- I took some time off from the end game grind for some leveling this weekend.
- I tired to get the last secrets on my priest at the beginning of the week and ran everything they drop from and only managed to get 2.
- At least it is more than 1 or 0.
- 1 and 0 is what I had the previous two weeks.
- So 3 in 3 week.
- 5 people in my guild have started, and completed, the secrets part of the quest in those three weeks.
- And people wonder why I am always bitching about the random number generator.
- It deserves to be bitched about.
- But after another week of hell when it comes to drop rates I figured I would take a week off from working on progressing alts.
- My main is valor capped and my alts are at various stages of the quest line and none are having any luck with drops.
- Three coins each week on weapons bosses, and we down at least three of those a week, and no weapon for me still.
- Sucks, you know it does right?
- I healed the first few bosses as it was needed and guess what dropped off the second boss?
- The weapon for my hunter.
- I am at a 100% drop rate for my weapon off bosses when I am tanking for healing one of them.
- I am at a 0% drop rate and 0% coin rate on them when I am on my hunter.
- So I needed a break.
- I needed a break, something different for the weekend.
- Wouldn't you agree?
- Time to head back to the only part of the game that actually feels rewarding, leveling a new character.
- When you do stuff, you level.
- You see your effort rewarded.
- You see a bar telling you how far away from that reward you are.
- You know you are actually advancing.
- End game does not offer that reward.
- You can do everything every week and get nothing.
- One priest needed 6 secrets 3 weeks ago, I figured I would finish it off, still have not finished it.
- Another priest needed 1 sigil of power, just 1 sigil of power.
- I ran everything that can drop it for 2 weeks and did not get it.
- That is 24 bosses each week for 2 weeks, for one sigil, and nothing.
- For those people that do not grasp the magnitude of how bad it is I hope you never go 48 bosses without a quest item drop.
- At least if I level a new priest I know in 10,800 experience I get a level.
- At least if I level a new priest I know as soon as I collect 12 bear meat I get a new wand.
- At least I see my effort rewarded.
- Leveling is just so much more exciting than end game in terms of effort and reward.
- Questing = Small effort, seemingly powerful reward.
- Max level = Massive effort, so little reward and that little reward is left up to luck.
- We need a middle ground.
- You decide which one is better when you are in the mood to play and want to feel like you are getting somewhere.
- Killing 24 bosses and not getting one sigil is basically a epic feeling of wasting my time.
- All that work for no reward.
- Now if it were a quest that said, kill 24 bosses and I will give you this sigil, it would have been worth it.
- The game needs to make people feel like they are being rewarded, even if it is with something that they do not need.
- I would rather get a new pair of gloves that I do not need and I will vendor when I finish the quest then let random number generator decide if I was going to get a reward at all for doing it.
- End game has completely lost its reward.
- As least for people with bad luck it has.
- But the gearing up phase, when you first hit 90.
- Now that I love.
- Even more so with the island.
- It feels as if you are building up to take on the world.
- It feels as if you are moving forward.
- At least until you hit the brick wall of random to progress you any further.
- So I started a new character this weekend.
- I figured I would play a little with the actual feeling of being rewarded after another week of the LFR fucking me over with drops.
- Guess what level I made it to?
- I am not telling, not even telling the class.
- But I will say I made it far, really far.
- Feel free to leave your guess as to level and class if you feel so inclined.
- Power leveling is rewarding, seeing how far you can level over a weekend.
- It feels like an accomplishment to look back on your weekend and see progress was made.
- Instead of looking and saying, I killed 24 bosses and got no sigils I can say, look at all that work and I am now 30 or 40 or 50 or higher.
- Leveling has its bad points too, do not get me wrong.
- Like at end game in the LFR the bad runs are more about bad people than it is bad play.
- Bad play can be over come with a decent group of people, trust me, I've seen it.
- Most of the leveling issues I could complain about come down to bad people.
- Like having a quest to kill some mobs and someone at 90 is working on their goblin rep and grinding them so there are none for me to kill because they one shot the entire zone basically.
- When I am out doing things like that if I see a quester I stop, let them do their quest, then go about what I am doing.
- Perhaps that is because I am not a world class asshole like it seems everyone else in the game is.
- I am just a world class grump.
- I did have a lot of fun spending the weekend leveling however.
- Still not fond of the busier world and waiting for respawns, but for all the bad there is with more people out in the world there is some good.
- I can not believe the number of people that will buff you, at random.
- I've had people riding past me dismount, throw a buff on me, and then mount back up and continue along.
- Something so little, but it made me feel good.
- I was in one cave killing mobs that were part of a quest and there was a rogue there with me.
- We took turns on the mobs.
- I would tag one, he would help me down it, then he would tag one and I would help him down it.
- Sure, we could have grouped but this seems so much more human, if you will.
- It shows something about someone when they are willing to work with you.
- Anyone can group for their own advantage, but it takes a good person to work as a team when you are not in a group.
- I ran into this a few times.
- I threw a bandage on someone that was fighting that looked like they needed it, just for fun.
- They thanked me by bandaging me up when it was over even if I did not need it.
- He laughed, I laughed, we moved on.
- It seems like for every bad story of bad people you run into there is a story of good ones you run into as well.
- This is the first character in forever that I decided not to level fishing as I was questing.
- I am leveling my other professions for the most part however.
- When it comes to fishing I usually will stop at every pool as I go along, only fishing from pools.
- It does slow me down, but I enjoy doing it.
- It is also good for keeping cooking up as well as leveling fishing.
- But now with pandaria you can level cooking from one to current, so it is not a big deal any longer.
- And if you go to the catch of the day area, you can level fishing from 1 to current always catching something because you will always have a wealth of pools.
- And if you choose a good catch of the day to do it on you can actually make a mini fortune on it too.
- I am still selling paddlefish (if that is the name, can't recall at the moment) for 300 gold a stack.
- You will easily have many stacks while leveling fishing there.
- So make a few grand, level a profession, and pass the time while waiting in queue when end game comes.
- Or just go and start another new character, because leveling is so much more rewarding.
- Anything is more rewarding when compared to waiting for the LFR forever, getting in and getting a bad group, and then getting nothing you need from it.
- It is lose (for waiting), lose (for bad people), lose (for bad players), lose (for wasting gold on repairs), lose (for not getting gear), and lose (for not getting quest items).
- Where is there any "win" in the LFR, where is your sense of moving forward?
- At least with leveling you see yourself progress toward your goal.
- At least with leveling you control your progress toward that goal.
- Makes me wonder, should leveling be longer like it used to be?
- I used to say yes, but I think I am changing my mind.
- As the times change the game must change with it.
- With level 100 coming soon and the imposing task that seems like to someone that has never played maybe they need to do a level squish too.
- Because 100 just seems, well, a long way away.
- Even if you can make it to 80 in one weekend now.
- Okay, maybe most won't make it to 80 in one weekend.
- But you get the idea.
- And just to mention, it can be done.
- Have a great day.
Monday, November 18, 2013
Friday, November 15, 2013
3 Reasons Mythic 20 Man Raiding is the Real Deal.
When warlords comes out heroic raiding with no longer be 10 or 25 man, it will be 20 and it will be called mythic. One single format instead of two. For the 10 man heroic guild they face an uphill battle to get more members and for the 25 man heroic guild they face the unenviable task of deciding which 5 excellent players you will have to leave on the bench and hope you do not lose.
I would be willing to guess that adding 10 quality players that fit with your team will be harder for the majority of 10 man guilds moving onward than choosing which 5 to lose will be for a 25 man team. Just expansion turn over alone will likely settle which 5 will not be coming for a fair but of the 25 man guilds as 5 people will just disappear but for a 10 man there will not be 10 people just magically appearing to fill their needs. But it will still be something both teams need to look forward on and start making some hard decisions.
This change has made for a hot bed of conversation on the forums including many people making threads how to "fix" mythic. As if something someone knows absolutely nothing about could be considered broken. I understand their issues but you can not say something is broken without first using it. Just my opinion of course for whatever little it is worth.
I know my guild is one of those 10 man guilds that is in a fair position if we can keep everyone going into warlords. As we have a fledgling 25 man that is not very good and a few 10 man teams, we have a wealth of players to choose from, even if our over all ability is not exactly heroic level. But most guilds small and large and worried about mythic. Even mine and the seemingly good position we are in.
I will make no guaranteed prediction on if this will succeed or not except to say I think it will, in time. I will however share three reasons I think that moving to a single raid size of 20 for heroic raiding is the real deal and a great change for the heroic raiding scene.
1) 10 vs 25:
The 10 vs 25 argument is as old as the day you could start doing raids in 2 different sizes in wrath. Even when 10s offered lesser gear and were considered lesser by everyone the merits and / or difficulties of 10 vs 25 have always been a hot topic.
When the raids were equalized in cataclysm in terms of gear the hot topic got even hotter. If you wanted to start a "fight" in any thread about raiding all you ever needed to do is add one small line such as "it was in 10 man so it doesn't count" or "25s are easier because there is less individual responsibility". No matter what side you took you could be sure that any such comment calling the other side easier would avalanche into a name calling flame fest in a matter of no time.
I like to argue the points myself because I find it fun. I could present you with a dozen facts that prove 10s are harder and another dozens facts that prove 25s are harder. In the end there is no real answer if you just want to throw around the facts. There is proof that you could read to mean either.
Do you want to know which is harder? I'll give you a hint. The hardest one is the one you do first. I do 10s first so I blow through 25s and they seem like a joke. If you did 25s first you would blow through 10s like they are a joke. So there you go, the last fact of 10 vs 25 there will ever be. Whichever you learn the fight on will be harder because that is where you do all your wiping, the other one you already know when you do it and if everyone else knows it like you do, it will be easy.
Lets forget the opinions of it, lets look at what those opinions do. They divide the community. This community is in a bad place to begin with, the last thing it needs is more dotted lines to separate us. Every time a 10 vs 25 thread starts it becomes people insulting others for their preferred mode of progression on heroic content. One size now fits all. A mythic raider will be a mythic raider. They will not be the "lowly 10 man raider" or the "easy mode 25 man raider". They will just be the mythic raider.
This is something that can only be a good step forward for the community. Something that brings us together, not drags us apart.
No more will we need 10 man and 25 man guides, we will just need mythic guides. There will no longer be a need for knowing what works in one format and what does in another. There will be no more "oh crap I forgot there are 2 adds in 25 man" moments like the first time we did sha in 25. Sorry guys.
The top tier will be one single tier where everyone is playing on equal footing and the community can work together to conquer it instead of against each other saying one is better than the other.
2) Ease of Entry:
While I can not comment on the difficulty of mythic right now, no one really can, I can tell you that making the step up to mythic raiding will be a lot easier now. How can I make such a bold statement you might ask and because this is my blog I might just tell you. Okay, not might, I will.
Even if you are a strict 10 man guild right now you most likely have a few back ups sitting around. I know we have 1 spare tank waiting to fill in and 1 spare healer waiting to fill in as well as three capable damage dealers. That means my main 10 man team is really a 15 man team.
While right now that means nothing except I need to juggle people around it means a lot come warlords. A hell of a lot. Because my main 10 man team is already 15 strong. 15 people that have been working together for a while. And guess what, we can raid heroic (old normal) together instead of making 5 people rotate. Being heroic (old normal) is going to be using the new flexible technology we can effectively move into it with 15 capable people.
In doing that we can also grow, we can test out 10 new people each week while clearing heroic (old normal). So we can build up to our mythic team without having to rotate anyone in and out. This means all 15 get a chance at gear each week instead of trying to gear up 15 people 10 at a time.
The entry level to mythic will be the best it has ever been to enter top tier raiding before. I am not talking about difficulty here, I am talking about building the team to do it.
Being heroic and mythic will be on separate lock outs (I believe) that means you can work on your mythic progress with those people you do have sitting on the side lines still getting a heroic clear each week, with the mains and not trying to have to do alt runs or with lesser skilled fill ins.
As it stands now, when my 10 man is doing heroics that means they can not help in the 25 that is doing normals. When those main 10 people from the heroic team are not in the 25, the 25 suffers a great deal. Just as an idea, the one week the mains from the 10 all sat out, the 25 man could only get 2 bosses down. Yeah, ouch. You can say that again.
The fact you can run heroic and mythic side by side and heroic will be using the flex mode you can test new players out, help other players get gear, and keep those that are sitting out of the mythic that week still feel as if they are part of the bigger picture instead of being stuck in a group that will only get 2 bosses down because it is their week to ride the bench.
