Altitis

… 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.

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I decided to join the army of deep red wannabes in Ebon Hold for my first steps in Wrath. I’ll keep it relatively short and spoiler free. The backstory is well done, the build-up of the DK’s first three levels too. If you haven’t done so already, here’s one warning though: At some stage, you will gain the quest The Light of Dawn. At the top of the screen, you should have a yellow indicator indicating the equilibrium of forces between two factions, and below, potentially, a countdown.

If there’s no countdown showing on the third line, stay put at Browman’s Mill. There’s an event in progress, which holds a key piece of storytelling, and when I mean key, it really holds the story together. Go make yourself a cup of tea or something, the event will reset about every 10 minutes. Getting in there in the middle will make you want to stick around for the next round anyway, but unlike other story pieces, once you’ve stumbled upon the end, you will only get the audio afterwards… which can be mixed in with emotes from other players and whatnot.

So how does the heroic class handle? That is a bit more difficult to answer. The class is definitely powerful, but it is also complex to take stock of. If you haven’t tried it, it handles a bit like a rogue on slow-motion where all combo points aren’t always useable. By design, you’ll be alternating between several abilities all the time, about 5 per rotation (though most of the stuff will be dead before you finish a rotation anyway. Yay for training dummies).

The fact that it’s not a 1 or 2 button spamming class is definitely nice. On the other hand, you’re mostly always doing the same things in the same order, so it’s also a bit of a faceroller – you just have to roll from left to right

When going to bed, the DK was level 59 and about 500 rep off friendly with Argent Dawn, and still plenty o’ quests left to do in EPL. I’ve tried out unholy so far, and will probably respec to blood for a comparison at 60, but the undead just roll over and die before me. There’s a bunch of elite abomination wandering about in Andhoral, with about 11k health, and they were no problem at all either. Compared to the endless fight those represented on my then prot pallie, it’s certainly a very welcome change.

Will I stick to the class in the long run? I have no idea. I’ll most certainly be riding around in HFP over the weekend and then decide.

In terms of server load, Blizzard was on top of their game on our cluster. There was no visible performance hit in Ebon Hold at all, despite the starter part being packed full with other wannabe death knights. The other thing which is very well done is using the phase technology to make the area evolve over time (which also trickles down the population and avoids brand new level 55 DKs in starter greens with only 3 abilities to have to constantly dodge duelling challenges by the level 57s in full blues with all of their availabilities ready. These two populations play in different story times and simply don’t mix.

In terms of races, in the end I went for looks first and picked a male orc. The just look badass in the dark plate set, although as is often the case, with the blue set you have at the end of the DK intro storyline, I tend to believe that shrugging with these on would probably squish the Death Knight’s brain neatly between shoulder pads.

Finally, one thing which I realized this morning which would definitely add to the heroic dimension of the class, Blizzard shouldn’t have stopped with just the introduction quest series, but added a new series of story-driven quests every 10 levels to renew the Ebon Hold story line and, possibly, refresh the gear set with an upgraded kit with again matching looks and colours. That would definitely have added to the epic feeling of the class.

And that’s it for a first evening in Wrath. I’ll probably move the pallie to Northrend over the weekend to test the temperatures there. Got some righteous arse-kicking to do after all this defiling.

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My nominal office (when I’m not gallivanting around abroad) is at half a stone throw distance from an airport. Which contains, despite some people’s notion about the backwardness of Switzerland, a bunch of shops. One of which, amazingly enough, happens to be an electronics shop.
When BC got released, I went to said electronics shop during my lunch break, and picked up my copy – at that time, a good dozen remained on the shelf.
Fast-forward to today. The shop opens at 8:30 in the morning. I’m flying back from my last trip, landing at 9:00. I’m at the shop at 9:15. Given that at noon last time, there was a good dozen copies of the first expansion to be bought, I was sure to find Wrath there at 9:15, wasn’t I?
Wrong. Despite several of my own work colleagues who I identified as WoW players the past couple of years quitting the game, the shop had already sold out all its copies. Most had been pre-reserved, something I hadn’t even considered necessary.
Bugger.
Plan B: go to work, then start making the rounds of the supermarkets during lunch break. I had already planned a trip which would take me through 5 different stores within 90 minutes if needed, some of these remote enough that people would have to drive there instead of just casually strolling around the corner (to my esteemed American readers, in tiny Switzerland, although we own 2 cars, 3 houses and 4 bank account per individual, we usually don’t get into one of these cars every time we have to go to the loo ). That round-trip was certainly immensely more attractive than plan C – downloading the whole thing on my DSL line.

