You know that old bit about the introverted, socially awkward geek who goes online and becomes a type-A chatterbox, exudes charm and charisma, and hillarity ensues (because it always does)?
Yeah, not so much here.
New guilds freak me the heck out. I play less, I say less, I blog less (sorry), I find weird things to do (alone) like critter-hugging achievements when I am online.
The truth is, I am so bad at dealing with new people that I probably wouldn't be in a guild at all were I not able to just go and join whatever guild Eric is in most of the time.
But ironically, I really hate playing the game when I am not in a guild. I get bored with solo content, with achievement farming, rep grinds, completionism, and the whole solo player thing. I like instances and (small) raids and green chat that I can be snarky in.
So there it is, the only way I can have the environment in-game that I want or need in order to enjoy the game is to endure the transitions that I find most unpleasant and uncomfortable.
Some hobby. I should have taken up knitting.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Revenge: the Cold Dish
Or something like that. There's a clever title in here somewhere, I'm sure. Short story: revenge is off my actionbars for now, and I've taken points out of improved revenge for my prot spec on Radish. I'm playing with glyphs for the time being, but I'm pretty sure the setup I want is Shield Wall, Cleave, Devastate. I'd kind of like the glyph of blocking as well, and I think I'll probably carry a few in my bag to swap out for cleave situationally (cleave for heroics and AoE tanking, blocking for raids and high-damage single-target stuff). Even then, the blocking glyph isn't all that hot, 10% block value is nice but it's a few hundred extra damage off of incoming hits. If the boss hits you for 15k or more, that's a drop in the bucket anyway.
The big deal, though, is that after patch 3.3.2, devastate has been buffed in an attempt to "improve prot warrior DPS" and overcome the annoying warbringer/shield slam nerfs. Granted, from my perspective (not PvP, and raiding as fury), I don't notice most of those high-falutin' nerfs. But what I did notice was that after the patch, the expected DPS output of devastate has gotten to the point where it's more-or-less the same as the talented DPS of revenge, before you factor in bonus damage from the multiple sunder stacks. In terms of TPS, devastate comes out even better, especially glyphed, because you get two times the sunder armor bonus threat per devastate (even if there's already a 5-stack up).
So for snap and sustained TPS and DPS, devastate edges out revenge. Not so much that you'd be a fool to use revenge, but definitely enough that you can take two points out of imp revenge and put them elsewhere (I put them in imp disciplines instead, hence the shield wall glyph). The only thing revenge has going for it is the fact that it costs 10 less rage to use (meaning you could maybe get off an extra heroic strike now and again). But that's simply not enough of a benefit to make me watch my cooldown timers for when it's up and when it's lit (because you have to block/dodge/parry before you can even qualify to use revenge, and then it has to be off its 15 sec CD).
One less button to press. That's kind of a bummer, as I like the complexity of tanking with a warrior. But if I can get away with shield slam and devastate as my only two real threat moves (besides thunder clap and shockwave, of course), well, I can live with that.
The big deal, though, is that after patch 3.3.2, devastate has been buffed in an attempt to "improve prot warrior DPS" and overcome the annoying warbringer/shield slam nerfs. Granted, from my perspective (not PvP, and raiding as fury), I don't notice most of those high-falutin' nerfs. But what I did notice was that after the patch, the expected DPS output of devastate has gotten to the point where it's more-or-less the same as the talented DPS of revenge, before you factor in bonus damage from the multiple sunder stacks. In terms of TPS, devastate comes out even better, especially glyphed, because you get two times the sunder armor bonus threat per devastate (even if there's already a 5-stack up).
So for snap and sustained TPS and DPS, devastate edges out revenge. Not so much that you'd be a fool to use revenge, but definitely enough that you can take two points out of imp revenge and put them elsewhere (I put them in imp disciplines instead, hence the shield wall glyph). The only thing revenge has going for it is the fact that it costs 10 less rage to use (meaning you could maybe get off an extra heroic strike now and again). But that's simply not enough of a benefit to make me watch my cooldown timers for when it's up and when it's lit (because you have to block/dodge/parry before you can even qualify to use revenge, and then it has to be off its 15 sec CD).
