The Grumpy Elf

Monday Random Thoughts

2012-02-27T11:03:00.001-05:00

- Today I am mostly thinking about achievements.

- I was looking over some of my alts and seeing who I've done things on and who I didn't.

- It is funny how you can see what alts I was using at different times based on achievements.

- My paladin has absolutely zero wrath dungeon achievements.

- Not even one normal done.

- I do have nearly every raid in wrath done with her.

- Oddly enough my paladin shows as having never beaten hodir.

- My paladin has the achievement for beating all keepers, which includes hodir.

- My paladin has a slew of achievements from hodir like coolest friends, buffed all winter, cheese the freeze, etc but shows as having never once downed hodir.

- How exactly is that possible?

- Ulduar has a whole slew of fun achievements. I like going back just to get them even now.

- Some of the achievement are actual achievements too.

- I hate those achievements that are achievements for doing it right.

- Like its not easy being green.

- An achievement for not getting hit by things you shouldn't get hit by to begin with.

- That is not an achievement.

- What has the game fallen into when doing things the way they should be done gets you an achievement.

- Ready for raiding is another one like that but then again there is something funny about that achievement at least.

- It really isn't an achievement to do it right but it is funny to think that doing it right makes someone ready for raiding.

- Some ulduar achievements are actually achievements.

- That is because you are doing things to make in intentionally harder.

- Like saronite in the morning, leaving the vapors up is intentionally hindering you making it more of a challenge.

- Now that is an achievement.

- Maybe its not easy being green should have been to have every member in the party hit by all those things and survive.

- Now that would be an achievement.

- It would really put all the stress on the healer, but to have everyone get hit by everything and have no one die, now that is an achievement.

- And it would really make sense to say its not easy being green because it is not easy to get hit by all that crap and live, nevertheless have everyone hit by all that stuff and live would be a real achievement.

- I like doing achievement runs for fun.

- With all the alts I have there is always someone I can bring to get achievements with if I am not needed to help on one of my other characters.

- There is something about the "ding" of an achievement popping up that I love.

- I think that is why I love alts more then anything else.

- A whole new chance to get new achievements.

- A whole new chance to do raids.

- My main hunter might have done it a 100 times, but my alt hunter hasn't, so it is all new and all exciting again.

- Not to mention I get to see all those achievements pop up.

- I love that.

- And that is another reason to love ulduar.

- One raid, 30 achievements minimum on one run.

- I love bringing alts through there.

- And you can go back again and again and again because there are dozens more achievements.

- Some achievements are just downright impossible to get at the same time.

- Can't choose steel, mo and burn at the same time can you?

- It takes at least three visits for that one.

- I like achievements. I like the pop ups. I like that some take many trips to get.

- I guess that is another reason I like ulduar so much.

- Speaking of ulduar, there is nothing more exiting then sharing ulduar with someone the first time.

- Every time I do a run with someone that has never been there before all you hear is oohs and aahs.

- It reminds me of my first time through there.

- They look at the raids they see now and wonder, why can't they be like this.

- After seeing the scenery of ulduar you can realize that they spent a lot of time on it, they loved what they where doing when they made it and it showed.

- We need more raids like ulduar.

- People would not mind waiting 9 months between patches if they had 9 months of ulduar to do.

- 9 months and I might have finished it when it was out and not old.

- We where on mimron, the other 3 keepers where down, when ToC came out so sadly we only beat ulduar when we where out gearing it with ToC and ICC gear.

- They say they will not do something like that again because so few people got to see the whole thing.

- Excuse me blizzard but I don't mind.

- Anyway, the reason I did not see the whole thing is two phased.

- One being I am in a casual guild and two being that you released ToC three days after you released ulduar.

- Okay, three days is a huge exaggeration but you get the idea.

- If we had more time with ulduar as the top raid we might have finished it.

- Might still have never seen Al, but that is fine.

- Al could be saved until we over geared it or over leveled it.

- Nothing wrong with a casual guild only getting there at 85. Nothing at all.

- I did get to see it in wrath, but I did not beat it until 85.

- I am completely fine with that and I would hazard a guess that most of the players would be as well.

- We had so many different achievements to do.

- We had some great scenery to see and always introduce new people too.

- We had a huge raid that actually felt like a raid.

- There was only one mistake with ulduars design.

- We did not have enough time with it to really truly enjoy it as an end game raid.

- At least we can still go back and do it for fun, which I love to do.

- I've got 2 new hunters at 85 that have never been there.

- I have a new DK and a new priest that will be ready for their first time there as well soon.

- I am going to enjoy every minute of it when I go.

- There is one thing I was thinking about when doing these old raids that has me wondering.

- With the change to all melee interrupts becoming 15 seconds there are a lot of bosses I hope they change or they will make even old raids hard.

- Can you imagine nef in BWD without being able to interrupt those guys on the stands?

- I can see it now, level 90s wiping on an old raid because they can not interrupt them.

- You know how we get talent changes before the new expansions come out?

- I can already see 85s in all DS heroic gear wiping on that fight once the talents change.

- Makes you wonder if there is anyone in blizzards office that pays attention to these things and asks these questions.

- I am thinking of making another achievement whore character just for fun.

- I love having something to aim for and I really love when I can do it solo for the most part.

- I've four manned all the hard modes of ulduar but there is no way in hell I am good enough of a player to solo them.

- But that still makes them fun.

- Have to love the high life totals we have now when doing older raids.

- It makes things once thought impossible possible.

- I hunter tank some stuff in ulduar.

- Would be even easier if we still had our old agility converting to dodge thing with the huge agility we have now.

- That and aspect of the beast and I would have more dodge than a bear druid.

- I think a hunter tank spec is long over due. Let our pets tank or let us tank.

- If I make another achievement whore it would probably be a hunter.

- I am thinking of transferring one of my hunters to the server I have my priest on.

- The hunter I would transfer is inscription and jewelcrafting.

- Would be ideal for my priest.

- My priest is enchanting and it is really expensive starting on a new server.

- Will be nice when I can have all the key things I need for end game that I can make myself.

- With gems, enchants and glyphs all self provided life is good.

- A guild will usually provide the flask, so that is not much of a worry.

- But that would defeat why I have my priest where I have my priest.

- I wanted the starting all new feeling again.

- I got it.

- Too bad I am on a server that sucks for leveling players.

- I am always short on cloth being you level so fast so my tailoring, and in turn my enchanting, are lagging behind.

- I buy the cloth when I can off the market and have been selling everything that is not nailed down to try and make some cash.

- Still it is hard on that server.

- 60 gold for a stack of mageweave, I will never catch up.

- On my main server mageweave is 5 gold a stack.

- I'll make due, I wanted the feeling of starting new and I got it.

- While I might have the experience to work the market and to make it work I can imagine how hard it is on a new player being professions lag so badly like that.

- I feel really bad for the new players and honestly can not say that if I started now I would have continued playing.

- I could not even afford flying at 60.

- I loved it.

- Yeap, you heard me right. I loved it.

- I actually ran around on a ground mount questing.

- It is taking me twice as long to level as it normally does, but I am loving every minute of it.

- So it will take me 4 days played to get to 85 instead of 2. Big deal.

- I am more concerned with gemming up when I hit 85.

- More on my priests adventures can be found on the grumpy gnome, linked on the side, a blog made for his leveling only for fun, if you are interested.

- I can't wait until I hit 85 and start to run everything again.

- Lots and lots of achievements every step of the way everywhere I go.

- That is why I love leveling alts I think.

- I also think I said that already.

- Is there an achievement for that?

- Have a great day all.

Playing WoW "IS" Being Productive

2012-02-24T15:19:00.000-05:00

Seems like a topic I have seen a few places today, like over at MMO Melting Pot, is about people playing WoW and feeling as if they are being unproductive. They seem to be missing a point about gaming however that actually goes to show that in a way gaming, in this case playing WoW, is productive.

While I am willing to accept that too much of anything is a bad thing and there is a line, and that line is different for every person, gaming is not as bad a thing as people try to make it out to be.

Everyone needs to have something to stimulate the mind. The mind is like any muscle, it needs to be used or it will deteriorate. That alone makes playing WoW a productive thing in and of itself. It keeps the mind active and in many cases way more active then other common hobbies people choose to pass the time.

If someone watches three hours of prime time television a night, which actually is the number the average person watches, it is considered normal. Even if they watch 5 hours a day when you include some talk shows, or news shows or any other sort of entertainment it is considered fine.

I don't know about you as I can only speak for myself but I find playing a game that requires interaction a lot more mentally stimulating than watching TV.

Many studies have found that people that have hobbies in which they are actively using their mind have better mental health further into life. So exercising your mind playing WoW would indeed be a productive thing. Just like doing some exercise is good for your physical health and eating right is good for your medical health having an active hobby to stimulate your mind is good for your mental health.

Everyone wastes time during the day and most do not consider what they do unproductive. Watching TV, reading a book, going to the bar, going to the gym, fixing up old cars, posting auctions on ebay, etc, these are all things people might do on a daily basis. They are all things people do to relax, to unwind, to have some "my" time with.

How is it that you doing what you want to do with your "my" time is unproductive yet someone else doing what they want with their "my" time is productive?

As long as your hobby (WoW) does not interfere with your normal day to day life and responsibilities you are not being unproductive, you are just stimulating your mental health.

Cataclysm Miscues: IX: Leveling

2012-02-23T09:15:00.001-05:00

This is the ninth in a series of posts about the little things that cataclysm messed up on this expansion. These little things are things that mostly go unnoticed or are easily overlooked because they are usually not game breaking but they do leave you having that feeling of something being off.

Past posts:
Cataclysm Miscues: I: Healing & Mana Potions
Cataclysm Miscues: II: Hemet Nesingwary
Cataclysm Miscues: III: Targeting
Cataclysm Miscues: IV: Professions
Cataclysm Miscues: V: Flow
Cataclysm Miscues: VI: The Gap
Cataclysm Miscues: VII: Stats
Cataclysm Miscues: VIII: Gems

Isn't Leveling Supposed to be Fun?

Cataclysm made many miscues that can be summed up in one word but none where that one word means so many different things all at once. Leveling is one of those words. The revamped leveling of 1-60. The leveling of 60-70 left as is, and then adjusted. The level of 70-80 left as is, and then changed twice. The leveling of 80-85. The leveling of professions. Every step of the way, anything you can pin the word leveling on was a miscue of cataclysm.

Let us start at the beginning. While the old world revamp is not actually a part of cataclysm content like people like to think it is because you do not need the cataclysm expansion to experience it, it was introduced in cataclysm, so all the problems that are attached to it are cataclysm problems.

The leveling speed from 1-60 in the revamped world is so out of whack that you can basically level and miss the entire story they are trying to tell. If you are a once a week player and queue up for a dungeon when you come on one Saturday you can conceivably get up to three levels in one dungeons effectively missing nearly an entire leveling zone in the matter of a 30 minute dungeon run.

The experience offered in low level dungeons is out of line. It makes you miss out on the whole history of the game. You do not get to experience any of the story, of the beautiful landscapes they designed, of the travel that makes you feel as if you are part of the world. Leveling is just too fast.

Even if you are a daily player that does not do dungeons you are missing out on a lot leveling now. Questing is effectively the best way to level. The quests offer huge chunks of experience and if you kill everything too and from the questing area then each big quest area you work on could be a level in itself.

With no rested, no guild bonus, no heirlooms and no experience, you will still out level a zone well before you are anywhere close to finishing it. They decided to speed up leveling but they did not adjust the zones to keep with the new faster leveling pace. The zones should have been redesigned to not have half their quests left undone, or done as limited experience quests because you out leveled the zone.

Now add to the speed leveling that is offered in the old world now with the advent that they have added what seems like 100s if not 1000s of rare creatures to the world, all that gives more experience then turning in a quest does and a respawn rate that allows you to camp them to level if you want to because they reappear so quickly. Makes one wonder why they call them rare creatures when they are anything but. Perhaps they should be called what they really are, level jumpers. Kill a few rares and jump right past a level.

Another side effect of leveling that quickly that cataclysm seemed to have missed was the leveling of professions. Lets start with gathering professions.

Picking the right gathering professions, skinning in an area with lots of animals, mining in an area with lots of mountains or herbalism in an area with lots of grass and you are fine, you will level that as fast as anything could possibly level. Pick the wrong one and you will be stuck behind for a while. You might even need to go back.

For example, roll a tauren and skinning and you will be 75 before you can even train to get the next level. Pick mining and you might be in trouble unless you go out of your way to level it.

When leveling took more time every gathering skill, even if you did not pick a starting area that is advantageous to it, would keep up with your leveling. Now that the speed of leveling is so fast, if you pick the wrong profession for your starting zone, you can find yourself in the pinch of needing to go back to gathering in an area that offers no experience just to catch your profession up.

That is not as bad as it sounds when you compare it to crafting professions. There is no crafting profession that can come close to keeping up with the speed you level now. When we got the patch that changed the leveling speed of characters no patch was given to changing the leveling speed of professions.

None of the crafting professions is worse than leatherworking. Do to the absolute insane amount of leather it takes to make one piece of gear to level and you leveling so fast that you never actively build up a stock pile, if you wanted to level straight through you would be stuck leaving your leatherworking behind and coming back for it later or spending gold on the market to play catch up.

Most other crafting professions are like that as well. Of all of them the only two that are not totally horrible with keeping up with it as you go are inscription and alchemy. Unless you happen to dungeon or PvP a lot, then no herbs for you.