For guilds like mine, the casual guild of average ability, this is a huge bonus. More so than it will be to the guilds that are normally pressing heroic (soon to be mythic). When the time does come for us to move to mythic we will have been dragging more and more people with us in heroic and testing them out to see who can come because they are ready for it.
Recruiting is going to even easier too. When I want to recruit and see how someone does I have to ask someone to sit out or ask them to come to the 25 or one of the other 10s. But if I want to see them while getting a lot of bosses down to see a full range of their ability, one of the main team need to sit out. No one likes riding the bench. But with the flex heroic I can ask them to sit if we are full, as they will be raiding the mythic the next day, and they will not mind at all because they are not missing anything. I can test 2, 5, maybe even 10 players at the same time. I can't do that now. I will not need to bring them to mythic to test them out. I can bring them on heroic, and still be able to raid mythic with them later that week if I do want them along. How is that for being great for recruitment? Tell someone impress me tonight and we might have a spot for you in mythic tomorrow. Oh yeah.
I can use heroic flex to build my mythic team, whereas now, I need to hope and pray that people are willing to sit on the bench waiting. I need to hope and pray that when I ask someone to sit to squeeze in another person they do not get upset. I have to hope and pray that I do not lose my best people because they want to move to a 25 heroic team instead of being on a 10 heroic one. I have to hope and pray that they will not leave for a place where they can raid every week and not be asked to rotate.
Flex heroic leading into mythic just makes things so much easier to build up a team and so much easier to keep a team happy. The entry level to mythic, as far as building the team, will be easier than it has ever been.
3) Difficulty of Content:
Like anything else pertaining to the new mythic raiding I can not comment on the actual content, but I can comment on the "theory" of what it can become. Having a single raid size means a lot for development in terms of time spent and involvement as well as difficulty.
Having to only design one tier of the absolute top level of raiding will be a lot quicker than having to design it for two different raid sizes. It is no secret that balancing the top end bosses is a task and a half and it takes a great deal of time to find those correct numbers where something is not too easy, or not as hard as they intended it to be. Having to do that twice meant it took twice as long. Unless you really think they have 2 different teams working on 10 and 25. Just no.
When they will only need to work on balancing one size of the top tier of raiding it will mean that they will finish with it sooner than they normally do. The sooner they finish the sooner they can start on the next tier of raiding. You see where this is going right?
Then we have to look at the raid itself and the difficulty of it. Like I said, I can not comment on the difficulty as I do not know, but I can comment on the theory of it. As one of the developers said at blizzcon, paraphrasing of course, one size will allow them to do things they could have never done before.
What exactly did he mean by that? I will gladly tell you.
There were some mechanics that would work fine in 25 man that could not be tuned down to work in 10 man. It would either end up too easy or too hard, so the idea was dropped. With one size this means those such things would now be capable of being included. It works both ways as well. Some things would have been perfect for a smaller group but they could not figure out a way to make it for a larger one.
Then there are little things like I have heard others mention. A fight like the four horseman which needed four tanks is a lot easier to design for a group that you could see 4 tanks fitting in. It would allow for more fights of the sort. Or how about something more recent for an example, if any of you raid both 10 and 25 like I do.
Dark shaman. 25 man, easy as cake, the fight is a push over because we use three tanks. In 10 man, this week was the first time we ever downed it without at least 1 death because it is just chaotic with 2 tanks. The fight was designed for 25 man, it is easy on 25 man. It did not translate well to 10 man. In my humble opinion, dark shaman is the hardest fight in all of SoO for a 10 man team.
Being they will not be limited by concepts they can make work in 2 formats and can instead concentrate on the one size fits all raid that is mythic 20 and because of that we will see a plethora of new types of mechanics and fights. Just a guess, but I believe this is a pretty solid guess, we are going to see stuff at the mythic level that we would have never seen in a 10 man or a 25 man. Developing for one size only opens the doors to so many more things that can be done. Open doors are a good thing, don't you think. Or as Betty from Dead Like Me said, "an open door is an invitation." Don't know why I thought of that quote, just happened to pop into my head.
But speaking of invitations, the one size fits all mythic option in an invitation to make the top tier of raiding more difficult. How so you might ask? Heroic being flex. Yes, the heroic (old normal) being flex mode will open the doors to the ability to make mythic harder for those that really seek the challenge.
Being heroic will use the flex technology that means you can run it a second time and just not get loot. So this will allow you to run it multiple times to find new players that are better that can join your mythic team. By using your mains that can blow through normal fast and you can kill two birds with one stone. Even if you had done heroic already that week you can bring some trials in to test them out and run it with them. You can see how they do and funnel them all the gear at the same time so they can catch up, if need be. Not to mention you get to see how they can interact and work with the actual main raid team on their real characters, not alts.
Being you can do things like that, the bar of entry into mythic, difficulty wise, can be raised to a higher point, perhaps even a point no one has ever seen before. If you get stuck on a boss you can go back and do it in heroic (old normal) over and over again. You can do a heroic run for more gear, to test some players, to get some practice. You can now go clear heroic (old normal) and not have to wait until next week to continue your mythic (old heroic) progression. This can only mean that mythic actually HAS to be harder because there are so many other things you can do.
So while for someone like me that never has finished a tier where I killed the last boss on heroic, this might be a bad thing because it will make even the first boss harder, for those that seek the ultimate gaming challenge it allows the designers to come ever so closer to actually giving it to them. How can anyone see that as a bad thing? I can't, and if anything I am one of the people that would be hurt by it. So if I do not see it as a bad thing, I don't think it is. Bring on the real hard bosses. It will be great for the game and mythic 20 can make that possible.
I would be willing to guess that adding 10 quality players that fit with your team will be harder for the majority of 10 man guilds moving onward than choosing which 5 to lose will be for a 25 man team. Just expansion turn over alone will likely settle which 5 will not be coming for a fair but of the 25 man guilds as 5 people will just disappear but for a 10 man there will not be 10 people just magically appearing to fill their needs. But it will still be something both teams need to look forward on and start making some hard decisions.
This change has made for a hot bed of conversation on the forums including many people making threads how to "fix" mythic. As if something someone knows absolutely nothing about could be considered broken. I understand their issues but you can not say something is broken without first using it. Just my opinion of course for whatever little it is worth.
I know my guild is one of those 10 man guilds that is in a fair position if we can keep everyone going into warlords. As we have a fledgling 25 man that is not very good and a few 10 man teams, we have a wealth of players to choose from, even if our over all ability is not exactly heroic level. But most guilds small and large and worried about mythic. Even mine and the seemingly good position we are in.
I will make no guaranteed prediction on if this will succeed or not except to say I think it will, in time. I will however share three reasons I think that moving to a single raid size of 20 for heroic raiding is the real deal and a great change for the heroic raiding scene.
1) 10 vs 25:
The 10 vs 25 argument is as old as the day you could start doing raids in 2 different sizes in wrath. Even when 10s offered lesser gear and were considered lesser by everyone the merits and / or difficulties of 10 vs 25 have always been a hot topic.
When the raids were equalized in cataclysm in terms of gear the hot topic got even hotter. If you wanted to start a "fight" in any thread about raiding all you ever needed to do is add one small line such as "it was in 10 man so it doesn't count" or "25s are easier because there is less individual responsibility". No matter what side you took you could be sure that any such comment calling the other side easier would avalanche into a name calling flame fest in a matter of no time.
I like to argue the points myself because I find it fun. I could present you with a dozen facts that prove 10s are harder and another dozens facts that prove 25s are harder. In the end there is no real answer if you just want to throw around the facts. There is proof that you could read to mean either.
Do you want to know which is harder? I'll give you a hint. The hardest one is the one you do first. I do 10s first so I blow through 25s and they seem like a joke. If you did 25s first you would blow through 10s like they are a joke. So there you go, the last fact of 10 vs 25 there will ever be. Whichever you learn the fight on will be harder because that is where you do all your wiping, the other one you already know when you do it and if everyone else knows it like you do, it will be easy.
Lets forget the opinions of it, lets look at what those opinions do. They divide the community. This community is in a bad place to begin with, the last thing it needs is more dotted lines to separate us. Every time a 10 vs 25 thread starts it becomes people insulting others for their preferred mode of progression on heroic content. One size now fits all. A mythic raider will be a mythic raider. They will not be the "lowly 10 man raider" or the "easy mode 25 man raider". They will just be the mythic raider.
This is something that can only be a good step forward for the community. Something that brings us together, not drags us apart.
No more will we need 10 man and 25 man guides, we will just need mythic guides. There will no longer be a need for knowing what works in one format and what does in another. There will be no more "oh crap I forgot there are 2 adds in 25 man" moments like the first time we did sha in 25. Sorry guys.
The top tier will be one single tier where everyone is playing on equal footing and the community can work together to conquer it instead of against each other saying one is better than the other.
2) Ease of Entry:
While I can not comment on the difficulty of mythic right now, no one really can, I can tell you that making the step up to mythic raiding will be a lot easier now. How can I make such a bold statement you might ask and because this is my blog I might just tell you. Okay, not might, I will.
Even if you are a strict 10 man guild right now you most likely have a few back ups sitting around. I know we have 1 spare tank waiting to fill in and 1 spare healer waiting to fill in as well as three capable damage dealers. That means my main 10 man team is really a 15 man team.
While right now that means nothing except I need to juggle people around it means a lot come warlords. A hell of a lot. Because my main 10 man team is already 15 strong. 15 people that have been working together for a while. And guess what, we can raid heroic (old normal) together instead of making 5 people rotate. Being heroic (old normal) is going to be using the new flexible technology we can effectively move into it with 15 capable people.
In doing that we can also grow, we can test out 10 new people each week while clearing heroic (old normal). So we can build up to our mythic team without having to rotate anyone in and out. This means all 15 get a chance at gear each week instead of trying to gear up 15 people 10 at a time.
The entry level to mythic will be the best it has ever been to enter top tier raiding before. I am not talking about difficulty here, I am talking about building the team to do it.
Being heroic and mythic will be on separate lock outs (I believe) that means you can work on your mythic progress with those people you do have sitting on the side lines still getting a heroic clear each week, with the mains and not trying to have to do alt runs or with lesser skilled fill ins.
As it stands now, when my 10 man is doing heroics that means they can not help in the 25 that is doing normals. When those main 10 people from the heroic team are not in the 25, the 25 suffers a great deal. Just as an idea, the one week the mains from the 10 all sat out, the 25 man could only get 2 bosses down. Yeah, ouch. You can say that again.
The fact you can run heroic and mythic side by side and heroic will be using the flex mode you can test new players out, help other players get gear, and keep those that are sitting out of the mythic that week still feel as if they are part of the bigger picture instead of being stuck in a group that will only get 2 bosses down because it is their week to ride the bench.
For guilds like mine, the casual guild of average ability, this is a huge bonus. More so than it will be to the guilds that are normally pressing heroic (soon to be mythic). When the time does come for us to move to mythic we will have been dragging more and more people with us in heroic and testing them out to see who can come because they are ready for it.
Recruiting is going to even easier too. When I want to recruit and see how someone does I have to ask someone to sit out or ask them to come to the 25 or one of the other 10s. But if I want to see them while getting a lot of bosses down to see a full range of their ability, one of the main team need to sit out. No one likes riding the bench. But with the flex heroic I can ask them to sit if we are full, as they will be raiding the mythic the next day, and they will not mind at all because they are not missing anything. I can test 2, 5, maybe even 10 players at the same time. I can't do that now. I will not need to bring them to mythic to test them out. I can bring them on heroic, and still be able to raid mythic with them later that week if I do want them along. How is that for being great for recruitment? Tell someone impress me tonight and we might have a spot for you in mythic tomorrow. Oh yeah.
I can use heroic flex to build my mythic team, whereas now, I need to hope and pray that people are willing to sit on the bench waiting. I need to hope and pray that when I ask someone to sit to squeeze in another person they do not get upset. I have to hope and pray that I do not lose my best people because they want to move to a 25 heroic team instead of being on a 10 heroic one. I have to hope and pray that they will not leave for a place where they can raid every week and not be asked to rotate.
Flex heroic leading into mythic just makes things so much easier to build up a team and so much easier to keep a team happy. The entry level to mythic, as far as building the team, will be easier than it has ever been.
