I thought it would be fun to go through and pick my favorites as they are currently described and "think out loud" at the same time. I'll likely have a strong feral bias as that is the spec I feel most at home playing, but I am bound to have the healer in me speak up at times as well. At least one this is for sure, I won't be mentioning boomkins. Woops, moving on...
Tier One
The first tier of talents are aimed at improving mobility. As a feral druid at heart I can't pull myself away from Feline Swiftness and the base 30% speed increase in cat form. As an added bonus this grants a 10% speed boost when not in cat form, so it's also a good talent for bears as well as healers.
The other two talents in the first tier force you into cat form. This is not generally a good thing when tanking in bear. That and they have cooldowns, moderately long 3 minute cooldowns right now which probably won't change too much.
The first of these is displacer beast which teleports you somewhere random within 20 yards and puts you into stealth for 10 seconds. As a night elf druid I think to myself, I'll just run into the corner, flip to cat and shadowmeld. That only has a two minute cooldown. Shadowmeld is hit or miss already when you manually pick a safe spot, I don't see a random teleport working out too well. All I see in this talent is a way for non-night elf druids to occasionally avoid a repair bill.
The last mobility talent is Tireless Pursuit which is basically dash that breaks roots and snares. Snares we already clear by "power shifting" which I assume will not change and I am guessing we will keep dash as a standard ability as well. So all that is left is the breaking out of roots which a PVP trinket can do and then some on a shorter 2 minute cooldown. Now compared to feral swiftness which is 10/30% speed all the time this grants on average less than a 6% speed boost on an extended run. During a boss fight you'd get to use it two or maybe three times on average, and what is the chance of it being available every time you want it. So even if you never shift into cat feral swiftness is probably better mobility in the long run.
Tier Two
These talents seem targeted at survival. I'm at a bit of a loss for which one is actually the better choice for me without having some numbers to base my decision off of. All three talents provide some healing, but one in particular, Nature's Swiftness, stands out from the pack. Every 3 minutes it allows you to cast a spell usually restricted to caster form from any form and increase the healing/duration of the spell by 50%. This is the bear form battle rez we druids have been dreaming about forever. I also think that this will be replacing the predatory strikes talent which allows cats to do almost the same thing after a 5 combo point finisher. Most of the time I see this being used as a defensive cooldown with healing touch. Just how much that healing touch heals for compared to the other two talents will make or break this one. Lets face it, bears have been battle rezzing for as long as they wished they could do it in bear form and crowd controlling as a tank isn't going to happen aside from the beginning of a pull. This is a straight up 3 minute heal cooldown in a pretty disguise.
The next healing talent doesn't have a disguise, renewal is a 30% heal every two minutes. I'm guessing this will be the winner for tanks, but it all depends on how much healing a healing touch can do as a feral and probably whether or not the 7th tier talent heart of the wild affect the healing done. I can't see this not being better for a feral, especially considering it has a shorter cooldown that nature's swiftness. Nature's swiftness is probably going to be better for healers.
The last healing talent, Cenarion Ward, is a shield that puts a HoT on the target when they next take damage. If the healing from this ability is on par with the other talents of this tier then it is just a button you have to hit 4-6 times as often which seems tedious. So I am thinking renewal for feral druids and nature's swiftness for caster druids.
Tier Three
This tier is pretty boring for ferals. The theme for the tier is creating or maintaining distance between you and your enemies. The first talent is our familiar friend faerie fire with the addition of a 50% slowing effect (think faerie fire applying the infected wounds debuff). I think this is pretty much a non-choice for ferals. Bears rely on faerie fire as a ranged pull and threat generator and cats rely on it for the damage boost from the armor reduction. Not the mention the anti-stealth utility in PVP. I expect this tier to change drastically sometime before the expansion comes out.
Oh, the other two talents. First we have mass entanglement, or as I like to think of it, hungering cold: the druid edition. The one big difference is that it is a targeted AOE crowd control instead of being centered on the caster. The one minute cooldown we already know isn't reliable for add control on boss fights and the two minute cast time in PVP is just asking for an interrupt. All that trouble for an 8 second root. I have decided this talent sucks, you can't even use it in forms.
The last talent makes me smile. Typhoon which you can cast in forms. Bears and cats blasting their targets over cliffs and whatnot. Sadly other than being amusing and potentially useful on a couple gimmicky fights, this isn't all that helpful for ferals. We are a melee spec, why would we want to purposefully blast our targets out of our range? Obviously this is the go to talent for caster druids.
