Altitis

So the 33rd America’s Cup is finally run, congratulations to Oracle who crushed the Swiss team Alinghi.

Ironically, despite writing about the shameful display of court action (that would continue for a long while) a couple of years ago, I almost missed that the race has taken place last week.

I wasn’t alone.

The America’s Cup used to be one of the most popular sailing contests the layman knew of, and being Swiss, I had been caught up in the enthusiasm of the 2003 win that helped capture the people’s imagination here.

When the next edition was held in Summer 2007 and Alinghi successfully defended their title, the mood in the country was the one you’ll see in any place when your favourite sports team is in a final and has solid chances to win the contest, no matter the sport itself.

At my workplace, for instance, we had an overhead projector showing all races live, and most of my co-workers (the vast majority of them who wouldn’t otherwise give a damn about sailing, and for good reason – for those among us who aren’t sailing aficionados, watching a regatta on TV is often barely more exciting than watching grass grow) would regularly mill around between their desk and the recreation area to watch the races, or at least part of it.

The contrast couldn’t have been more stark with what happened last week. Before even the first race saw our “champion” Alinghi severely spanked by its challenger, you’d be hard-pressed to find people giving a damn. The talk of last week, in terms of sports, was about the Olympic games and in what disciplines “we” would have chances to bring home a medal (incidentally, at the time of this writing, Switzerland didn’t just win the first gold medal of the games, we secured our third gold a few moments ago, marking this the most probably only time we’ll be #1 on the medal table. Woot. Ahem. Where was I? Oh yes).

Only the one colleague I know for participating in local sailing competitions himself admitted having watched both races. Everyone else was ‘meh’.

And the reality, plain and simple, is that the figureheads of both teams, billionaires Larry Ellison and Ernesto Bertarelli, have pretty much ruined everything that could even remotely be thought of as “sportsmanship” for this 33rd contest.

Spending more than 30 months fighting it out in courtrooms, both teams have first and foremost demonstrated that winning at all costs was way more important than the sport itself. Both teams have fought teeth and nails, with all means at their disposal, to try and win by default, disqualifying their opponents or running the clock so that they would not be able to compete. Setting totally unfair rulings favouring the defender, having these tossed out by the court in favour of an even more outrageously unfair counter-rule that would itself be overruled, most of the 33rd America’s cup was actually fought in the dirtiest arena in the world, a court of law, by the most dishonourably unsporting contenders, two armies of lawyers intent on only one thing, to crush the others, no matter the consequences.

At the end, two impressive looking boats were produced, in a size and format more removed from every day sailing than F1 is removed from a normal family car. The first two races had to be cancelled, one because there wasn’t enough wind to move those juggernauts, the second one because the waves were too high for these beasts.

What won on the water, in the end, isn’t even clearly to be attributed to the skill of skippers and crew, but first and foremost the prowess and the flair of the engineers who made a far superior technical decision.

Of course, what heavily contributed to the loss of Alinghi, beyond the inferior technical design, was also the unbelievable hubris of the very man the country had admired for making the two previous victories happen, Ernesto Bertarelli, who tried to helm the boat himself and mostly demonstrated that he lacked any skill on the water, just like he had shown, together with his opponent, that he knew no shame and no move so vile that he wouldn’t have his team try to win before the race could take place.

The disgust I’m expressing here isn’t just mine alone. For instance, the 32nd edition in 2007 attracted over 200M € worth of sponsorships. The 2010 disgrace just about 11M, and no matter how you slice it, the financial crisis isn’t the only factor to blame for this.

And speaking of the crisis, in the end, the amount of money thrown away in the court contest but also those two completely uneven boats, in the face of the crisis, is nothing short of obscene. A sporting event is something that very much can lift the spirit of the world even in the darkest of times, but the shameful spectacle that led to this underwhelming race pretty much achieved the contrary: It is, in the end, the mirror image of what led the world into economic downturn, greed without restraint, a will to win at all costs without regard to ethics nor consequences, a take-no-prisoner dog-eat-dog contest that leaves the bystander exhausted and thoroughly disgusted by what the rich, powerful and depraved billionaires are doing.

Oracle won fair and square on the water, but they won a pyrrhic victory. The reputation of America’s cup is in shambles, and nobody trusts the future to reintroduce “fair play” and “sportmanship” in the event. Only the insanely wealthy stand any chance of running another race of the same format, and the vast majority of the public is most definitely not going to care about a 34th edition if that, too, is held after the courts decide on every minute detail while the competitors try to out-cheat each other.

Is the event salvageable? Perhaps. It would require nothing short of a totally neutral and balanced set of racing rules where every boat is to be constructed within the exact same specifications (ideally under a similar budget) and not a single line exists to favour either the defender or the challenger.