3) Difficulty of Content:
Like anything else pertaining to the new mythic raiding I can not comment on the actual content, but I can comment on the "theory" of what it can become. Having a single raid size means a lot for development in terms of time spent and involvement as well as difficulty.
Having to only design one tier of the absolute top level of raiding will be a lot quicker than having to design it for two different raid sizes. It is no secret that balancing the top end bosses is a task and a half and it takes a great deal of time to find those correct numbers where something is not too easy, or not as hard as they intended it to be. Having to do that twice meant it took twice as long. Unless you really think they have 2 different teams working on 10 and 25. Just no.
When they will only need to work on balancing one size of the top tier of raiding it will mean that they will finish with it sooner than they normally do. The sooner they finish the sooner they can start on the next tier of raiding. You see where this is going right?
Then we have to look at the raid itself and the difficulty of it. Like I said, I can not comment on the difficulty as I do not know, but I can comment on the theory of it. As one of the developers said at blizzcon, paraphrasing of course, one size will allow them to do things they could have never done before.
What exactly did he mean by that? I will gladly tell you.
There were some mechanics that would work fine in 25 man that could not be tuned down to work in 10 man. It would either end up too easy or too hard, so the idea was dropped. With one size this means those such things would now be capable of being included. It works both ways as well. Some things would have been perfect for a smaller group but they could not figure out a way to make it for a larger one.
Then there are little things like I have heard others mention. A fight like the four horseman which needed four tanks is a lot easier to design for a group that you could see 4 tanks fitting in. It would allow for more fights of the sort. Or how about something more recent for an example, if any of you raid both 10 and 25 like I do.
Dark shaman. 25 man, easy as cake, the fight is a push over because we use three tanks. In 10 man, this week was the first time we ever downed it without at least 1 death because it is just chaotic with 2 tanks. The fight was designed for 25 man, it is easy on 25 man. It did not translate well to 10 man. In my humble opinion, dark shaman is the hardest fight in all of SoO for a 10 man team.
Being they will not be limited by concepts they can make work in 2 formats and can instead concentrate on the one size fits all raid that is mythic 20 and because of that we will see a plethora of new types of mechanics and fights. Just a guess, but I believe this is a pretty solid guess, we are going to see stuff at the mythic level that we would have never seen in a 10 man or a 25 man. Developing for one size only opens the doors to so many more things that can be done. Open doors are a good thing, don't you think. Or as Betty from Dead Like Me said, "an open door is an invitation." Don't know why I thought of that quote, just happened to pop into my head.
But speaking of invitations, the one size fits all mythic option in an invitation to make the top tier of raiding more difficult. How so you might ask? Heroic being flex. Yes, the heroic (old normal) being flex mode will open the doors to the ability to make mythic harder for those that really seek the challenge.
Being heroic will use the flex technology that means you can run it a second time and just not get loot. So this will allow you to run it multiple times to find new players that are better that can join your mythic team. By using your mains that can blow through normal fast and you can kill two birds with one stone. Even if you had done heroic already that week you can bring some trials in to test them out and run it with them. You can see how they do and funnel them all the gear at the same time so they can catch up, if need be. Not to mention you get to see how they can interact and work with the actual main raid team on their real characters, not alts.
Being you can do things like that, the bar of entry into mythic, difficulty wise, can be raised to a higher point, perhaps even a point no one has ever seen before. If you get stuck on a boss you can go back and do it in heroic (old normal) over and over again. You can do a heroic run for more gear, to test some players, to get some practice. You can now go clear heroic (old normal) and not have to wait until next week to continue your mythic (old heroic) progression. This can only mean that mythic actually HAS to be harder because there are so many other things you can do.
So while for someone like me that never has finished a tier where I killed the last boss on heroic, this might be a bad thing because it will make even the first boss harder, for those that seek the ultimate gaming challenge it allows the designers to come ever so closer to actually giving it to them. How can anyone see that as a bad thing? I can't, and if anything I am one of the people that would be hurt by it. So if I do not see it as a bad thing, I don't think it is. Bring on the real hard bosses. It will be great for the game and mythic 20 can make that possible.
Thursday, November 14, 2013
What Will Dynamic Armor Mean to You? Part 2
Part 2 - Every positive has a negitive
While over all most people seem excited about the coming changes to armor types there are a few that are complaining about it. Mostly the people I see complaining the most are the ones that are losing the most because of this change. Holy paladins. The only class / spec in the game that had an entire set of armor all to itself.
Usually if you had a holy paladin in your raid, and it was the only one, it was most likely the best geared character on the raid team. It always seemed that holy paladin gear drops at the same clip as all other gear in the grand scheme of things even if only one spec could use it, but being that only one class / spec can use it, it often seems like "is this the only thing that ever drops, intellect plate gear".
Who out there has never said that? If you have never said that you either 1) raid with a lot of holy paladins or 2) you have an extremely small amount of raid experience.
In my main 10 man the last time we had a regular holy paladin was firelands. In the 3 10 mans and 1 25 man we have running now we have 1 holy paladin and at that he is only a part time player usually only maiking 75% of the raids. This mean a massive amount of intellect plate gear gets disenchanted. Nice for making the current BoE items for our raiders, bad for getting actual gear upfront for them.
So the change is great for many, but hell for the holy paladin. From their standpoint this is a huge negative. They had the run of the roost. Anything that was plate and had intellect was theirs, no ifs, ands or buts about it. No one else could use it. Now they need to roll against prot paladins, ret paladins, arms warriors, prot warriors, fury warriors, blood DKs, unholy DKs and forst DKs. So going from all the gear belonging to them to having to compete with 8 other specs for it, this is a freaking nightmare for our plate dress wearing friends.
Sorry if I do not feel their pain. Seeing our first two thunderforged pieces ever to drop in ToT being disenchanted because we had no holy paladins and seeing countless other pieces being disenchanted when so many others could have used something, I do not feel their pain. Not at all.
But I regress, there are negatives for all classes when it comes to competition. Every single class will have more of it. Now my hunter loot needs to be shared with elemental shaman and restoration shaman. I would say we always shared with enhancement shaman but outside of myself I have only ever seen 2 other people in my entire history of playing the game that played enhancement shaman. So they where never competition anyway.
In the end, we all have extra competition for gear now thanks to all gear being used by everyone. So the positive is no more wasted gear, at least until everyone is geared up, but the negative is more competition for said gear.
Do you really consider this a negative?
I personally don't mind really. But then again, I am not a holy paladin used to getting all the intellect plate for myself.
That is not the only negative that comes with the new dynamically changing gear. There is another one I have only seen touched on slightly by a few posters on the forums and a few bloggers, but only in passing. I would like to spend a little extra time looking into it.
That negative is off spec.
Lets take my warrior and another two warriors from my guild for examples.
My warrior - Protection spec, almost no DPS gear and even less DPS experience.
Warrior 1 - DPS warrior since vanilla but tanked in cata, quite well I might add, and is now just DPS again.
Warrior 2 - Only ever DPSed. Never even attempted tanking.
With all gear changing with your spec, assuming you had the weapons (and shield) for it, should all warriors be capable of tanking now? Or in my case, be capable of DPSing.
My warrior first. I am a sub-average arms warrior. I do so in my tanking gear so my stats are never really right to do so but even with the correct stats I would never be above middle of the pack because I do not put enough effort into being an arms warrior. If I did out some effort into it I am sure I could do well, I just have not. I am a tank and that is what I do.
With the changes to gear I have little to no excuse for not being proficient as an arms warrior. Outside of the weapons, neck, trinkets and rings, all my gear will be DPS gear as soon as I switch specs. So no more dodge and parry on my tank stuff in either tank spec or DPSing with it. Even if my rings and trinkets and neck are more tank oriented, I should be versed in dealing damage and do considerably better with it than I currently do.
As it stands now it would be fine for me to say I do not have an off spec. This is an alt so I do not make the effort to gear him for both specs. I am a tank and that is what I do. In the future I have no excuse. I should be able to deal damage with the best of them just as I can tank with the best of them.
Now warrior number 2. He used to tank, when we really needed him, but he always preferred being a damage dealer. He is glad to return to what he once was, a damage dealer, now that the guild has tanks, too many actually. But what happens when the day comes when we need a tank. Where he could say "I don't have any tank gear" now because he has not been worrying about gearing for it as we have so many, he can not say that next expansion. As long as he has a sword and board he is good to go. Change specs, pop into defensive, and you are a tank again. Even if his off set gear is not tank oriented he knows how to tank and that is half the battle. As long as you are not pressing heroic (mythic) content a DPS tank in the new world should be just fine.
He would have no excuse, he knows how to tank, he has the skills for it, he has most of the gear for it, and as long as there is a shied somewhere in his bag, he should be able to do it. Do you feel it is right to ask someone to do something he would rather not do just because the dynamic gear says he should be capable of doing it?
Warrior number 3 up now. How about this guy, he has never tanked in his life, but now with the way gear is he really has no reason not to learn. Just grab a sword and board and tank in your otherwise DPS gear. Some dungeons here and there, for the instant queue or the help out your guild, shouldn't he do it?
Would you call mr 3 selfish if he still will not tank super easy content like a dungeon now? I see a lot of that happening now. "Just switch specs, your gear will be just fine.". "No? You selfish bastard."
I see a lot of people possibly feeling forced into playing roles they do not want to because of this change. The guy who used to say, I don't heal because I don't have healing gear can no longer get way with that. The person who was a shadow priest their entire life but never healed has little to no excuse why he won't now. He has the gear for it. Just has to switch specs.
It is now a case of just needing to learn and having to gear up for something you have never done is no longer an excuse for why you can not do it.
I can see, at least at the mid range hard core zone of players, that priest being forced into having an offspec of healing because he already has most of the gear for it. He would either have to do it or they will replace him with someone that will.
It is as if this gear means that hybirds will have to be hybrid. No more saying, but I do not have healing gear or I do not have tanking gear. You have most of it, now get the rest and learn. We need a tank or need a healer.
Do you believe that this dynamic gear change will make people feel like they have to fill a role they do not want to?
It is something I am sure we can delve into a lot deeper once we know the actual stats on gear and how they work, but looking at it from the outside in, at the moment, it seems like there will be no excuses for not having a viable off spec any longer. No more will our priest need to switch to his warlock if we need him as DPS. No longer will be be forced to sit a restoration shaman in favor of a damage dealer because they do not have enough gear for elemental or enhancement. Yes, I believe, at least people that care about raiding, people will feel forced to have an off spec they can play as well as their main spec.
How about crafting? It will surely change, a lot. But is this a negative or a positive? I am still not decided personally. I can see a lot of positives in it, as a buyer, that is for sure. We do not know how it will work of course, but we can guess.
Lets take a leather worker making a new set of bracers that came out now. They will have leather agility, leather intellect, leather spirit, mail agility, mail intellect and mail spirit ones. That is 6 different types, 7 if they happen to have a version of the leather agility with dodge on it, which is not really out of the question.
With the new dynamic armor, as I am calling it, they would make two sets of bracers. Leather and mail. That is it. Plain, simple, straight forward. This is actually a good thing for the crafter in some cases, a very good thing.
No longer will they make something that will not sell. Crap, you made the leather intellect ones and your server is a little light on boomkins and being it has hit the mistweavers and restos want nothing to do with it. So you list and list and list and eventually you sell it for a fraction of the price you originally wanted and after countless listing costs. Now that piece is just a leather bracer, nothing more, and it will become whatever the class that buys it needs it for. So all leather wearers are now your target audience, not just boomkins, which expands your market.
So if all that sounds good, where do I see the negative here? Gold making. With less risk in making crafted items thinking they might not sell, more people will make them which means prices go down. To the buyer that is a good thing, to the crafter, that is not. This is the money maker.
Also, if you ever looked at the bracers, again for example, some will go for more than others, but now they will all go together and that would be the lowest common denominator. Decreased prices might be good for the community, unless you are the crafter making them.
I do not see much of a big deal with this. I believe the economy of the new gear system will settle into its own around the community and what they are willing to charge and pay. However, I can already see the grumblings from the gold goblins around the world as they are complaining about it as it is a negative.
What do you think, will this positively or negatively effect the crafted gear market? As I said, I am still undecided on this one.
What other possible negatives can you see coming from this otherwise positive change to gear?
While over all most people seem excited about the coming changes to armor types there are a few that are complaining about it. Mostly the people I see complaining the most are the ones that are losing the most because of this change. Holy paladins. The only class / spec in the game that had an entire set of armor all to itself.