One less button to press. That's kind of a bummer, as I like the complexity of tanking with a warrior. But if I can get away with shield slam and devastate as my only two real threat moves (besides thunder clap and shockwave, of course), well, I can live with that.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Showing off your mount in Dalaran
Normally, you can't fly in Dalaran. At some point recently (I think in 3.2), the city was marked with the "noflyable" tag, which is nice - originally my macro that selected my ground mount using /cast [noflyable] Horsie didn't work in dalaran (it still doesn't work during a wintergrasp fight, which is annoying). If you fly into Dalaran and fly over the city, you'll get a "forbidden airspace" warning, which gives you 10 seconds before you get knocked off your dragon. Conveniently, you get a parachute. Why you don't get one of those when you're dismounted by a flying attacker, I dunno.
Anyway, there are a number of secret spots in Dalaran. One is right on top of the well in front of the horde bank. The other is just to the side of the stairs up to the Violet Citadel, as I'm showing in the above screenshot. These spots are (for the time being, at least) not marked as forbidden airspace. So you can float there, showing off your mount, for as long as you want. The well by the bank is a particularly good place to go with your Proto-Drakes or whatever. When I got a blue drake for Radish (the second day they were available in Oculus no less), I sat there for a while, to the delight and amusement of all.
Unfortunately, those spots are marked 'noflyable', so you can't *mount* there. But you can mount at the launchpad and fly over the city speedily and end up there. I'm pretty sure there are other spots as well, but I haven't found them all yet. It's also worth noting that the "ceiling" of the no-fly zone seems to be lower than it used to be. You can get pretty close to the ground without tripping the warning.
It's these little things that make WoW so interesting to me. I remember when the only place on a trans-continental boat you could mount was standing on the one deck crate; I would jump up there and mount all the time, for no good reason other than to do it. That and singing about riding a pony on a boat. Anyway, have fun showing off your cool mounts.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
.... and back again.
Times have turned around, and come full circle again. It's clearly not Phil who sucks at alts, because he doesn't have to keep going through this rigamarole. Just a little while ago, I was online with a tank who wanted to run heroics. So rather than DPS with Radish, I decided to see what Mariwocket could do now that they made haste good for affliction. There have also been a number of changes to Demonology that make it a lot easier, and destruction is still all about blowing people up, even though the new conflagrate is a letdown.
That was a mistake. Or it wasn't a mistake, depends on how you look at things. I was blowing stuff up left and right, didn't have to worry about aggro, with the 130% threat ceiling and an active aggro drop skill, and don't even get me started on AoE. Of course Mariwocket already has some decent gear to start with - the problem with leveling a brand-new toon is that if you can't get a gear slot filled with badges, you end up with an AH blue in that position instead. But Mari has been through Naxx and Ulduar and even a bit of ToC and Onyxia. So she's got some decent stuff already, which is very nice.
But the thing was, it was a BLAST. I remember how much fun it was to DPS again. Especially in the longer fights where you have to watch cooldowns, keep an eye out for ground effects, and stuff. I was able to pretty significantly out-DPS a Warlock in much better gear than mine (ICC-10 mainly) - skill matters. Of course she could have been phoning it in, since it's just a heroic, but it's nice to see how well skill can modulate your character's performance. Plus, DPSing is a lot more relaxed than tanking or healing. Most tanks could probably three-man most heroics, especially Paladins and Druids. So as long as I'm there and doing something, we're probably good.
The only problem I have is the queue time. Queuing as a DPS takes about 20 minutes or so. Of course, I could always run dailies or farm, but ironically Radish is a better farmer, as he can mine and has more quests unfinished. Oh well.
We'll see how it goes. Maybe there will be a spate of new warlock theorycrafting posts here coming up. Those are always fun.
That was a mistake. Or it wasn't a mistake, depends on how you look at things. I was blowing stuff up left and right, didn't have to worry about aggro, with the 130% threat ceiling and an active aggro drop skill, and don't even get me started on AoE. Of course Mariwocket already has some decent gear to start with - the problem with leveling a brand-new toon is that if you can't get a gear slot filled with badges, you end up with an AH blue in that position instead. But Mari has been through Naxx and Ulduar and even a bit of ToC and Onyxia. So she's got some decent stuff already, which is very nice.