There is another little miscue with profession leveling in cataclysm most might not even notice. It goes back to the gather professions on your first trip through the basin in wrath content. You can, and will, level any gathering profession to max 525 while in the basin doing the Nesingwary quest line. I don't mind it at all really but think about it for a moment. Is there any reason why you can level to the maximum of cataclysm content, or very near it, in an area that is meant to be 4 levels before the end of the previous expansion?

When leveling was changed it was left untouched in BC and wrath content. This left people, even more so new people, with a bit of a culture shock. Going from the blazing speed leveling that the old world was to a more balanced and intelligently designed questing scheme could throw some kinks in the works for people. Lets not even get into the fact that there were elite quests in those areas that where meant to require skill and thinking, something the old world completely removed from the leveling process. That is a whole different story.

So that as well was one of the miscues of cataclysm. Develop a new leveling standard and then not make it game wide. They should have released catalysm with an updated speed of leveling in BC and wrath at the start, there was no reason not to.

When they finally noticed their mistake they made two changes over time. One was a blanket reduction to the amount of experience needed to level and the other was removing all the elite quests by making those quest mobs normal mobs. This was another miscue of cataclysm. It would have been more effective to change the experience awarded by the quests instead of making a blanket reduction to experience needed.

For an example of how this was a major miscue all we have to do is look at BC content currently. Being BC and wrath still use the hard quest designation that seems to have been removed from the old world questing that meant you get too many levels in one area. If they wanted to speed up leveling the best bet would have been to adjust the quests themselves.

It is quite possible to get to level 64 or 65 in hellfire alone meaning that you might do a few quests in nagrand or terokkar and be at 68 and moving on to northrend. It was, and is, quite possible that you would level through BC content now and never even notice that zangarmarsh, blades edge, netherstorm or shadowmoon was even there. Even in the few cases that you might have ventured into zangermarsh or blades edge it is quite common for someone that is leveling in this new design to have never even entered netherstorm or shadowmoon.

The last leveling miscue of cataclysm was the new cataclysm content itself. We where told that even though we would only be having 5 levels it would be the same experience as leveling 10 levels where in BC and wrath. We where lied to.

Even after two series of nerfs to BC and wrath leveling, one for experience needed to level and one removing all the elite quests, it still takes longer to level 10 levels in BC or 10 levels in wrath than it does to level 5 levels in cataclysm.

The 5 levels that felt like 10 that we were promised was about as off target as saying that elton john is a ladies man. It is a flat out lie. Cataclysm content seems to follow the idea of the redesigned old world, where leveling is merely an inconvenience and no longer a meaningful part of the game meant for fun, lore and exploration.

So if you are playing cataclysm, like it or not is irrelevant, and you ever felt like some things just did not seem right then perhaps this is one of those things you subconsciously noticed. While not game breaking the leveling process is one of the miscues of cataclysm.

Evaluating My Numbers

2012-02-22T14:09:00.000-05:00

Last night I got myself three new pieces of gear so I will have to see what happens next week but for the last few weeks I have felt stuck with my DPS while making the switch from marksmen to survival. I know I can get more out of the gear I have but I am just not doing it.

I usually use the looking for raid as a training tool to try and get better. It is ideal for me to get comfortable with a new spec. I will test things there like using cooldowns at a different time or messing with my rotation some like pooling focus at certain points. Trust me, it might not always be ideal for DPS numbers but pooling can make target switching and downing a lot easier. Again, none of that is needed in the looking for raid but that doesn't mean I don't try to do the best I can do.

I've got my shiny new bow, 397 tier legs and a 397 chest too so no doubt my DPS will go up next week but that does not mean I have to start evaluating my numbers all over again. I still know what I was doing, I still know how it ended and I can still figure out what I was doing wrong.

That is one of the reasons I feel DPS is the most exciting role in the game. It is a never ending battle to do the best you can do and at the moment I know I can do better which means I have a lot of work ahead of me.

All the fights in the looking for raid I've seen a steady increase on each week since switching to survival even though I have not gotten a new piece of gear in three weeks but each of the three weeks I saw an increase. Only one boss did I see a decrease on in those three week and that was the 5th boss. Oddly enough, the DPS race boss is the only one I saw a loss on.

Madness is the one that seems to get me. I think when the new raid was released and the first time I had ever done it I was 44K. Each week that passed I got better, one week about a month ago while still marksmen I broke 60K for the first time. Since then I have not been able to do it again even though from everything I read survival is supposed to be leaps and bounds better on that fight. The last three weeks with the same gear as survival, which is better then when I did 60K as marksmen, I have done 56K, 56K and 56K respectively. Notice a pattern there?

Admittedly I can do much better but 2 of those 3 times 56K was enough to be top dog DPS wise by at least 8K. It might seem odd but I run a lot of characters through there and it does seem like 48K is where everyone tops out. There are usually 2 or 3 people above that, but never more. Only once did anyone beat me and that was a DK that did 67K but his damage done was 1/2 mine so that means he capped out and then just hung around so his 67K looked good.

Sometimes I have to wonder about people like that. Don't they realize that anyone with a brain knows they are not really as good as they are trying to pass themselves off as? Anyone can pull off some sick burst numbers if they know what to do. Saw a mage do 120K on that fight once in a wipe attempt. He blew everything, capped out, got himself killed and then bragged about how awesome he was. The group kicked him, I love when stuff like that happens.

It is kind of like an OS 3D run I did the other day. I had 28K and someone else had 41K and they asked me why my DPS was so low yet we had almost the same damage done. I said, because I killed the adds after the boss went down and you didn't. My DPS dropped because of it where yours stayed at your burn numbers when the boss went down.

That is one of the reasons that just looking at DPS numbers is not where it is at. You need to look at the bigger picture. So when I am saying I did 56K on the last three weeks I also mean that my damage done was nearly the same all three weeks. I at least attempt to look at the bigger picture. If I can push to 60K but do the same damage done, it does not mean I did 4K better, I did the same.

One mistake I always seem to make it with my rapid fire. I am so used to a 3 minute cooldown and readiness where I would use it often. With survival it is a 5 minute cooldown and that is killer. I can use it twice during the fight as survival as opposed to at least eight times in marksmen but always seem to only do it once. I seem to have it as part of my normal thing in marksmen but have not really gotten into using it as survival in the same way.

It is not because I forget but it is because of the time I feel it is best to use it does not fit well with the wanting to use it twice. I am considering blowing it at the start of the first platform which would allow it to be available for when I want to use it but I always feel like it is a waste there.

The question to ask there is this, is more DPS ever really a waste in a fight like that? Just because it is not needed doesn't mean I shouldn't use it. So I am blowing away something that was the easy part anyway.

Damage dealing is not like healing or tanking. Wasting a huge healing cooldown even if it is not needed because no one is injured because it will be back when you know you will need it later is useless, it won't hurt you, sure, but it is useless. Wasting a defensive cooldown when you are not taking any damage just because you know it will be available when you need it later is a waste just like the healer thing. But wasting a DPS cooldown is not really wasting, as long as it is there when you really do need it.

Laying a big heal on someone with 100% life = a waste.
Using a 50% damage reduction for 12 seconds when you know you are taking not damage for 12 seconds = a waste.
Using a damage dealing cooldown when it does not interfere with when you need it later = a huge plus.

There, I convinced myself, now I just need to remember to use the damn thing at the start of the fight, even if it is not required, it will still be a plus. The little things like that do make a difference. The thing is to remember them. Rapid fire just does not seem to have its place in my survival world at the moment. I need to force it into it.

My other issue with the fight is something I think most people over look. I have herbalism as a skill. Herbalism has lifeblood. Lifeblood gives you 480 haste every 2 minutes. It is off the global cooldown. It is something I should be using every single cooldown but never do.

It is nice to realize the errors you are making. It is another thing to correct them. I need to correct them.

There is one other thing I think I need to work on being I have switched to survival. Should I use the wait half a second thing or fire an arcane between lock and load free explosives.

The way I am currently doing it is this. Lock and load procs. If I am low on focus I wait half a second between explosives. If I am high on focus I fire an arcane between them. I never fire a cobra between them. While on paper this seems like a fine idea I can't help but feel there is something off with it. As if I am doing something wrong.

I've never been a fan of survival. I know many people swear by it and say it is fun or the best hunter spec but to each their own. I am a marksmen. That is what I am good at, that is what I like, I like that it feels like a challenge to do correctly.

I like survival because it is not like marksmen in one major way, you make one mistake in marks and you see it with your over all numbers but with survival you screw up left and right and while your numbers will reflect it the actual drop in damage done is miniscule when compared to screwing something up in marksmen.

I think I like marksmen because it feels like more of a challenge whereas survival seems more like the play for fun sort of spec. I am getting used to doing it but I am still not 100% comfortable with it. I won't be happy until I can beat my markmen numbers while in survival being survival is supposed to be the better spec.

With three new pieces I am sure I will not have 56K for the 4th week in a row, I should blow that away now but can I do it while using a second rapid fire and using my herbalism bonus? That is what is the most important change should be. That is all damage that is easily available to me. That is all damage that requires zero skill. That is all damage waiting for me to use it that I am not using it.

I can surely tie up rotation up better. I can surely make better shot selections. I can surely pool focus when I know bloods are coming. There is a lot I can do to get better but none are as easy as making sure I use the skills available to me that I have not been using.

So when I evaluate my numbers I notice that the biggest problem with them is that I am not using all the tools in my toolbox so the fact I was doing okay means nothing. I was not doing all I could. Have to love DPS. No matter how you do, you can always do it better.

Survival is supposed to be the better spec yet I did more as marksmen. It goes to prove what I always say. You will always do better with what you are comfortable playing. The thing for me is, if survival is showing it is best, I'll just have to get comfortable with it. I might not be in a server first type of guild but that doesn't mean that I can not give 100% all the time. I play for fun, doing good is fun. I want to have fun. I want to do good. Survival is supposed to be better then marksmen yet I have still never beat my marksmen numbers. I will get there, no matter how long it takes. Maybe using my toolbox better might be the difference.

My Perspectives Based On Roles

2012-02-21T12:43:00.000-05:00

Each role has its ups and downs. Some I like better in circumstances more than others. Having played all three (four of you count melee and ranged as two different ones, which I do) I can make a personal judgement on them based on situations. We all have our personal opinions, these are mine.

Low Level Dungeons:

Tank: I dislike being a tank in low level dungeons because there more than any place else you really need to know the dungeons. They are not like BC, Wrath and Cata where everything is easily set forward. I still get lost in some dungeons and that is why I do not like tanking them. It usually ends up one of two ways. Way one, you need to lead and know where to go or way two happens. Way two, some idiot DPS or healer will run ahead of you and pull everything for you and then complain if they die because you did not get aggro off of them.

Also, low level dungeons seem to have more "we are invincible" attitude than high level ones from many of the players. Low level dungeons are more often to turn into a wipe at a moments notice for no good reason because of people that do not understand that tanks do not have as many aggro generating tools and healers do not have as many heals and most definitely not quick heals and AoE heals at lowest levels. Any failures here always fall on the tanks back when in truth 80% of the time wipes in low level dungeons have more to do with the DPS then the tanks or healers.

Healer: This is hit or miss really and it usually depends on the tank more then anything else. If you have a tank that notices that most heals are something along the lines of 3 second casts and that mana is a very limited resource then healing low level dungeons can be really easy and fun. If you get a tank that never lets you drink and keeps pulling or pulls too much, incoming wipefest, and there is nothing you can do about it with your long cast heals and even more limited toolbox.

One good part about it is that as a healer, if you speak up and do not act like a jerk 99 out of 100 times the group will side with you. One line like, I am sorry but there where too many mobs and I only have so much mana at this level. Or, could you please let me drink next time before pulling the boss, I burn through mana so quick at this level. Either of those politely said lines and the 3 DPS, unless they are grouped with the tank to begin with, will always be on your side.

Melee DPS: Low level dungeons can really be fun for melee. Things die so quick but you have no cast time moves which means you get maximum up time. Also, if the tank goes down and you have a remotely competent healer combined with knowing how to play your class and using whatever ability you have to adapt to being the tank now you can tank nearly anything at low levels as a melee, yes, even as a rogue.

Ranged DPS: This is both good and bad. Ranged usually get some decent AoE early on and in low level dungeons you can live with AoE only for the most part. The bad is that everything dies so fast, which means if you try to actually do anything even remotely resembling a rotation you will do nothing. It will go like this. Pick a target, start casting, just as cast is about to finish, mob dies, cast interrupted. Tab to next mob, start casting, just as the cast is about to finish, mob dies, cast interrupted. It is completely annoying and frustrating to the 10th degree.

Even worse if you are a hunter. Casters can do instants and drink when they need mana. When hunters need focus, they need to steady to get it back. Most mobs die within the cast time of a hunters steady. This means auto shoot only most of the time but if you are an experienced hunter, you can easily compensate, but like all casters in low level dungeons, it is just no fun.

Learning The Role:

Tank: Learning to tank can be a very daunting task. You can only really do it in a group setting which means unless you assemble the group yourself any failures are for everyone else to see and ridicule you about. This could very well be the reason there are not many tanks. Unless you pick up really quickly on things and can move from reading to implementing smoothly and quick, you will fail and you will need think skin to deal with all the fail tank remarks.

One good thing is that if you are somewhat lacking most of the times a melee can handle a few hits before you taunt back. In many cases the healer can compensate while you are learning the best times to use cooldowns. You can make some failures along the way and not have any ill effects from it because there are others there to compensate for you.