Usually if you had a holy paladin in your raid, and it was the only one, it was most likely the best geared character on the raid team. It always seemed that holy paladin gear drops at the same clip as all other gear in the grand scheme of things even if only one spec could use it, but being that only one class / spec can use it, it often seems like "is this the only thing that ever drops, intellect plate gear".
Who out there has never said that? If you have never said that you either 1) raid with a lot of holy paladins or 2) you have an extremely small amount of raid experience.
In my main 10 man the last time we had a regular holy paladin was firelands. In the 3 10 mans and 1 25 man we have running now we have 1 holy paladin and at that he is only a part time player usually only maiking 75% of the raids. This mean a massive amount of intellect plate gear gets disenchanted. Nice for making the current BoE items for our raiders, bad for getting actual gear upfront for them.
So the change is great for many, but hell for the holy paladin. From their standpoint this is a huge negative. They had the run of the roost. Anything that was plate and had intellect was theirs, no ifs, ands or buts about it. No one else could use it. Now they need to roll against prot paladins, ret paladins, arms warriors, prot warriors, fury warriors, blood DKs, unholy DKs and forst DKs. So going from all the gear belonging to them to having to compete with 8 other specs for it, this is a freaking nightmare for our plate dress wearing friends.
Sorry if I do not feel their pain. Seeing our first two thunderforged pieces ever to drop in ToT being disenchanted because we had no holy paladins and seeing countless other pieces being disenchanted when so many others could have used something, I do not feel their pain. Not at all.
But I regress, there are negatives for all classes when it comes to competition. Every single class will have more of it. Now my hunter loot needs to be shared with elemental shaman and restoration shaman. I would say we always shared with enhancement shaman but outside of myself I have only ever seen 2 other people in my entire history of playing the game that played enhancement shaman. So they where never competition anyway.
In the end, we all have extra competition for gear now thanks to all gear being used by everyone. So the positive is no more wasted gear, at least until everyone is geared up, but the negative is more competition for said gear.
Do you really consider this a negative?
I personally don't mind really. But then again, I am not a holy paladin used to getting all the intellect plate for myself.
That is not the only negative that comes with the new dynamically changing gear. There is another one I have only seen touched on slightly by a few posters on the forums and a few bloggers, but only in passing. I would like to spend a little extra time looking into it.
That negative is off spec.
Lets take my warrior and another two warriors from my guild for examples.
My warrior - Protection spec, almost no DPS gear and even less DPS experience.
Warrior 1 - DPS warrior since vanilla but tanked in cata, quite well I might add, and is now just DPS again.
Warrior 2 - Only ever DPSed. Never even attempted tanking.
With all gear changing with your spec, assuming you had the weapons (and shield) for it, should all warriors be capable of tanking now? Or in my case, be capable of DPSing.
My warrior first. I am a sub-average arms warrior. I do so in my tanking gear so my stats are never really right to do so but even with the correct stats I would never be above middle of the pack because I do not put enough effort into being an arms warrior. If I did out some effort into it I am sure I could do well, I just have not. I am a tank and that is what I do.
With the changes to gear I have little to no excuse for not being proficient as an arms warrior. Outside of the weapons, neck, trinkets and rings, all my gear will be DPS gear as soon as I switch specs. So no more dodge and parry on my tank stuff in either tank spec or DPSing with it. Even if my rings and trinkets and neck are more tank oriented, I should be versed in dealing damage and do considerably better with it than I currently do.
As it stands now it would be fine for me to say I do not have an off spec. This is an alt so I do not make the effort to gear him for both specs. I am a tank and that is what I do. In the future I have no excuse. I should be able to deal damage with the best of them just as I can tank with the best of them.
Now warrior number 2. He used to tank, when we really needed him, but he always preferred being a damage dealer. He is glad to return to what he once was, a damage dealer, now that the guild has tanks, too many actually. But what happens when the day comes when we need a tank. Where he could say "I don't have any tank gear" now because he has not been worrying about gearing for it as we have so many, he can not say that next expansion. As long as he has a sword and board he is good to go. Change specs, pop into defensive, and you are a tank again. Even if his off set gear is not tank oriented he knows how to tank and that is half the battle. As long as you are not pressing heroic (mythic) content a DPS tank in the new world should be just fine.
He would have no excuse, he knows how to tank, he has the skills for it, he has most of the gear for it, and as long as there is a shied somewhere in his bag, he should be able to do it. Do you feel it is right to ask someone to do something he would rather not do just because the dynamic gear says he should be capable of doing it?
Warrior number 3 up now. How about this guy, he has never tanked in his life, but now with the way gear is he really has no reason not to learn. Just grab a sword and board and tank in your otherwise DPS gear. Some dungeons here and there, for the instant queue or the help out your guild, shouldn't he do it?
Would you call mr 3 selfish if he still will not tank super easy content like a dungeon now? I see a lot of that happening now. "Just switch specs, your gear will be just fine.". "No? You selfish bastard."
I see a lot of people possibly feeling forced into playing roles they do not want to because of this change. The guy who used to say, I don't heal because I don't have healing gear can no longer get way with that. The person who was a shadow priest their entire life but never healed has little to no excuse why he won't now. He has the gear for it. Just has to switch specs.
It is now a case of just needing to learn and having to gear up for something you have never done is no longer an excuse for why you can not do it.
I can see, at least at the mid range hard core zone of players, that priest being forced into having an offspec of healing because he already has most of the gear for it. He would either have to do it or they will replace him with someone that will.
It is as if this gear means that hybirds will have to be hybrid. No more saying, but I do not have healing gear or I do not have tanking gear. You have most of it, now get the rest and learn. We need a tank or need a healer.
Do you believe that this dynamic gear change will make people feel like they have to fill a role they do not want to?
It is something I am sure we can delve into a lot deeper once we know the actual stats on gear and how they work, but looking at it from the outside in, at the moment, it seems like there will be no excuses for not having a viable off spec any longer. No more will our priest need to switch to his warlock if we need him as DPS. No longer will be be forced to sit a restoration shaman in favor of a damage dealer because they do not have enough gear for elemental or enhancement. Yes, I believe, at least people that care about raiding, people will feel forced to have an off spec they can play as well as their main spec.
How about crafting? It will surely change, a lot. But is this a negative or a positive? I am still not decided personally. I can see a lot of positives in it, as a buyer, that is for sure. We do not know how it will work of course, but we can guess.
Lets take a leather worker making a new set of bracers that came out now. They will have leather agility, leather intellect, leather spirit, mail agility, mail intellect and mail spirit ones. That is 6 different types, 7 if they happen to have a version of the leather agility with dodge on it, which is not really out of the question.
With the new dynamic armor, as I am calling it, they would make two sets of bracers. Leather and mail. That is it. Plain, simple, straight forward. This is actually a good thing for the crafter in some cases, a very good thing.
No longer will they make something that will not sell. Crap, you made the leather intellect ones and your server is a little light on boomkins and being it has hit the mistweavers and restos want nothing to do with it. So you list and list and list and eventually you sell it for a fraction of the price you originally wanted and after countless listing costs. Now that piece is just a leather bracer, nothing more, and it will become whatever the class that buys it needs it for. So all leather wearers are now your target audience, not just boomkins, which expands your market.
So if all that sounds good, where do I see the negative here? Gold making. With less risk in making crafted items thinking they might not sell, more people will make them which means prices go down. To the buyer that is a good thing, to the crafter, that is not. This is the money maker.
Also, if you ever looked at the bracers, again for example, some will go for more than others, but now they will all go together and that would be the lowest common denominator. Decreased prices might be good for the community, unless you are the crafter making them.
I do not see much of a big deal with this. I believe the economy of the new gear system will settle into its own around the community and what they are willing to charge and pay. However, I can already see the grumblings from the gold goblins around the world as they are complaining about it as it is a negative.
What do you think, will this positively or negatively effect the crafted gear market? As I said, I am still undecided on this one.
What other possible negatives can you see coming from this otherwise positive change to gear?
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
What Will Dynamic Armor Mean to You? Part 1
Part 1 - Character choices.
When the next expansion comes out armor will be different. It will be armor type. As in plate is plate, mail is mail, leather is leather and cloth is cloth. No more will there be intellect plate, parry plate and strength plate. It will just be plate and parry will be gone all together.
When you are in tank or retribution spec your paladins plate will have strength as its main stat. When you are in holy spec on your paladin your plate will have intellect on it. The removal of dodge and parry mean DPS and tanking strength pieces are the same and the fact the gear dynamically updates based on you spec when you are in holy that strength becomes intellect.
Easy enough to understand and something I have been a vocal supporter of for many years now. I think my support came from the fact that I got sick and tired of seeing all this intellect plate drop when we did not have a holy paladin in the group or seeing all this intellect leather drop when we did not have anyone that could use it. So often we would kill a boss for the first time and it would, to our dismay, drop 2 pieces that no one in the group could use.
I can really get behind the plate is plate design. But it will have an impact on how we play the game and how raiding could very well change thanks to it. First up, the individual take on how your play your character.
For me, the first thing that came to mind is that my shaman can return to her roots as enhancement. My shaman first reached max level in wrath. I was enhancement back then and that was all I ever was. I always liked the game play of enhancement even if the dead spots in the rotation would infuriate me beyond belief. As someone that does not like being melee an enhancement shaman was something different for me and I really enjoyed it. Odd being I hate melee right?
When cataclysm came about and we lost nearly every raid healer we had I was forced to work on another healer. My shaman was one of the early characters to hit 85 so I started to build a healing set for it even having never healed with it before. Soon I fell in love with shaman healing and my shaman was basically a healer main spec from that point on. I was able to gear up my enhancement spec well enough in cataclysm and would even play it from time to time.
When mists came out I leveled as enhancement but worked on getting my healing gear as soon as I hit 90 because now I was a healer main spec. I figured I would get my enhancement gear later. With the reputation requirements, the time sink of dailies, and so much to do to keep up there was no way I was able to keep up two complete sets of gear on an alt. I fell way behind on gearing for enhancement. I did enough to make sure my healing set kept up but my enhancement spec was brutal. So much so I stopped even questing, it would take too long to kill things.
I made the decision, unhappily, to ditch the only spec I had ever known for elemental, because at least I could use my healing gear for my elemental spec and still do okay. Sure, the 50% hit rating was a tad bit overboard, maybe, you think? But at least I could kill stuff at lot quicker in 500 item level healing gear as elemental than I could in 460 enhancement gear with some green pieces still. And enhancement went the way of the dodo, never to be seen again.
As long as gearing was like this I had no intentions of ever seeing myself play enhancement again. But never say never. Enter warlords and me having the ability to say goodbye to elemental, a spec I never really liked anyway. Enhancement here I come.
But what if I stayed elemental? My elemental set would surely be much better because now that hit is being removed I would not be bogged down by nearly 50% hit rating when I used my healing gear as elemental. I might be putting out 120K instead of 80K thanks to all those stats no longer going to waste.
But wait, there is more, I could also use all that healing gear to be enhancement again. Thank you for opening the doors once more to return to the only spec I had known for DPS as a shaman. I am looking forward to the day I can once again be enhancement and not have to build an entirely different set for it.
Not all is fine and dandy in dynamic armor world however. From what they said I would still need to get a neck, rings, trinkets and weapons for my enhancement set but at least it is no longer a case of needing to get everything, just some things. And that opens so many doors.
My shaman can return to enhancement. My druid could have its first healing set since the start of cataclysm, which oddly enough I still had in my bank until I cleaned it out a few weeks ago. My paladin could be holy again for the first time since wrath. I can finally test out monk healing because the only reason I have not is because it uses a different set of gear.
Will dynamic armor change the way you play your class?
Will you test a spec out that you never have because you will already have most of the gear for it?
If you have never healed or tanked before will you be willing to now that you basically have a healing a tank set already?
End of part 1
When the next expansion comes out armor will be different. It will be armor type. As in plate is plate, mail is mail, leather is leather and cloth is cloth. No more will there be intellect plate, parry plate and strength plate. It will just be plate and parry will be gone all together.
When you are in tank or retribution spec your paladins plate will have strength as its main stat. When you are in holy spec on your paladin your plate will have intellect on it. The removal of dodge and parry mean DPS and tanking strength pieces are the same and the fact the gear dynamically updates based on you spec when you are in holy that strength becomes intellect.