But the thing was, it was a BLAST. I remember how much fun it was to DPS again. Especially in the longer fights where you have to watch cooldowns, keep an eye out for ground effects, and stuff. I was able to pretty significantly out-DPS a Warlock in much better gear than mine (ICC-10 mainly) - skill matters. Of course she could have been phoning it in, since it's just a heroic, but it's nice to see how well skill can modulate your character's performance. Plus, DPSing is a lot more relaxed than tanking or healing. Most tanks could probably three-man most heroics, especially Paladins and Druids. So as long as I'm there and doing something, we're probably good.
The only problem I have is the queue time. Queuing as a DPS takes about 20 minutes or so. Of course, I could always run dailies or farm, but ironically Radish is a better farmer, as he can mine and has more quests unfinished. Oh well.
We'll see how it goes. Maybe there will be a spate of new warlock theorycrafting posts here coming up. Those are always fun.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Addon Idea: AbandonThreat
Lately, tanking with Radish, I've been using Omen to figure out when it's time to move on to the next mob in a pack (or who needs my Vigilance).
It's pretty wild, the difference between the threat I generate and the average threat generated by a DPSer. Some of it is because I'm always getting grouped with poor DPS. But halfway through most bossfights, I've got so much threat on the boss, there's no way anybody is getting it back. By the time they did enough damage to peel the boss from me, he'd be dead. At least if the numbers in Omen and the HP numbers on the boss are comparable, that's true.
This is an especially useful threshold to know for warrior tanking of add packs. Because my AoE threat move (thunder clap) is on a cooldown, I'm not able to really spam AoE threat on everybody. I need to rotate through targets and use Devastate, Revenge, and Shield Slam to build threat one at a time. Cleave helps a lot too, but that's on the swing timer so it's not strictly spammable. So, what I'd like is an addon that looks at the HP remaining on a mob as well as the relative levels of threat on the mob and does a worst-case scenario (assuming nobody has any threat reduction) and tells me if I've got so much, I should just move on.
It's pretty wild, the difference between the threat I generate and the average threat generated by a DPSer. Some of it is because I'm always getting grouped with poor DPS. But halfway through most bossfights, I've got so much threat on the boss, there's no way anybody is getting it back. By the time they did enough damage to peel the boss from me, he'd be dead. At least if the numbers in Omen and the HP numbers on the boss are comparable, that's true.
This is an especially useful threshold to know for warrior tanking of add packs. Because my AoE threat move (thunder clap) is on a cooldown, I'm not able to really spam AoE threat on everybody. I need to rotate through targets and use Devastate, Revenge, and Shield Slam to build threat one at a time. Cleave helps a lot too, but that's on the swing timer so it's not strictly spammable. So, what I'd like is an addon that looks at the HP remaining on a mob as well as the relative levels of threat on the mob and does a worst-case scenario (assuming nobody has any threat reduction) and tells me if I've got so much, I should just move on.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Nerfs as social engineering
Another day, another round of heroic dungeon nerfs.
At least they're not changing Oculus again.
What's on the plate this time (if not to inform, then perhaps just to place this in proper historical context)? In Old Kingdom, we have Fewer adds on Elder Nadox and only one sacrifice on Jedova Shadowsong. Over in the Nexus (nerfing Nexus, really?) Anomalous will summon fewer chaotic rifts.
Really?
Ok, I can understand there being a lot of qq about Jedova. Puggers being puggers I don't think I've run the joint without at least one of the sacrifices making it to her and consequently being forced to heal through a damage buff, which, given the gear healers are running around in these days, isn't all that hard to do. On the flip side, even the worst groups seem to get one of them down - hence my not yet having the achievement for that boss.
I wasn't even aware that Nadox was an issue. Sure, your tank needs to be aware of the existence of adds and your dps needs to know to swap targets, but isn't that basic preparation? I don't seem to recall wiping on this guy and generally, it's a pretty boring fight from my side of the role split.
