Bring the Class Not the Player

So, a lot of what we've heard about raiding since before Wrath came out was this concept of "Bring the Player Not the Class." Basically meaning that Blizzard doesn't feel it should be required to bring certain classes to each raid. For example, many of the Burning Crusade raids required certain classes (mage for sheep / steal magic, warlocks to tank, hunters to tranq shot, etc.) With almost everything in Wrath, they've pretty much eliminated that need. Only thing left I can think of off the top of my head is the MC'ing in Naxx for Instructor Razuvious on the 25-man version.

It's still held on a bit though, in a way. Ideally, the best way to go into VoA is to bring one of each class so that you're sure somebody can use a drop. Now, if they have it or not is another story, but still... it's not an instant-shard.

But I had this random idea for a raid. What if it took the complete opposite of Blizzard's statement. But not in a bad way. See.. what if there were certain mechanics that only a specific class could get the loot. Here's the catch though: the class-specific item is obtained by conquering that mechanic. An easy example would be that there's a lockbox (or maybe even a series of lockboxes) that contains either gold or a rogue item. Maybe there's a guy you have to MC in order to open something and then either gold or a priest item drops. (I mention gold so that you can still have Blizzard's precious "random drop" mechanic in play.) A mage can spell steal an NPC shield to bypass some lazer door. etc. You get the idea.

Ideally, it may even open some small wing or something so that you can only see that part of the dungeon/raid when you have that class. As a dungeon, it would almost make the run different every time based on what you brought to the instance.

Anyway, just a random idea disguised as a post on my blog. :)

School of Worst Achievement Ever

Subtitle: Why Horde and Alliance have to Work Together.

I vaguely remember the last couple of years that people complained about a certain achievement during Children's Week. There's probably a few reasons why this achievement is so horrible.

First, the achievement itself. I'm, of course, talking about the achievement School of Hard Knocks. This is one of those holiday achievements, so you have only one week to complete it. It's a requirement to prove that you've done the achievements for Children's week, and of course that's a requirement to get one of the really fast mounts in the game. And that's the main reason I'm doing it.

I'm sure all the PVP'ers have gone on vacation this week. Or they've made sure that they only queue while in full group, and it's probably the easiest BGs in the world if they do it that way. Because you have a bunch of noobs in PVE or crap gear trying to get this achievement. (Yes, I'd probably consider myself one of those noobs.) Furthermore, you force everyone to do something that they probably wouldn't do normally such as (1) Capture the Flag in Eye of the Storm. Umm.. okay. I play a healer. And as well as I can generally keep myself alive, it's usually easier to keep somebody else alive since they generally blast the flag carrier and not the healer. So, now I'm forced to camp by the flag with my orphan out (any orphan will do, just make sure that it's out, and you have to bring him back each time you die) in hopes that I can be the first one to click the flag once it respawns. Not to mention that most of the people are grouped up on the flag, so having a controlled tower to return the flag makes it even more challenging.

(2) Assault a flag in Arathi Basin. Okay... this one is still pretty normal. I had to actually fight for this one. Flags tend to trade control a number of times in a game, and you generally have to clear out all the enemy before you can cap the flag. So, probably a normal BG, but with a ton of noobs in it.

Then here's where you pretty much have to start a giant love fest with the opposite faction. (3) Return a Fallen Flag in Warsong Gulch. Now maybe it's just me and the server I play on. But I zoned in to an already in progress WSG to find EVERYONE on my team sitting in the flag room. Eventually a smart hordie came over to our room, picked up the flag, and then immediately dropped it. Somebody returned it; achievement complete. He picked it up and dropped it again... you get the idea. After I got my achievement, I walked on over to the horde flag room and did the same thing. With both sides trying for the achievement, it's basically a standoff unless somebody decides to work together.

Then in AV, it gets even worse. You have to (4) Assault a tower in Alterec Valley. Let's just look at the numbers here. 40 people. 4 towers. Most of the AV games I've been in, it's pretty much a mad rush to cap the towers and then kill Drek/Van. Sometimes there's a force that helps in defense, but nobody wants a long, drawn out turtle game. So, you have a 1 in 10 chance to actually assault a tower. So, I had a few games, where again, the enemy would help out. But the problem is that you'll have a few enemies helping, and then you'll have a few idiots that start to kill said enemy. So, enemy gives up and goes to try to actually win AV. It's just... well... it's just horrible.

In a way, it's kind of a cool idea that it makes people do things in BGs that they might not normally do, but it also turns the BG into a selfish fight. The teamwork has been reduced even further. It's just plain ugly. Want to increase the popularity of BGs, Blizzard? I have hopes for Cataclysm and rated BGs, but forcing noobs to go into BGs to selfishly complete an achievement is the wrong way to go about it. How about something like Help Assault a Tower (that you have to be in the general vicinity), or Help Capture a Flag (in WSG).