Easy enough to understand and something I have been a vocal supporter of for many years now. I think my support came from the fact that I got sick and tired of seeing all this intellect plate drop when we did not have a holy paladin in the group or seeing all this intellect leather drop when we did not have anyone that could use it. So often we would kill a boss for the first time and it would, to our dismay, drop 2 pieces that no one in the group could use.
I can really get behind the plate is plate design. But it will have an impact on how we play the game and how raiding could very well change thanks to it. First up, the individual take on how your play your character.
For me, the first thing that came to mind is that my shaman can return to her roots as enhancement. My shaman first reached max level in wrath. I was enhancement back then and that was all I ever was. I always liked the game play of enhancement even if the dead spots in the rotation would infuriate me beyond belief. As someone that does not like being melee an enhancement shaman was something different for me and I really enjoyed it. Odd being I hate melee right?
When cataclysm came about and we lost nearly every raid healer we had I was forced to work on another healer. My shaman was one of the early characters to hit 85 so I started to build a healing set for it even having never healed with it before. Soon I fell in love with shaman healing and my shaman was basically a healer main spec from that point on. I was able to gear up my enhancement spec well enough in cataclysm and would even play it from time to time.
When mists came out I leveled as enhancement but worked on getting my healing gear as soon as I hit 90 because now I was a healer main spec. I figured I would get my enhancement gear later. With the reputation requirements, the time sink of dailies, and so much to do to keep up there was no way I was able to keep up two complete sets of gear on an alt. I fell way behind on gearing for enhancement. I did enough to make sure my healing set kept up but my enhancement spec was brutal. So much so I stopped even questing, it would take too long to kill things.
I made the decision, unhappily, to ditch the only spec I had ever known for elemental, because at least I could use my healing gear for my elemental spec and still do okay. Sure, the 50% hit rating was a tad bit overboard, maybe, you think? But at least I could kill stuff at lot quicker in 500 item level healing gear as elemental than I could in 460 enhancement gear with some green pieces still. And enhancement went the way of the dodo, never to be seen again.
As long as gearing was like this I had no intentions of ever seeing myself play enhancement again. But never say never. Enter warlords and me having the ability to say goodbye to elemental, a spec I never really liked anyway. Enhancement here I come.
But what if I stayed elemental? My elemental set would surely be much better because now that hit is being removed I would not be bogged down by nearly 50% hit rating when I used my healing gear as elemental. I might be putting out 120K instead of 80K thanks to all those stats no longer going to waste.
But wait, there is more, I could also use all that healing gear to be enhancement again. Thank you for opening the doors once more to return to the only spec I had known for DPS as a shaman. I am looking forward to the day I can once again be enhancement and not have to build an entirely different set for it.
Not all is fine and dandy in dynamic armor world however. From what they said I would still need to get a neck, rings, trinkets and weapons for my enhancement set but at least it is no longer a case of needing to get everything, just some things. And that opens so many doors.
My shaman can return to enhancement. My druid could have its first healing set since the start of cataclysm, which oddly enough I still had in my bank until I cleaned it out a few weeks ago. My paladin could be holy again for the first time since wrath. I can finally test out monk healing because the only reason I have not is because it uses a different set of gear.
Will dynamic armor change the way you play your class?
Will you test a spec out that you never have because you will already have most of the gear for it?
If you have never healed or tanked before will you be willing to now that you basically have a healing a tank set already?
End of part 1
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
Tuesday Random Thoughts
- Because monday alone just wasn't enough I have some more random thoughts.
- When I first played rift there were a few things, three small things, that I though I would love to see added to WoW.
- All three were simple quality of life things.
- This expansion WoW added one of those three things, AoE looting.
- Woot for taking good ideas, making them your own and implementing them.
- Next expansion they are taking another page from the Rift book, quest book that is.
- Quest items no longer take up bag space, they are kept in your quest log.
- Awesome quality of life update.
- I loved that when I first saw it in rift.
- So what is the third quality of life thing I liked in rift that has not yet made it to WoW?
- Profession dailies.
- They had so many levels of profession dailies in rift, giving tokens, crafting materials, etc.
- I think that was a nice little quality of life thing, maybe wow can still add it.
- At least it made all materials from all throughout the game useful to some extent.
- They seem to be adding a lot of other things to questing that I am sure many will like.
- Makes me wonder if lore master is really anything special any longer.
- Remember trying to hunt down those quests you were missing and them being impossible to find?
- Now everything just appears there for you.
- Good or bad, it would all be opinion based.
- Even if I do not like it, I still call it progress.
- Most of the people that play this game need their hands held, and this is just some serious hand holding.
- How much do you want to bet that people will still be asking for help where to go next?
- No matter what quest help you put in the game, people will still not read it.
- Nice to add it, but wonder if it will actually be useful for the people that would actually need it, because the people that actually need it, aren't the ones that would look at it to begin with.
- Kind of like the encounter journal for dungeons and raids.
- The people that could most use reading it never do.
- More events popping up in the world is another thing taken straight from the pages of rift.
- That is another good thing.
- Don't think I am blasting wow for "stealing" ideas.
- I am not, that is how a good game gets better, they see things that are good and they add it.
- I am hoping they keep stealing good ideas.
- It is amazing how so many people just can not get the "time travel" thing.
- Everyone is complaining about how this will screw over every thing we know.
- People, it is an "alternate" reality. It is not time travel.
- HUGE difference.
- Time travel - You kill your dad, you disappear.
- Alternate reality - You kill your dad, the you from that reality never appears but you are fine.
- I saw some blizzard people trying to explain this and I think they confused the people more than they were before they asked the question.
- You would have thought that someone would have known this would confuse a lot of people and they would have prepared for answering these questions.
- Nope, they were too busy patting themselves on the back because the gnome females have such hilarious, but cute, facial expressions.
- Public service announcement: We are not time traveling, we are going to an alternate reality.
- A "what if" world, if you will.
- They had to expect this from a bunch of people that even the LFR is too hard for.
- Even veteran sci/fi fans have problems with time travel sometimes, and these are people that are not into that sort of stuff.
- That is why it is even harder for them to understand.
- While I do not mind a "what if" world scenario I do not think it was the best course of action for a fantasy game.
- Even more so this fantasy game with this player base.
- Just be happy some of them can figure out how to log in, don't make them try to understand time travel and alternate realities.
- I see lots and lots of "but that isn't what happened" or "what is this going to do to us now" type of posts in the future.
- Expect the next two years to be filled with people answering nearly every forum post with "it is an alternate reality and has no effect on our history".
- So how about pet breeding?
- In your garrison you can breed pets for a chance to make epic pets.
- Sounds kind of cool if you ask me and I know I will be doing it.
- So much better than they adding epic pets out in the world and having to go around and recatch and relevel them all again.
- I would have hated that.
- So much better than giving us new stones we needed to grind for to upgrade to epic.
- I would have hated that too.
- I wondered if they would go full on pokemon with cross breeds.
- Doesn't seem so, and that is a good thing, or we would need a hell of a lot more pet spaces because I would be cross breeding the shit out of everything I could get my hands on.
- Speaking of garrisons, they will be required for raiding.
- Yes, you heard that, required for raiding.
- You can get buffs that last for 4 hours and persist through death.
- So I believe all raiders should have any buffs they are capable of getting.
- Being we never raided 4 hours in a row in our entire career that means you should always have the buff for the entire raid night.
- Anything less and you are not an actual raider.
- You are someone that "wants" to raid.
- There is a difference between someone that wants to raid and a raider.
- Someone that is a raider will have those garrison buffs without even being asked to get them.
- I am not going to even mention it to new recruits, I will just see if they have the buff on them when they join a group.
- If they have it, I will give them additional consideration.
- If I am a casual raider and think that, what do you think hard core raiders would be like?
- It would be "get the buff or lose your raid spot".
- Yes, I see that happening.
- But to what end?
- We will see what the buffs are and what is required to get them.
- Maybe someone will want a bunch of professions instead of buffs.
- So not having a 1% crit buff would not be a reason for me to kick someone, not even in the slightest, but for a hard core guild I can sure see it being a reason.
- I wonder if we can already say having a high garrison will be considered "mandatory".
- Sure, anything "mandatory" is actually an option, but not an option if you want to do the best you can do.
- If you want to do the best you can do the garrisons will be mandatory.
- Get extra crafting materials, get a 4 hour buff that increases your performance, get epic loot from sending followers on quests and dungeons and raids, yeah, absolutely mandatory.
- As long as it is fun and does not take a long time however, it will not get the back lash that dailies had.
- That was the problem with the dailies, in part, that they took so long to get done those first days.
- People complained about golden lotus and klaxxi, both with what seemed like hundreds of dailies.
- They did not complain about the anglers or the august celestial ones because that was 3 or 4 dailies.
- Small doses of dailies work, not huge quest lines of dailies each day.
- Hearing little to no dailies upsets me, I like dailies.
- But even I hated the golden lotus.
- So what is this I hear about no flying until 6.1?
- Rumor? Fact?
- Either way, I do not think it is a half bad idea.
- Sure, it will suck for gathering, it will suck for getting around, it will suck for rare hunting or event hunting, it will suck because we have gotten so used to it.
- But there are good side effects people are forgetting.
- The smart players will still find the best farm spots.
- The dedicated players will still make the effort.
- The stupid and the lazy will be shut out because they will not be able to find the quick routes or not be willing to take the time to head out in the world on foot.
- So maybe that is a good thing.
- But I will surely be putting my garrison as close as I can to my home city if I am going to have to hoof it there every day.
- Speaking of home city, the black temple is the home city of the alliance.
- Cool beans.
- There is so much more information we did not even get, seems like blizzard is holding back on us.
- Like the extra stats on gear. Speed, unbreakable.
- What other ones are there out there?
- I want a full speed set.
- It will make getting out of bad easier, questing easier, gathering easier.
- Heck, anything that increases movement speed is a welcome addition.
- Can you imagine having a complete speed set in PvP?
- Yes, I will be the flag carrier and you will never catch me.
- I think stuff like that one would have to be made to not work in PvP.
- It would give a huge advantage to the lucky mofo that farmed a full speed set.
- I might only be guessing here, but I doubt their intention will be to give people an advantage.
- They are supposed to be small bonuses.
- Do you think they will go the route of diablo with extra stats on gear?
- Like increased rare item drop rate gear?
- Like increased gold drop rate gear?
- Things like that?
- I wonder what all the other little extra stats will be.
- I also wonder how rare gem slots will be.
- And what items we will no longer be enchanting.
- Lots of questions still bouncing around in my head.
- For as much as they showed us they left us with more questions.
- What is that saying, "always leave them wanting more".
- Well blizzcon did just that for me, it left me wanting more.
- Actually left me wanting so much more it has nearly all but killed my desire to keep playing now.
- I have completely given up on leveling any more alts now.
- Why you ask?
- Because of the shared BoA heirlooms.
- Why waste time leveling now on other servers when next expansion all my characters on all servers both sides will have access to the BoAs?
- Sometimes announcements make things worse.
- The only thing I do for fun now when I want to escape the end game feels like I am wasting time because if I do it later it will be done better and more efficiently.
- I hope they change the way drops work next expansion, try to even out the RNG some.
- My poor lock still needs one sigil.
- My poor lock needed 1 sigil at the beginning of the week.
- It killed everything under the sun and did not get one sigil this week.
- Screw you mr RNG.
- I think the single best change they could ever made to the game is fixing the RNG to not be so darn random.
- A friend of mine just got to the secrets part of the legendary quest this week.
- He has 15 secrets already.
- Yes, in 1 week.
- My priest has been on it for months, yes months, and I only have 11.
- Got one this week running all raids that I could get it from.
- Hey, at least it is better than last week when I got none doing all the bosses.
- Now that is an upgrade I would love to see for warlords.
- None of that one person is lucky and get 15 in one week and another person is unlucky and gets 1 in 2 weeks.
- Fix RNG, that would be the best thing blizzard could ever do for the game if you ask me.
- Random will always be random, but fix it so it is not abusively random, as in screwing me over that badly.
- They can do it by adding streak protection, like they did for extra rolls, on all personal drops of all sorts.
- That is all I ask.
- If secrets are supposed to have a 50% drop rate now than doing 20 bosses each week for 2 weeks I should have gotten all 20, not 1.
- Streak protection is a nice thing.
- Just a quality of life change for the unlucky people like me.
- And people wonder why I am so grumpy.
- I wonder what they are going to do with profession bonuses.