Only under such conditions will the next edition pit sailors against sailors and decide what racing team is actually the best in the world, instead of who has the better lawyers and smarter engineers. But just as the early warnings in 2007 and 2008, like the January bust of French trader Jerôme Kerviel, went unheeded by the finance world, there is little hope to see that happening. Team Oracle has most definitely demonstrated that victory could be acquired by extending every mean no matter how low or dirty (and again, Alinghi’s approach was the very same on the other side of the Atlantic), and I’d be highly surprised that they would suddenly look at restoring honour to their disgraced cup.

And coming full circle with the long series of posts that occupied my Warcraft gaming days, where in retrospect PvP completely fails is in the possibility to build totally unbalanced match-ups where superior gear and the right team composition removes most of the player skill before the match has begun.

Truly meaningful PvP would require that the teams duking it out be as evenly matched as possible before the gates open, including wearing the same level of preset gear as everyone else. That would of course be a lot less attractive, because people aren’t looking for a fair and challenging fight, the vast majority is playing to crush at any cost.

And therein lies the misery of these contest. In the immortal words of XVIIth century author Pierre Corneille, “A vaincre sans péril on triomphe sans gloire” – “Triumph without peril brings no glory”.

So it was on the Sea near Valencia, and so it is in our MMOs.

On Similar Matters

• When Sports Are Played Out in the Courtroom (1)
• Raiding and the Patrouille des Glaciers (0)
• Catering to the Casuals Indeed (26)
• 80 at Last, Now What? (7)
• Wrath to End PvE / PvP Gear Dispute (0)

Leveling to 80 on a PvP server brings its share of mistrust about the opposite faction, the amount of backstabbing gankers on both sides sees to that.

I’m therefore always quite wary of my surroundings when engaged with some NPCs when alliance shows up.

Today, deciding to clean up my dragonblight quest log of the remaining group quests I never managed to do before, specced tankadin for a change to see where my ragtag offspec looting left me (532 def, 50% avoidance ex holy shield), it was no different, or so I thought.

I had an appointment in New Heartglen, to put an end to the High General in charge there.

After clearing around and waiting for the general to show herself, I quietly engaged her and calmly worked her down. And suddenly, behind me, a lower level alliance death knight shows up.

One of 73 seasons would probably have been manageable in tank spec – after all, it’s not as if the fight were taxing me to the limit, only my mana pool was something to keep an eye on from time to time.

The Death Knight engaged in combat too – with the general. So once my affair was over, and he picked his own fight, I gave him a hand in return. Death Knights may be powerful, but soloing the general at level 73? Nah. She was having him for dinner. The most difficult part? Not using any AoE abilities for fear of killing the DK.

We parted ways after exchanging salutes. Would the outcome have been different if he too were level 80? Possibly. Still, the human Death Knight Horcan was honourable in battle, and Honour I returned.

On Similar Matters

• The Mandatory Paladin QQ Post (0)
• State of Altitis: May 2008 Edition (1)
• Raiding and the Patrouille des Glaciers (0)
• Muckbeast on Raiding Design (6)
• Catering to the Casuals Indeed (26)

Are any of these familiar?

• Some of your players simply never seem to read strategies posted to the website?
• Some others, no matter how, will always forget about vital buffs or die to ground fire at least once?
• When you explain tactics over vent, some people may be heard sighing after a while, grow restless and want to just go on with it?
• After a wipe (or an arena defeat), part of the team wants to jump straight back into the fray while others want to analyze what just happened, seemingly to death?
• Do some people seem to have a hard time remembering when to blow their trinket cooldowns in the heat of battle, finding themselves short at crucial times?
• Do you find that your arena team is split between those who want to immediately queue up for the next match and the guys who want to discuss what just happened?

If it does, the above symptoms are just a reminder that people learn things in different ways.

Two Psychologists, Peter Honey and Alfred Mumford, expanding upon the earlier works of one David Kolb, have identified four major ways by which people acquire new knowledge:

• Activists are people who respond best to Scout Movement founder Lord Baden-Powell‘s credo of “Learning by doing”. These players will learn a new encounter or a new arena tactic best by simply experiencing it. They are the people most likely to interrupt a strategy session with “let’s just do it”, they want to be in the thick of things and will learn best through practice.
• Theorists are on the opposite side of things. Half of what we’d call our Theorycrafters stem from this group, they have to model something in their head to grasp it completely. The better the model they build, the better their practical execution later on. These players will usually respond best to long and detailed boss strategies, the more the information you provide them with beforehand matches the reality of a fight, the better they will respond.
• Reflectors mainly gain their understanding from analyzing and reviewing their experiences. The second half of the Theorycrafters belong in this group, as they will tend to collect as much data as they can to support their analysis. Players in this group, more than any other, will be ready to spend hours on training dummies running large sequences of tests and changing tiny elements just to find out the single most optimal cookie-cutter approach to whatever they are reviewing. Where the theorist will be content to calculate the best possible output with maths only, a reflector will thrive on maths derived from hard data.
• Pragmatists will learn best from information which is directly tied to practical use. Contingency planning, adapting to the situation in the thick of battle is something they love, endless strategy sessions and what-if-scenarios tend however to quickly bore them unless you can tie every aspect of it to direct and concrete use. A pragmatist would be quite likely to ask “can we do it with one less?” and willing to go through with it.