Anomalous too? Nexus is a 7-badge giftset soured only by the fact that it's a bit on the lengthy side. The trash packs around the mage boss's room are more dangerous than anomalous, but I do understand how frustrating it can be to watch as that DK continues to dps the boss during his immune phase.
And that is why these nerfs are being made.
Make no mistake, this round of changes is not about weakening the content so that noobs can beat it, it's about lessening the burden on the very people who will kvetch the most about the changes in teh first place.
So, while the hard core raiders piss and moan about how the content is too easy now and all the gear is just handed around in giftwrapped packages what they fail to realize is that this change is for them.
When the dungeon finder was put in place, the leader flag was added in hopes that the players who'd done the content would, either with or without the flag instruct those who were new or clueless in how to get through the fights. The hope was that the experienced would pass that knowledge on and everyone in the queue would become more competent, better geared, and over time runs would go smoother, gear levels would rise, and fun would be had by all.
Sadly, Blizzard did not count on the greed, impatience, and antisocial tendencies of its raid-oriented player subset.
People aren't teaching fights. They're just berating and complaining at people who don't know them. At the best of times the overgeared players are trivializing the difficult phases with overheal, ridiculous mitigation, and party's worth of dps in a single player, removing both the need and the occasion for a teachable moment, and at the worst, those experienced players who should have been instructing are instead dropping group in any case where the other players do not seem to have the knowledge or gear to blast through every encounter in a silent badge-farming speed run.
So, when fights like these where a lack of preparation or potency could potentially slow down or even lead to the death of an experienced raider just trying to get badges became an occasion in entirely too many cases for that awe-inspiring raider to launch into an abusive tirade or drop group, something had to be changed. Because the elites among us are so spoiled, so immature, so poorly-behaved, and so entitled that they cannot be bothered to suffer the moments it takes to explain a fight or to persevere through a run with people who cannot trivialize every encounter the developers are forced to diminish the difficulty of more encounters so that the casuals do not set them off.
These nerfs are not about making it easier for casuals to run content, they are not Blizzard dumbing down the game or about caving to the inexperienced portion of the player base. They are not about the things the raiders are kvetching about, they are about the raiders kvetching. This is about saving the casuals from the nastiness and fecklessness of the raiders, and nothing more. It is Blizzard saving us from them. It is about the game changing to keep the fragile peace between the different groups of people using the dungeon finder, a hope that in not provoking the worst of the few we can be sure that the many are spared the unpleasantness of their tantrums.
Sadly, it's probably still not enough.
At least they're not changing Oculus again.
What's on the plate this time (if not to inform, then perhaps just to place this in proper historical context)? In Old Kingdom, we have Fewer adds on Elder Nadox and only one sacrifice on Jedova Shadowsong. Over in the Nexus (nerfing Nexus, really?) Anomalous will summon fewer chaotic rifts.
Really?
Ok, I can understand there being a lot of qq about Jedova. Puggers being puggers I don't think I've run the joint without at least one of the sacrifices making it to her and consequently being forced to heal through a damage buff, which, given the gear healers are running around in these days, isn't all that hard to do. On the flip side, even the worst groups seem to get one of them down - hence my not yet having the achievement for that boss.
I wasn't even aware that Nadox was an issue. Sure, your tank needs to be aware of the existence of adds and your dps needs to know to swap targets, but isn't that basic preparation? I don't seem to recall wiping on this guy and generally, it's a pretty boring fight from my side of the role split.
Anomalous too? Nexus is a 7-badge giftset soured only by the fact that it's a bit on the lengthy side. The trash packs around the mage boss's room are more dangerous than anomalous, but I do understand how frustrating it can be to watch as that DK continues to dps the boss during his immune phase.
And that is why these nerfs are being made.
Make no mistake, this round of changes is not about weakening the content so that noobs can beat it, it's about lessening the burden on the very people who will kvetch the most about the changes in teh first place.
So, while the hard core raiders piss and moan about how the content is too easy now and all the gear is just handed around in giftwrapped packages what they fail to realize is that this change is for them.