While learning to tank can be amazingly difficult in ways that non tanks will never be fully capable of understanding it is in the same richly rewarding once you do it right because you get to feel like the superhero of the group once you got it down.

Healer: Tanking is hard but can be learned with people around you being bad. Healing is impossible to learn with people around you being bad. Tank pulls to much you try to cast your long big heal, tank dies. Tank pulls to much next time, you try to cast an instant, an HoT, and anything else fast you have, tank dies. Tank pulls to much a third time and you try to cast something instant, something fast and expensive and then roll out the long big heal, tank dies. See, you just went through the entire learning process and tied a few different ways to deal with the situation but the tank died every time.

It is not your fault, it is the tanks. Does he have a stun he can use, an interrupt for the caster he can use, CC he could have asked for, the ability to pull less? If any of those are true, and I am sure at least one is, the tank is a bad tank and you can never see that learning process you just went through actually work because at the moment you are incapable of doing it. It is not possible with your gear and abilities while learning.

If you have DPS that are pulling aggro and running away from the tank. If you have DPS that are all attacking different mobs. If you have a group that does not notice you are being attacked and no one helps. If you have bad players, it is nearly impossible to learn. Side note, yes, bad groups later on teach you to become a better healer, this part is about learning, learning with bad groups makes you pull your hair out. It makes you quit. This could be part of the reason we have a healer shortage just like we have a tank shortage. Learning at the start is really hard sometimes.

DPS Melee & Ranged: Without doubt it is the easiest role to learn. You attack what the tank is attacking and has the most aggro on. Even if you are someone that rides the short yellow bus you will get the idea that if you attack things the tank is not attacking or the tank does not have aggro on you will die. That is your learning process. Hit buttons, do damage, don't do something that gets you killed.

Perfecting Your Craft:

Tank: Once you know your role perfecting it as a tank is probably one of the easiest things. Once you know how to pull mobs, all mobs are the same. Doesn't make a difference if it is 2 casters and 3 melee at level 35 or 85, you will pull them the same, just with more useful abilities at higher levels. Also, at higher levels when you get new abilities they are easier for you to identify as a tank then as a healer or DPS. This basically means, once you know how to tank, you know how to tank. You will just get better at doing things cleaner. You will get better with interrupts, with stuns, with cooldown usage, with integrating DPS into your tanking. Once you know the role you know the role. Once you can do it, you can do it. Bare minimum is can do. You can do the job with bare minimum. So you have time to perfect your craft.

Healer: Healer is like the tank in one way. Once you can do it, you can do it. If bare minimum is keeping people alive and you can do that you can get by with bare minimum. From that point on it is just a matter of doing it more efficiently and making it less stressful for yourself. Unlike tanks where new abilities are usually a clear cut what is better healers do not have that luxury. Some abilities might seem like a good thing but really are not. Some things just don't scream out at you how to use them like they do with a tank. Perfecting your craft as a healer is much more involved then it is for a tank.

Melee & Ranged DPS: As easy as it is to DPS to start with is as hard as it is to master it later on. Like healers they do not have the luxury of an upgrade to an ability being as clear cut as possible. Where a tank and a healer don't use a rotation, they react, a damage dealer needs to use a rotation, or priority if you will. There is a perfect way to do things and that will always offer the best results. There is a perfect way to do your rotation, or priority. There is a perfect way to time your abilities being it spamming or waiting a half a second. There is a perfect way of using cooldowns. There is perfection and there is you. You will never meet perfection, ever, even if you play for a million years. That is why mastering the craft of DPS is the hardest part of the game.

Simplest way to explain the perfecting your craft differences it to join up in a pug on your local server. If you tank or heal and say you have done the fight before, 95% of the time it is an instant invite, no further question asked. Like I said, if you can do it, you can do it when it comes to tanking and healing. For a DPS they will ask what your DPS is and if they do not feel it is up to what they want you do not get an invite. Saying, I've done it as a damage dealer is just not acceptable. Damage dealers can not just get away with having to have done it, they need to have done it well.

Questing:

Tank: Leveling as a tank in today's world is a beautiful thing. Walk into a zone and start pulling, round up half the zone, 20 minutes later take a breath and get read to spend the next 5 minutes looting. There has never been a better case for AoE looting then tank questing. Even more so if you are questing as a warrior or a bear. The more mobs the better for them. One on one killing can take time but twenty on one killing takes almost the same amount of time as one on one would. Some can argue that tank questing might be in a position right now where it is the best way to level, at least if you are a melee class that has the option of a tank spec.

Healer: Healer questing means you hate your life and you want to make things as hard as humanly possible. With the exception of discipline priest questing, which is quite effective, healers are not exactly built to quest. Can they do it? Yes. Should they do it? Not unless you are Disc.

Melee DPS: If you are a DK, warrior or paladin spec for tanking or you are bound to die a little more often then you might like. If you are a cat, make good use of bear if you want to survive. If you are a rogue, too bad so sad. Recuperation makes life bearable as a rogue in today's world, but no one wearing leather should be getting beat on and more so beat on my multiple mobs. Melee questing can be very effective. One on one and you will speed through it no problem what so ever but once you get a few mobs you might be in trouble. Good thing for melee that all those elite quests where changed in outlands and wrath because unless you where extremely good at your class there was no way a non tank could get that close to one of those melee mobs and not die.

Ranged DPS: Always has been and always will be the best leveling role in the game. Keep things at a distance and hopefully kill it before it gets to you. All ranged classes can be OP when it comes to questing but none more so then hunters with the personal tank. Ranged got it easy when it comes to questing and hunters got it easy when it comes to being ranged. Being the game has changed so much however the hunter advantage of having the personal tank is evaporating. Any ranged class can burn down any mob in mere seconds making the need for the personal tank a great deal less.

Soloing:

Tank: It depends on the content you are soloing but all tanks can easily solo a vast majority of dated content out there. At least all old dungeons. Only blood DKs however can go all psycho with their soloing content. paladins might be able to get some extreme soloing done but warriors and druids are a no go. If you want to solo content as a tank, do it as a blood DK.

Healer: You're kidding me right? They might be able to solo some classic dungeons at 85. Disc can even solo some classic raid content. I don't think any healer spec can even get past BC normals and if they do the skill involved most likely means the people capable of doing it are few and far between.

Melee DPS: They can solo a fair deal of content but not nearly as much as their tanking counter parts in most cases. Some melee classes can pull off some really interesting soloing but the skill level and preparations required means that not many could do it leaving melee and soloing just a step above healers. This means they can do some but it is not exactly practical.

Ranged DPS: If you read a lot on the forums you will see some new ranged DPS soloing something insane nearly every week. Just like they are the best questers they are also the best soloers. While blood DKs get all the press ranged classes have been doing it for a long and and it is a lot easier to do it with them. While the skill level required for a blood DK to solo some of the content they have soloed is insane, the skill cap for many fights, not all, for a ranged to solo some harder content is not anywhere in the same ballpark. I am an average hunter and was soloing 85 heroics a few months into the expansion. Good ones have soloed nearly all the original ones. There have been mages, warlocks, hunters and shadow priests soloing insane stuff all expansion. While there are many things they can not solo when you look at the average player and what the average player can do, if you want to solo you can solo as ranged a lot easier then you could solo stuff blood DKs are doing. No other role can come close to it.

Professions:

Tanks: Crafting and crafting only here. Jewelcrafting is ideal here but not talking about bonuses here. I am talking about practicality. Your dungeon queue will always be instant. If you have a healing off spec your raid queue will be instant too. If you have a DPS offspec it will be a small wait and in that time you can make some crafts to sell on the market. If you are tank only, like I usually am, perhaps a gathering profession might be in order. Usually mining if anything for me. At least you can mine some while waiting in the raid queue.

Healer: You will never wait for the raid queue. You will never wait long for the dungeon queue. This means crafting and crafting only. A gathering profession on a healer is a waste. You will never have the free time doing nothing to actively go gathering.

Melee & Ranged DPS: Unless you have a tank or healer offspec to work with to speed up queue times you are going to spend your life waiting. Might as well put that time to good use. Get a gathering profession. Unless you are in a hard mode server first type guild where you need to maximize your profession bonus it is really no big deal to have a gathering profession. While waiting in queue for the raid finder and dungeon finder, which you will have to wait for, you can be out and about gathering. At least you are making money doing something while waiting instead of sitting in some city letting your brain rot reading trade chat.

Leadership:

Tank: I find raid leading as a tank much easier then in any other role. I have my task and that is what I am focused on and like I said earlier about tanking once you know how to do it you know how to do it. This gives me more available time to keep track of life totals, timers, when the big moves are going to come, etc. Not to mention, I am facing the raid when tanking and usually there is nothing behind me. Sure, I have this big thing in front of me but it is not as bad as having your back to all the action. Being many of the annoying mechanics never target the tank, this also means I am in the position that is the least likely to require moment which once again allows me to control everything that is going around and announcing any strategic changes on the fly.

Healer: I hate raid leading as the healer. While I am in a much better position to see what others are doing and unlike the tank I can see the entire raid easily instead of just some mobs crotch and whatever is visible around it. Then again I tend to take healing a great deal more serious which usually means I get more focused and can sometimes miss things I should be calling out. With an experienced group that does not need anything called out, this is fine, but while learning a fight or teaching it to new people, this could serve as a problem.

Melee DPS: I don't know why, I just can't raid lead as melee DPS. Maybe it is all the spell effects. Maybe it is me not being extremely good at any melee class to the point where I do not need to even think about my rotation. Maybe it is the stink coming from the bosses butt that distracts me. Maybe it is having my back to the raid. It could be a million things but I just do not feel like raid leading as a melee DPS gives me a good position to do it.

Ranged DPS: Next to tanking this is the best position to raid lead from for me. You can see everything that is going on, more so then the tank even. While it does give a little added difficultly because you need to keep optimum rotation for maximum DPS, move as needed and call out everything, it is a lot easier then doing it from a healers standpoint which is the same basically. If I make a mistake in my rotation I might drop 1K DPS which in most cases will not cause a wipe as opposed to if I make a mistake in healing it could drop one player, which could in most cases cause a wipe depending on who that person is.

Raiding:

Tank: When you want it nice and easy this is the way to go. Just like a healer always trying to be better and a damage dealer always trying to do more damage you will always be trying to do more damage, to better time your cooldowns, etc. The one main difference is, if you group can do the fight at your current skill level, it is not required. You can sit back and relax and get the easiest job on the way to loot. I always like to improve but it is nice to do something once in a while where you don't feel like you have to because there is no pressure on you.

Healing: I love healing when the fight is new. I love learning a new fight and healing on the fly before I know all the patterns for when damage is coming and where it is coming from and who it is going to. I know my tools on how to heal so it is basically just doing what I know how to do in a different way. Sadly a great deal of fights are only exciting that first time or two. Once you got it down and everyone you are with got it down it gets boring fast really.

Melee & Ranged DPS: This is where the action is when it comes to raiding. Once the tank is tanking it fine and once the healers are healing it fine they can just chill out and collect loot. However, as a damage dealer that is what you are all about. If you did 28K today you want to do 28500 next week and 29000 the week after. While it is not required, you could use the same argument about DPS as you do about tanking and healing and say once you can do it you can do it, it is not the same. 13K was faceroll if everyone was doing that in ICC back when it was out but you do not see people doing that now. Nope, they are pushing it to see how high they can get. Tanks and heals can rest as soon as they can get it done. DPS can never rest. There is always room to get better and always new heights to reach when it comes to doing damage. DPS is where it is at, it is where good enough is never good enough.

Mechanics:

Tank: The large majority of the fights for tanks are pick a spot, tank the mobs there, and use cooldowns at a set time that never deviates. Hence the reason I say tanking is the easiest job in the game when it comes to raiding. I find fights like that boring as sin. I love add fights. I love having to run around and gather things up. I love having to move the boss in a manner that keep it in range of the ranged as well as move it at a pace that melee can keep DPSing it. I love active tanking fights. There are not enough of them if you ask me. If I am going to have just stand there I would prefer DPS tank fights where I DPS more then I tank. It makes it more fun for me. Nothing fun about standing in one place popping cooldowns at 30, 60 or 90 second intervals and never moving so might as well think of them as DPSing tank fights to spice it up.

Healers: I love the newness of fights like I mentioned before. I love the feeling of the sense of urgency. I love feeling like anyone can die at any given moment. I love healing like a mad man hoping, praying that my mana does not run out before the boss dies. I love the pressure, it invigorates me. I dislike just healing the tank and having to deal with huge damage spikes. Healing like that always seems to feel luck based more then skill based. I dislike having raid damage that is instantly deadly. I like it when I have a chance to respond and it is cast, cast, cast non stop. This is how healing should always be. Everyone getting damage all the time, you going crazy keeping people up, it is a race to the enrage timer and the enrage timer is you mana bar. Now that is exciting.

Melee DPS: I love stand still fights where I can just practice my rotation like on a target dummy. I hate movement fights and target switching fights where I need to run all over the place. It always feels like I am starting all over from the beginning when I have to do that. I am not saying I just want to stay on the boss and pad my DPS numbers when I melee. I have no problems with needing to interrupt, disarm, etc. I do not mind if there are tasks that require me to do things other than damage but I hate running all over the place. The run distance between where I am and where I need to be always feels like wasted time where I am doing nothing and it makes me feel basically useless. If you noticed my comment about DPS having gathering professions so they can put their time waiting in queue to good use you will see it is not just a DPS thing. Wasted time doing nothing is wasted time. I don't like wasted time which means I don't like running all over the place to get to mobs.