Learning styles aren’t mutually exclusive. In general, people will respond strongly to one learning style and a bit less to the others in various degrees. Studies in the past tend to demonstrate that the best learning effect is achieved when many or even all learning styles are being catered to.

That’s All Fine But How Does That Help My Groups?

A fine type of pragmatist question, raid leaders and battlegroup tacticians may want to make their briefings appeal to a wider type of learning styles to maximize their progression speed:

• Theorists will continue to thrive on strategies posted on the guild website. Keep it up, you’re most likely already catering to them
• Activists can greatly benefit from videos implementing the strategy (if available). To help their learning, post them in a thread separate from your strategy post
• Reflectors can be brought up to speed by linking to existing parses and combat logs.
• For the Pragmatists, building a checklist with a direct link to in-game effects can work well. Eg: “Keep your trinkets up for phase 2 because we need to produce XXX dps in 30 seconds otherwise we wipe”.
• After a wipe, instead of running straight back into the fray the moment everyone is rezzed and rebuffed, leave some time for the reflectors to review their combat logs, they might not only improve their own performance but also find out exactly what went wrong on the last attempt
• Make sure you foster a climate where Activists and Reflectors in particular aren’t being singled out: both of these more than the other two will really need to experience things in order to truly understand them. Yelling at an activist because he hasn’t read your 10’000 words of strategy explanation won’t help him get better but rather discouraged, but after two or three attempts, he will probably understand the flow of the fight better than anyone else.
• Theorists and pragmatists are the most likely to come up with intellectual leaps of faith going against the official strategy – if yours just doesn’t work, try it out their way. They might just have thought of a way to get around whatever roadblock your team is encountering.
• Keep your pre-encounter briefing short and to the point. The theorists and reflectors will have done their preliminary research, the pragmatists only want the telegraphic style short overview and the activists want to rush straight into battle. Long explanations will just waste everyone’s time for little concrete benefits.

These, and more, can all help speed up the time your group needs to adapt to a new strategy and put it to successful use. Being mindful of the four different learning styles, and trying to cater to all of them, can speed up your preparation time and help you conquer new content faster.

On Similar Matters

• Closing the 2007 Welfare Epics Debate with a Look at PvE (8)
• Why Nerf Calling is Wrong (9)
• The Sky is falling, the Sky is falling! Oh wait, it’s not (5)
• The Hardcore Raider’s Alien Mindset (8)
• Of Welfare Epics and Loot Envy (13)

This week ended up a lot better for Steptoe and I than our first week in Season 5 (where we ran 1-9), with a 10-6 win ratio out of 16 games. In general we felt a lot more comfortable with the new context and made up some of the ranking losses. The fact that both of us also got ourselves a Titansteel  Destroyer crafted (upgrading from the De-Raged Waraxes we had from Amphitheater of Anguish) certainly helped.

We’re still working on finding our correct skill / gear niche, and the teams we have been facing have been of very various qualities: some quite skilled people without necessarily imba gear, but also some teams which were outgearing us quite massively but showing little to justify it.

The fact that PvP gear can be easily obtained through PvE nowadays (and is much more difficult, in particular for semi-casual players, to obtain through PvP only) got me thinking back to the good old debates we had a year ago.

In practice, with the PvP gear acquisition made very easy through PvE, we suddenly find ourselves in a situation not unlike the WoW classic battleground scene, when T2 / T3 clad players would completely destroy everything in their path by the sheer superiority of their kit, skills be damned. In practice, the ease of obtaining PvP gear through PvE nullifies to quite an extent what the introduction of resilience was meant to achieve: to separate PvE and PvP gear, enclosing the latter in a relatively dedicated manner and rendering crossovers more difficult.

There’s little point in rehashing today the old disputes about the fact that S2 – S4 gear could be used a lot easier for PvE than the reverse. That was the 2007 debate. In 2009, though, the current situation (as well as Ghostcrawler’s repeatedly stated intention to make PvP more about skills, usually applied to BG) led me to rethink the arena.

Currently, until one reaches the point where he wears the entire current season PvP gear, arena matches (of course especially in the noob brackets yours truly operates) don’t just pitch opponents together to measure their respective skill. Gear remains a factor which can compensate for quite some other shortcomings, it is for instance quite a bit more challenging to burn down a DK with 28k HP than one with 20k health (the level you’d typically be at if you start out with crafted saronite sets).

So in any matches below the top and fully geared brackets, the contest isn’t currently just about skills, but the skills / gear combination (just as it was before). The PvE gearing route just adds to the issue however.

If you really wanted to make Arena just about measuring player skills, though, how would you go about that?