*sigh* I have 3 of the 4 done. If I can just assault a tower in AV tonight, then I never have to go in a BG during Children's Week ever again.

Gimpy Tank

The other night, I finally got a tank to level 80. That makes 3 80's for me: a mage (mostly hangs out with the other mages in Dalaran now), a shaman, and a feral druid. Class-wise, I can now cover every role needed. Gear-wise... well... now that's a different story. It's probably 2 of 3 roles (both on my Shaman) that I can cover in any instance right now.

Since I leveled a lot from 70 to 80 via the dungeon finder, I had some pretty decent gear. I was sporting all blues (which is probably better than any of my other fresh 80's). So, I'm for sure in the right gear area to start on heroics. But I also recognize that my gear sucks in comparison to the people I get randomly grouped with.

You see, the dungeon finder must compensate for a really badly geared person (probably especially a tank), by putting them with over-geared people. I swear the dps and healers I'm put with are all wearing Tier-12 gear. I let everyone know that I've only run a few heroics so they don't completely bad-mouth me. They're generally pretty nice. They keep me alive. The hunter constantly misdirects, and they even let me tank a mob or two. But the rest of them have about 30k health in their PVE gear, so they tank just as well as I do. So, in a way, I really feel like the tank in the picture. Only that I can move.

After 2 heroics (and the badges I'd saved up), I was able to buy my first T-9 piece of armor (my first epic). It's just such a paradigm shift from the types of tanks that I'm used to running with. Even healing on heroics I generally seemed to get decently geared tanks... usually. I just hope that I'm competent enough to make sure the encounters are successful to the best of my ability. So far, no deaths, but I've also only tanked 2 heroics. (Probably more of an achievement for the healers in my groups since so many other people are taking damage because they pulled aggro off me.)

But it is kind of fun to know that I can run into an instance and get multiple upgrades. It's different than my geared shaman where I'll be lucky if I get an item... I'm usually just counting on the badges to eventually get another piece of T-10. lol.

It's also a lot of fun to see these instances from a different perspective. It really is a different game when you're healing, tanking, and dps'ing. So, it's a lot of fun to change things up a bit. Then again, it also takes me a few heartbeats to heal an instance right after I've just tanked one on the other toon.

10-Man Raiding in Catacylsm

Or another title might be, "____! It's about time!"

In case you haven't heard, there's some really good news for 10-man raiding in Cataclysm. Maybe not so good for 25, but we'll see. The source is from the European forums found here. And to sum it all up, 10-man and 25-man raids will have the same loot drops in Cataclysm. There will also be only one raid lock-out for each. So, you don't have 25-man guilds also farming 10-man content and gearing up much faster than people that only run 10-man content.

To offset it, the 25-man content will drop more loot, and more gold as well. They still want 25-man content to be a more efficient way of gearing up. (Writer Warning: lots of math-type stuff ahead.)

So, let's play with this a bit. Let's say that trends continue, and each boss on 10-man raids drops 2 items (or 1 for every 5 players). An even way would be for 25-man bosses to drop 5 items (same 1:5 ratio). Making it slightly more profitable would mean 25-man would drop say 6 items. If loot tables are something like the first 3 bosses in ICC, there's 12 different items that will drop on 10-man. That means you have a 1 in 6 chance for your loot to drop in 10-man, but 1 in 2 chance for your loot to drop in 25-man.

But will you win it? I'll have to make some assumptions here. Let's assume gear is very homogenized. There will still be some differences though. For example, some hybrid classes will still have 2 sets of gear, especially those that require completely different stats (like a healing druid vs. a tanking druid). But for the sake of this conversation, let's say that we have a 10-man raid with one of each class. As a Shaman healer (best case), I get every single drop that's casting mail. (Only shaman in raid, and hunters don't want it.) As a cloth mage (worst case), I have to fight 2 other classes making my initial drop rate of 1 in 6 change to a loot rate chance to 1 in 18.

Our 25-man raid has to be guessed at. Let's assume 1 of each class/role. Where only 1 role for the class is available, we'll assume they bring two of those class (hunter, mage, rogue, warlock). We may have too many tanks (4), and probably not enough healers (4), but it's simply for illustration purposes. I also threw in another paladin healer (5 healers now) since they were in a armor group all by themselves. Here's what I came up with for this fictional raid:

death knight dps

death knight tank

druid healer

druid melee

druid ranged

druid tank

hunter

hunter

mage

mage

paladin healer

paladin healer

paladin melee

paladin tank

priest healer

priest ranged

rogue

rogue

shaman healer

shaman melee

shaman ranged

warlock

warlock

warrior melee

warrior tank

So, your odds vary quite a bit here as well. You have anywhere from a 1 in 2 chance to get your item (paladin healer vs. paladin healer, or, shaman healer vs. shaman ranged, or, druid healer vs. druid ranged) all the way to a 1 in 6 chance (all clothies, or, all melee/tank plate wearers). So, the 1 in 2 chance that your item will drop becomes a 1 in 4 loot rate (best case scenario) or a 1 in 12 loot rate (worst case scenario), with a couple other odds in between.