Ranged DPS: I don't have the same problem I do with melee. Target switching, no problem. Boss moving, no problem. I enjoy most fights as ranged. The only thing I really hate as ranged is when we are forced to move every two seconds. Cast, move, cast, move, cast, move, that crap is for PvP, not raiding. Otherwise, ranged is fun, no matter the mechanics.

I think I babbled enough for today.

Do you see things differently depending on which roll you play like I do?

New Item Slots: Accessory

2012-02-17T10:11:00.000-05:00

With the emphasis being on PvP in MoP I started thinking about how to add a little spice to it. I love patterns which is why I love raiding. Once I see something I can start figuring out where I will position myself, when I can use my cooldowns, so forth and so on. That, in my opinion, is really what separates the good players from the great players.

PvP does not have those patterns because people control the character you are fighting but it is not really all that different. The more you do it the more you learn how to react to things you see. Visual triggers if you will. Where for raiding it is all about maximizing what you can do while dancing the dance PvP is about reacting faster to the other person.

While there are no patterns in PvP, unless you fight the same person over and over and they don't change things up, there is a skill set that is somewhat the same. Instead of preplanning your attack against a raid boss knowing when to use your cooldowns, you preplan what you will need to beat certain classes.

If you are a good PvPer then you know what classes have what abilities and you adjust to fighting those classes by keeping your fingers over the keys that are bound to the relevant abilities. Blah, blah, blah. No need to go any further, if you have stayed reading for this long you know what is required to be a good PvPer or you think I actually have some point to make. Time for the point.

New Item Slots: Accessory

Each player would have three accessory slots which you can put accessories in. Accessories would all have abilities, either timed, on use or triggered and would all have resilience on them. By having resilience on them only it will be known that they are meant for PvP. While some of the trinkets abilities would have PvE uses they would never be make or break for the PvE environment.

Some trinket abilities would be as follows.

Equip: Whenever you fall below 20% of your maximum life all debuffs and DoTs will be removed and you become immune to any new DoTs or debuffs for 5 seconds. This ability can not be triggered more then once per minute.

Equip: As long as you remain over 90% life you can not be the target of any CC abilities. If you are under 90% life and CCed as soon as you are healed to over 90% it will break the CC.

Equip: Whenever you are hit by a critical strike the player that landed that hit will be slowed by 70% for 2 seconds.

On Use: When triggered the next melee attack that hits you will be reflected back for 100% unresistable damage. 1 minute cooldown.

On Use: When triggered the next magical attack that hits you will be reflected back for 100% unresistable damage. 1 minute cooldown.

On Use: Teleport yourself 50 yards from your current position. Direction is random, if no 50 yard direction is available you will be teleported to the furthest possible distance. 1 minute cooldown.

Equip: Whenever you take damage you gain 20 resilience. This effect can stack up to 50 times, 20 second, refreshed on hit, buff duration.

Equip: Whenever you are hit by a magical ability for damage you gain 100 resistance to that school of magic for 5 seconds. This resistance does not stack or refresh. You can have more then 1 resistance on you at a time.

Equip: Whenever you are CCed the person that CCed you is also CCed by the same ability for the same duration. This ability can not be triggered more then once per minute.

Equip: Whenever you are slowed the applicant of the slow takes 1000 x duration of the slow in unresistable damage.

Equip: If you are hit by three critical strikes of any source that causes damage in a row your mana, focus, rage, energy, and chi are filled and your runes refreshed.

On Use: The next damage you take will add a bubble on you as a shield to protect for the amount of damage instead of taking the damage. The shield will last until enough damage is done to remove it, until you leave active battle or until this ability is off cooldown. One minute cooldown.

Equip: Whenever you land a killing blow your main stat is increased by 30% for 10 seconds.

Equip: If you die your corpse becomes a bomb. 3 seconds after death all enemies within 10 yards take damage equal to 30% of their total life. If you explode in this manner you can not be revived in any way. If you kill 2 other players by your explosion you will return to live with 10% health.

The possibilities are endless on what could be done with accessories. It would bring skill in PvP to a whole new level. You might know the class you are facing but you won't know the accessories they are wearing. At least not until they are triggered.

In arenas you can have all your accessories lined up and ready to switch at a moments notice as soon as the match begins. Not only would it add a whole new level of skill, it would add a whole new level of unpredictability. Where raiding is predictable PvP is not and with these it would not be even more so.

Some of these accessories would probably have to have it say spell or ability "from a player" because if not they would become way to powerful for PvE.

While the accessory slot would be basically for PvP only that does not mean we have to leave PvE out completely. There could be PvE accessories as well if they so wanted. They could also add a whole series of accessories that are for cosmetic purposes only.

Could you imagine the fun things like the orb or the money in a ball being accessories instead of being trinkets? It means you can leave them on all the time and trigger them just for fun.

The accessory slot could really be a great addition for PvP and for everything else.

Why Can't People Grasp The Basics

2012-02-16T11:25:00.000-05:00

The healer baggie came up yesterday so it was time to do a run with my healer. I am the total opposite of what they expected to happen with adding the baggie. I used to cap out my healers every week. Now, I only run if there is the baggie. If a week goes by and there is no baggie, I do not run dungeons, simple as that. I run less now because of the baggie, not more. But that is another story.

My first adventure into healing a random yesterday, or should I call it misadventure, was not completely horrible for the most part, nothing I couldn't handle, but it did get me thinking about dungeons, fights, mechanics and the roles people play.

This post will contain nothing involving peoples skill or lack thereof.

This post will contain nothing involving peoples knowledge of fights or mechanics.

This post will contain nothing involving people gear level, gear choices, gem choices or enchanting choices.

This post will only contain things that are complete and total common sense.

I enter into well of eternity on my shaman. The dungeon is already in progress and it seems there was just a wipe or a near wipe being the four people there are at the entrance with low life. I see the body of the guard at the entrance is still there so I know that this just started.

We get to the first pack and the tank runs in. Common sense failure alert. The tank faces them toward everyone and they start breathing fire in everybody's face. Okay, I can accept he is new, did not notice it and sometimes it is hard to turn mobs around but he did not even try to turn them around when he noticed this happening.

We get to the second pack and the tank runs in. Common sense failure alert. You would think that he would have figured it out being this pack is the same as the others but he didn't. He did the same thing he did before. This is not a skill issue, this is not an ability issue, this is a common sense issue.

Common Sense Pro Tip: If stuff is breathing fire at you and you are the tank, face it away from people.

Okay, so we have a tank with no common sense. Lets check out the rest of the group. One melee and two ranged DPS. Common sense failure alert. The two ranged DPS just stood there getting hit by the fire. I noticed the tank did not turn them the first time so I made sure to stand where the fire would not hit me the second time in case he did not turn them again. The ranged did not seem to have that same level of common sense.

Common Sense Pro Tip: If you are getting hit by something because of where the tank has positioned a mob and the tank won't move, you move.

The tank has no common sense, the ranged have no common sense so what about our friendly neighborhood melee DPS? Common sense failure alert. The melee DPS didn't give me a break healing either. He stood right in front of the mobs taking all the damage. Lets remember, this post is not about skill or knowledge. So lets forget that it is basic knowledge that melee should not be in front of the mob. This has nothing to do with skill. It has to do with common sense.

Common Sense Pro Tip: If you are getting hurt by something that is coming from a mobs face and you are not the tank, get out of their face.

I'll give credit where credit is due however to the melee, a feral druid. He might have been lacking in the common sense department but he actually did have a grasp of his class, as this story will show.

The only reason we did not wipe on those trash packs with everyone taking damage except for me is the fact that my shaman is way over geared for this content and that 100%+ crit buff makes healing as a shaman like super healing, every cast is over 100K heals. I can handle a little stupidity here and there. Not a lot of stupidity, but a little. Next fight, the boss, we settled into a lot of stupid, but not completely stupid. It was a combination of lack of fight mechanic knowledge and a bit of common sense failure.

Apparently the only person that knew about the flame circles was the melee DPS. Common sense failure alert. The ranged DPS just stood in it. I tried healing them through it but being the tank was seriously under geared he required a lot of healing which meant I lost the two ranged DPS in time.

Common Sense Pro Tip: If there is any ground effect under you and you are tanking damage from it. MOVE!

Again, this is not about not knowing mechanics. I do not mind they did not know there where flame circles and they where taken by surprise by it so they took damage. I can handle a little extra healing for a short period of time. It is not about the tanks gear. While under geared, the tank was more then geared enough to handle the fight. It is about the complete and total lack of common sense.

That attempt ended in a wipe because the tank made two mistakes. Common sense failure alert. Instead of kiting the boss out of the flame circles, he kited the tank to them and stood in them with the boss. Common sense failure alert. So he saw he was taking insane damage and did not have the common sense to move, you would figure he would at least use a cooldown or something. Nope. He made no efforts to save himself even.

Common Sense Pro Tip: If you are about to die, try to save yourself.

This was the first showing that the melee actually had a clue about the abilities his class had. When the tank went down he switched to bear and taunted the boss out of the fire. To bad the damage was done, it was a wipe.

We go at it again, no one said a word, I started to type out that they needed to step out of the flame rings while my rez was loading on the tank but never really had the chance to finish my sentence. Common sense failure alert. The tank charged right in the second he was revived. He did not wait to be healed, he did not wait to be buffed, he did not wait to even ask what went wrong.

Common Sense Pro Tip: If something is going to hit you and hurt you a lot, be healed before you enter combat.

I kept the tank up, no biggie. Everyone moved from the fire rings this time without me ever getting my post out about it which proved they learned something. Maybe they had some common sense, it just moved really slow. Like an old lady that can't see over the steering wheel drives. They get there, but slow as hell and they might injure a few people along the way.

I can go on and on with this run.

I could tell about people standing in bad on the second fight even if the casters usually give you more then enough notice to move. Heck, one of the images no one could miss with his huge swirling lights everywhere before they land.

I could tell about how the melee was so good with his timing that he stopped fighting and headed to interrupt the boss the second the cast started, even if I said I would handle it before the fight started.

I could tell how I died, not once but twice, on the last boss because the tank was too busy DPSing the boss to pull the adds off of me even though I was standing right on top of him and all he needed to do was an AoE tanking rotation to save me. I self rezzed and had a druid battle rez and almost died a third time. All while standing directly on top of him and not even once did he try to take the mobs off me.

Common Sense Pro Tip: If the healer is taking damage, save them.

The whole run left me wondering what is wrong with people. None of this stuff is skill related. None of this stuff is not having the knowledge of the fight related. None of this stuff is gear related. All of this is complete and total common sense. All of this is something that anyone would be able to figure out even if they never played warcraft or any other game before.

If something hurts and it is in front of you or under your feet... Move from it.
If you are the tank and someone that is not you is being attacked... Get them to attack you.
You know, common sense things like that. Those types of things have nothing to do with gear, ability, skill, knowledge, just common sense.

Stuff like that annoys me. I have no problem with people that have never done a fight before. We all need to learn at some point. I have no problem with people being lesser geared. We all have to go through the gearing up process. But people failing to things that someone that doesn't even play games could figure out on their own annoys the crap out of me.

Why can't people grasp the basics?

Cataclysm Miscues: VIII: Gems

2012-02-15T09:44:00.001-05:00

This is the eight in a series of posts about the little things that cataclysm messed up on this expansion. These little things are things that mostly go unnoticed or are easily overlooked because they are usually not game breaking but they do leave you having that feeling of something being off.

Past posts:
Cataclysm Miscues: I: Healing & Mana Potions
Cataclysm Miscues: II: Hemet Nesingwary
Cataclysm Miscues: III: Targeting
Cataclysm Miscues: IV: Professions
Cataclysm Miscues: V: Flow
Cataclysm Miscues: VI: The Gap
Cataclysm Miscues: VII: Stats

Why? Because it's Red:

Although most of my posts are things that are not game breaking some people might consider this one a little bit game breaking. I don't. I consider it a little bit annoying maybe. A little bit off focus maybe. A miscue of cataclysm definitely.

Where should we start with the problem with gems? There are so many miscues this expansion related to gems. Lets start where the expansion started.

When the expansion first came out you could become an instant billionaire with gems. While I loved it to make some money it was definitely a miscue. Did no one at any point in the development of the game ever realize that people where basically creating gold by prospecting gems? Sure, you can still prospect to make some decent money but now it makes more sense.

At the start you could prospect, cut, vendor, and make gold hand over fist. Even if you went out and spent tens of thousands of gold you could easily quadruple it in a matter of minutes. It added a huge influx of gold to the game for anyone that was smart enough and had enough free time to take advantage of it.

As the expansion went on and we all started to realize what we would be gemming for best results it started to become apparent that everyone and their mother would be using basically straight red gems 90% of the time. With the exception of tanks wanting heavy mastery and fresh healers maybe considering spirit at the start everyone else was left with one gemming option, whore your main stats. Agility, intellect and strength. All red in case you did not notice.

The design basically made it that if you gemmed for anything other then your main stat you would not be getting the most out of your character and no one purposely gimps themselves like that. There was something that they could have done to fix this but they went the opposite way instead of the fix it way which brings us to the next point that shows it was a miscue.