Tier Four
Not sure what the theme of this tier is, unless making you better at your role is a theme. The first talent is wild charge, basically feral charge with a new name to ferals, but now it works for caster druids as well. The odd exception is that it works as a disengage for boomkins, but they are already odd to the point that odd is normal for them. So far this is my favorite talent this tier, but the other two just haven't been flushed out yet enough to actually consider them. Wild charge almost seems like it belongs in tier three.
The second talent, incarnation, appears to make you better at whatever form you happen to be in. More DPS in cat, more healing in tree and theoretically more mitigation in bear and more DPS in moonkin form. This tier has got to be the most interesting choice so far, at least for tanks. Do you choose mobility in the form of a charge, or do you favor additional mitigation? That choice right there makes me think that the talents in this tier won't provide additional mitigation for tanks because what raid tank in their right mind would favor a charge they usually use once over increased survivability once they are in front of the boss.
The third talent, force of nature, much like incarnation, is a boost to your performance, but by summoning adds to help instead of just making yourself better. No details on what the treats will actually do, but I imagine the balance ones will remain unchanged and will probably be shared by cats. The resto treats will probably heal and the bear treants might end up being something similar to army of the dead.
Nothing really to decide for tier four right now, we'll have to wait for more information.
Tier Five
This tier is another one that obviously needs to be reworked, more so than tier three and the whole faerie fire imbalance. The theme of this tier is cool things to do in bear form. Although I suspect that at the very least the flipping to bear will be disassociated with the first talent, demoralizing roar so that caster druids have something to use. Speaking of the first talent, demoralizing roar disorients enemies within 10 yards for 4 seconds, sort of like an AOE bash. This could be handy for non-tanks, but is currently annoying because they would have to return to their non-bear form afterwards wasting a GCD worth of their 4 second CC in the process. This just doesn't seem that exciting for anyone that isn't a bear tank.
The second talent, ursol's vortex, is like super death grip for bears or cats for that matter since it doesn't seem to have a taunt built into it. There is absolutely no reason why a caster druid would want to suck enemies to them, so again this is mainly a bear talent. The interesting part of this talent though is that if a bear gave up charge in tier four for some yet unknown mitigation talent they would still have a gap closer. This talent would even make faerie fire less important if you can suck ranged casters right into the melee puddle.
The last talent, and quite possibly my favorite talent in the entire tree, is bear hug. Grabs an enemy into a strange combination of a channeled crowd control and damage over time. Basically you hop in bear form and squish the life (or unlife) out of your target. The vortex does sound neat, but I don't think I could pass up giving my enemies a big ol' bear hug.
Tier Six
The theme of the last tier seems to be something along the lines of, be all the hybrid you can be. The first talent, heart of the wild, makes it possible for all druids to go "hero bear" and save the day. Every six minutes for 45 seconds you can flip to bear and gain 95% more armor and have your hit also count as expertise. It also converts 50% int to agility for casters so they could in theory go kitty fo some silly reason, or more interestingly it converts 50% agility to int so cats, or bears in theory, can do some healing in a pinch. Very interesting talent.
The next talent, master shapeshifter, doesn't seem as cool as heart of the wild, in fact it seems pretty stupid, but it doesn't have a cooldown. Non-instant spells give you an attack power buff and melee abilities give you a spell damage buff. The only spec interested in spell damage are boomkins, who would never melee. And the only non-instant spells a feral would cast are maybe crowd control abilities. The buff stack up to three times and is consumed when an ability makes use of the buff. Really the only purpose I can think for it is skull bash for balance druids and crowd control for ferals. In either case the buff makes up for the damage loss from flipping forms for utility. Obviously healers and tanks need not apply.
The final talent called disentanglement causes shapeshifting to remove roots in addition to healing 20% of your maximum health on a 30 second internal cooldown. All I can think is how much I am going to kill frost mages with this talent in PVP. This also seems to be the preferred healer on this tier.
All in all I see at least three talents I am going to want to flip between regularly depending on what I am doing (raid, dungeon or PVP). Good thing they promised talent switching would be as easy as glyph switching.
Monday, October 31, 2011
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Pandas!
You know what excites me most about the next expansion. It's not pandas, it's not monks, and yet both are contributing factors. It's the hope of breaking that 10 character limit on any given realm.
I've tried making alts on other realms, meeting new people, trying to keep up with another community, and then losing touch after playing on my main realm exclusively for a few weeks. It just doesn't work for me, and as a result those other toons collect dust since the community is an important part of the game for me. Past the starting area anyway.