So lunch arrived while my apprehension about ending up burning fuel for nothing (don’t know about you but here, Big Oil is a lot less keen on lowering the price at the pump when the Barrel price drops than they were eager to yank it up NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW when the prices were rising) and getting stuck with said plan C was growing by the minute.
Fortunately, I needn’t have worried, the first store had a good hundred copies and no lines at the cashier’s desk. I also snatched a copy of Pink‘s latest record, Fun House, at a 20% special launch discount price (I wish I could actually see Steptoe cringing while he’s reading more evidence about my hopeless lack of musical taste. Hey buddy, she’s got one of the most amazing voices in commercial pop-rock these days, at least to me, so bugger off). I’m a sucker.

Now I only have to finish slaving through the day writing a trainer’s guide for a new training programme, and it’s either off to Northrend or to Ebon Hold (depending on what area hasn’t crashed, but if BC is any indication, chances are both areas are actually on the same instance server nodes – the smart thing would be to have Ebon Hold implemented on the Azeroth server instead, bound to see less load after this coming weekend than Northrend. Sorry, my inner geek is showing). Oh, and a small personal project may be finished today too, but more on that whenever it’s actually finished.

Anyway, have fun with the new expansion. I’ll be there shortly.

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I figured that stocking up on some quest turn-ins early was a good idea and got started on the cloth donation mats for the future DK.

Being horde, I thought that reaching the Stockades was more pain that it was worth, but after grinding the furbolgs in Ashenvale for wool for 3 hours, I might reconsider.

For silk, there’s always Scarlet Monastery and although going there as a Ret pallie takes about twice the amount of pulls I’d use with prot spec, only the looting took time. 300 silk cloth can easily be earned by doing lib + 2x armory + cathedral. 1 hour. Painless (except for bag management near the end).

Magewave and Runecloth are on tonight. I think I’ll go grind ZF for the former, and Tyr’s Hand or something similar for the latter. Looks good.

Oh, and if you’re not planning on making a Death Knight or want to skip the cloth turn-in quests, if you need some money and are fed up with doing the same dailies over and over, on my server wool cloth is up to 9g a stack (from 1g50) and silk is already in the 12g range / stack.

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Patch 3.0.2 is upon us. With it come goodies like new talent trees (bye bye holy, hello Ret on my paladin), inscriptions, the barber shops and more.

The patch will also bring Stormwind Harbor. And a ferry between Auberdine and Stormwind.

Think about that one for a while.

Until now, a young nelfie born in Darnassus or a space goat who wanted to reconnect with the rest of the alliance, to, say, visit far-away weapon masters, had to go through a rite of passage. An adventurer’s courage, skill and cunning could be measured by the level at which he undertook the dangerous voyage to far-away Ironforge, which involved braving the swampy, crocolisk-infested marshes of the Wetlands. The younger the braver was the saying.

The conforts of modern life however are now robbing the Alliance of yet another test of skill and courage, softening up an already weak youth even more, by providing mass transportation allowing the weakling long-ears and big-horns to completely bypass otherwise valuable lessons in aggro management and, let’s name it, running for their lives.

And they call THAT progress?

/snort.

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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.

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As quoted by MMO Champion, the almost-standard staple of warlock talent builds, putting 5 points into improved corruption to make the bloody spell instant, has been changed. Corruption becomes instant as a base spell, and the talent boosts its damage.

Further, Ruin will get swapped around with Devastation, and become a 5-point talent for the same effect, allowing people to include it in 51-point builds if they want to.

It’s about damn time, if you ask me. That being said, and still beeing the Blizzard cheerleading optimistic PR-Gobbler that I am, I am still really happy about that entire review philosophy they have for wrath to put stuff which has become must-have talents back into base abilities.

How well they will deliver on the promise to provide us with talent trees providing multiple and open choices remains to be seen, but I like the whole approach, even if they could have done this same exercise in 2006 already. But hey, better late than never (critics will of course counter with too little too late, but I wish them happiness in WAR).

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If you’re interested in Wrath analysis and in things shapeshifting, the Big Bear Butt Blogger has a very in-depth analysis and commentary on Bear tanking here.

Only avoid reading it in case you don’t want to be Wrath-spoiled, of course.

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I probably should have known better. I actually used to.

With the latest beta build, DK tanking talents appear again to spread across all three trees. Again, not much of an issue in general (except that now you actually will have to make some choices as currently not every single of them can be picked anymore), just that with the rate of changes, the class is currently too unstable to try and predict much about it.

As I said: I should probably have known better. I actually used to.

That being said, on the paladin front, not only do current tanking and healing specs look very interesting, it also appears even lower level gameplay may be smoother, making leveling another one a more interesting prospect than before. Looking forward to that aspect – provided it doesn’t get nerfed until live.

As others have noted, class-specific glyphs (inscriptions) have been introduced. See the same MMO-Champion link as above for all details, but some of these just sound too good to remain untouched.