Perhaps it is time to rethink the whole PvP gear aspect from scratch, by actually getting rid of it entirely. A notion I used to oppose in 2007 on the reasoning that arena was a valid gear progression path. Well, there’s a saying in French, “il n’y a que les imbeciles qui ne changent jamais d’avis”: only imbeciles never change their minds.

With two more years of arena, what I’d advocate today is the following:

While we talk about rating brackets, this is quite informal. This could actually be formalized into, say, three leagues: novices, pro and champion’s league for instance. A new team starts out in the novice league and (perhaps reusing the current rating system) eventually work their way upwards to the higher leagues.

Upon entering the arena, the gear gets replaced by a standardized gladiator set with different qualities depending on the league. In order to leave some choice in building up your character’s equipment, players can select a set of tokens for each equipment slot (reusing the Gem name prefixes for instance, or the current gear names): each token gives a gear pieces with a baseline of resilience and stamina, and a variable mix of other stats, eg picking an Ornate leg token will add a bit of intel and spellpower to the baseline stats, a Savage leg token adds strength and crit and so on.

You then get the according gear set to match your token selection whenever you enter an arena match, with more powerful versions of the gear depending on the league you’re playing in. The key point is, though, that everyone playing in the same league as you will have the same level of gear.

If you want to tweak your setup, just pick a different set of tokens to emphasize eg haste or more even more defense, all within boundaries set by your league.

As the seasons turn, Blizzard can then adjust the values to adjust the gameplay. For instance Season 5 is pretty much a burst / burn season, but with tweaking baseline resilience, Season 6 (just as it is now) could become more of an outlast season, to provide gameplay variance and strategy evolution.

And how does that work for BGs? Exactly the same way. Using the same token, everyone gets handed out their customized gearsets at the beginning of a game, which could for instance match the middle arena league.

At that stage, all players being on an equal footing gear-wise, the focus will be centered on knowing your class and your adversaries, and exploiting your skills to the maximum.

As for rewards? Just grant a handful of PvE tokens every week, 0 to 1 emblems of heroism for the bottom of the novice league, a handful for emblems of valor for the top of the champion’s league. Enough to incentivize it for the good players, not so much that people would suddenly consider it better to dance in arenas instead of running their heroics.

Leaves world PvP, Wintergrasp in particular, which aren’t bound to instance doors and therefore probably more difficult to provide gear swapping upon entry. Well, if you wanted also to minimize gear impact, one of the possible ways to achieve that would be to expand and tweak the tenacity buff.

Am I completely off my rockers? You tell me.

On Similar Matters

• Putting a few things back into their right place (11)
• Matticus Channels Cosmo: 16 New and Sexy Additions in 2.4 (8)
• Wrath to End PvE / PvP Gear Dispute (0)
• Why Nerf Calling is Wrong (9)
• The Sky is falling, the Sky is falling! Oh wait, it’s not (5)

On my paladin, I finally dinged 80, ending my first toon’s journey to the new endgame.

A couple of thoughts about the latter parts of the journey, if you will.

Veteran of Wrathgate: I completed what some people have dubbed bestest quest chain evar and as is often the case when expectations are high, I actually ended up disappointed. The wrath gate itself, the cinematic (which isn’t playing in my game, had to youtube it) both look like a massive rip-off from Lords of the Rings. Heck, even Bolvar seeing the dragons coming in his last moments smacks of the battle at the Black Gate, when the joined forces of the West see the eagles coming. Now of course I’ve been long aware that Blizzard recycles content and the various easter eggs, cameos and not always so subtle references are actually enjoyable. This transposition smacks of lack of imagination, badly written fanfic, nothing more to me.
And flying through Icecrown later on while getting my exploration achievement just left the same aftertaste: it’s Mordor-on-the-rocks, it borrows really heavily from the visual atmosphere created in the Two Towers when Frodo is at Minas Morgul. Pity.

In a similar vein, lamest dragon ever:

Alexstrazsa, queen of dragons. You may be a massive red dragon with mean looking fire coming off your eyes and whatnot, but the  earrings? horn-rings? totally ruin her otherwise badass look. What’s the point depicting such vanity in a dragon in her dragon form?

Irony is always present in this game. Getting insulted by my future me about my gear? When the future me not only wears the same but manages to have 4.5k hp less than I do? Come on. The future apparently looks bleak, gear-wise.

My future me is apparently totally gimped. Oh well…

So as soon as I ding 80, Steptoe wants to reform our PvP duo. 102 bars of saronite later and a friendly blacksmith located and I’m ready to go with the crafted savage saronite gear. Ret paladin and DK, we’re bound to pwn, aren’t we?

Looks like our start in Season 5 is pretty much the same as our start in Season 2 (when we first formed our duo). Huge learning curve again, and massive fail. 9-1. For all other teams. Geez. 

Oh well. In actuality, I’m wearing kit with more than double the stamina and AP of my future me in Dragonblight, that’s got to count for something.

