skurm

It’s been, what, 3 weeks? since patch 3.3 launched. Scarcely even a month, and what I’ve suspected has come to pass.

The gear bar has been raised. I was one of those complaining that we’d all get free emblem loots, free Tier 9 and free loot from new , ezmode heroics. Well, HoR isn’t exactly ezmode, but the other two are.

But I suppose I was proven wrong, in a manner. I’ve geared my DK tank up in the best available emblem loot in a manner of weeks, and it doesn’t matter. I’m still not ‘imba’. See, Tier 9 is already baseline. It’s is no longer cool. See, while me and my casual buddies have moved up from ilvl 200’s and blues to 232 gear, everyone else has moved on to even higher heights. Tier 10 is now cool. Ilvl 251’s and 264’s  are now cool. We adjust. Welfare epix are merely the gateway drug. We grind out our 232’s and now set our sights on gear only attainable through raiding the new content. And, once more, the ever unattainable carrot is dangled in front of our noses.

Nothing has changed, really. There’s always going to be a carrot. It’s what keeps us vested.

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This is my white whale. I picked up my DK again because I absolutely adore the idea of being able to wade into an army of mobs, drop some aoe abilities and tank the hell out of them all, while pushing some solid dps in the process. Cue adoration and praise of all and sundry, flower petals drifting from the sky, peasants whispering in hushed voices as the mighty Skurm wanders by….

Ahem.

See, DK tanks are in a pretty bad place for maintanking right now. But theoretically, they should make great offtanks, and theoretically they should perform as the finest AoE tanks around. So instead of trying to be something that the class is not exactly the strongest at, instead focus on it’s strengths and capitalise on them. Towards that end I’ve experimented with Blood, Unholy and Frost specs specifically for the purpose of tanking hordes of mobs. Right now I’ve settled on a 10-54-7 2Handed Frost spec, which performs quite admirably, but still doesn’t seem quite as… sticky as I’d like. I had good results with a Frost dual-wield spec as well, but until I get some actual decent tanking 1handers, I decided I’ll stick to a 2hander build. I’ve also had admirable results with a Blood spec which is unusual, by simply going 11 specs down Unholy for Corpse Explosion. This gives you great single target threat, the best DK danking CD in Vampiric Blood, spammable Death and Decay thanks to Morbidity and the sustained aoe threat of Corpse Explosion. Not much aoe snap aggro (Howling Blast is truly awesome) or the passive avoidance of Frost. But, my experiments with Unholy itself have been lacklustre. Probably because I simply do not know the tree. I have fair experience with both Blood and Frost, but Unholy escapes me. I must tame it!

So, my challenge is to find the absolute best spec for aoe tanking – primarily for heroics and perhaps offtanking the occasional raid.  Be that Frost or Unholy.

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It struck me yesterday just how much this game has changed, and just how little water it’s detractors hold considering the current iteration. WoW of today is literally nothing like WoW of yesteryear, and most of the reasons many people left – mostly ‘casuals’, but some hardcore too, is gone. Let’s see how.

1: Too much grind. This argument is pretty much null and void. The biggest grind this game faced before was 1-60. Nowadays there are so many ways around that – Recruit a Friend, Heirloom items, Battleground grinding – that it puzzles me when people mention ‘grind’ in WoW, the same people who’ll gleefully farm mountain lions for 13 hours in Aion or bang at rocks for days in Darkfall. Gathering professions have been overhauled, and this struck home with me particularly over the weekend when I levelled mining from 1 to 300 in a handful of days. A feat that, a year or two ago, would have taken me far longer, or at elast have cost me a few thousand gold. The only really ‘grindy’ aspect left to this game is fishing. Rep farming is no longer terribly necessary and there are often substitutes that, while they may not be the absolute best, often approach it. Example – Sons of Hodir rep for shoulder enchant getting you down? Go do Wintergrasp or heroics while your faction controls WG and buy a shoulder enchant for a couple Stone Keeper shards. World of wArcraft today is a game you can spend an hour or two here and there and still progress quite rapidly.

that said

2:It’s too easy. This sentiment probably gets heard mostly from the ex BC raiding vets, of which I am one.  I’ll both agree and disagree. The entry level content is jsut that – entry level, and doable by most anyone. Even so, it takes gear to do. And hard and heroic mode raids are easily as hard as anything I’ve encountered in BC, if not more so. Granted, anyone can look pimp in welfare gear now, but you will come to notice the lead that heroic raiders have over us regular folk. A tank running in 45K HP unbuffed? Me in my welfare epics can only dream. There is a wall here, a wall that can only be broken through by hitting the hardest content. And boy is it hard. But there’s still room for epeen measuring, if that’s your thing. Just don’t expect to be carried to the fattest of loots.