- Someone asked in guild yesterday if switching to black smith was a good idea for the 2 extra gem slots.
- I didn't know how to answer.
- I said, right not it would be good but I can't say what the future holds.
- We are not going to be having as many gem slots, so maybe they will not have the gem slot bonus any more.
- But if they do still, then that would be a huge bonus, black smith might be the best professions for all we know.
- In the end I suggested, unless he really wants to for some other reasons, not to bother until we find out what is happening with professions.
- I would really like to know what is happening with professions.
- Will black smiths still have 2 gem slots to add?
- They mentioned no more bracer enchants, so what happens to the leather working bonus?
- Will they be the only one with bracer enchants, or will they just lose out?
- So many questions, but I guess that is the fun part.
- It means lots of information still to come, and I am excited to hear it all.
- Have you signed up for the beta yet?
- I did, of course.
- Not sure if I will actually do the beta however.
- It takes away from the real game once it comes.
- And I would not hold my breath to get into the beta any way with my luck.
- So many questions, so few answered.
- Does anyone else feel like the blizzcon left us with too little information?
- And what was not mentioned that is coming.
- Remember the BC one, they only mentioned alliance would get a new race, did not say what it would be.
- So big announcements could still be on the horizon.
- But do not expect a new race or class, that would have been mentioned.
- I am actually glad for that.
- We do not need a new class, we need the old classes balanced.
- Speaking of old classes, I am so glad we are not getting new abilities.
- We did not need any more buttons to add to our bloat.
- I like the level 100 talents, all changing existing things instead of adding more.
- That is really what it should be like from now on, not adding abilities for the sake of adding them.
- Kind of the reason they said no new guild levels.
- They would have to add bonuses for bonus sake and it makes no sense.
- Glad to see they adopted that to the class abilities as well.
- Not adding abilities for abilities sake.
- Thinking of hunter abilities I like the with or without you.
- Just hate the name for it.
- But adding 30% damage when you do not have your pet out will need to be balanced.
- I can not remember the last time my pet was 30% of my damage when not in BM.
- I am sure it will be adjusted.
- 20% sounds more reasonable, but we do not know how things will balance with the new stats and such.
- Maybe a pet will be worth 30% in warlords even for MM or SV.
- I can see a few fights were pets bug out where I would love to have that now.
- Heck, I would love to have that on any fight now because I think the most damage, percentage wise, I have ever seen my pet do this expansion is 21%.
- So it would be a 9% DPS increase for me at worst, and much more at best.
- Who would say no to a 9% DPS increase.
- Lets do some unscientific napkin math.
- I am doing around 250K now and my pet maxes out at best of 20%.
- Minus 20% of 250K to give me 200K then add 30% to 200K from the with of without you which will give me 260K now.
- So at the very least it would be a 10K increase to say goodbye to fluffy.
- I'll take it.
- Over the other two shots, it is not even an option as it stands now, with or without you wins.
- Makes me wonder what changes are coming if these things are considered all on the same level come warlords.
- Or is the design balance not even close to being looked at yet and only in the idea phase.
- That would really mess with my prediction for a may release of warlords.
- If warlords is any later than May it would be an epic failure on blizzards part.
- Even may is stressing it big time for an expansion we have gotten used to having at least a story telling content patch every 3 months.
- With the announcement that there would be no 5.5 that would mean may puts us at what, 9 months without any new content?
- So yes, any later than may and it would be an epic failure for an expansion that will go down as the best expansion to date when it comes to timely content releases.
- Any later than may and all that credit we can give them for an awesome expansion of releases gets lost in another last tier we get burnt out on.
- And we will be getting burnt out a lot faster with LFR, flex and normal/heroic.
- So like I said, 9 months is pushing it about as far as it should be pushed.
- I hope I am wrong, I hope it is march, but that is impossible, isn't it?
- Even if beta started today march would be out of the question.
- Or would it?
- This is the new world of faster releases, anything is possible.
- Maybe blizzard will surprise us.
- I just hope it is no later than may.
- I know I am ready for a new expansion right now.
- Have a great day.
- When I first played rift there were a few things, three small things, that I though I would love to see added to WoW.
- All three were simple quality of life things.
- This expansion WoW added one of those three things, AoE looting.
- Woot for taking good ideas, making them your own and implementing them.
- Next expansion they are taking another page from the Rift book, quest book that is.
- Quest items no longer take up bag space, they are kept in your quest log.
- Awesome quality of life update.
- I loved that when I first saw it in rift.
- So what is the third quality of life thing I liked in rift that has not yet made it to WoW?
- Profession dailies.
- They had so many levels of profession dailies in rift, giving tokens, crafting materials, etc.
- I think that was a nice little quality of life thing, maybe wow can still add it.
- At least it made all materials from all throughout the game useful to some extent.
- They seem to be adding a lot of other things to questing that I am sure many will like.
- Makes me wonder if lore master is really anything special any longer.
- Remember trying to hunt down those quests you were missing and them being impossible to find?
- Now everything just appears there for you.
- Good or bad, it would all be opinion based.
- Even if I do not like it, I still call it progress.
- Most of the people that play this game need their hands held, and this is just some serious hand holding.
- How much do you want to bet that people will still be asking for help where to go next?
- No matter what quest help you put in the game, people will still not read it.
- Nice to add it, but wonder if it will actually be useful for the people that would actually need it, because the people that actually need it, aren't the ones that would look at it to begin with.
- Kind of like the encounter journal for dungeons and raids.
- The people that could most use reading it never do.
- More events popping up in the world is another thing taken straight from the pages of rift.
- That is another good thing.
- Don't think I am blasting wow for "stealing" ideas.
- I am not, that is how a good game gets better, they see things that are good and they add it.
- I am hoping they keep stealing good ideas.
- It is amazing how so many people just can not get the "time travel" thing.
- Everyone is complaining about how this will screw over every thing we know.
- People, it is an "alternate" reality. It is not time travel.
- HUGE difference.
- Time travel - You kill your dad, you disappear.
- Alternate reality - You kill your dad, the you from that reality never appears but you are fine.
- I saw some blizzard people trying to explain this and I think they confused the people more than they were before they asked the question.
- You would have thought that someone would have known this would confuse a lot of people and they would have prepared for answering these questions.
- Nope, they were too busy patting themselves on the back because the gnome females have such hilarious, but cute, facial expressions.
- Public service announcement: We are not time traveling, we are going to an alternate reality.
- A "what if" world, if you will.
- They had to expect this from a bunch of people that even the LFR is too hard for.
- Even veteran sci/fi fans have problems with time travel sometimes, and these are people that are not into that sort of stuff.
- That is why it is even harder for them to understand.
- While I do not mind a "what if" world scenario I do not think it was the best course of action for a fantasy game.
- Even more so this fantasy game with this player base.
- Just be happy some of them can figure out how to log in, don't make them try to understand time travel and alternate realities.
- I see lots and lots of "but that isn't what happened" or "what is this going to do to us now" type of posts in the future.
- Expect the next two years to be filled with people answering nearly every forum post with "it is an alternate reality and has no effect on our history".
- So how about pet breeding?
- In your garrison you can breed pets for a chance to make epic pets.
- Sounds kind of cool if you ask me and I know I will be doing it.
- So much better than they adding epic pets out in the world and having to go around and recatch and relevel them all again.
- I would have hated that.
- So much better than giving us new stones we needed to grind for to upgrade to epic.
- I would have hated that too.
- I wondered if they would go full on pokemon with cross breeds.
- Doesn't seem so, and that is a good thing, or we would need a hell of a lot more pet spaces because I would be cross breeding the shit out of everything I could get my hands on.
- Speaking of garrisons, they will be required for raiding.
- Yes, you heard that, required for raiding.
- You can get buffs that last for 4 hours and persist through death.
- So I believe all raiders should have any buffs they are capable of getting.
- Being we never raided 4 hours in a row in our entire career that means you should always have the buff for the entire raid night.
- Anything less and you are not an actual raider.
- You are someone that "wants" to raid.
- There is a difference between someone that wants to raid and a raider.
- Someone that is a raider will have those garrison buffs without even being asked to get them.
- I am not going to even mention it to new recruits, I will just see if they have the buff on them when they join a group.
- If they have it, I will give them additional consideration.
- If I am a casual raider and think that, what do you think hard core raiders would be like?
- It would be "get the buff or lose your raid spot".
- Yes, I see that happening.
- But to what end?
- We will see what the buffs are and what is required to get them.
- Maybe someone will want a bunch of professions instead of buffs.
- So not having a 1% crit buff would not be a reason for me to kick someone, not even in the slightest, but for a hard core guild I can sure see it being a reason.
- I wonder if we can already say having a high garrison will be considered "mandatory".
- Sure, anything "mandatory" is actually an option, but not an option if you want to do the best you can do.
- If you want to do the best you can do the garrisons will be mandatory.
- Get extra crafting materials, get a 4 hour buff that increases your performance, get epic loot from sending followers on quests and dungeons and raids, yeah, absolutely mandatory.
- As long as it is fun and does not take a long time however, it will not get the back lash that dailies had.
- That was the problem with the dailies, in part, that they took so long to get done those first days.
- People complained about golden lotus and klaxxi, both with what seemed like hundreds of dailies.
- They did not complain about the anglers or the august celestial ones because that was 3 or 4 dailies.
- Small doses of dailies work, not huge quest lines of dailies each day.
- Hearing little to no dailies upsets me, I like dailies.
- But even I hated the golden lotus.
- So what is this I hear about no flying until 6.1?
- Rumor? Fact?
- Either way, I do not think it is a half bad idea.
- Sure, it will suck for gathering, it will suck for getting around, it will suck for rare hunting or event hunting, it will suck because we have gotten so used to it.
- But there are good side effects people are forgetting.
- The smart players will still find the best farm spots.
- The dedicated players will still make the effort.
- The stupid and the lazy will be shut out because they will not be able to find the quick routes or not be willing to take the time to head out in the world on foot.
- So maybe that is a good thing.
- But I will surely be putting my garrison as close as I can to my home city if I am going to have to hoof it there every day.
- Speaking of home city, the black temple is the home city of the alliance.
- Cool beans.
- There is so much more information we did not even get, seems like blizzard is holding back on us.
- Like the extra stats on gear. Speed, unbreakable.
- What other ones are there out there?
- I want a full speed set.
- It will make getting out of bad easier, questing easier, gathering easier.
- Heck, anything that increases movement speed is a welcome addition.
- Can you imagine having a complete speed set in PvP?
- Yes, I will be the flag carrier and you will never catch me.
- I think stuff like that one would have to be made to not work in PvP.
- It would give a huge advantage to the lucky mofo that farmed a full speed set.
- I might only be guessing here, but I doubt their intention will be to give people an advantage.
- They are supposed to be small bonuses.
- Do you think they will go the route of diablo with extra stats on gear?
- Like increased rare item drop rate gear?
- Like increased gold drop rate gear?
- Things like that?
- I wonder what all the other little extra stats will be.
- I also wonder how rare gem slots will be.
- And what items we will no longer be enchanting.
- Lots of questions still bouncing around in my head.
- For as much as they showed us they left us with more questions.
- What is that saying, "always leave them wanting more".
- Well blizzcon did just that for me, it left me wanting more.
- Actually left me wanting so much more it has nearly all but killed my desire to keep playing now.
- I have completely given up on leveling any more alts now.
- Why you ask?
- Because of the shared BoA heirlooms.
- Why waste time leveling now on other servers when next expansion all my characters on all servers both sides will have access to the BoAs?
- Sometimes announcements make things worse.
- The only thing I do for fun now when I want to escape the end game feels like I am wasting time because if I do it later it will be done better and more efficiently.
- I hope they change the way drops work next expansion, try to even out the RNG some.
- My poor lock still needs one sigil.
- My poor lock needed 1 sigil at the beginning of the week.
- It killed everything under the sun and did not get one sigil this week.
- Screw you mr RNG.
- I think the single best change they could ever made to the game is fixing the RNG to not be so darn random.
- A friend of mine just got to the secrets part of the legendary quest this week.
- He has 15 secrets already.
- Yes, in 1 week.
- My priest has been on it for months, yes months, and I only have 11.
- Got one this week running all raids that I could get it from.
- Hey, at least it is better than last week when I got none doing all the bosses.
- Now that is an upgrade I would love to see for warlords.
- None of that one person is lucky and get 15 in one week and another person is unlucky and gets 1 in 2 weeks.