We also tried out Strand of the Ancients. Fun. With a little help of Megan’s wisdom, I wasn’t completely clueless on the first run. That being said, and to put the record straight, dear Megan:

• There’s always been QQ about PvP on both sides
• The faction which did actually boycott AV in many Battlegroups was Alliance
• I remember in 2005 and 2006 that there was a lot of tears about shammies in BGs, in particular in WSG

And having played AV on both sides (though not since patch 3.0.2) at some point, other mechanisms aside, let me assure you that having to fight through most of the alliance NPCs to get to Vann is a bit different than bypassing most of them when you want to get to Drekk. Which might have been a balancing mechanism due to the fact that Balinda is less of a hassle to kill (and much more difficult to defend) than her orcish counterpart, but as such, it’s badly implemented.

That being said, while the people complaining that alliance have an advantage by attacking first are obviously dumb as a pair of bricks (that is, twice as dumb as I am, I come with single-brick dumbness), the advantage you see of buffing everyone on horde def doesn’t exist. Players trickle in when the BG is started and immediately mount up and race to the beach. You never get to buff the entire raid, at least not with a PUG, and same with assigning groups. Players trickle in and the smarter go either man the canons or look who’s riding to what side before deciding to reinforce the weaker side. Preforms are probably different, but for PUGs, neither side is advantaged or disadvantaged by who goes first, methinks.

I defended Wintergrasp this afternoon, and it was a dreadful lagfest at the end. Manned a cannon for 20 minutes, and then things went downhill for us. Still, it’s good fun, and it’s good honour considering the fun to be had If you haven’t tried it out yet, you should

Last but not least, I keep saying this but I’d really love dual specs to be live.

And this concludes the short report about the last leg of my first journey to 80. DK and mage are next.

On Similar Matters

• The Mandatory Paladin QQ Post (0)
• I’m Alive, Damnit! (4)
• The Week-End wrapped up (0)
• Some Blue Posts on Tanking Design Philosophy for Wrath (0)
• Catering to the Casuals Indeed (26)

And here we are, on the brink of 2009, and as usual, it’s time to look back at what changes the year brought.

One year ago, the hot topic in the WoW blogosphere was still the PvE / PvP opposition centered around the notion of Welfare epics. When I wrote my closing post on the matter, I didn’t yet measure how different 2008 was going to be – not only has the topic practically vanished, but as Megan astutely points out, the notion of Welfare epics nowadays could, if used at all, be applied very readily to raiding, whereas PvP gear is currently a lot harder and longer to aquire.

The one thing which hasn’t changed though is that the term is still being used by certain people to demean the achievements of those who are following a different path from theirs, one they deem inferior. 

2008 was largely dominated by the long Wait for the Lich King, and like the end of 2006, the controversies have centered around the hardcore / casual divide and the raiding scene. One thing which has changed drastically though is the reputation of the few dominating figures. In 2006, even me (then still raiding) was following the race to the Naxx world first with interest. Death and Taxes and Nihilum were in a neck-to-neck race and most people were cheering them on. Even if we weren’t directly affected, we could sympathise with all uberguild’s dismay at the reduction from 40-men to the 25-men raiding format.

Two years later, Death and Taxes has suffered from problems but has at least exited the immediate consciousness of the average player rather gracefully. Their opponent, though, through countless name changes, ugly drama, questionable sponsorships but foremost through a series of graceless and classless public tantrums about the difficulty of the game, haven’t just tarnished their name but in the end effect massively diminished the interest of the community in the life and adventures of the überguilds. In my mind they have become like the spoiled, rotten elites living lavishly and criticizing the taste of this year’s caviar and champagne when the unwashed masses are having sausage and beer. In the most ironic development, while they were wallowing in their pride and spitting at the rest of the gamers (with their dwindling cohorts of me-tooers), the world first for the currently most difficult raid achievement in the game, killing Sartharion on 10-men with 3 drakes up, was snatched up by Method.

In the meantime, titles and mounts for PvE feats have become a lot more commonplace, and the introduction of the achievement system has brought an entirely new dimension to certain aspects of the game. Whether by a bit of an accident or clear design, achievements don’t just give raiders more elements to compare and measure up against each other but also allow for different grades of challenges for farmed content. A bit like all those RPGs with several party members where players have developped additional challenges (single character, low level, gametime etc…) but formalized in a quite addictive structure.

I can’t help but wonder how my old 2007 antagonist Stop the Warrior views today’s game. Might give way to an interesting argument.

So here we are, on the brink of the new year. Last night, Steptoe remarked that this was the most hardcore evening he’d ever seen me play: we ran 5 instances in a row together. Which is indeed more than I have ever done in this game. That being said, it was 2 times Violet Hold, Drak’Tharon followed by another pair of Violet Hold runs (Steptoe wanted the plate pantaloons off the voidwalker boss), and Violet Hold isn’t exactly a long isntance – according to my Blessings timers, it takes slightly less than 24 minutes from buffing to exit. It was quite a profitable evening for my paladin, too, with a couple of nice drops.