No one was gemming for the bonus so instead of making the bonus more attractive, so people would be forced to gem for it, they decided to make nearly all gem slots red to start with. Where they could have made a new hunter piece one blue and two yellow and made the bonus 100 agility, thus meaning it would be worth matching colors and making the other gems useful, they just gave the new hunter piece 3 red slots or 2 red and one yellow at best.

They basically designed the game with having so many different gem patterns, six different gem colors, so many combinations that it boggles the mind and then made only one gem useful 90% of the time. A miscue of epic proportions.

Which brings us to more gem miscues. Blizzard apparently noticed that everyone wanted red and red only, that is why T13 has so many red slots for us. So why are red gems still nearly impossible to get when compared to other gems?

Any jewelcrafter that took advantage of the money to be made at the start of the game can tell you they prospected countless numbers of ore and all came to the same conclusion. How come you get the red uncommon gems less then all others? I am not talking a little less, I am talking leaps and bounds less. Whatever of the other 5 you got the least of, the red one is 50% of that.

Blizzard, as I mentioned, apparently knew that everyone would be using red gems only yet they made red gems the least available gem in the game. Another miscue there.

Gem miscues do not stop with everything being red. It flows over to all the other gems. The red/yellow and red/blue have some market even if minimal, but blue, yellow, and blue/yellow are usually better off being sold to the vendor. On most servers the sell price for gems of those types would be a loss if you consider the cost it takes to list them. The mastery/stamina one is the only one that has any market out of those other ones. It just does not feel right.

This goes into the way they added epic gems. Having epic gems come from raiding is not the problem. Having them come randomly is. Instead of making it that people buy something and play the lady luck game they could have sold the rares for those same tokens directly.

There are more than a few people I've heard complain they have been raiding since DS was released and still have not gotten an epic gem. In my guild only one person has even gotten a red epic gem and that is after many weeks. I personally seem to get at least two shadow spirit gems per run but that seems to be the only one I get and I seem to be the luckiest person when it comes to pulling epics gems out. The way epic gems where instituted is another miscue.

The gem miscues do not stop there however. Jewelcrafters losing the full profession bonus because of epic gems was another miscue. Alchemists not being able to transmute them is another miscue. Not being able to get them from prospecting is another miscue.

No matter how you cut it, no pun intended, gems just never felt right this expansion. From the get go there was always something off with them. Off with the money that could be made from them. Off with only one gem being really useful. Off with the only useful gem being the hardest to come by. Off with it screwing with other professions. Off with the way epics are attained.

Many professions felt a little off in one way or another but none so badly off like the one that is in charge of our gemming needs, jewelcrafting.

So while this whole thing might not be game breaking it sure does feel a little off. All my characters, except tanks, have the same gemming priorities, red, red and more red. It just does not feel right.

So if you are playing cataclysm, like it or not is irrelevant, and you ever felt like some things just did not seem right then perhaps this is one of those things you subconsciously noticed. While not game breaking, gems and gemming in general is one of the miscues of cataclysm.

Cataclysm Miscues: VII: Stats

2012-02-14T10:02:00.000-05:00

This is the seventh in a series of posts about the little things that cataclysm messed up on this expansion. These little things are things that mostly go unnoticed or are easily overlooked because they are usually not game breaking but they do leave you having that feeling of something being off.

Past posts:
Cataclysm Miscues: I: Healing & Mana Potions
Cataclysm Miscues: II: Hemet Nesingwary
Cataclysm Miscues: III: Targeting
Cataclysm Miscues: IV: Professions
Cataclysm Miscues: V: Flow
Cataclysm Miscues: VI: The Gap

Stat Inflation Gone Wild:

This is not going to be about stat inflation even if that is an interesting topic that deserves discussion. This series is about things that feel off in the game and I will attempt to approach it from the angle that explains why stats being like they are just feels wrong. No matter if you agree or disagree with inflating stats or are hoping they squish them is irrelevant.

In all previous expansions the end of the previous version to the beginning of the new one saw some nice increases to the stats that were on gear but none can hold a candle to what we saw happen this expansion. Where you might have been wearing a chest with 32 agility and came across a new quest reward with 40 when the previous expansion came out you where now moving into the realm of having a piece of gear with 80 agility to a piece with 120 agility.

While you can argue, and rightfully so, that the difference between 32 and 40 when compared to the difference between 80 and 120 is only a small bump more percentage wise it just did not feel right. It did not feel like a smooth transaction.

If you went into a level 80 area like hyjal fresh from questing now you would be in mostly 130s, 150s and maybe a few 170s items and by the time you finished a few quests you would be in gear in the 270s. For people like myself and most likely you where our lowest item level was a 264 item when we started cataclysm the only real difference we noticed was with stamina and the main stat but because we where gemmed and enchanted sometimes it was not worth upgrading but for people just passing through now the increases was leaps and bounds better.

It should have been designed, for better flow and stat allocation, that the fresh questers entering there would have been in the position we where, where it might be a decent upgrade or it might be only a little better. For a full 264 player it was like that, for someone coming in with a 138 chest it was culture shock seeing the stat difference.

It is as if they designed the new areas with the idea that everyone had been doing ICC 25 at the very least, and would always be geared like that the first time they enter there, before entering the new areas and never once considered that people would be coming directly from questing in storm peaks and icecrown into hyjal.

So while the increase in stats was fine for us, the 80 to 120 example but one was gemmed and enchanted where the other wasn't which made it a choice, for someone just questing through that did not raid all wrath, the new person, they might be wearing a piece that has 44 agility and are moving from a 44 agility piece to a 120 agility piece and that just never feels right.

When it comes to the miscue on stats it wasn't so much the inflation that was the problem. It was where they started the inflation. Starter gear in a level 80 zone should have been slightly better then the quest gear from storm peaks and icecrown. It should not have been slightly better then ICC25 and even some ICC25 heroic pieces.

The gear did not make a fluid transition and that is why it feels so out of place. The stats on the most basic of starter gear from cataclysm is double and in some cases triple of what can be found in wrath content. This is the reasoning for such a large amount of people playing the level 79 twink bracket.

The cataclysm greens you can get and equip at level 79 are insanely better then anything you could even imagine to find in wrath content. We are not talking an 80 to 120 difference here, we are talking a 30 to 120 difference here.

There are many cases where everything just feels off with gear this expansion but nothing is more apparent then the level 79 twinks that have taken it to the next level. The comparison between the best geared ever level 79 with wrath gear to the best geared ever level 79 with cataclysm gear shows how insanely wrong the stats are. We are not talking what looks like an expansions difference with a 20%-30% stat increase from one to the next, these are 200%-300%-400% increases, sometimes even more.

Where they chose to start the stats on the new items never felt right the first time around even walking into the area in 264s mostly and it feels even more off running there with alts that are just coming through for the first time and replacing that 138 item with a 272 item that basically quadruples the stats of something we only got 1 level ago from a simple quest no different then this new simple quest.

People like big numbers, I know I do, so everyone just looks at things and says, woohoo, huge upgrade and doesn't even think about it again but somewhere in the back of their minds they realize that something just feels a bit wrong with all of it.

So if you are playing cataclysm, like it or not is irrelevant, and you ever felt like some things just did not seem right then perhaps this is one of those things you subconsciously noticed. While not game breaking the huge jump in stats is one of the miscues of cataclysm.

Cataclysm Miscues: VI: Forums Creating The Gap

2012-02-13T14:57:00.000-05:00

This is the sixth in a series of posts about the little things that cataclysm messed up on this expansion. These little things are things that mostly go unnoticed or are easily overlooked because they are usually not game breaking but they do leave you having that feeling of something being off.

Past posts:
Cataclysm Miscues: I: Healing & Mana Potions
Cataclysm Miscues: II: Hemet Nesingwary
Cataclysm Miscues: III: Targeting
Cataclysm Miscues: IV: Professions
Cataclysm Miscues: V: Flow

Listening to People on the Forums:

I can not remember where I read it and I can not post any facts in any way to back it up but once I read something about the forums I was left to believe only because, quite honestly, it made sense.

Someone said they had data that stated that out of the entire warcraft playing population that 0.4% of the users have ever posted on the forums more then a dozen times outside of customer, bug or technical support.

Based on purely anecdotal data I would have to say that seems entirely believable. In my time playing I have met two people in total that have used the forums on even a once a month basis to post and both those people did it in a guild recruitment thread only.

I have never met anyone in my entire play time that posted on the forums daily or even weekly. I have never met anyone in my entire play time that ever posted on the forums to seek information or to comment on situations. Basically, in my entire play time I have never met anyone that used the warcraft forums.

Even if it is only anecdotal data it leads me to believe that the person who once posted that only 0.4% of the wow population use the forums seems like a reasonable deduction. They said their numbers where based on facts available to them and were accurate to the best of their belief. I am willing to accept their finding as fact, even if I might put an asterisk next to the word fact.

Now, lets just say, for arguments sake, that those numbers are indeed accurate we need to figure out who those 0.4% are. From a quick view of the most recent topic you might be lead to believe that 90% of the 0.4% that do post are trolls and the other 10% of the 0.4% percent are the best of the best that play the game, at least they are if you ask them.

Which brings me to another statement that I always like to say here. No matter how bad a player is, everyone thinks they are good.

When the vocal minority of the game was screaming for more difficulty it was comprised of people that fell into one of three categories. 1) A good player that wanted more challenge. 2) A bad player that thinks they are a good player that wants more challenge. 3) A troll who is more then happy to say they want more challenge so they can insult anyone that can't do it.

The people at blizzard decided to make an expansion that started an end game that catered to these people. The 0.4% of the vocal minority. This was one of their biggest miscues because it created a gap between leveling and dungeons.

The meat and potatoes of the game, the real masses, the ones that keep paying for this game so we can play it do not go to the forums, do not post on the forums and most likely if asked they would not even know where the forums where. They play the game for the sake of playing the game.

The game is no longer the game I started playing, the game is no longer the game you started playing. Even if we all want a challenge, the basics of the game need to stay simple and you can tell blizzard understands this to some extent by the way they have completely mutilated the leveling process down to something a monkey can do by slapping any key.

This shows you something that blizzard came up on their own. They noticed, most likely from their own numbers, that new players where not making it to max level to stay around and become continuous dues paying members for the long haul. They went and adjusted the leveling to a pace and skill level that the modern day gamer can handle. Remember, this new gamer is not you or I.

Once at max level however, they decided to listen to the forum people and added difficulty back at the starter level of end game, heroics and even normals in some fights. For these new players that where given the easy route to 85 this was a shock to the system.

I think cataclysm could have been just fine with the difficulty level of the new heroics if it were not for the fact that until people got to them the game was all about casual fun and suddenly turned into an actual game to play instead of just a way to pass the time and have fun.

The divide between the skill needed to level to 85 and the skill needed to complete a heroic was as wide as the grand canyon if not wider. The mistake they made was letting the 0.4% influence the content the way they had even after they went the completely opposite way with the entire redesign of the game.

If blizzard kept with their redesign concept and kept any of the do it or die mechanics out of heroics the subscription numbers would have not taken the hit they did once people made it to 85 and noticed that they hit the proverbial brick wall.

For the meat and potatoes player the heroics are end game. For the meat and potatoes player they could no longer do heroics. For the meat and potatoes player they left to find another game that could fill the hole the player had now because they could not do the heroics and went to find something else where they could just pop on to a game and have some fun for an hour or two a few times a week.

You and I are a horse of a different color. We might have embraced the changes to heroics. I know I did. I loved doing them with my guild at 329 item level. I loved working my way through them and figuring out who to CC. I loved single targeting trash while we chain CCed the others. I loved boss fights with a challenge those first few times while it was actually still a challenge.

I loved all of it until I went into a random with people I didn't know, without people I could count on to have a brain, without people that I knew I could talk to and work strategy with, without people that had a clue. I was in the world of the meat and potatoes of the game now and they did not like the fact that this content was no longer meant for them.

The difference is that for the older player, anyone that has done dungeons and raiding before, the new heroics where a breath of fresh air, they where fun. They where nothing of the sort to the lesser skilled players. To the new players. To the people that heroics where always end game for.

They got fed up with the game. I got fed up with the game for having to run with them. It helped no one, no one but the forum people. No one but the 0.4% of the player base that would all turn around and call anyone that could not do it a baddie.

Blizzard made the mistake of listening to people about content at the end game and never let questers ease their way into it. The jump in difficulty for a brand new player once they reached 85 was just way to much for someone that never looked up their rotation, class, abilities, skills, and encounters. It was way to much for the meat and potatoes of the player base.

Try to think of it from a different view, not your own. Be open minded and look at things from the standpoint of someone that just started the game this expansion. They would level up with no difficulty, no problems, no real skill needed and then they would be thrown into heroics where one person doing the wrong thing could mean a wipe all thanks to the forum people wanting more difficulty.

The gap between questing to 85 and dungeons at 85 was insanely huge. It has never felt right and still doesn't.

So if you are playing cataclysm, like it or not is irrelevant, and you ever felt like some things just did not seem right then perhaps this is one of those things you subconsciously noticed. While not game breaking the huge change in difficulty between leveling and entry levels dungeons is one of the miscues of cataclysm.

Monday Random Thoughts

2012-02-13T08:40:00.000-05:00

- I can say now that I have a new record to 85.

- 1 Day 20 hours.

- With heirlooms of course but even I would have not expected it to be that quick.

- I am thinking if I did it on rested the whole time I could even shave that down to 1 day 12 hours.

- Do you remember your first character?