- Fix RNG, that would be the best thing blizzard could ever do for the game if you ask me.
- Random will always be random, but fix it so it is not abusively random, as in screwing me over that badly.
- They can do it by adding streak protection, like they did for extra rolls, on all personal drops of all sorts.
- That is all I ask.
- If secrets are supposed to have a 50% drop rate now than doing 20 bosses each week for 2 weeks I should have gotten all 20, not 1.
- Streak protection is a nice thing.
- Just a quality of life change for the unlucky people like me.
- And people wonder why I am so grumpy.
- I wonder what they are going to do with profession bonuses.
- Someone asked in guild yesterday if switching to black smith was a good idea for the 2 extra gem slots.
- I didn't know how to answer.
- I said, right not it would be good but I can't say what the future holds.
- We are not going to be having as many gem slots, so maybe they will not have the gem slot bonus any more.
- But if they do still, then that would be a huge bonus, black smith might be the best professions for all we know.
- In the end I suggested, unless he really wants to for some other reasons, not to bother until we find out what is happening with professions.
- I would really like to know what is happening with professions.
- Will black smiths still have 2 gem slots to add?
- They mentioned no more bracer enchants, so what happens to the leather working bonus?
- Will they be the only one with bracer enchants, or will they just lose out?
- So many questions, but I guess that is the fun part.
- It means lots of information still to come, and I am excited to hear it all.
- Have you signed up for the beta yet?
- I did, of course.
- Not sure if I will actually do the beta however.
- It takes away from the real game once it comes.
- And I would not hold my breath to get into the beta any way with my luck.
- So many questions, so few answered.
- Does anyone else feel like the blizzcon left us with too little information?
- And what was not mentioned that is coming.
- Remember the BC one, they only mentioned alliance would get a new race, did not say what it would be.
- So big announcements could still be on the horizon.
- But do not expect a new race or class, that would have been mentioned.
- I am actually glad for that.
- We do not need a new class, we need the old classes balanced.
- Speaking of old classes, I am so glad we are not getting new abilities.
- We did not need any more buttons to add to our bloat.
- I like the level 100 talents, all changing existing things instead of adding more.
- That is really what it should be like from now on, not adding abilities for the sake of adding them.
- Kind of the reason they said no new guild levels.
- They would have to add bonuses for bonus sake and it makes no sense.
- Glad to see they adopted that to the class abilities as well.
- Not adding abilities for abilities sake.
- Thinking of hunter abilities I like the with or without you.
- Just hate the name for it.
- But adding 30% damage when you do not have your pet out will need to be balanced.
- I can not remember the last time my pet was 30% of my damage when not in BM.
- I am sure it will be adjusted.
- 20% sounds more reasonable, but we do not know how things will balance with the new stats and such.
- Maybe a pet will be worth 30% in warlords even for MM or SV.
- I can see a few fights were pets bug out where I would love to have that now.
- Heck, I would love to have that on any fight now because I think the most damage, percentage wise, I have ever seen my pet do this expansion is 21%.
- So it would be a 9% DPS increase for me at worst, and much more at best.
- Who would say no to a 9% DPS increase.
- Lets do some unscientific napkin math.
- I am doing around 250K now and my pet maxes out at best of 20%.
- Minus 20% of 250K to give me 200K then add 30% to 200K from the with of without you which will give me 260K now.
- So at the very least it would be a 10K increase to say goodbye to fluffy.
- I'll take it.
- Over the other two shots, it is not even an option as it stands now, with or without you wins.
- Makes me wonder what changes are coming if these things are considered all on the same level come warlords.
- Or is the design balance not even close to being looked at yet and only in the idea phase.
- That would really mess with my prediction for a may release of warlords.
- If warlords is any later than May it would be an epic failure on blizzards part.
- Even may is stressing it big time for an expansion we have gotten used to having at least a story telling content patch every 3 months.
- With the announcement that there would be no 5.5 that would mean may puts us at what, 9 months without any new content?
- So yes, any later than may and it would be an epic failure for an expansion that will go down as the best expansion to date when it comes to timely content releases.
- Any later than may and all that credit we can give them for an awesome expansion of releases gets lost in another last tier we get burnt out on.
- And we will be getting burnt out a lot faster with LFR, flex and normal/heroic.
- So like I said, 9 months is pushing it about as far as it should be pushed.
- I hope I am wrong, I hope it is march, but that is impossible, isn't it?
- Even if beta started today march would be out of the question.
- Or would it?
- This is the new world of faster releases, anything is possible.
- Maybe blizzard will surprise us.
- I just hope it is no later than may.
- I know I am ready for a new expansion right now.
- Have a great day.
Monday, November 11, 2013
Monday Random Thoughts
- I'm back after a small break.
- Did ya miss me?
- With blizzcon there is a lot to think about randomly.
- I think out of all the announcements I am looking forward to garrisons most.
- I like how fleshed out it is so far, shows they are really far along with the development of the expansion when one "small" feature is that complete.
- And for a "small" feature it sure does not seem small at all.
- Basically it is like player housing.
- Kind of sad they are doing what they did with the farm and tying it to one expansion however but that does not change the fact I am looking forward to it.
- Getting followers, making them gather, quest, do dungeons, even raid for me.
- Yeah, that sounds like fun.
- I dig mini games like that.
- With my cast of characters I can have a massive amount of the garrisons and that means if I want I could farm materials like crazy.
- I can't wait to try it out.
- Going to miss reforging being they are removing it.
- Now the only thing good that ever came out of cataclysm in terms of effecting game play is gone.
- Don't say transmog, that does not effect game play.
- Unless of course you believe what your gear looks like effects how well you play.
- In that case, to each their own.
- I guess I can actually see how to some people what they look like does help them play.
- Hit and expertise being gone? Winner.
- What took so freaking long?
- Dodge and parry being gone? Winner.
- Again, what took so freaking long?
- When they first started to remove stats that were considered uninteresting like attack power, armor penetration, etc, they should have removed hit, expertise, dodge and parry.
- How someone thought that hit was more compelling of a stat than attack power is still beyond me.
- And lets face it, as I've said a million times before, our characters are supposed to be professional killers, so to speak, if they could not hit something the size of a three story building they would have never survived long enough to get to max level.
- Hit had always been a completely useless stat.
- So glad it is gone.
- With hit and expertise gone it does lower the need for reforging however.
- Sure, there are stats we want to stack otherwise.
- Sure, there will be a lot of not the best type of gear we get now because we would prefer something with stats more suitable for us.
- Sure, there will still be haste break points.
- But over all reforging was for getting hit and expertise close, so we did not waste any stats.
- Now, even if mastery is not great for you, it is not a useless stat.
- Unlike hit, where when you were over cap it was useless.
- So maybe the need for reforging left when the need for hit and expertise did.
- Still going to miss it, I loved reforging.
- But I am so extremely happy that I will not have to fiddle about with hit and expertise in its absence.
- Could you just imagine the nightmare that is hit cap without reforging?
- How often has your hunter (or any character) found himself at 12% hit?
- I know without reforging mine would have been there a lot this expansion.
- And all things being equal I would rather have 12% of a crappy stat like mastery than 12% of a useless stat like hit any day.
- I am excited with the changes to armor as well.
- Even if it does mean I now need to roll against elemental shaman and restoration shaman.
- Your gears stats changing with your spec is something I have been suggesting here for years.
- About time they listened.
- My shaman can go back to being enhancement / restoration.
- My paladin can go back to being protection / holy.
- My monk can finally test out healing without needing to get a whole new set of gear for it.
- My death knight and warrior will no longer be DPSing in tank gear, strength plate is strength plate.
- And tier sets, oh my god tier sets.
- My druid just needs to get one four piece set and now I will have the four piece set for all four specs.
- I think I almost shed a tear at how easy life has become for my alts.
- Fewer gem slots, fewer items that can be enchanted, no reforging, some people might call it dumming down, I just call it a blessing.
- My mage has 5 pieces in his bag that are upgrades, but I am not equipping them yet.
- Why? Because I don't want to do it each time I get a new piece of gear and have to regem, rereforge, reenchant, it is just a hassle.
- All my mage does is the LFR and it already does better than 95% of the people in there, no rush to get that gear on me.
- When I get some more pieces to be worth going through all that crap I will put it all on and do it all at once.
- But as long as nearly everything I might get will be an upgrade, I am not going to waste my time or energy on redoing everything every time I get one single piece on a character I play maybe once or twice a month.
- I waited until I had 8 pieces on my warlock before I did anything with it.
- Waited until I had four pieces on my druid and then only put them all on because I was needed to tank a SoO normal one day.
- Now my druid has a couple more pieces sitting in its bags and I will not put them on until I feel it is needed for a type of content I will be doing.
- If my druid is going to do flex or LFR I will just leave it as is.
- And that is why I can actually get on board with the fewer enchants, fewer gem slots, and no reforging.
- As it is now getting gear sometimes feels like work, not fun.
- Good old ghostcrawler said it well when he said he wanted to make getting gear exciting again.
- Being able to get it and put it on instantly instead of saying, I'll have to wait until after the raid so I can figure out how to reforged for my caps and get the most use out of it is more exciting for sure.
- I think I would like the idea of getting a new piece and putting it right on as is.
- And that is another awesome thing with gear changes.
- Gem slots do not count to itemization as gem slots are not standard.
- Speaking of gem slots, no more meta gems.
- Our good buddy ghostcrawler says that it is because there was never any decisions in them, you use the best one for your class/spec.
- Excuse me? Isn't that the way with everything in the game GC?
- You use the best stats, the best gear, the best rotation, the best enchants, the best whatever.
- So of course people were just using the best gem for them.
- To say metas were not interesting because people just used the best one you can say that anything in game is not interesting because people just use the best one.
- Bracer enchants are boring because people just use the best one.
- Weapons are boring because people just use the best one.
- Come on GC, you can find a better explanation than that.
- How about you are removing meta gems because they no longer fit with the scheme of things.
- At least that is truthful.
- We do not even need meta requirements any more.
- When requirements like "need three blue gems" was removed you could see that the meta concept had worn out its welcome.
- Speaking of Ghostcrawler, has anyone here ever seen the rocky horror picture show?
- I mean the real show, with people performing along with the moving, people throwing toast and rice and shouting things at the screen?
- Well, if you have never seen it, get your ass out and go see it, it is a great experience, I've seen it over 500 times and it never gets old.
- But that is not the point, if you have seen the rocky horror picture show, as I described you will get the next joke.
- If you haven't, you might still get the next joke.
- As soon as I saw ghostcrawler appear on stage I yelled... "this man has no neck."
- I could not help it.
- Now lets move on to some raiding stuff.
- TOYBOX!!!
- Sorry, just remembered that and could not resist mentioning that awesome addition.
- Excuse me for a moment while I do the happy dance.
- Okay, I am back, lets get on to raiding.
- Flex is becoming the new normal.
- Show me one person that did not see that coming from a mile away and I will show you someone that is not a raider to begin with.
- Normal is becoming the new heroic and it is going to be flexible.
- Okay, now that one got me. I thought they would just ditch the old normal completely.
- A new level of raiding is being added, not flexible, for 20 players, and that will be the top tier of raiding.
- Now that is something I did see coming.
- No more 10 vs 25 arguments.
- No more trying to design for 2 different versions.
- It opens many more design options to make heroic raiding better than it has ever been.
- World first is one format only.
- For 25 man groups this should not be a problem, for 10 man groups, this could be an issue.
- For my guild it means nothing what so ever.
- With a 25 man team and 3 10 man teams and the addition of flex, the only problem I have is picking the 20 best players for it.
- Actually the only problem I have is finding 20 decent players for it. lol
- But being we are not a world, or even server, first type of group, who cares.
- When the time comes for us to do the new heroic raiding I am sure I can pick 20 people to drag along.
- And more importantly, they can still raid in the normals because they all have different lock outs now.
- I must say I like that.
- And having the flex ability to do a boss you already did but not be awarded loot is another awesome thing.
- Wonder if we will still have coins next expansion, I did not see anything about that.
- I kind of liked the lesser charm approach to extra rolls.
- Now lets get back to that toybox.
- No more will I need to keep my puntable marmot on all my characters.
- Ah, the beauty of more bag space.
- All those island goodies, rare goodies, quest goodies, archeology goodies, all on a shared tab that span over all my characters.
- Me like.
- And heirlooms being on a shared tab as well.
- This means cross realm heirlooms.