3:Requires a guild to get the most out of it. This may be true, but much of the reason for guilds has evaporated. At least for gearing. For the social aspect, guilds are still great. But if you’re not exactly a people person 9why are you playing MMO’s then, exactly?), Blizzards recent Dungeon Finder means you never have to actually join a guild to experience most of the content. For raiding, you may find a guild useful, but more than ever PUG raids are becoming popular, with all but the most recent content being farmed by pickup raids.

4:Need lots of friends. This can be a boon, but smaller 10man raiding guilds are becoming more popular than the larger 25man focused ones. You can still experience all content this way and even pick up some decent loot if you tackle the hard/hc 10man raids. Again, if you can’t scrounge together 9 other buddies, smaller guilds focused on levelling and 5man content can nonetheless experience raid content thanks to the Dungeon Finder tool. There’s always going to be good people looking to raid something that their guild isn’t doing anymore, and that’s where your small guild can benefit.

5. PvP is rubbish. This I’ll agree to somewhat. Balancing around PvP in a PvE game is always going to be a nightmare. But Blizzard have come a long way since vanilla and even BC and while issues might still remain, it’s a far cry from those early days of being oneshot by shamans (vanilla) or fearbombed all day long by warlocks (BC). Just recently, the daily BG quest now grants some arena points. And Wintergrasp remains popular and is a great way at fast-tracking yourself some PvP gear (Wintergrasp Commendations are bar-none the fastest way to accumulate honor). The new BG’s, Strand of the Ancients and Isle of Conquest are very well designed and and interesting change of pace. And of course, Arena remains probably the most popular and renowned form of professional PvP in the entire MMO world.
Yes, the days of open world PvP are over but as a Warhammer veteran I’ve come to realise that maybe Open World PvP isn’t the holy grail we’ve been looking for. I’ve had more fun in Arathi Basin than I’ve ever had in WAR. It’s smooth, fast, fun, strategic and rewarding.

6. It’s ugly/old. This statement is simply false. While the engine is still largely low-poly, the enhancements to it over the year have given us some of the best looking spell effects I’ve seen in an MMO to date. Colours are vivid, sharp, attractive. Recent changes to the shadowing engine make wandering through a forest truly atmospheric. And comparing some of the character models and armour sets of today with those of 2 or 3 years ago, one would think you’re playing a completely different game.  This game is still good to look at. It might not be the absolute ebst, but it’s certainly worth thinking about, especially when you compare it  to a more recent game like Warhammer Online or even Champions Online and realise that WoW has the better stylization, finer detail, and is simply all-round prettier. Madness, you say? Then you haven’t flown through the Grizzly Hills at dusk and marvelled at how atmospheric the setting is.

7: It’s boring. Well, this remains a subjective point. WoW is essentially Kill Ten Rats refined to nigh perfection. But if you haven’t played WoW since vanilla or BC, and you haven’t experienced events such as the Wrathgate, or even the more recent, storyline-based 5mans (progressing through the Forge of Souls, the Pit of Saron and finally escaping Arthas in the Halls of Relection is an example of real storyline-driven gaming in an MMO – and it is fabulous), then essentially you’re still commenting about the state of this game 2, 3 or more years ago. A lot has changed with the way questing, instancing and raiding works. Looks. Feels. There’s a lot more story, dialogue, plot. And you’re in the middle of it. Effective use of voiceovers and ingame events and cutscenes looks to be the way forward for Blizzard and if WotLK is anything to go by, Cataclysm is going to be awesome.

8: It’s all about raiding. Well, every game needs an endgame, and raiding will always be it in WoW. But more than ever, 5man instances are incredibly popular and if you simply enjoy a good dungeon crawl with 4 mates, there is enough of a game herem to keep you engaged permanently. again the Dungeon Finder rears it’s head, and if not being able to find groups for instances between levels 1 and 79 was getting you down, this new patch will have changed that. People are always levelling alts, and allowing all the realms to pool their resources means an easy, effective and instant way to group together.

9. It’s expensive/not F2P. Well, considering WoW basically defined the current standard subscription rate, I’d contest that. The value for money you get from WoW beats out every contender. And it remaisn the same price. You simply can’t get quality like this with Free To Play titles, and in fact few subscription based competitors are able to provide a worthy cost-to-benefit ratio.

10. Lastly…too much investment. I think most people who shy away from WoW are afraid of it monopolising their time. Yet more and more, the game is becoming accessible to the common man. Housewives, celebrities, pro athletes, grandmothers… they all play WoW. Along side pr and hardcore gamers and casuals alike. Fact is, WoW of 2009 offers such a diverse experience, you can find almost anything to grab your fancy, and there’s always something to do. The gear differential between raiders and casuals, while still notable, is not so great as it once was. And fact remains, if you aren’t a raider and not even really that big into heroics or pvp, there’s enough of a game here to enjoy it casually, simply levelling and enjoying the dungeons on normal difficulty. It’s truly become the anyone can play, and a game with something for everyone.