- I do and I can assure you I was not even level 20 after 1 day and 12 hours played.

- I also took no professions on that character which helped.

- Professions slow down leveling.

- Also being the character is on a server where I have every profession maxed it was not something I considered important.

- I'll just power level 2 professions now.

- Did you know that even gathering professions slow down the leveling process?

- You would figure being they give experience they would speed it up.

- You would be wrong.

- If you want to speed level here are some tips.

- Quests only. Dungeons and battlegrounds are the plague and they will drag you down.

- Keep moving and stack quests when you can.

- Get the biggest bags possible as soon as possible.

- Never pass a vendor without emptying your bags.

- I've had a few people that said I should write a leveling guide.

- Maybe I will here when I am done with my cataclysm miscues series.

- I've still have a few miscues to touch on.

- With pandas coming soon and the ability to make them horde or alliance I see an opening.

- We can see some other middle of the road npc races being a choose your path type of thing for coming expansions.

- I am guessing this will be a way for them to do filler new content for new expansions now.

- They have so many neutral races they can add that we can choose our sides with.

- Enough for a dozen expansions to come.

- Too bad there will only be one more expansion after MoP.

- That is my guess, nothing to back it up.

- I am guessing after that they will introduce wow 2.0.

- Goblins should have been a neutral choose your direction faction.

- Even if they always seemed to favor the horde they do stay neutral for the most part.

- Why wouldn't they?

- Choose a side and make money from one side, stay neutral and make money from both sides.

- Doesn't even seem like there is a choice there for a goblin.

- We have instances with all night elves, all trolls, all humans, etc.

- I don't think I have ever seen anything with all tauren.

- Am I forgetting something or where is the tauren love?

- I am looking forward to the bugs in MoP.

- I think the game is seriously lacking in bugs.

- Bugs make for good bad guys.

- Thousands of bad 50s sci/fi movies with giant bugs can't be wrong.

- Admit it, you love those old black and white giant bug movies.

- Bugs are awesome baddies.

- If all else fails in MoP the fact we get bugs as baddies makes me happy.

- Even if we have to deal with an entire expansion of pandas.

- We already have bears in game and they so much cooler then any panda will ever be.

- Who doesn't love the bear dance.

- The bear dance is so awesome they made a mount so people that are not bears can do the bear dance.

- What more needs to be said?

- Every time I see a bear tanking I can't help but start singing sir mix-a-lots baby got back.

- I like big butts and I can not lie.

- How can any panda ever compare to the total awesomeness of the druid bear form.

- They can't.

- I wonder what the panda dances will be.

- Of all the things we can think about for the next expansion I am wondering about dances?

- I wonder if that is a sign I have faith the next expansion will be better then this one or it is a sign that I just do not take the game all that seriously.

- I think it is a little of both.

- I don't take the game that seriously and I don't expect much.

- Heck, after this expansion, I don't expect anything.

- There is one good thing about hitting rock bottom, there is no place to go but up.

- Cataclysm hit rock bottom.

- Funny part is, as bad as cataclysm was, it was still better than almost all of the other MMORPGs out there.

- Says something really said about the whole genre in general doesn't it?

- Cataclysm as its own was actually pretty good, but compared to itself in what came before it you see it for what it was, crap.

- Anyone new to wow might very well have loved it.

- Heck, can't blame them, they don't know any better because they do not have the previous expansions to compare it to.

- They do have other games to compare it to however and compared to other games, even a horrible wow expansion is better then anything most games have to offer.

- Still no love rocket but I did get my pink bird ground mount.

- I did not even try it on for size, I would be embarrassed to be seen on it.

- I would be kicked out of the hunters union.

- I would be laughed at by beasts I was trying to tame.

- My current pets would abandon me.

- Nope, I will never even try it on to see what it looks like.

- The risks are not worth it.

- Have a great day.

Cataclysm Miscues: V: Flow

2012-02-10T09:15:00.000-05:00

This is the fifth in a series of posts about the little things that cataclysm messed up on this expansion. These little things are things that mostly go unnoticed or are easily overlooked because they are usually not game breaking but they do leave you having that feeling of something being off.

Past posts:
Cataclysm Miscues: I: Healing & Mana Potions
Cataclysm Miscues: II: Hemet Nesingwary
Cataclysm Miscues: III: Targeting
Cataclysm Miscues: IV: Professions

Game Flow:

For an expansion that felt more like a patch (more on that in a later post) designed to tighten up the flow of the game to be easier to find things when leveling by connecting the zones from one to the next they seemed to have lost their focus when it got to the actual current level of the game and the actual new content.

Gone where the days of looking all over the place for where you need to go to quest next, the flow of the game was tightened up so well that you could pick a direction and move in it as a new player and never once run out of quests or get lost on where to go next.

Each area was kind enough to give you lead in quests to the next area which was so generously connected to the current area you where in. That was all the redesign of the old world, something take took a page out of BC and wrath design when recreating it. They noticed people liked connected areas. Cataclysm was five new zones. Cataclysm zones were not connected.

That is also where cataclysm lost the flow of the game and the new connected design it seemed to want to push. 1-60 was nicely connected now. 60-70 and 70-80 had always been nicely connected as they where self contained for the most part. What cataclysm bought us was a mishmash of zones added to the game and presented as the new areas.

One area was out in the ocean, one had been on our map seemingly forever, as was another but we just could not see it by name, another was in the center of the ocean but underground and last but not least we had a zone that no one had a clue was an entire zone, it was just a giant door to grim batol as far as we knew.

Not exactly the flow that this entire redesign had in mind for us. For all the effort put into the old world redesign to make sure that everything was connected they let the new areas ruin that new found feeling of an actual designed world.

We all just played along with it. Making SW or Org our home and hearthing back there to port wherever we needed to go to but it just never felt right. It never felt like it was a new area we where exploring. It had the feeling of us visiting new found area's, sure, but not exactly connected areas in terms of expansion.

The new zones don't feel like a collective group of zones that represent an expansion in a flow we are comfortable with. I've mentioned our comfort zones before and that is one of them.

There were two continents we used to bounce between while questing. Now that is no longer needed. Once you start quests on one continent you can continue until 60 on that continent if you wanted to. In fact, with the new design it is entirely possible to never even realize another continent is even there.

So with the old world being one questing flow, the outlands being one questing flow, and northrend being one questing flow we enter cataclysm and just feel as if we are all over the place. We know these areas are connected by events. We know these areas are connected by expansion. We just never get the feeling we had with old world leveling, outland leveling and northrend leveling. The feeling that these things actually belong together.

Each of these zones in and of themselves could have been added at any time in the game one at a time as new daily quest hub sort of places. On their own, they are all fine. It is calling them connected that just feels a bit off. It is making them leveling areas after making all other leveling areas connected that feels a bit off.

I don't mind the bouncing around. I don't mind that I finally got to see hyjal. I don't mind that I finally got to see uldum. I don't mind that I finally got to see what was behind the grim batol door in the wetlands. I am sure most people are happy with all of that. But it does feel kind of odd, as if something is off with it, that all of these long lost places are connected when they really aren't.

The next expansion will be on a new continent which will make sure we do not have that detached world feeling again but for cataclysm the world is all over the place.

So if you are playing cataclysm, like it or not is irrelevant, and you ever felt like some things just did not seem right then perhaps this is one of those things you subconsciously noticed. While not game breaking the lack of a constant or connected flow of the new areas is one of the miscues of cataclysm.

Cataclysm Miscues: IV: Professions

2012-02-09T11:22:00.000-05:00

This is the forth in a series of posts about the little things that cataclysm messed up on this expansion. These little things are things that mostly go unnoticed or are easily overlooked because they are usually not game breaking but they do leave you having that feeling of something being off.

Past posts:
Cataclysm Miscues: I: Healing & Mana Potions
Cataclysm Miscues: II: Hemet Nesingwary
Cataclysm Miscues: III: Targeting

Professionally Speaking:

Profession this expansion are filled with those little "what?" moments. The little things that I am talking about in this series of posts. All things that you might like to see fixed but it doesn't really stress on you. Many of them you might not have even noticed because there is so much going on otherwise. Me, I noticed and I went, what?

Inscription is the king of the what? this expansion. Every profession has something that is considered its main gig. Leatherworkers work with leather, blacksmiths work with metal, jewelcrafters work with gems, you get the idea. Scribes write things with ink. Things like glyphs and scrolls.

One problem with that this expansion is there are no glyphs and scrolls now count as an elixirs, what?, there really is not much of a reason for a scribe to actually inscribe anything.

By not even making some sort of vanity type glyphs to fill in something they can do being it is their main thing they left a profession that makes glyphs without their focus. What do you think would happen if a leatherworker had a whole expansion that never made any gear with leather? That is the same thing as a scribe going an entire expansion without making new glyphs. This leaves inscription as a great big what? this expansion.

Alchemy is another one of those professions that has left people wondering this whole expansion, what ever happened to their bonus. Every profession gets a bonus of some sort that equals 80 (or 81 in the case of JC or +120 in the case of mining) but that 80 has been elusively absent from this entire expansion. They can use their extra special flask for 80 at least but that does not work with the normal flask, so when raiding they get the normal +300 a flask gives and not +380 like they should, or do they? Some say it just a tooltip error and others swear it is not. Either way, it leaves people saying, what? If the bonus is not being given or if it is a tooltip error it has never been fixed this entire expansion.

Jewelcrafting is another profession that left us scratching our heads collectively with all the new numbers for gems thanks to blizzard changing the value of stamina when compared to other stats basically. The uncommon gems where a base 30 for all stats and 45 for stamina, the rare gems where a base 40 for all stats and 60 for stamina and the epic gems where a base 50 for all stats and 75 for stamina. With that information we can safely say that stamina has a bonus value is 1.5 times what all other stats are now. All stats are no longer equal. This alone is one of those things that could make you feel a little off. At least they kept it a steady 1.5 times across the board as proved by mining being +120 stamina and not +80.

To make matters worse when it comes to numbers, based on the way they released the epic gems this expansion the jewelcrafters join alchemy in the group of professions that got screwed out of their +80 bonus. When epic gems where added there were no new epic jewelcrafter gems added.

If you had been using 3 +67 agility gems, effectively giving you +27 x 3, which is 81 when based off rares, the effective bonus was now +17 x 3, which is 51 based off epics. Sorry jewelcrafters, the once best profession in the game for bonuses is now one of the lesser ones.

Not to get into if they should or shouldn't have added new JC patterns for the bonus, but I do understand how it was a damned if you do damned if you don't type of situation for them. If you do add them then all jewelcrafters, even if they do not raid, effectively get 3 epics for the cost of a chimera eye and if you don't you screw over the profession bonus for jewelcrafters.

The addition of epic gems and how they did it this expansion hurt jewelcrafters, miners, and alchemists. Another thing that people might find a little baffling. Jewelcrafters lost their bonus, miners now had an almost useless collection of pyrite ore and alchemists who routinely make a fortune transmuting epic gems lost their major money maker.

Another small change, which I did not mind but surely left some people wondering, is the crafting materials dropping from raid bosses only which was a change from what people had gotten used to toward the end of wrath.

Things such as living ember and essence of destruction should have also been purchasable from the valor vendor as well as drops from raid bosses. This is not a question of raiding, this is a question of professions.

Many people have profession mules, that all they do is learn their profession to make stuff for personal use or for sale. Many people have non raiding alts that end up with valor that has no use. From a profession standpoint having items like embers available for valor is a god send, it is a money maker. It is something missing this expansion that could make people scratch their head.

Having the crafting items more readily available would have helped tailors, blacksmiths, leatherworkers and basically anyone wanting to gear up an alt pretty quickly with BoEs. The change in attitude with how you attain these items effectively hurt those three professions.

What about poor herbalism which totally got left out this expansion on the +80 stat thing like its counterpart alchemy. Sure, lifeblood does give an on use 480 haste for 20 seconds but with a 2 minute cooldown you would need to remember to use it every two minutes exactly to get the same benifit of +80 that every other profession gets without having to click an ability constantly. All things being equal, this one doesn't always seem as if it is.

All professions could have entered a new phase in the game, one where it seems they want more people to have more access to gear with a little effort.

They could have easily added new personal trinkets to alchemy each raid patch and made the previous level one no longer BoP. They could have easily added new personal helms for engineers with each raid patch and made the previous level ones no longer BoP.

Is there a real reason that dreamcloth is still soulbound for tailors? It would be a major money maker for them if it where not and it would allow people to buy and sell them one at a time instead of as just the finished item. It doesn't make a great deal of sense for them to be soulbound and is one of those what? things.

How come the alchemy mount, which takes an alchemist a lot of time and effort to get the recipe for, is not BoP? If it is not BoP then why are the flying machine and flying carpet still BoP? Either sell all flying mounts or sell no flying mounts. The fact the alchemy mount is BoE still has me wondering what?.

It seems that the things they changed left people with the feeling that something was a little off and the things they could have changed that people would have loved they left alone. No matter what profession you are there is something about how professions where handled in this expansion that left you scratching your head and saying what?.

There are a lot of things in professions that moved us from our comfort zone, perhaps it is just change, and change is not always a bad thing but people like things they are comfortable with like I mentioned in a previous post. Personally, when a profession that is designed to make glyphs has no new glyphs to make for an entire expansion I begin to feel there is something off.

So if you are playing cataclysm, like it or not is irrelevant, and you ever felt like some things just did not seem right then perhaps this is one of those things you subconsciously noticed. While not game breaking (unless you are a hard core raider that wants your +80) all professions are some of the miscues of cataclysm.