When the dungeon finder was put in place, the leader flag was added in hopes that the players who'd done the content would, either with or without the flag instruct those who were new or clueless in how to get through the fights. The hope was that the experienced would pass that knowledge on and everyone in the queue would become more competent, better geared, and over time runs would go smoother, gear levels would rise, and fun would be had by all.
Sadly, Blizzard did not count on the greed, impatience, and antisocial tendencies of its raid-oriented player subset.
People aren't teaching fights. They're just berating and complaining at people who don't know them. At the best of times the overgeared players are trivializing the difficult phases with overheal, ridiculous mitigation, and party's worth of dps in a single player, removing both the need and the occasion for a teachable moment, and at the worst, those experienced players who should have been instructing are instead dropping group in any case where the other players do not seem to have the knowledge or gear to blast through every encounter in a silent badge-farming speed run.
So, when fights like these where a lack of preparation or potency could potentially slow down or even lead to the death of an experienced raider just trying to get badges became an occasion in entirely too many cases for that awe-inspiring raider to launch into an abusive tirade or drop group, something had to be changed. Because the elites among us are so spoiled, so immature, so poorly-behaved, and so entitled that they cannot be bothered to suffer the moments it takes to explain a fight or to persevere through a run with people who cannot trivialize every encounter the developers are forced to diminish the difficulty of more encounters so that the casuals do not set them off.
These nerfs are not about making it easier for casuals to run content, they are not Blizzard dumbing down the game or about caving to the inexperienced portion of the player base. They are not about the things the raiders are kvetching about, they are about the raiders kvetching. This is about saving the casuals from the nastiness and fecklessness of the raiders, and nothing more. It is Blizzard saving us from them. It is about the game changing to keep the fragile peace between the different groups of people using the dungeon finder, a hope that in not provoking the worst of the few we can be sure that the many are spared the unpleasantness of their tantrums.
Sadly, it's probably still not enough.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
WTB: Heroic Strike Toggle
I know that Blizzard wants to make sure we don't have macros that do the thinking for us. So I understand that I'm more or less stuck with the situation as it currently stands. But here it is, simply. I hate Heroic Strike (and Cleave, for that matter). I just absolutely hate it.
Wait. Back up a bit.
Since we last met, Radish has completed his journey to 80, picked up a decent heroic-tanking prot spec and a titan's grip fury DPS spec. Both are pretty optimized for heroics - glyphing cleave for trash packs, etc. I love Radish, really I do. He's a cool tank with lots of buttons, and when I'm feeling lazy, Fury DPS has like two buttons to press and they're both on cooldown timers so you really literally could faceroll.
Everything except heroic strike.
The thing about heroic strike and cleave is that they're "on next strike" abilities. Turning them on means your next melee strike will instead be a heroic strike, and will hit for more damage and much more threat (or if it's cleave will hit three people instead of one). Since it converts a white hit into a yellow special hit, you not only pay rage to use it, you lose the rage you would have generated when you hit with it. Heroic strike therefore eats your rage relatively quickly, but this is a GOOD thing - you want to spend as much of your rage on damage as possible.
The problem is that my swing timer is something like 1.6 seconds with my tanking mace. So every 1.6 seconds, I have to press the heroic strike button. If I want to heroic strike, that is. I'm at a gearing point where I only have infinite rage on bosses, and only some bosses at that. In normal fights with trash packs, I can run out of rage cleaving. This will only get worse as my gear gets better, since reducing incoming damage reduces the amount of rage I generate. So for now and for the foreseeable future, I don't want to do what many people do, and just write macros that attach a /castrandom heroic strike to each main tanking move I make, as I'll (a) run out of rage too quickly, and (b) sometimes I want to cleave, even on bossfights.
The problem is more pronounced as Fury, since I don't have the crit rating to support the heroic strike glyph (10 rage generated when HS crits), and I *really really* don't want to be so low on rage that I can't whirlwind/bloodthirst when they're off cooldown.
If a macro were doing my thinking for me, it would use only white attacks if I was below 40 rage and single-target, heroic strike otherwise. It would cleave if I were facing 3+ targets and I was above 25 rage, or cleave at 2 targets and 40 rage. But that's not really possible to write.