To wit, some of the pallie glyphs:

• Glyph of Blessing of Might – Your Blessing of Might also grants offensive spell power equal to 10% of the attack power it grants.
• Glyph of Holy Light – Your Holy Light grants 10% of its heal amount to up to 5 friendly targets within 5 of the initial target.
• Glyph of Blessing of Wisdom – Your Blessing of Wisdom causes your target to also regenerate health at the same rate as mana.

These three appear pretty much quite powerful.
Or Shammies?

• Glyph – Chain Heal 01 (Shaman) (Class: Shaman) – Your Chain Heal heals 1 additional target.
• Glyph – Healing Wave 01 (Shaman) (Class: Shaman) – Your Healing Wave also heals you for 20% of the healing effect when you heal someone else.

Can you say battle healer?

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Looking through recent Blue posts, here are a few interesting tidbits regarding Tank design for Wrath.

The Summary:

• They haven’t yet a clear notion how threat handling / management will happen at level 80
• They want to keep each tank with its own specialty but improve overall viability (ie blurring the difference between classes)
• They want to make it perfectly possible and viable to raid without any one definite cookie-cutter tank spec
• They want to look at any formerly “must have” talents and integrate most of these into core mechanics to foster more varied spec… flavours instead of one single cookie-cutter approach.

Generic:

It’s almost impossible at this stage to talk about which class can generate the most threat or has the most survivability at level 80. There are no level 80 characters in beta, and we haven’t done our own testing yet. We want to come up with mechanics we like, then we get the numbers in good shape. I’m not saying don’t talk about it — it’s very useful when someone can point out a potential problem, particularly if it’s one we hadn’t thought of. Yes, that happens–a shock, I know. Just don’t slip down the slope from there by declaring the class dead or breaking out the slaps to the face.

There are 4 tanks in WoW. They all are intended to tank 5-player, 10-player and 25-player instances. They all have their specialties, and the warrior specialty will probably remain as the best tank for single, hard-hitting bosses. But if you only have a death knight for that encounter, or you bring a warrior to a fight with a bunch of adds, you’ll still be able to get purps. This is a slight change in philosophy for us, but one we feel is necessary in a world with 10 classes and several specs getting a boost to raid viability.
(Source)

I also acknowledge that hit and expertise are great threat stats, and expertise can offer a little mitigation to boot. The point I was trying to make is that putting strength on tanking gear solves a lot of problems in the game — it can improve dps and threat (and mitigation if we build the talents correctly) without us having to worry about whether plate-wearing tanks are already capped in some other stat. Defense means something different for warriors and paladins than it does for death knights, and unless we build different gear for each class we can’t count on defense as always being desirable above everything else. The last thing we want is for some classes to feel that they don’t have access to the gear to do their jobs properly. (Source)

I know there is a tradition in BC of a prot warrior MT with perhaps another prot warrior or a paladin as OT. If we do our jobs right, there will be some gouprs that run feral MTs with unholy DK OTs in Lich King raids. Crazy, I know, but in the BWL days it was 5 prot warriors tanking, so we’ve already come a long way. (Source)

Warrior:

AE tanking is hard for warriors. This tends to mean that pugs in particular would rather have a paladin tank just for the consistency. I agree this feels broken. We think we can make it easier for warriors to AE tank, especially in 5-player instances, without displacing the paladin as the best AE tank. At the moment we are considering increasing Thunder Clap to 5 targets. We’ll see how that feels.

The old Shield Block wasn’t fun. We think we can make the new one fun. Numbers are the easiest thing to tweak if that’s all that’s called for. So we tend to focus on mechanics at this stage in development. Once we like the mechanics, we can massage the numbers. (Source)

Warriors need to be better AE tanks without eclipsing paladins. Thunder Clap is a good place to address that problem. If Shockwave becomes the ultimate tanking ability than we’re concerned nobody would want to run a 5-player dungeon without it. That’s not the goal. We don’t want to hand out Consecrate to every tank, but we want you to be able to tank groups better. (Source)

Druid:

The design is for bears to be viable, end-game main tanks. The design is for cats to be viable, end-game melee dps. In both cases you are going to need the right talents, good gear, skill and companions who can back you up — I don’t mean to imply raiding will be easy.

If you want to do a little tanking and dps, you probably won’t be as optimal at either, though you’ll probably always be better at switching between the two than other classes. In order to be as good at tanking as the other classes, you might have to give up a few talents that maximize your dps, and vice versa. This is a good thing — it lets you choose to actually be a main tank.
Don’t worry about your bears. The armor and other changes were done to fix itemization issues, not to nerf druids. You’ve already gotten the ability to drink pots in bear form and benefit from weapon enchants and windfury. We have plenty of knobs to turn to make sure you can do your job even better than you could in LK. (Source)

Paladin:

Like I promised, the paladin changes were more sweeping than most changes. As such, it’s going to take us some time to go through a second pass on the abilities and get everything polished up enough to evaluate the shiny, new paladin. I expect we’ll be a lot more active on this forum when that happens. (Source)

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