Cataclysm Miscues: III: Targeting

2012-02-08T08:43:00.001-05:00

This is the third in a series of posts about the little things that cataclysm messed up on this expansion. These little things are things that mostly go unnoticed or are easily overlooked because they are usually not game breaking but they do leave you having that feeling of something being off.

Past posts:
Cataclysm Miscues: I: Healing & Mana Potions
Cataclysm Miscues: II: Hemet Nesingwary

What are you Targeting?

Tab targeting has never been an exact science in this game but like anything else you would consider something like that a work in progress. Cataclysm threw in the towel on the problem. It has totally given up on trying to fix the system, so much so that it has actually made it worse.

How many of us have been out questing or in a dungeon or raid and hit tab and wondered where the hell is the mob that I am targeting? It is on the floor below you of course, the floor above you of course or behind the wall of course. Why would the tab target system ever consider picking one of the three mobs that are directly in front of you. That would be stupid.

It seemed like the tab targeting system took a step backward this expansion and they have made no efforts to fix the error. Most people just consider it a general annoyance and let it slide, but it wasn't always like this. This was a change cataclysm brought us. I am willing to guess it was not intentional, but it is something that should have been addressed at some time during the expansion.

I can't tell you the number of times that I have been in a dungeon where there are three mobs attacking the tank and one mob CCed away from everyone and it always seems that someone breaks him out of CC and says, sorry, tab target fail.

You can't really blame them because it is not their fault. There are three mobs standing directly in front of them, three mobs in active battle, of course when you go around to tab target through them so you can multi dot them on your lock the tab target system is going to choose to go to the one mob 20 yards away, not in active battle, that just so happens to be in a frost trap not bothering anyone.

It is almost as if the targeting system will always choose the mob that is the absolute furthest away from you, even if that mob is behind a wall or CCed.

That is not the only targeting miscue this expansion when it comes to tab targeting. There are many, way to many. Magmaw, can't tab to him. Al'Akir, can't tab on him. Deathwings limbs, can't tab to them. There are these mountainous being and we can not hit tab to get to them?

Speaking of targeting on fights like Magmaw and Al'Akir, what is up with their hit boxes when it comes to targeting? Magmaw has been fixed but that was not until the content was old and dated. You would walk into the instance and target him from half a room away down a long staircase. Something doesn't seem right there.

The nightmare stories I have read on the forums of all the poor hunters that accidentally pulled Mags or Al because of their insanely huge targeting hit box. I am proud to say that I have never pulled either but that has nothing to do with not targeting them, I just learned to stand backwards during those fights at all times until the fight began because if you sneeze and accidentally click anywhere on the screen you will ninja pull.

The targeting dead people thing also annoyed me to a great extent, so much so I do not even know if the bug still exists because I created macros for all my most used abilities on my tanks with the [nodead] tag to stop it from happening. While I had noticed it happening on occasion on other characters it was when tanking I noticed it most.

Having a pack of mobs in your face you would usually just do your AoE tanking rotation and when the main target died you would automatically move to the next target when you hit devastate or mangle or what have you but not any more thanks to cataclysm. Now you stayed targeted on the dead mob meaning you either had to click on another mob manually or take the risk of hitting tab target and hoping that the system did not give you a mob that was not one of the four mobs beating on you. As mentioned, that seems to usually happen this expansion.

Another little targeting error that I can not confirm 100% if it was like this or not is tab targeting to a PvP flagged target when you are not flagged for PvP. I don't recall it ever being like this before but I could be mistaken. If you are out questing and tab targeting mobs and a PvP flagged player is in the area your tab target can choose them as a target. For people that want to just quest and avoid PvP this could mean you get flagged unwillingly if you're a key smasher like I am. Like I said, I don't recall it ever being like this before.

Speaking of targeting failures when it comes to PvP cataclysm reintroduced us to something that we have not seen since BC. AoE PvP targeting. If you are not flagged for PvP and do an AoE ability with a PvP flagged person in range it flags you. I could have sworn that was fixed back in BC.

It lead to a lot of griefing on my server. One horde guild had a raid of 20+ on the day the thrall quest line came out all flagged and killing any alliance character that was unlucky enough to do anything on the first platform phase that had an AoE ability thanks to this targeting fail.

While cataclysm did a lot of things in an effort to make the game better, little things, one little thing escaped their grasp and moved backwards, targeting.

I could say these things are game changing / breaking miscues but they really are not. Everything here can be dealt with easily enough. You can tab spam to get the right target. You can be careful so you do not hit things with huge hitboxes. You can click on the mobs that can not be tabbed to. You can make sure you are on an enemy mob and not an enemy player before doing an ability. You can make sure not to use AoE abilities when flagged people around.

Nothing here hindered your ability to play the game, but targeting and everything involved with it was a huge miscue in cataclysm, one that set the game back instead of forward like expansions should. Fixing all these errors would only be a quality of life thing but I would not mind at all and in truth, I am sure there are a great deal of players out there that never even noticed these errors or even if they did noticed, they never thought much about it, they just shrugged and moved on.

So if you are playing cataclysm, like it or not is irrelevant, and you ever felt like some things just did not seem right then perhaps this is one of those things you subconsciously noticed. While not game breaking the lack of a decent targeting systems is one of the miscues of cataclysm.

Cataclysm Miscues: II: Hemet Nesingwary

2012-02-07T08:28:00.001-05:00

This is the second in a series of posts about the little things that cataclysm messed up on this expansion. These little things are things that mostly go unnoticed or are easily overlooked because they are usually not game breaking but they do leave you having that feeling of something being off.

Past posts:
Cataclysm Miscues: I: Healing & Mana Potions

Where in the World is Hemet Nesingwary?

The Hemet Nesingwary series of quests is one of those things that go back as long as the history of the game itself. Hemet is a big game hunter, not just a big game hunter, the big game hunter.

You first meet Mr. Nesingwary in Stranglethorn Vale where he and his fellow hunters will send you on various quests to kill the local wildlife. You will hunt panthers, tigers and raptors on your way to hunting the ultimate big game.

We later run into the hunter extraordinaire in another realm where he has us helping him hunt down clefthoof, windroc and talbuk once again in an effort to hunting down the ultimate game.

When we run into Mr. Nesingway in northrend he seems to have found the most tropical of paradises in a snow filled world to stage his hunting adventures. He has us hunting down crocolisks, dreadsabers and rhino while we work our way to the ultimate hunt once more.

Every step we have taken in the game, with each advance we have, there are always new adventures to be had with the greatest hunter to ever live. He will always have some big game in his sights and he will always seek us out to assist him. He has become as much a part of our lives as anything else in game.

Every skinner in the game waits with baited breath for the next Nesingwary quest line because it is a paradise of leather and even once they are done with it there are always new people passing through doing the quest that are not skinners that will leave a trail of gold, I mean skins, behind for them to collect.

The Nesingwary quest lines are not exactly game breaking. Nothing in actual game play changes if it is there or not but it is something we have all become comfortable with and it is something that seems to be missing.

While we all like new things there is something to be said about things we are comfortable with, something we are familiar with. Just like you will always stop to watch your favorite show on television even if it is a repeat because you are comfortable with it. The nesingwary quest line is like that.

While talking to someone about this a while back he mentioned the reason he believes there is no Nesingwary quest line this expansion and it makes a great deal of sense. He said that cataclysm takes place in the old world basically, just in zones we have not visited yet, so being there is already a Nesingwary quest line in the old world there was no need to add a new one.

Well, I say, those areas are new to us, which means they are also new to him and if there is anyone that can find something that is worth killing it is our good friend Hemet Nesingwary.

Where would it have fit this expansion is another story. There is a fair amount of animal life in Uldum which would make it ideal. We have birds, bugs, snakes, crocks and wolves among other things. Twilight Highlands would have been another option but Deepholm and Hyjal seems sort of out of the question because of the lack on beasts in the former and the desire to help the beasts, not kill them, in the latter.

In the end I think it would have been Vash'ir that would be the best place for the master hunter to venture off to. Despite my own personal dislike for the zone as a whole it is does offer a few good reasons why it would have been the perfect place for Hemet to kill stuff.

Uldum, Twilight Highlands and Hyjal are all part of the current (old) world so excluding them makes sense based on there already being an old world version of the quests leaving only Deepholm and Vash'ir as options. Deepholm, as mentioned, doesn't have a great deal of beasts so Vash'ir it is.

Vash'ir would also offer us another type of big game hunting bought to us by Mr. Nesingwary. I can see a little humor involved with malfunctioning equipment and the land loving hunters getting used to underwater life. There is an ample supply of underwater wildlife for us to slay in our aim of the great hunt and it would be different from all other quest lines Hemet has offered us before as it was underwater, something Nesingwary had yet to do.

Either way and for whatever reason there is no great hunt for the big game this expansion. Hemet is nowhere to be found. The comfortable quest line we just do in passing each expansion was forgotten about.

So if you are playing cataclysm, like it or not is irrelevant, and you ever felt like some things just did not seem right then perhaps this is one of those things you subconsciously noticed. While not game breaking the lack of a big game hunt is one of the miscues of cataclysm.

Here is hoping that with MoP and new areas it will bring new wildlife as well that Nesingwary will need our help killing. You know he can't take that long off from the great hunt. Can he?

Monday Random Thoughts

2012-02-06T08:35:00.000-05:00

- I love holiday events.

- Having a few things going on at once, lunar, love and darkmoon, makes for a lot to do.

- It gives you a taste of what could be.

- I think the game needs more holiday type events and more limited time events.

- Darkmoon is the first week of each month. What is to stop them from making second week events, third week events.

- Even if my main finished all the holiday events over 3 years ago I still have fun with them on alts even if I do not intend to complete them all.

- Having a new mount for 270 love tokens does give me a reason to do it on my main again.

- Events give people a reason to log on. It makes the game have more of a do it now feeling..

- Didn't get Kingslayer? No rush, you can still get it now.

- Didn't get the new mount from the holiday event, wait until next year.

- That is what game events have over anything else. The get it now or wait a year.

- I think that is why they are fun, a sense of urgency if you want to finish it.

- Coupled with the fact that nothing gets removed. So you did not get the achievement this year, you can next year.

- So everyone can get everything all the time, which pleases most, but it is limited time thing, which makes it a time where you must play the game.

- Unless you are in a world/server first guild, nothing about raids is must play gaming.

- If I don't do it now, I can do it any time in the future, even when I over gear it, and still get all associated achievements.

- Not exactly a compelling reason to do it now, is it?

- Events are do it now gaming.

- With the new month upon us and the darkmoon faire coming back there is another round of me trying to figure out how to steal that darn pony.

- I've tried the mount and run technique. No dice.

- I've tried the standing at the exit port all innocent and clicking it when they least expected it. No dice.

- I've tried making a port and mounting and going through. No dice.

- I've tried having a warlock summon me while on it. No dice.

- I've tried someone using have group. No dice.

- If there is a way to steal that pony I am going to steal it.

- Big characters should not be allowed on them. Tauren, worgen, etc, darn they look horrible.

- They are for gnomes, goblins, and dwarves because they look awesome on it.

- In time they will make an in game one I am sure.

- Will probably be an addition to the mounts for sale at the faire.

- To keep people doing it they need to keep giving them a reason to do it.

- For someone like myself, who is already exalted, the mounts and pets are the only reason I am doing it.

- Once I get them I will never step foot in there again, except for the arena from time to time.

- That is why they added the new mount for this love is in the air event. To give people like me a reason to do it.

- Found myself a nice farming spot for lovely charms. Managed to get 238 (or 23.8 bracelets) in 1 hour worth of farming.

- Add that to having a treasure finding potion on and I got a bunch of volatiles, enough cloth to open my own clothing store, a few hands full of ore, an epic jewelcrafting recipe, 12 green items and assorted junk that when all sold made me 800+ gold.

- Not bad for an hour farming when making money was not my objective to begin with.

- When all was said and done if I sold everything I got we are talking about 4K gold made.

- Loved the results so much I went back and did a second hour.

- I now have enough cloth to cover the entire planet.

- Twice.

- More importantly, I have a ton of charms to either sell or do my dailies with meaning the new mount will be mine, no problem.

- I don't think I will ever ride it, pink is not really a hunter color, but a mount is a mount and I want it.

- I think the funniest thing would be seeing a big imposing tauren warrior in massive armor riding a pink tailstrider into battle.

- The boss will die of laughter, no need to tank him mr warrior, he died watching you ride up.

- The only thing I could actually see looking good on that mount is a female gnome with pink pigtails.

- I would be willing to sex change my gnomes just for that reason alone.

- Not sure why, but every time I see something silly I always think gnomes.

- Maybe because gnomes are silly by nature.

- Have a great day, good luck getting the rocket.

Cataclysm Miscues: I: Healing & Mana Potions

2012-02-04T11:01:00.002-05:00

This is the first in a series of posts about the little things that cataclysm messed up on this expansion. These little things are things that mostly go unnoticed or are easily overlooked because they are usually not game breaking but they do leave you having that feeling of something being off.

Healing and Mana Potions:

Throughout the history of warcraft humanoid mobs where known for three things. They drop currency, they drop cloth and they drop potions. For some reason they do not drop potions this expansion. A question I have never seen asked of any of the designers is why is that.