I'll settle for a toggle - if I press the heroic strike button, make all my attacks heroic strikes until I press it again, like a stance change. That way, at least, I don't have to keep madly spamming heroic strike and watching my swing timer addon.
I'm sure eventually I'll get used to it, and my new naga mouse will wear out its 2 button. But between now and then, it'd be a huge quality of life improvement if I could have a smarter or better way to burn rage.
Conclusion: really, all heroic strike does is give you a higher damage output in exchange for lower rage generation for times when your rage generation is higher than you can spend it with GCD-based abilities. If there were a skill or talent or whatever that said: "you deal R/20 percent more damage" where R was your rage level (so at 100 rage you deal 5% more damage), we wouldn't worry about burning rage on heroic strike spam. Cleave is a little different, but if it were an instant-cast, akin to the Bear Druid's Swipe ability (although only 2 targets unglyphed, and lower damage output to keep warriors from turning into rogues with non-cooldown spammable main attack spells), with those caveats, it would be better.
Also, I want a pony.
Wait. Back up a bit.
Since we last met, Radish has completed his journey to 80, picked up a decent heroic-tanking prot spec and a titan's grip fury DPS spec. Both are pretty optimized for heroics - glyphing cleave for trash packs, etc. I love Radish, really I do. He's a cool tank with lots of buttons, and when I'm feeling lazy, Fury DPS has like two buttons to press and they're both on cooldown timers so you really literally could faceroll.
Everything except heroic strike.
The thing about heroic strike and cleave is that they're "on next strike" abilities. Turning them on means your next melee strike will instead be a heroic strike, and will hit for more damage and much more threat (or if it's cleave will hit three people instead of one). Since it converts a white hit into a yellow special hit, you not only pay rage to use it, you lose the rage you would have generated when you hit with it. Heroic strike therefore eats your rage relatively quickly, but this is a GOOD thing - you want to spend as much of your rage on damage as possible.
The problem is that my swing timer is something like 1.6 seconds with my tanking mace. So every 1.6 seconds, I have to press the heroic strike button. If I want to heroic strike, that is. I'm at a gearing point where I only have infinite rage on bosses, and only some bosses at that. In normal fights with trash packs, I can run out of rage cleaving. This will only get worse as my gear gets better, since reducing incoming damage reduces the amount of rage I generate. So for now and for the foreseeable future, I don't want to do what many people do, and just write macros that attach a /castrandom heroic strike to each main tanking move I make, as I'll (a) run out of rage too quickly, and (b) sometimes I want to cleave, even on bossfights.
The problem is more pronounced as Fury, since I don't have the crit rating to support the heroic strike glyph (10 rage generated when HS crits), and I *really really* don't want to be so low on rage that I can't whirlwind/bloodthirst when they're off cooldown.
If a macro were doing my thinking for me, it would use only white attacks if I was below 40 rage and single-target, heroic strike otherwise. It would cleave if I were facing 3+ targets and I was above 25 rage, or cleave at 2 targets and 40 rage. But that's not really possible to write.
I'll settle for a toggle - if I press the heroic strike button, make all my attacks heroic strikes until I press it again, like a stance change. That way, at least, I don't have to keep madly spamming heroic strike and watching my swing timer addon.
I'm sure eventually I'll get used to it, and my new naga mouse will wear out its 2 button. But between now and then, it'd be a huge quality of life improvement if I could have a smarter or better way to burn rage.
Conclusion: really, all heroic strike does is give you a higher damage output in exchange for lower rage generation for times when your rage generation is higher than you can spend it with GCD-based abilities. If there were a skill or talent or whatever that said: "you deal R/20 percent more damage" where R was your rage level (so at 100 rage you deal 5% more damage), we wouldn't worry about burning rage on heroic strike spam. Cleave is a little different, but if it were an instant-cast, akin to the Bear Druid's Swipe ability (although only 2 targets unglyphed, and lower damage output to keep warriors from turning into rogues with non-cooldown spammable main attack spells), with those caveats, it would be better.
Also, I want a pony.
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