Cataclysm Miscues: VIII: Gems

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

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

Why? Because it's Red:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cataclysm Miscues: VII: Stats

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

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

Stat Inflation Gone Wild:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cataclysm Miscues: VI: Forums Creating The Gap

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

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

Listening to People on the Forums:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Monday Random Thoughts

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

- 1 Day 20 hours.

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

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

- Do you remember your first character?

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

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

- Professions slow down leveling.

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

- I'll just power level 2 professions now.

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

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

- You would be wrong.

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

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

- Keep moving and stack quests when you can.

- Get the biggest bags possible as soon as possible.

- Never pass a vendor without emptying your bags.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Enough for a dozen expansions to come.

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

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

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

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

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

- Why wouldn't they?

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

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

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

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

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

- I am looking forward to the bugs in MoP.

- I think the game is seriously lacking in bugs.

- Bugs make for good bad guys.

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

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

- Bugs are awesome baddies.

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

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

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

- Who doesn't love the bear dance.

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

- What more needs to be said?

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

- I like big butts and I can not lie.

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

- They can't.

- I wonder what the panda dances will be.

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

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

- I think it is a little of both.

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

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

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

- Cataclysm hit rock bottom.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- I would be kicked out of the hunters union.

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

- My current pets would abandon me.

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

- The risks are not worth it.

- Have a great day.

Cataclysm Miscues: V: Flow

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

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

Game Flow:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cataclysm Miscues: IV: Professions

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

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

Professionally Speaking:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cataclysm Miscues: III: Targeting

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

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

What are you Targeting?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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