I am sure there must be some sort of design reasoning behind that but I am not exactly sure what it might be. Admittedly when raiding I would rather use my one potion per fight on the potion of Tol'Vir for the agility boost during the burn phase but that does not mean that there is no need to ever supply me with a flow of healing and mana potions otherwise.

Some might say that alchemists can make both potions but that still does not answer the question of why they do not fall from mobs. It also is (was) not a suitable replacement as the healing and mana potions required volatile life to make which with the shortage of that in comparison of herbs meant that it was not worth making. What would you rather have, a flask with an hour buff or a few healing and mana pots? Most people would take the flask in a heartbeat.

In a recent patch they corrected the volatile life error and healing and mana potions no longer require them to be made but that does not change the fact that we went through two tiers of raiding without any easy to come by pots. None dropping from mobs and none on the market really, unless someone wanted to waste volatiles or you where willing to pay an insane amount for a minor potion really.

You did not even get the by product potions on the auction house that leveling alchemists might make because leveling alchemy did not ever have a spot where making them would be cost effective to level, so none where made in the leveling process.

Let us not even delve into the area of the amount of mana or health these things gave us. While minimal they could have their place if they where more readily available.

In the history of the game potions could be found everywhere. You could get them off humanoid mobs, as mentioned, you could get them fishing oddly enough, you could get them from treasure chests, you could get them from the cases you got while fishing, you could get them off the occasional non humanoid mobs too as strange as that sounds and you could get them from a few vendors that kept them available at a limited stock where you just had to be lucky enough to be at the vendor when it was restocked. They were also easy to make with no expensive ingredients for alchemists and were often used as leveling potions which meant there was always a steady flow of them on the auction house.

So if you are playing cataclysm, like it or not is irrelevant, and you ever felt like some things just did not seem right then perhaps this is one of those things you subconsciously noticed. While not game breaking the lack of readily available potions is one of the miscues of cataclysm.

LFR Guilds? Cross Realm Guilds?

2012-02-03T10:00:00.001-05:00

There are already what we consider the standard guilds. The hard core raiding guild. The raiding guild. The PvP guild. The causal guild. The leveling guild. The future is looking as if we have have a few new styles of guilds popping up soon. One is already beginning to form and another I do not see far behind, we are just waiting for the technology to catch up.

Meet the new guilds.

Looking for Raid Guild:

These are already starting to make an appearance. Guilds whos main focus is doing the looking for raid as a group on Tuesdays. Just like the hardcore guilds might do progression (or farm) on the reset, the LFR guilds do the LFR as a group on Tuesdays. Of course their main focus is their guild so everyone rolls need on everything and they all share it between themselves to get every one geared as efficiently as possible.

The idea for a looking for raid guild is a completely different type of play. It is to get as many people into a raid that has the "real" raid feelings while still being of the LFR difficulty level.

It is sort of like a leveling guild but for raiding. They would be leveling their raiding skills. They will do the real raid on Wednesdays and Thursdays but their focus is getting everyone geared through the raid finder and teaching people how to raid. They use vent, cauldrons of battle, food, and strategy. They actively use the LFR for its true intended purpose, a place to gear up, learn and have fun.

If the looking for raid ever comes out with a 10 man version I can tell you to keep an eye out for these types of guilds as more will begin to pop up. The looking for raid guild is the perfect step between the leveling guild and the casual raiding guild. It would give a guild the freedom to run the LFR or the real raid depending on who shows up.

It is quite possible you can see the looking for raid guilds also crossing paths with the raiding guild or even the hard core raiding guild when content is brand spanking new just to gear people up for the real raid a little faster. It seems like the looking for raid guild is something we will be seeing more of in the near future and seeing a hell of a lot more of should they ever make a 10 man version, like they should.

While many of those other types of guilds might do the looking for raid as a group you will be able to tell the difference between them by the fact the LFR guilds main focus is to make sure they do the LFR each week as early after the reset as they can.

Cross Realm Guild:

There are none of these yet and there will be none of these in the near future, but there could very well be some in the coming years if the feature is added and mark my words, it will be added. With the advent of cross realm raiding it is only a matter of time before cross realm guilds get added to the game.

Instead of having to pick and choose people from your real id friends list and assemble a group you will be part of a cross realm guild with them and others. This will make recruiting people for raiding guilds a million times easier. Now when you post you are looking for a healer on blackwater for your raid team you do not need to get people on blackwater or people willing to server transfer, you just need to get people willing to share their real id.

To make it so guild can still get guild achievements there will have to be a way to have people on different servers in the same guild as you so cross realm guilds can't really be that far behind. Can they?

The whole focus of guilds seems to be changing all the time as the face of the game chances. No guilds are just one thing any more, except for maybe leveling guilds but even they have some people that stay in them forever. Most guilds seem to be all encompassing now.

The cross realm guild however will be bound to what is currently considered high end content because they are on different servers. They will not run into each other in stormwind, they will not be able to help each other with quests or running alts through dungeons and things like that. They will be for raiding / battlegrounds / arena / dungeons, basically anything instanced. Does this mean that this will really be the future of hard core raiding? Get the best players from all over the world in one guild while being on different servers? This will change the face of world first forever if cross realm guilds come to be.

These are two types of guilds I can see popping up and in a way I think both would be really good for the game.

My Hunter PvP thoughts.

2012-02-02T11:38:00.000-05:00

I've still yet to seriously PvP on my hunter this expansion. While I am on a 2s, 3s and 5s team I've only actively went into 5s since the change to focus and that was as a joke with my Play Naked arena team.

I hear people complaining about the state of hunter PvP on the forums and can't help but think that these people don't seem to realize how good hunters really have it. Hunters in PvP can very well be over powered if they are played correctly but that is where the issue is.

Hunters have an amazingly high skill cap and not many people are like I am and willing to admit it is a skill issue. Remember one of my mantras, everyone thinks they are good. This means hunters do not want to admit that they are doing badly at PvP because of their skill, they would rather place the blame on balance.

Maybe they are right in a way. Some classes can just go in there and slap their keyboard in some random way and destroy anyone that comes near them while others require attention, positioning, planning, and an extremely high level of skill. So I guess they are right. In that case, the classes are not exactly balanced.

If all classes where played out to their maximum potential then you would see a difference. Hunters would always be in the top 10%, or even higher, of players because of the hunter toolbox. There is only one thing hunters are really missing and that is a dependable heal. If they where given that, then without a doubt, hunters would be the #1 class in the game when it comes to PvP.

So maybe the issue we need to look deeper into is how hunters can be balanced, on a skill needed to play level. I think giving them a heal would really help the lesser players, like myself and what seems to be 98% of the hunter PvP player base. The one true issue with a solution like that is the top players in the game, the hunters that actively know how to use their amazingly huge toolbox to its fullest, would become hugely over powered.

So adding to hunters by giving them a heal or a few more survivability skills is not really the answer. I think the answer for making hunter PvP easier for people that do not want to learn all the ins and outs of the absolute hardest class in the game to play at top level in PvP is the removal of abilities and boosting others we already have.

The reason hunters do not appear to be on the same level as other classes for the average player is two fold. One is people like myself, the kill first and ask questions later type. I liked mana for PvP. It gave me amazing burst and there was no class in the game that could hold a candle to that burst. When hunters moved to focus they where screwed, which is why they added fox. It does help a lot.

The second reason hunters do not feel as capable in PvP is because our approach changed. We used to be killing machines that where back up control people and now we are more of a control class. This is my own personal issue. I am not used to controlling people. I am used to getting at distance and killing anyone before they can get to me and if they do manage to get to me I can use my amazingly huge toolbox to regain my distance and continue my killing spree. Being I can not do that any more and I need to play the control game which has changed the entire class for me and many others.

It seems this is the main reason many hunters are having issues with PvP. They have not embraced the new world we live in. The world with focus and using our entire toolbox. While leveling or doing anything else that is not PvP based a hunter will rarely if ever have the need for any of his toolboxes toys to come out.

Sure, more learned hunters like myself enjoy seeing I can now learn concussive shot when leveling but to most it seems like a wasted ability, just as it did to me the first time I ever saw it, before I learned. I use things like that, traps, etc while leveling. It is part of the reason hunters are the best levelers, they can move non stop and handle many different tasks at once but most hunters never learn that. They send in their pet and burn down the mobs. Simple as that. So when they get to the world of PvP they treat those battles they same as they do everything else and the problems start.

The next generation of hunters, the ones leveled in cataclysm, the ones that only know about focus, those are the ones that are going to be just fine. They will not go into PvP with a misconception of who we are and what we do as hunters. It is us, the mana users of years past, that are having the problems. Lets be honest, it is not the class that is the problem, it is the player that is the problem.

Once you learn to adjust your play style you will be better off in PvP. You have to stop thinking like a hunter and start thinking like a ranged rogue because that is about as perfect an analogy as you can get to explain what we are now. A rogue lives on controlling others and now a hunter does too.

Hunters are in a very good place when it comes to PvP, we, the players, just need to get better at it.

As someone on my server said when a person said he had an 1800 arena rating and people started saying that it was nothing to be proud of, that 1800 was easy to get, and someone noticed he was a hunter and pointed it out, he said, a hunter at 1800 is like anyone else at 2800, congrats on the great work. The rest of trade started saying the same thing, they were all impressed after it became known the person was a hunter. Trade supporting a persons accomplishments? Unheard of. They must really have been impressed.

People know hunters are the hardest class in the game to play in PvP. That is also why they know that 90% of the time when you run into one in a PvP environment you excitedly yell, free kill. However, when played correctly, a hunter is nearly unbeatable.

So what do I look forward to in the mists expansion, the one that is supposed to be focused on PvP?

I look forward to them making my hunter less reliant on control and giving me back my old life as a killing machine. Lets face it, I am a hunter, that is my job. Tell me what to kill and I will make sure it dies as fast as humanly possible. Leave the control to the sneaky guys in leather that like to hide in the shadows.

Even if I say hunters are fine in PvP, because they are, I think I have to agree with the majority. In the end hunters are not balanced in the only way that seems to matter. They are so much more complicated to play at the top level than any other class in the game. That is the balance they need to addressed. Make them easier to PvP with, or at the very least, put them on par with the other classes when it comes to skill level required to be top of the heap.

That is the balance people should be complaining about if they want to complain. Do not complain about our abilities because our abilities rock. We have the best toolbox in the game, we just don't know how to use it correctly.

Make LFR Actually Train People.

2012-02-01T13:18:00.001-05:00

I like the idea of LFR as a training tool. Too bad it does not have a 10 man version because I think that would be an amazing tool for training new guild members and new raiders. A super water downed version just to give them an idea so when you explain how the real fight works they have a frame of reference.

With that said, what can Blizzard do to assist in the effort of making LFR a training tool?

We can't exactly go so far as to checking peoples bags to see if they have at least 1 stack of food appropriate for their role can we?

"You do not have any buff food appropriate for the role you have selected"

We can't exactly go so far as to checking peoples bags to see if they have at least 2 flasks appropriate for their role can we?

"You do not have any flasks appropriate for the role you have selected"

We can't exactly go through and check to make sure they have all their gear enchanted can we?

"You are missing four (4) enchantments on your gear in the following areas: Chest, shoulders, head, and weapon."

We can't exactly check to make sure that all their enchants are appropriate for the role can we?

"You are using inappropriate enchants for your role on one (1) item: Chest"

We can't exactly go and check that people are using their profession bonuses appropriate for their role can we?

"You are missing one blacksmith socket on your gloves."

We can't exactly check their gear to make sure they are using appropriate gear for their role can we?

"You currently have three items itemized with agility when agility does nothing for your spec"

We can't exactly check their gear to make sure they are using appropriate gear for the content can we?

"You are currently wearing three pieces of gear that are not itemized for PvE content in the following slots: Head, Shoulder and Trinket."

We can't exactly check their gear to make sure it is gemmed for their role can we?

"You are currently missing gems in two slots on your: Waist"

We can't exactly check their gear to make sure it is gemmed appropriately for their role can we?

"You are currently using gems that are not appropriate for your role."

Actually, the game can do all of that if it wanted to. They just choose not to. There are a lot of things that the game can not control no matter how hard it tries. You can not control peoples ability or intelligence for that matter. It can not control how well someone plays but it sure as hell can control how people learn.

Adding some or all the the above checks to the LFR might actually help people that do not know any better to learn. It could be done heavy handed, with not allowing people to even queue if they fail one of those checks or it could do it passively by just giving them a popup they need to press okay to continue with, so that way you know they at least saw there was a popup even if they did not read it or understand it.

For the people that actually want to try this could be a very helpful thing in their efforts to learn. For the people that actually want to raid this will show them some of the things that actual raiding guilds will look for. For even experienced raiders it could point out something people might have missed. I know I go a new piece of gear and forgot to enchant it before going into a new raid before, I am sure we all have had that happen. So these checks would actually be a good thing for anyone at any level of play.

I am not advocating that people should be excluded from being in the LFR system if they fail any of these checks but I would like to see the LFR being used as a tool that teaches people to get better. Sadly at the moment it seems to be doing the exact opposite. It is teaching people to be bad which is not a good thing as I see it.

So maybe it might be an idea for blizzard to add in the next round of LFR content that should come packed with MoP. Use the LFR to teach people. It would be better for everyone involved.

The Five Stages of Mechanics

2012-02-01T09:30:00.000-05:00

Stage 1: Denial:

I can stand in the fire, it won't really hurt.
Why can't the healer just heal me through it?
I am sure there has to be a way we can ignore this mechanic.