So, too all you burned out MMO players who’ve been skipping from MMO to MMO and finding nothing engaging, perhaps it’s time you gave WoW another whirl. From the dungeon finder to queue anywhere battlegrounds, from mounts at level 20 to hard mode Algalon. From arena to ganking noobs in STV. WoW has it all.

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It’s been just over a week for WoW addicts, and all signs point to this having been a rather successful content patch for Blizzard. Then again, when are they not?

My experiences have been very positive. The new 5mans are well constructed and finely tuned. The raid instance itself seems pretty challenging – I haven’t downed Lord Marrowgar yet, let alone the other 3 opening bosses, but had some good attempts and would have downed him had we had more time. Again, very well tuned. You’ll need to be somewhat geared and co-ordinated to down him. And of course, it’s Winter Festival and while it would have been nice to see it updated, it’s still good fun.

The highlight of the patch is, as everyones been enthusing, the Dungeon Finder. It may not be something new to the genre really, but it’s so well done, so simple, so convenient that hopping into heroics for some emblem farming is jsut about the quickest and easiest it’s ever been. You get good groups and bad, sure, but this is truly a better way to kill some time than grinding battlegrounds or farming gold. Tanks and healers benefit the most, enjoying virtually no queue times. It’s fun, easy, and jsut grindy enough. As long as incentive remains to keep doing pugs, this feature will remain a hit. My only worry is that in probably a rather short amount of time, most tanks and healers will have gotten the loot they wanted from chain running thsoe pugs, and the ease with which to grab a run will diminish. Then again, it remains an excellent tool for anyone out there wanting to gear up their tank or healer offspec, or alts. Particularly lucrative for anyone wanting to level up as a tank or healer. Which really is the best way to do it. Walking into your first heroic at 80 as a new tank with no prior experience is a frustrating experience for anyone, and I wouldn’t exactly reccomend it.

3.3 is an all-round great patch, and a great way to spend the holiday for those of us stuck at home. Blizzard deserves a great big pat on the back for this, they couldn’t have timed it better.

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Here’s today’s idle thought. I haven’t seen many of our Ebon Blade brethren around of late. Have the steady stream of nerfs finally caught up with the once tastiest of  monthly flavours? Or has enough time simply gone by to erode the novelty value of the class? Either way, Death Knights are incredibly scarce these days. For the past month or so I’ve seen countless Death Knight only drops sharded or vendored because there wasn’t a DK in the raid group. Not 1. Not even a DPS DK. DK tanks? Hens teeth. There are more bear tanks these days.

This disparity is even more pronounced with cross-faction pugging. At first I thought it was only my server, but I’ve been running random dungeons by the dozen daily for the past week on my Death Knight tank and I’ve encountered maybe a half dozen other DK’s during that time. Hell I’ve run with more rogues. Mages are becoming more and more popular as people realise they’re #1 dps for less investment. Arcane really is a braindead spec to play and shunts out the big numbers.

Maybe it’s due to my theory that if a class is great for PVP, it’ll be popular for PVE. And Death Knights are, right now, not doing so great in the arenas.

All of this benefits me, though. I hate being FOTM. The biggest reason I quit my DK a few months back and picked up my mage was to try and deviate from the norm, and boy was the norm Death Knight cornucopia. They were everywhere. Which made trying to get a piece of gear in edgewise nigh impossible, bar via emblem loot. Never mind trying to get raid spots. Every second raid was a case of  ‘LF DPS, no moar DK’s please’.

Yes, my DK might not be the best tank in the game (all hail our Paladin lords and masters) right now, it may not be the best dps, it may not be any good at PVP. But I’m liking it. They still look pimp, they’re still great offtanks, their dps is still respectable and they’re still fun to pvp with – death grip is just that awesome, there’s nothing else like it. Hopefully, though, all the minmaxers will continue to leave this class alone and let us flavour-players revel in our niche. How long that lasts remains to be seen, if DK’s continue to be bottom-rung tanks/pvp I’m sure we can expect buffs soon enough.

Either way – viable shmiable, I’m having fun, and I enjoy taking something that’s not exactly the best and running with it. Making it shine.  And having fun is all that really matters.

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There’s been a lot of talk about how World of Warcraft has been dumbed down in Wrath of the Lich King. And much of that’s true, at least from a PVE standpoint. PVP otoh has become more challenging than ever before, especially now that the game looks to be increasingly balanced around it, and not dying in a single ‘global’ is much more difficult in today’s world of massive spike damage. I’m looking at you, Elemental Shamans. Grr.

Nonetheless, some common perceptions re: PVE EZMode need refuting.