Steptoe has taken to taking with his Death Knight and is doing well. Let’s also immediatly put one notion to rest: on leveling instances, you do not need to be crit immune as a Death Knight, far from it. Steptoe was level 75 and his gear was around 435ish defense after he got the legplates, with a combined avoidance of about 40%. The healer was a level 74 priest, who didn’t really have too much of a hard time apparently (and since we ran UK the night before when Steptoe was only around 410 defense and the guy came back, that speaks for itself), and throughout the evening the amount of free FoLs I was tossing the tank’s way have decreased quite a bit.

We had two wipes throughout the 5 runs, one early in Drak’Tharon because sometimes a lifetime of experience in not standing in stuff isn’t enough to recognize the stuff you shouldn’t stand in, the second one in VH on the netherstalker boss because of an unfortunate conjunction of me getting hit by an energy sphere about a half second before critting with judgement of blood. Wipe by Bloodicide. Had to happen once.

Regarding Ret performance, I’m a bit peeved about where I was sitting on damage meters. Oh, I came out on top in Drak’Tharon Keep, that one being an undead-heavy instance, no contest. The first two Violet Hold runs, though, I was only third (not by a large measure but still), behind a mage and Steptoe, and in the last two runs, I really had to work my arse off to keep on top against a level 75 boomkin, including eating AP food.

In the end, some gear upgrades, and I dinged Coldweather Flying in the middle of the last run. 3 more levels to 80. Still with about 20 quests in Dragonblight to go, that’s just three zones I’ve seen and used so far. Glad to have my epic fyling back though.

And this concludes my last 2008 post. Whether you level, raid, PvP, and do it casually, softcore or hardcore, I wish you all a very merry evening and a happy new year. To 2009, and may your chosen activities in game and in Real Life bring you joy and merryment.

On Similar Matters

• Catering to the Casuals Indeed (26)
• Raiding and the Patrouille des Glaciers (0)
• Muckbeast on Raiding Design (6)
• Closing the 2007 Welfare Epics Debate with a Look at PvE (8)
• And thus TBC Ends, both in a Bang and in a Whimper (4)

… Get out of the kitchen!

While I have another post planned to join the chorus of bloggers writing about their first Wrath experiences, I have come to a realization this weekend.

Let’s call it by its name and not beat around the bush.

I’m a carebear.

I’m a PvP wuss.

Long time readers may remember that I rerolled on a PvP server in Spring to join some friends. Leveling there at late evenings during the last 6 months of the Burning Crusade wasn’t really heavy on world PvP. I had a couple of encounters in areas where you expect them, mainly STV and Hillsbrad Foothills, and a couple of skirmishes in HFP more recently. All against the perhaps dozen alliance players in the same level range, and (I thought) pretty much all in good fun. If we decided not to ignore each other, it was the typical Rock-Scissors-Papers game with the twist that the player who started it would most likely live.

Wrath exposed me to the other side of it, though – level 72+ players camping just outside of Thrallmar on their epic flyers, in twos or threes, hellbent to deny the aspiring DKs passage. Level 78 players escorting their guildies through Howling Fjord quests and hell-bent to slow the progress of the opposing faction level 70-71s around.

I realized, there and then, that I’m not cut for a PvP server. Oh, I do enjoy organized PvP, within the boundaries of the formalized engagements which you can find in BGs, arenas but also outdoors encounters like Halaa. I like more or less balanced engagements where I feel I have at least a shot at at, even if it means being outnumbered.

I however derive no pleasure in ganking lowbies myself, so there’s no sense of compensation in the nature of “do unto others…” from the gankfest. I’m getting pissed off when I get 2-shotted while trying to read a quest text, and that’s been happening far too often for my taste since the 13th.

Steptoe having apparently left on another of his semestrial smoke breaks, I’m again in an almost people-devoid guild.

Which has me reviewing my options.

Anyone has any suggestions for a casual, late night, EU-English carebear horde player? Ideally the server should not suffer from login queues, have reasonable BG queue lines up to 1am server time and horde should win BGs from time to time.

Open to any ideas.

On Similar Matters

• Some Blue Posts on Tanking Design Philosophy for Wrath (0)
• Armchair Theorycrafting: the lackluster Wrath Healadin (0)
• WWI: Totems to Effect Entire Raid (0)
• Wrath to End PvE / PvP Gear Dispute (0)
• Wrath Paladins: Significant Changes in Healing Techniques Ahead? (7)

Being away and with little playtime to try out things has some advantages, I don’t get to react to strings of nerfs + partial reversals as they happen.

I got some playtime on my paladin (now Ret with the blue honour PvP set), and did some Shattered Sun dailies. And currently, despite the nerfs already live (and before the rest to come), from a pure solo PvP standpoint, the changes definitely feel good. Stuff dies a lot faster than before 3.0.2.