Anyway... point being... I think this will be a great change. I'm still not sure it's completely on track. Like I've mentioned and has been said many times before, 10-man raiding can be more difficult than 25-man. If one person dies on 10-man, that's 10% of your raid. A 25-man death is only 4%. But if they made it completely equal, it would be the death to the 25-man raiding for sure. And while I have found that 10-man raiding is by far what I enjoy, there's still a special place in my heart for the 25-man stuff that I did all through TBC.

Cataclysm Changes to Resto Shaman - First Thoughts

I don't know where the last month went as far as blogging goes. I had a few posts flying around in my head, and they never seemed to get off the ground. So let me take this moment to stretch, so I don't hurt my typing fingers.
Alright... that felt good.

In case you haven't heard, Blizzard has been releasing come class previews for Cataclysm. As of this writing (and without me constantly checking on MMO-Champion), they have released Shaman, Warlocks, and Priests. I actually like some of the more creative things they're doing with Priests. I'm kind of neutral to the Warlock changes (mainly since my only lock is like lvl 23). And honestly, I'm unsure about the Shaman changes.

See, here's the thing... I actually like the simple healing of the Shaman. Unless I'm doing it wrong, there's essentially about 7 healing spells for a Shaman. And a few of those are pretty much fire-and-forget spells. First off, there's Earthliving Weapon. Every 30 minutes, I have to put it on my weapon. That's almost a true fire-and-forget heal. (I even have a mod that puts this on for me.) Next is Healing Stream Totem. It isn't a strong heal, but gradually ticks and will slowly heal all group members for 5 minutes. Then there's Earth Shield that lasts 10 minutes, but has charges, so usually less than that. A spell that's used a lot, but not cast a lot. Then you get into our active spells. Chain Heal is for group heals. Riptide is nice, insta-cast heal with a HoT, but has a cooldown. And finally you have Lesser Healing Wave (fast) and Healing Wave.

That's it. Simple. Straight forward. Spells that take care of the job.

Now, never having played the other classes as healers at lvl 80, here's what I came up with for them. (So, feel free to correct me if I missed a spell.) Paladins are also pretty straight-forward with 6 healing spells: Sacred Shield, Holy Shock, Holy Light, Flash of Light, Lay on Hands, and Beacon of Light. Druids get a tad more complex with 8 spells: Wild Growth, Tranquility, Rejuvenation, Nourish, Lifebloom, Healing Touch, Regrowth, and Rebirth. (Yep, I'm including their Battle Rez.) And then you have Priests that have all sorts of crazy heal spells for every situation imaginable. There's 13 spells. I'm not listing them out.

So, now with the changes to Cataclysm, they want to add 3 spells to our arsenal. And I'm just not sure they're needed. Here's my thoughts why.

Healing Wave
This is the new Healing Wave. Don't confuse it with the old Healing Wave. The old one will be called Greater Healing Wave while the new one will be just Healing Wave. This will be the Shaman's "go-to heal". Maybe I'm too casual of a player now, but really, Tidal Waves seems to fill in the gap quite nicely for me. Riptide, two quick (Greater) Healing Waves, and then maybe a Lesser Healing Wave before Riptide is off cool down, then start it all over again. With my haste, I think I'm about 1.8 seconds for a (Greater) Healing Wave that's been buffed with Tidal Wave. Seems like a pretty quick nuke-heal. I can certainly see the need if you want to spam one spell, but it doesn't seem like that's Blizzard's approach. At any rate... not sure this was necessary, but we're getting it anyway.

Unleash Weapon
Let me quote what this does for the Earthliving Weapon enchant "Heals the target slightly and buffs the shaman's next healing spell by 20%." Holy crap! How original! Wait... isn't that pretty much the exact same thing that Riptide does with Tidal Waves? Only, Riptide has a HoT on it as well... and does 2 spells not 1... and has a 6-second cooldown instead of a 15. Yeah.. umm.. not sure I'm interested in this one just to have a new spell.