The predominant belief is that that most classes only need to press 2 or 3 buttons to do any DPS and Win The Game. From an Arcane Mage’s viewpoint, many people are of the belief that it we only cast two spells in our DPS rotation. Arcane Blast and Arcane Missiles, and that this is all that’s needed in order to play the class. I’d like to dispel that notion somewhat. The reality is that to play an Arcane Mage effectively, sure, we only have to cast 2 direct damage spells to do the actual damage, but to maintain DPS over a length of time, support the raid, and strain our healers less – which is the duty of any DPS – it takes far, far more. In between pressing 1 and pressing 2 when Missile Barrage procs, we also have to…

• Maintain mana optimally so that we don’t go oom too soon, while appreciating that ending a fight with a full mana bar and unused mana gems and evocates means we haven’t pushed out anywhere nearly as much mana as we’re capable of. Playing an Arcane Mage is a case of balancing two mana regen and dps plates. We have to judge when’s a good time to evocate, time it to get one off the tail end of an Icy Veins, and all the while ensure that our rate of Gem use is matching the length of the encounter and adjusting our rotation to fit. We also have to know when to burst (XT heart exposed) and when to take it slow and steady.
• In between the dps rotation and mana management minigame we also have to:
• Spellsteal dangerous buffs where possible, at every possible turn. Missing Spellsteals means missing free buffs and possibly hots to oneself and missing a Purge effect on a boss. It is nearly *always* better to Spellsteal an enemy than to have a shammy or priest waste a purge/dispel GCD, particularly since having healers waste time on dispels is far more debilitating to the raid than having DPS do it. Jaraxxus is the obvious example.
• Anticipate fire/frost based raid damage and put up the relevant Ice/Fire Ward beforehand. This has two effects, of reducing damage taken by the mage and thus straining healers less, and also buffing our DPS thanks to Incanters Absorption. There are a lot of noob mages out there who don’t know this trick, or can’t time it right.
• Use Ice Block effectively. Mages are one of two classes that can basically negate virtually any instant-kill ability that an enemy might posses- paladin’s being the other. Being able to Iceblock if, for some reason, you can’t dodge Icehowl’s charge saves a brez for someone who needs it. I’ve seen mages in 5man ToC, for example, get hit by Eadric’s hammer and die when they could have seen him casting the Hammer of the Righteous, seen that he’s targeting them, and simply pressed the Iceblock button to save the healer a bit of stress and mana and focus on keeping the tank up instead.
• Use Blink effectively. Blinking out of a freeze effect for example. Keristraza in Nexus is a simple example, Hodir is another, and I’ve never had to worry about getting the chill debuff and dying. Too often I’ve run with other mages getting frozen and simply standing their waiting for it to wear off or for a dispel or something.
• Decurse. Mages are the sole pure DPS class capable of removing curses. Rogues, hunters and warlocks can’t do it. Helping out with this task frees up healers to concentrate on keeping people alive. More often than not a second or two cleansing a curse or two or three from the raid will be of far more value than getting the #1 spot on the DPS meters.
• Counterspell. Sure it’s on a long cooldown, but we can do so from range and it’s reliable – unlike healers, we’re stacking enough spell hit to ensure it never misses. Mages have increasingly left the interruption duty to the likes of rogues and shamans, but the fact remains that in a pinch we CAN do it. If that Faction Champ looks like he’s going to land that long cast, cancel your damaging spell and counter it. Where counterspell beats many other classes’ interrupts is that it locks the school of spell it interrupted out for a time. Against healing mobs such as the druid on Faction Champs, countering a Regrowth can lock out the rest of his instant hots long enough for your raid to squeak out that last 1 percent .
• Polymorph, Frost Nova, Slow, etc. Mages remain the king of CC. Now, sure, for the most part there might not be much of a need for it, but we’ve also become too complacent. A timely polymorph on a mob that the tank missed can be a lifesaver. More importantly, I see a number of Arcane Mages not speccing for Slow at all. And yet, it is such an incredibly versatile and useful spell for PVE. No, it’s not just a PVP spell. Keeping slow up on the Warrior, Rogue or DK in Faction champs, for example, makes kiting him incredibly easy. And keeping your eyes open on Anub’Arak can mean saving someone from one of those little beetle adds. Rooting 5 mobs and slowing a dangerous one…again, potentially the different between a one-shot and a wipe.

So sure, while standing in one spot, oblivious to everyone else and punching your two DPS buttons while staring at Recount might be ridiculously easy, it’s doing alll that other stuff while not standing in fires that’s the real challenge. How many other DPS classes, particularly pure DPS, can boast about hitting the top spots on damage done while simultaneously interrupting, cc’ing, ‘purging’, kiting, decursing  and not dying?

Don’t be a bad player. Use your entire repertoire. It’s not just about punching your big-numbers buttons.

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