PvP? Haven’t had a chance to do more than one single AV, and I don’t think there’s any justification for me to start playing pretend DPS. Healing remains an extremely rare commodity in BGs, my PvP healing set is half season 1 and half season 2 kit from back in the day, I’ve only started to use some of the Ret healing toys a bit in the mix. In other words, I haven’t had a chance to experience that so badly decried uberness which has led to this uncessant string of nerfs.

That being said, what this past month has, again, amply demonstrated, is that Blizzard still has no clue about the paladin class. The sequence of “Ret is fine, stop QQing” leading to “it’s a bit too high, we’ll tweak a bit” followed by the implementation of “To the Ground, Baby”, a modification to the TTGB nerf, and now the backtracking on Avenging Wrath / Bubble / Forebearance, combined with the dramatic side effects on prot threat generation and holy solo-ability, shows a team of class designers in total disarray.

There is no plan, there is no coherent vision, there is also no consistent message and there is ample evidence of QA (including player testing on the beta and the test realms) being a shameful mess.

Ghostcrawler, initially applauded for a new approach to dev / player communication, is seeing his credibility dropping week after week.

An example, when he answers the forum question “How do you come about your decisions and numbers to boost or nerf paladin class related abilities?” with the following gem, illustrates that we’ve moved from open communication to defensive PR bullshit:

“We do very extensive testing on all aspects of combat balance. Remember, as a large company we have access to testing capabilities far beyond that of the average player. As developers of the game, we also have access to a large number of tools that we don’t make public.”

Sorry, Ghostcrawler. When 3.0.2 went live, you first told us Ret was fine, then perhaps slightly too strong in PvP, then massively too strong in PvP and PvE and again still too strong in both aspects (oh and we don’t know how to handle burst damage sorry but in another couple of months we’ll revert a lot of the nerfs because contrary to what we’re saying now Ret won’t be scaling well at level 80 beyond Naxx). I’m not questioning the reality of the class’ balance state, I’m simply unable to reconcile the evolution of your claims with the notion that you do extensive testing.

Or perhaps you’re simply unable to interpret the results.

The final nail on the Paladin class designers’ coffin is this gem hidden in the announcement of the next nerf (they said to the ground, after all):

“Yet bubble+wings currently is used a lot in BGs and Arenas and helps contribute to the feeling of being destroyed by a Retribution paladin while you are unable to respond.”

Hello, Blizzard, ever heard of stunlocking? For four years, you have nerfed every other class who had the capability to kill another player while they were unable to respond. Never has stunlocking been touched. If rogues are to be the exception, fine, but you could start being open about it, and cut the crap like shown in the post above. As a former warlock main who’s had chain fear nerfed time and time again, I’m getting really tired of this.

That being said, since Blizzard has no clue, there are extremely smart bloggers out here who’ve come up with many suggestions to diminish the frontloaded burst potential of a Retadin in PvP without affecting PvE damage on longer fights nor holy / protadins.

The first, repeated often, is to stop seals proccing on special attacks (and adjust damage accordingly to make up for it). Almost every Retribution paladin who has given some thoughts to the matter recommends the same thing.

Blessing of Kings’ Rohan, perhaps the smartest of us all, has an extremely well thought out post with a whole set of measures to fix the issues. While I encourage you to read the whole thing for yourself, here’s the TL;DR version:

“Have Judgement, Crusader Strike, Divine Storm, and Consecration share a 3 second cooldown (in addition to their normal individual cooldown).

1. 1. Change Judgement as follows:
      1. Increase cooldown to 12s.
      2. Increase damage by 20%.
      3. Change Improved Judgements to increase damage by 10/20%.
      4. Increase the duration of the debuff to 30s.
   2. Change Divine Storm as follows:
      1. Increase cooldown to 12s.
      2. Make it do Holy damage once again.
   3. Remove Seal procs from specials, and tune abilities upwards as appropriate.“

If the burst frontloading is the issue, address the frontloading. What Blizzard is currently doing is lessening the value of every talent point invested in Ret more and more. They should make up their mind. If they want a holy-based burst class in the game, they should fix the frontloading. If  not, they’ll have to rethink the holy-based burst aspect from scratch. Either way, this is the fourth time they’re messing up the class in the same amount of years. Whatever they’re doing, it’s not working.

On Similar Matters

• Armchair Theorycrafting: the lackluster Wrath Healadin (0)
• Wrath Paladins: Significant Changes in Healing Techniques Ahead? (7)
• Wrath of the Lich King: NOW We Can Talk (6)
• Some Blue Posts on Tanking Design Philosophy for Wrath (0)
• Beacon of Light Macro (1)

With time and many tweaks and adjustments, the WotLK beta has wrought many changes from the initial beta outlook. As we get closer to patch 3.x and its class overhauls, I took a long, hard look at the current state of the healadin.