Healing Rain
Okay, now maybe we're getting somewhere. 2-second targetable cast with a 10-second HoT AoE. I can certainly see the limitation on Chain Heal, especially for 25-man raiding. But... I don't know... Can't we have an AoE spell that doesn't have such a limiting range or area? Or maybe just improve Chain Heal so that it jumps a lot further. (Raid Leader says, "Spread out so you don't get hurt as much by the AoE." Shamans cry.) So, maybe it just depends on the size of the area healed. But Circle of Healing is 15 yards. And Prayer of Healing is 30. I suppose it really depends on the encounters. And maybe I'm not as disappointed with this spell as the others, but still see a niche where our healing spells kind of fall short. In all honesty, this is probably the spell I see the most potential for. But I reserve the right to be excited until I actually see it in action. But being that you get it at lvl 83... and how long they say it will take to lvl in Cataclysm... I'm thinking I'll probably see it in action by Christmas... of next year.

Redesigning Professions

Last night, we were having a discussion in guild chat about some gems. Mainly it was a discussion about mage gems, but this topic certainly applies to all classes. Basically, it comes down to the whole discussion of what is a better stat to use. If, for example, you're a mage, everyone can agree that you need stats in +hit until capped, and then either haste or spell power (I think this changes with every patch). But as far as gear goes, Crit can be important... and I don't think Intellect has really been important since Arcane Mages in BC... your gear just generally has enough Intellect to cover stuff.

But with Cataclysm, Blizzard has already announced that they are working towards getting rid of a few stats. To be specific, they're looking to get rid of 5 stats. Attack Power, Spell Power, Armor Penetration, Defense Rating, and Mp5 are all going away (or at least, that's what they've planned). So, healers will have to get Spirit for mana regen and Intellect for Spell Power, which probably means that you can look at just how much mana a healer has to figure out their potential HPS. lol. Spell dps will need Intellect (again, looking at that mana pool), and then I guess hit and haste. All of this in an attempt to simplify gear, so people can actually tell what's an upgrade.

Now let me go on the record and say this is great. I think it's an awesome step for the game. I feel that I'm constantly consulting outside resources like Rawr to figure out if this higher ilvl item is actually an upgrade... even if they're both obviously shaman healing pieces... sometimes the lower ilvl item is better. It's all about stat allocation.

But... (and here's to the title of this post) this is really changing a lot of stuff to the game. Not only does Blizzard have to completely redo stats for all gear (which touches the professions of Blacksmithing, Leatherworking, and Tailor), but they'll also have to convert certain potions and flasks, and they'll be obliterating 5 core color gems. And with rough calculations, and not actually looking to see if all combination exist, that's something like 42 gem cuts, not including the original 5!

And now where dps Spell damage would have previously wanted red gems for spell power, they'll now want yellow for Intellect (which is also the same color for haste). Where melee dps wanted red for Attack Power, they'll still want red for Strength or Agility (depending on the class). And where healers previously wanted purple for mp5 or Spirit and Spell Power, they'll now want... green for Spirit and Intellect. Tanks will probably stay in the purple category to get Stamina and Strength/Agility for threat generation.

So... the only major change is really for spell dps. Let's look at this from another perspective. In a "standard" 10-man raid, you'll have 2-3 healers (green), 2 tanks (purple), 2-3 melee dps, including hunters (red), and 2-3 ranged dps (yellow). Maybe I'm wrong, but it really seems that they're trying to redistribute how gems are used.

And then I realized... they track this kind of stuff. Somebody pulls up a query and finds out that there's 5 million red gems compared to only 100,000 yellow gems, or whatever. And until this last patch, yellow wasn't really needed at all, but now haste is the latest thing, so yellow is useful again. They are in constant efforts to balance the economy... and gear... and different classes... And I imagine some planning meetings at Blizzard where they have the itemization guys vying for one thing, and the AH guys asking for something else, and the Profession guys wanting to make sure their babies aren't touched... Wow! There's simply a lot that goes into this game and the thinking... and we get to simply sit back and criticize enjoy the game that we play. I don't know... there's just something really cool about that.

Links Now in Custom Channels

This might be pretty minor news for the most of you. Heck, this may not even be newsworthy to some of you at all. Everyone is aware that they can create custom channels, right? You simply type /join CustomChannelName (CustomChannelName being pretty much anything you want) and voila! You're now in that channel. If somebody else already has that created, then you've now joined their channel. (As long as there isn't a password.) There's actually a ton of things you can do in these custom channels. Like a password, you can also ban players or kick players.

But that's not really the point here. If you want to know about any of those things, you can see all the commands on Wowwiki.

The point of this is that there are certain channels where things cannot be linked. General used to be one of them (I'm not sure if this is still true) and custom channels was another. So, in the custom channel I have with my closest friends, for example, I'd have to whisper-link any item to all of them; I couldn't just put it in the custom channel. But now, linking is available in these custom channels as well. Yeah!

That is all.