might work, so you did not need to add a glyph to use an ability and add a second to modify the ability.  But either way, they would still be better taking up an ability glyph slot than taking up a major or even minor slot.

If blizzard did come here and read my post and agree when I said that distracting shot would be a great ability to be added back as a glyph, lets hope they come back and read the rest of that post or even read this one and understand that for it to work best we need to have another row for glyphs called ability glyphs.  Sure, distracting shot is not bad as a glyph, but that was only half of the idea blizzard, do the rest of it now and make it something good.  Without ability glyph slots, we would be better off with distracting shot base line.  Changing it into a glyph is not a bad idea, but it is not a good idea either.  It is only a good idea if there were a section called ability glyphs.

Hey blizzard, now that you are becoming more receptive to adding abilities as glyphs I am sure there are many hunters that would like to see an old ability added back, hint hint, eyes of the beast.

Beta is Coming Mid June

I would guess you can look for beta somewhere around 2 to 4 weeks from now.

Double Health Means Balance

Hold on tight, because this one is really an insane idea.

I've touched on this idea for PvP balance before a while ago but I felt it was time once again to mention it.  There are a few things that make balancing PvP hard.  One is the damage we put out because the mobs in PvE keep getting more life so we need to hit harder and another is the healing we put out because the mobs hit for more so we need to heal for more.  There is a third issue and that is gear.

I was in the mood to touch on this once again so here goes.

Players should have two health bars.  One for PvE damage and healing and one for PvP damage and healing.  If either of those health bars reach zero, you die.

How it would work is simple really.  When you are out in the world or in a dungeon or raid or what have you and fighting PvE content all damage you receive takes health away from your PvE health.  All healing you receive heals your PvE health bar.  When you get hit by another player it takes health away from your PvP health and when you are healed and PvP health is lower the heal is applied to your PvP health.

The healing part can be a little trickier, it would need to be designed that the heal is always applied to the health bar that needs it more, percentage based.  So if your PvP health is lowest a PvP heal based on PvP healing lands on your PvP health and if your PvE health is lowest a heal based on your PvE healing lands on your PvE health.  It might sound a little weird, but it really isn't as hard to work as it might sound.

So now damage and healing can be scaled easier and make balancing easier.  While you might need to have your healer dropping 400K heal bombs on you while tanking a boss in siege having a healer do the same in PvP is over powered.  But if your PvP health is lower, it would land as a PvP heal, which would be scaled considerably lower.  Same goes for damage output.  Sure that 2 million chaos bolt is not really over powered against a boss with hundreds of millions of life but against another player it is.  When you hit another player it hits the person and takes away from their PvP health, not their PvE health.

This would mean you can balance things without screwing PvE over for PvP or screwing PvP over for PvE.  Each ability would work different when used against a player or a mob.

It would also allow for easier entry into PvP for those that do not do it or for those that are late comers because there would no longer be a need for PvP gear with resilience or power or whatever half baked idea they come up with next.  Abilities just work differently in PvP.  Sure, there will still be PvP gear sets with PvP set bonuses that would be better for PvP and there would still be PvP trinkets which would be better for PvP but otherwise all gear would be created equal.

I know the biggest argument against this is that PvP gear is easier to get and if there was no difference between PvP gear and PvE gear people would just gear up for PvE through the much easier to attain PvP gearing method.  I say, so what?  Who really cares? 

If the game is designed well and balanced, which this will help with, then skill should be the deciding factor on what someone is capable of doing and gear would just increase potential.  No matter how much potential you give a bad player they will still do poorly.  So let them get some gear easier.  The set pieces you could buy with the PvP system would still have PvP set bonuses so while it would be easier to get it would still not be ideal.

That is what should separate PvP gear and PvE gear, set bonuses, nothing otherwise.  You could tie PvP gear purchases to ratings so it feels more like raiding for levels.  Honor gear would be like dungeon gear, LFR level gear would require a simple and easy 1K rating in any arena or rated battleground comp, normal would require 1400, heroic 1800 and mythic 2200.

It would get more people into PvP, to gear up, and they might like it and do it more often if they give it a try, opening the game up for them to a greater level.  And it works both ways.  It might get a PvP player into PvE so they can get drops from raids so they can gear up faster and they might like PvE so it would open up more of the game for them.

There is no reason for there to be two different types of gear, just need to give people two different types of health and have all abilities act differently depending on if they are doing damage to a player or NPC or if they are healing PvP damage or PvE damage or if they are mitigating incoming player or mobs damage.

I can't help but believe that if they just made things simpler with one type of gear and just modify how abilities work against different targets that balancing would be so much easier.  Sure, two different health pools might seem a little weird but no more immersion killing than having to switch from your dragon killing gear to your people killing gear.  That just makes no sense.  Your axe does not know what you are killing with it, so there is no reason you should need a different axe to kill dragons instead of people.