- Does this mean I can equip them on all my characters or only one can be using it at a time?
- I need to see if anyone asked that question, would be interesting to gear my army of hunter alts with only one set of heirloom gear.
- And shaman for that matter being gear changes with spec.
- Oh god I love that gear changing with spec.
- Almost as much as I love a tab for all my heirlooms.
- But not quite as much as I love the TOYBOX.
- Yes, TOYBOX needs to be said in all caps at any given moment to put appropriate emphasis on how freaking awesome that is.
- I might need to do a tuesday random thoughts as well to touch on the rest of my thoughts being this is going on long enough for today.
- I have so many other random thoughts about things that are coming.
- As for story, I am not interested in the story of the new expansion at all.
- I'm about as burnt out as I can be with following an orc around for the 3rd expansion in a row.
- They need to find something else to do besides having us run around with orcs all the time.
- Stop putting your obsession into the game, if you really like orcs go look online somewhere and I am sure you can find some orc porn or something to satisfy your orc festish.
- Just stop making them the central selling point of the game each and every expansion.
- At least rotate it to every other expansion.
- So while the story doesn't do anything for me, the expansion looks pretty awesome over all from what they have showed us.
- Lets hope they do the bait and switch and this ends up being not about orcs, but just about orcs to get us there.
- Unless the big baddie at the end is Gul'Dan.
- Then it can be about orcs because he is one cool ass orc.
- The rest of them are just boring, played out, and are generally not all that interesting any longer.
- But Gul'Dan still rocks.
- And in case you did not notice, he already drank the blood whereas the other orcs have not.
- Interesting. Wouldn't you say?
- I might be sick and tired of yet another expansion centered entirely around the horde, but it looks like a winner so far either way.
- I'll do some more random thoughts tomorrow.
- Have a great day.
- Did ya miss me?
- With blizzcon there is a lot to think about randomly.
- I think out of all the announcements I am looking forward to garrisons most.
- I like how fleshed out it is so far, shows they are really far along with the development of the expansion when one "small" feature is that complete.
- And for a "small" feature it sure does not seem small at all.
- Basically it is like player housing.
- Kind of sad they are doing what they did with the farm and tying it to one expansion however but that does not change the fact I am looking forward to it.
- Getting followers, making them gather, quest, do dungeons, even raid for me.
- Yeah, that sounds like fun.
- I dig mini games like that.
- With my cast of characters I can have a massive amount of the garrisons and that means if I want I could farm materials like crazy.
- I can't wait to try it out.
- Going to miss reforging being they are removing it.
- Now the only thing good that ever came out of cataclysm in terms of effecting game play is gone.
- Don't say transmog, that does not effect game play.
- Unless of course you believe what your gear looks like effects how well you play.
- In that case, to each their own.
- I guess I can actually see how to some people what they look like does help them play.
- Hit and expertise being gone? Winner.
- What took so freaking long?
- Dodge and parry being gone? Winner.
- Again, what took so freaking long?
- When they first started to remove stats that were considered uninteresting like attack power, armor penetration, etc, they should have removed hit, expertise, dodge and parry.
- How someone thought that hit was more compelling of a stat than attack power is still beyond me.
- And lets face it, as I've said a million times before, our characters are supposed to be professional killers, so to speak, if they could not hit something the size of a three story building they would have never survived long enough to get to max level.
- Hit had always been a completely useless stat.
- So glad it is gone.
- With hit and expertise gone it does lower the need for reforging however.
- Sure, there are stats we want to stack otherwise.
- Sure, there will be a lot of not the best type of gear we get now because we would prefer something with stats more suitable for us.
- Sure, there will still be haste break points.
- But over all reforging was for getting hit and expertise close, so we did not waste any stats.
- Now, even if mastery is not great for you, it is not a useless stat.
- Unlike hit, where when you were over cap it was useless.
- So maybe the need for reforging left when the need for hit and expertise did.
- Still going to miss it, I loved reforging.
- But I am so extremely happy that I will not have to fiddle about with hit and expertise in its absence.
- Could you just imagine the nightmare that is hit cap without reforging?
- How often has your hunter (or any character) found himself at 12% hit?
- I know without reforging mine would have been there a lot this expansion.
- And all things being equal I would rather have 12% of a crappy stat like mastery than 12% of a useless stat like hit any day.
- I am excited with the changes to armor as well.
- Even if it does mean I now need to roll against elemental shaman and restoration shaman.
- Your gears stats changing with your spec is something I have been suggesting here for years.
- About time they listened.
- My shaman can go back to being enhancement / restoration.
- My paladin can go back to being protection / holy.
- My monk can finally test out healing without needing to get a whole new set of gear for it.
- My death knight and warrior will no longer be DPSing in tank gear, strength plate is strength plate.
- And tier sets, oh my god tier sets.
- My druid just needs to get one four piece set and now I will have the four piece set for all four specs.
- I think I almost shed a tear at how easy life has become for my alts.
- Fewer gem slots, fewer items that can be enchanted, no reforging, some people might call it dumming down, I just call it a blessing.
- My mage has 5 pieces in his bag that are upgrades, but I am not equipping them yet.
- Why? Because I don't want to do it each time I get a new piece of gear and have to regem, rereforge, reenchant, it is just a hassle.
- All my mage does is the LFR and it already does better than 95% of the people in there, no rush to get that gear on me.
- When I get some more pieces to be worth going through all that crap I will put it all on and do it all at once.
- But as long as nearly everything I might get will be an upgrade, I am not going to waste my time or energy on redoing everything every time I get one single piece on a character I play maybe once or twice a month.
- I waited until I had 8 pieces on my warlock before I did anything with it.
- Waited until I had four pieces on my druid and then only put them all on because I was needed to tank a SoO normal one day.
- Now my druid has a couple more pieces sitting in its bags and I will not put them on until I feel it is needed for a type of content I will be doing.
- If my druid is going to do flex or LFR I will just leave it as is.
- And that is why I can actually get on board with the fewer enchants, fewer gem slots, and no reforging.
- As it is now getting gear sometimes feels like work, not fun.
- Good old ghostcrawler said it well when he said he wanted to make getting gear exciting again.
- Being able to get it and put it on instantly instead of saying, I'll have to wait until after the raid so I can figure out how to reforged for my caps and get the most use out of it is more exciting for sure.
- I think I would like the idea of getting a new piece and putting it right on as is.
- And that is another awesome thing with gear changes.
- Gem slots do not count to itemization as gem slots are not standard.
- Speaking of gem slots, no more meta gems.
- Our good buddy ghostcrawler says that it is because there was never any decisions in them, you use the best one for your class/spec.
- Excuse me? Isn't that the way with everything in the game GC?
- You use the best stats, the best gear, the best rotation, the best enchants, the best whatever.
- So of course people were just using the best gem for them.
- To say metas were not interesting because people just used the best one you can say that anything in game is not interesting because people just use the best one.
- Bracer enchants are boring because people just use the best one.
- Weapons are boring because people just use the best one.
- Come on GC, you can find a better explanation than that.
- How about you are removing meta gems because they no longer fit with the scheme of things.
- At least that is truthful.
- We do not even need meta requirements any more.
- When requirements like "need three blue gems" was removed you could see that the meta concept had worn out its welcome.
- Speaking of Ghostcrawler, has anyone here ever seen the rocky horror picture show?
- I mean the real show, with people performing along with the moving, people throwing toast and rice and shouting things at the screen?
- Well, if you have never seen it, get your ass out and go see it, it is a great experience, I've seen it over 500 times and it never gets old.
- But that is not the point, if you have seen the rocky horror picture show, as I described you will get the next joke.
- If you haven't, you might still get the next joke.
- As soon as I saw ghostcrawler appear on stage I yelled... "this man has no neck."
- I could not help it.
- Now lets move on to some raiding stuff.
- TOYBOX!!!
- Sorry, just remembered that and could not resist mentioning that awesome addition.
- Excuse me for a moment while I do the happy dance.
- Okay, I am back, lets get on to raiding.
- Flex is becoming the new normal.
- Show me one person that did not see that coming from a mile away and I will show you someone that is not a raider to begin with.
- Normal is becoming the new heroic and it is going to be flexible.
- Okay, now that one got me. I thought they would just ditch the old normal completely.
- A new level of raiding is being added, not flexible, for 20 players, and that will be the top tier of raiding.
- Now that is something I did see coming.
- No more 10 vs 25 arguments.
- No more trying to design for 2 different versions.
- It opens many more design options to make heroic raiding better than it has ever been.
- World first is one format only.
- For 25 man groups this should not be a problem, for 10 man groups, this could be an issue.
- For my guild it means nothing what so ever.
- With a 25 man team and 3 10 man teams and the addition of flex, the only problem I have is picking the 20 best players for it.
- Actually the only problem I have is finding 20 decent players for it. lol
- But being we are not a world, or even server, first type of group, who cares.
- When the time comes for us to do the new heroic raiding I am sure I can pick 20 people to drag along.
- And more importantly, they can still raid in the normals because they all have different lock outs now.
- I must say I like that.
- And having the flex ability to do a boss you already did but not be awarded loot is another awesome thing.
- Wonder if we will still have coins next expansion, I did not see anything about that.
- I kind of liked the lesser charm approach to extra rolls.
- Now lets get back to that toybox.
- No more will I need to keep my puntable marmot on all my characters.
- Ah, the beauty of more bag space.
- All those island goodies, rare goodies, quest goodies, archeology goodies, all on a shared tab that span over all my characters.
- Me like.
- And heirlooms being on a shared tab as well.
- This means cross realm heirlooms.
- Does this mean I can equip them on all my characters or only one can be using it at a time?
- I need to see if anyone asked that question, would be interesting to gear my army of hunter alts with only one set of heirloom gear.
- And shaman for that matter being gear changes with spec.
- Oh god I love that gear changing with spec.
- Almost as much as I love a tab for all my heirlooms.
- But not quite as much as I love the TOYBOX.
- Yes, TOYBOX needs to be said in all caps at any given moment to put appropriate emphasis on how freaking awesome that is.
- I might need to do a tuesday random thoughts as well to touch on the rest of my thoughts being this is going on long enough for today.
- I have so many other random thoughts about things that are coming.
- As for story, I am not interested in the story of the new expansion at all.
- I'm about as burnt out as I can be with following an orc around for the 3rd expansion in a row.
- They need to find something else to do besides having us run around with orcs all the time.
- Stop putting your obsession into the game, if you really like orcs go look online somewhere and I am sure you can find some orc porn or something to satisfy your orc festish.
- Just stop making them the central selling point of the game each and every expansion.
- At least rotate it to every other expansion.
- So while the story doesn't do anything for me, the expansion looks pretty awesome over all from what they have showed us.
- Lets hope they do the bait and switch and this ends up being not about orcs, but just about orcs to get us there.
- Unless the big baddie at the end is Gul'Dan.
- Then it can be about orcs because he is one cool ass orc.
- The rest of them are just boring, played out, and are generally not all that interesting any longer.
- But Gul'Dan still rocks.
- And in case you did not notice, he already drank the blood whereas the other orcs have not.
- Interesting. Wouldn't you say?
- I might be sick and tired of yet another expansion centered entirely around the horde, but it looks like a winner so far either way.
- I'll do some more random thoughts tomorrow.
- Have a great day.
Friday, November 1, 2013
Connected Realms: What are the Odds?
I would really love to know what the odds of something like this happening. If you are one of those people that like to play with numbers feel free to have at it.
Let say you started playing on Server A. In BC, thanks to queue times, they started to offer server transfers off of server A. When the new wrath servers were started they added transfers to those start up servers and you took that free transfer to go to a less populated server, lets call it server B.
Now, since then you have played the game and made Server A your horde server with the characters you did leave behind and made server B your alliance server as you new home.
Now connected realms come many years later and Server A has been connected to Server B.
In a game with so many servers that has to be a long shot. But how would you feel if you were the person that ran away from a full server to, years later, be put back on it?
Let say you started playing on Server A. In BC, thanks to queue times, they started to offer server transfers off of server A. When the new wrath servers were started they added transfers to those start up servers and you took that free transfer to go to a less populated server, lets call it server B.
Now, since then you have played the game and made Server A your horde server with the characters you did leave behind and made server B your alliance server as you new home.
Now connected realms come many years later and Server A has been connected to Server B.
In a game with so many servers that has to be a long shot. But how would you feel if you were the person that ran away from a full server to, years later, be put back on it?
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