I always found the starting areas to be the most immersive and exciting parts of the game. I create a brand new character, spend a good hour languishing at the character creation screen to get that perfect look, and a name to match. All my hopes and dreams for that toon seem like they could happen tomorrow. Any rudimentary backstory and character personality is also fresh in my mind. All these things make those first 10 or so levels a lot of fun.
Then after neglecting my new toon for a while in favor of max level ones I lose that clarity. I still get excited about a lot of my character names; pretty much all of them thanks to some paid name changes, but any inkling of a personality gets muddled with my own and my character becomes me rather than me becoming my character. Paid race/faction/name changes also have a similar effect on a toon for me.
Let's steer back to the next expansion. The other thing I am really excited about has nothing to do with warcraft aside from being connected to the annual pass (nifty deal awarding a beta invite, mount and diablo 3 for promising to keep your subscription going for another year). I am excited by the prospect of the real money auction house in diablo 3. I have this neat idea that rare items will drop for me once in a while dabbling in diablo and I'll be able to sell them for a buck here and five bucks there that I will be able to spend on warcraft stuff like pets and mounts or perhaps just supplement my subscription.
It is an intriguing thought to think that the time I spend amusing myself with warcraft alts could be replaced by enjoying diablo alts and making money along the way to support my warcraft subscription. In reality I think I'd only get 1-2 months of playtime a year which I would probably spend on pets on mounts instead.
The rest of the new expansion stuff, nothing I wasn't expecting. New areas, new dungeons, new raids. I'll certainly take advantage of all that stuff, but as features go I've got the most interest in the additional character slots. That one tiny feature will have more impact on my long term attachment to the game than any other.
I've tried making alts on other realms, meeting new people, trying to keep up with another community, and then losing touch after playing on my main realm exclusively for a few weeks. It just doesn't work for me, and as a result those other toons collect dust since the community is an important part of the game for me. Past the starting area anyway.
I always found the starting areas to be the most immersive and exciting parts of the game. I create a brand new character, spend a good hour languishing at the character creation screen to get that perfect look, and a name to match. All my hopes and dreams for that toon seem like they could happen tomorrow. Any rudimentary backstory and character personality is also fresh in my mind. All these things make those first 10 or so levels a lot of fun.
Then after neglecting my new toon for a while in favor of max level ones I lose that clarity. I still get excited about a lot of my character names; pretty much all of them thanks to some paid name changes, but any inkling of a personality gets muddled with my own and my character becomes me rather than me becoming my character. Paid race/faction/name changes also have a similar effect on a toon for me.
Let's steer back to the next expansion. The other thing I am really excited about has nothing to do with warcraft aside from being connected to the annual pass (nifty deal awarding a beta invite, mount and diablo 3 for promising to keep your subscription going for another year). I am excited by the prospect of the real money auction house in diablo 3. I have this neat idea that rare items will drop for me once in a while dabbling in diablo and I'll be able to sell them for a buck here and five bucks there that I will be able to spend on warcraft stuff like pets and mounts or perhaps just supplement my subscription.
It is an intriguing thought to think that the time I spend amusing myself with warcraft alts could be replaced by enjoying diablo alts and making money along the way to support my warcraft subscription. In reality I think I'd only get 1-2 months of playtime a year which I would probably spend on pets on mounts instead.
The rest of the new expansion stuff, nothing I wasn't expecting. New areas, new dungeons, new raids. I'll certainly take advantage of all that stuff, but as features go I've got the most interest in the additional character slots. That one tiny feature will have more impact on my long term attachment to the game than any other.
Monday, October 24, 2011
Four Specs!? Say it ain't so.
As a casual raider it was always quite a perk to have my druid ready for anything. Need a tank, fine, need a healer, I can do that, need a DPS, oh I can do that too. I was a little worried when Cataclysm promised further division of bears and cats, but thankfully it never really came to pass. Perhaps the same will happen this time as well.
My current druid speccing algorithm creates two specs, one focused on tanking while also maximizing DPS effectiveness when possible and a second focused entirely on healing. Now worst case scenario MoP will leave some critical cat ability out of the bear spec like shred or mangle. Best case scenario is that they just leave out some of the quality of life cat talents like king of the jungle from the bear spec. I do have one point in king of the jungle right now, and it certainly helps my DPS, but I wouldn't be crippled without it. Other cat friendly talents like stampede or blood in the water I already do without.