And I don’t like it.

Admittedly, it is hard to make any truly informed decision from outside the beta – the latest changes for instance are still not final, nor does reading patch notes or second-hand accounts really give a feel of how the new trees will actually play.

That being said, from the looks of things, the hopes I had been harbouring to see an evolution of the healadin playstyle seem to have been in vain.

Due to a combination of factors which include mana cost adjustments, the nerf to the Infusion of Light talent and the addition of the admittingly interesting Sacred Shield spell, complex and more varied healing cast rotations which include Holy Shock appear to be, again, on the backburner compared to using our TBC single trick, spamming Flash of Light. Granted, on longer fights you’ll be keeping Sacred Shield up every 30 seconds (Woo! Sacred Shield is the new Seals) for variety, and if you spec all the 51 points in holy you’ll even get the option of keeping Beacon of Light up every minute.

But from where I’m sitting, it looks like the Wrath healadin will be, again, mostly a FoL-bot. So much for versatile and more interesting gameplay.

Not to mention that the Infusion of Light “adjustment” just killed, again, any semblance of 2v2 and 3v3 arena mobility for the holy paladin, one of the biggest issues holding the class back and keeping its number massively under-represented in those two brackets.

On the other hand, you can spec into a solid protection tree, said to provide much more damage (and hence solo viability) in Wrath than TBC, or an extremely sexy reborn Retribution tree which doesn’t just provide better DPS than ever before (OK, let’s cross our fingers, between patch 2.0.1 and TBC go-live Retribution was massive, too) but also pretty solid healing capabilities with the Art of War and Sheath of Light talents. Add to this that you can actually spec up to 5/5 Illumination in holy with 51 points in Retribution for off-healing or 5-men main healing, and you have (as it currently stands) not merely a good, non-gimped, non-laughingstock spec but you have something even more invaluable to many paladin players.

The realization, at last, of the Paladin vision of old: the dream of a holy warrior who can both smite his enemies and keep his allies alive, by staying in the thick of battle. And that alone is heavy enough in the paladin player psyche, especially among those players who stuck to the class through 4 years of disappointment and clericking for the lack of alternatives, to make the Wrath Healadin, as it stands now, the least attractive spec to come.

Caveat Emptor: As mentioned in the beginning, I’m merely theorycrafting. Actual results, in the beta or after a couple of additional adjustments, may change between now and level 80.

On Similar Matters

• The Mandatory Paladin QQ Post (0)
• Wrath Paladins: Significant Changes in Healing Techniques Ahead? (7)
• Wrath of the Lich King: NOW We Can Talk (6)
• Some Blue Posts on Tanking Design Philosophy for Wrath (0)
• Fitting the Paladin Class to the Image, another Perspective (4)

I might have mentioned I’m currently focusing my attention on a PvP realm, that’s where my pals are playing. The side-effect though is that my level 70 pallie lost all focus, due to sitting on a PvE realm.

My mage is level 60 and I thought, before doing the whole Outlands stretch, I’d see about raising 1-2 other toons, and started a new paladin.

“Heck, I did it once, I can do it again, right?”

Well no. I can’t. After the mage, after all the other toons I’ve played and leveled to a certain point, going from level 1 to 4 with just autoattack (hey, you can seal every 30 seconds too! woo!) waiting for stuff to die in about 12-15 seconds while a mage takes 5 seconds for the same thing did it for me. No way, not again, not before patch 3.0.2 changes things (assuming that it does actually change things at low levels, and I’m not holding my breath) and speeds the whole thing up.

What the motivation I had right after TBC, combined with discovering the new belf starting zones, was obscuring back then but is now just plainly obvious: the paladin currently totally sucks as a soloing and leveling class, from level 1 to level 70. No matter how you do it, even prot-grinding multiple mobs at a time without downtime, it just takes forever. I absolutely love the versatility of the class as a healer and a tank, but no other class makes the lack of soloability of tanks and healers in WoW 1 and 2 as painfully apparent as the paladin does. And this time around, Eversong Woods and Ghostlands aren’t new, in fact I could do it blindly.

And extremely slowly. Not.

That’s why the opening of PvE to PvP transfers, as reported by BBB, comes in extremely handy to me. A chance to take a toon I love at level 70 to the realm which currently has my attention. All other considerations are pretty moot, and the argument about going through 69 levels of gankage to “earn” the right is a bit silly nowadays, considering I had less than 10 world PvP encounters in 60 levels on my mage. Only since hitting Outlands do I actually see 1-2 alliance toons in the vicinity, and we tend to avoid each other. Azeroth was an empty world.

And there’s little ganking going on in empty worlds. So little “earning” opportunities.

On Similar Matters

• Odds and Ends before Christmas (4)
• I’m Alive, Damnit! (4)
• Back to the Roots (1)
• Yes, it’s That Time Again. Theme Change Time. (4)
• WTB Tank (0)