Now a blue response explicitly stated when the topic of off-tank DPS was brought up that no other tanks could do it and that druid would no longer be special little snowflakes. I take that to mean that they will be doing something to completely gimp cat DPS in the new bear spec, but I can't imagine what. Maybe it will just be equivalent to DPSing in a "bear spec" now and blues think that is enough. That's certainly not going to dissuade bearcats from speccing bear and keeping a DPS set on hand.
If you look at the talent trees right now there is a ton of overlap between cat and bear talents where the talent does something that is good for a cat and something that is good for a bear or something that is good for both. A truly sadistic developer could tease those all apart and work all the bear stuff into the bear spec while omitting the cat stuff.
I'm not sure that is likely since it was mentioned they were rolling the talents into the baseline abilities. So long as the bearspec retains all the crucial cat baseline abilities then there is nothing to worry about. Can a bear spec live without shred? Probably. It's not really all that important for soloing when you can't be behind your target anyway. Could they award the cat version of mangle to cats and the bear version to bears? That would hinder the bear spec's ability to solo.
So many possibilities, but when does it come to the point where being gimped x% dps isn't worth the ability to heal. I honestly don't heal often on my druid. I did heal a random heroic last night since healers were eligible for the bonus sack, but I can't remember the last time I healed before that. In the past healing has got me into many an informal raid for achievements, gear and amusement. Opportunities that wouldn't have been available if I just stuck to my strengths of dpsing and tanking. Not to say that I'm not proficient at druid healing, I'm actually quite good at it. I just like healing on my shaman more.
One thing is for sure, a cat spec won't be able to seriously tank without the crit immunity and extra mitigation that will undoubtedly be thrown into the bear spec. So the bearcat lifestyle rests squarely on the bear spec. Trispec anyone?
My current druid speccing algorithm creates two specs, one focused on tanking while also maximizing DPS effectiveness when possible and a second focused entirely on healing. Now worst case scenario MoP will leave some critical cat ability out of the bear spec like shred or mangle. Best case scenario is that they just leave out some of the quality of life cat talents like king of the jungle from the bear spec. I do have one point in king of the jungle right now, and it certainly helps my DPS, but I wouldn't be crippled without it. Other cat friendly talents like stampede or blood in the water I already do without.
Now a blue response explicitly stated when the topic of off-tank DPS was brought up that no other tanks could do it and that druid would no longer be special little snowflakes. I take that to mean that they will be doing something to completely gimp cat DPS in the new bear spec, but I can't imagine what. Maybe it will just be equivalent to DPSing in a "bear spec" now and blues think that is enough. That's certainly not going to dissuade bearcats from speccing bear and keeping a DPS set on hand.
If you look at the talent trees right now there is a ton of overlap between cat and bear talents where the talent does something that is good for a cat and something that is good for a bear or something that is good for both. A truly sadistic developer could tease those all apart and work all the bear stuff into the bear spec while omitting the cat stuff.
I'm not sure that is likely since it was mentioned they were rolling the talents into the baseline abilities. So long as the bearspec retains all the crucial cat baseline abilities then there is nothing to worry about. Can a bear spec live without shred? Probably. It's not really all that important for soloing when you can't be behind your target anyway. Could they award the cat version of mangle to cats and the bear version to bears? That would hinder the bear spec's ability to solo.
So many possibilities, but when does it come to the point where being gimped x% dps isn't worth the ability to heal. I honestly don't heal often on my druid. I did heal a random heroic last night since healers were eligible for the bonus sack, but I can't remember the last time I healed before that. In the past healing has got me into many an informal raid for achievements, gear and amusement. Opportunities that wouldn't have been available if I just stuck to my strengths of dpsing and tanking. Not to say that I'm not proficient at druid healing, I'm actually quite good at it. I just like healing on my shaman more.
One thing is for sure, a cat spec won't be able to seriously tank without the crit immunity and extra mitigation that will undoubtedly be thrown into the bear spec. So the bearcat lifestyle rests squarely on the bear spec. Trispec anyone?
Friday, October 7, 2011
Right Hand, Left Hand, Cooperate!
Once upon a time there were add-ons created to cast spells and use abilities when a hotkey was pressed rather than released. This was largely PVP driven where those few (hundred) milliseconds matter. Of course this was also useful for PVE and I think healers were the first to catch on. Now your mouseover healers (which most healers are) enjoyed the benefits of this right away, but those healers that click on their targets had a slight glitch.
Clicking on a raid/party/unit frame, or any friendly/hostile unit directly, sets your target when the mouse button is released, not when the mouse button is pressed. So as you can imagine, or perhaps as you have experienced first hand, it was very easy to begin casting a spell prior to your new target being selected, negating the benefits of those faster, more responsive, hotkeys.
So the next part of the arms race, largely for the benefit of healers, raid/party/unit frame add-ons added the ability to change your target when you pressed your mouse button instead of when you let go. Life is good again.
Fast forward to the present day; Blizzard finally saw the benefits of having hotkeys work when pressed rather than released, and added the option into the game by default. Sadly they did not see the big picture and the default frames still switch targets when the mouse button is released.
I have recently exposed a new and annoying wrinkle in this arms race between ability usage and target selection when tanking. Often times I will flip targets quickly to taunt, interrupt, or use a ranged ability like faerie fire, but since my target is changed when I release my mouse button I often end up taunting my current target and wasting the cooldown.
Interrupting worshipers on Cho'gall and taunting down spinners on Beth'tilac are just a couple examples of situations where it would really help to flip targets on mouse down rather than mouse up. Unfortunately I'm not sure there is an add-on to do this, or at least I don't know of one yet after searching for a while.
One day target selection and ability usage will consistently use either the key/button pressed event rather than the key/button released event, but in the meantime the left hand will never quite know what the right hand is doing, and vice versa.
Clicking on a raid/party/unit frame, or any friendly/hostile unit directly, sets your target when the mouse button is released, not when the mouse button is pressed. So as you can imagine, or perhaps as you have experienced first hand, it was very easy to begin casting a spell prior to your new target being selected, negating the benefits of those faster, more responsive, hotkeys.
So the next part of the arms race, largely for the benefit of healers, raid/party/unit frame add-ons added the ability to change your target when you pressed your mouse button instead of when you let go. Life is good again.
Fast forward to the present day; Blizzard finally saw the benefits of having hotkeys work when pressed rather than released, and added the option into the game by default. Sadly they did not see the big picture and the default frames still switch targets when the mouse button is released.
I have recently exposed a new and annoying wrinkle in this arms race between ability usage and target selection when tanking. Often times I will flip targets quickly to taunt, interrupt, or use a ranged ability like faerie fire, but since my target is changed when I release my mouse button I often end up taunting my current target and wasting the cooldown.
Interrupting worshipers on Cho'gall and taunting down spinners on Beth'tilac are just a couple examples of situations where it would really help to flip targets on mouse down rather than mouse up. Unfortunately I'm not sure there is an add-on to do this, or at least I don't know of one yet after searching for a while.
One day target selection and ability usage will consistently use either the key/button pressed event rather than the key/button released event, but in the meantime the left hand will never quite know what the right hand is doing, and vice versa.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Pet Stances No Longer Sufficient
Before 4.2, and after whatever patch last messed with my pet controls, I kept all my pets on defensive 99% of the time. As soon as I started attacking my pet would go in and attack that target and if I told my pet to go after a different target it would do so and then return to its original target. Perfect for PVE where you spend most of your time concentrating on a single target and occasionally focus on burning a secondary target/add down quickly. Most notably 4.2 took away the automatically attack my target when entering combat feature of the old defensive mode. Not a huge deal as I can just macro that feature back into all my shots with something like the following.
/petattack [@pettarget,noexists,@target][@pettarget,dead,@target]
I've yet to try it as I've only done the Thrall chain and one ZG run on my hunter since the patch. One perk of wiping repeatedly on the last boss in ZG was that I got a lot of practice playing with the new pet stances with all those adds. Assist mode was pretty much useless and I felt my pet spent more time running around than actually hitting anything. Not to mention that when assisting it was near to impossible to get my pet back to pull a new add off of me. Defensive mode was best, but I had to pay a lot more attention to managing my pet's target.
I used to use aggressive for waves of mobs and/or PVP when I really didn't care what my pet hit so long as it did it quickly. I haven't PVPed on my hunter for the longest time, but I fondly remember standing back to back with my pet on aggressive to provide 360 degrees of stealth detection. In other words I won't miss it too much, but still assist mode is certainly no replacement for what aggressive stance provided.
One thing I like about assist mode is that it feels a little more like a pet command than the other stances. What I would like to see replace/augment the pet stances are three commands: assist, defend and heel. Assist would behave much like assist does today with the exception that if I specifically command my pet to attack something else it will do that instead and then go back to assisting. Defend would focus on defending me and turn my pet into a pseudo tank focusing on and switching to targets that are attacking me first (to pull them off). Finally the heel command would call your pet back to your side where it would remain until instructed otherwise (basically a rename of what passive does already).
To extend that one step further the assist and defend commands could be used on another friendly target! How cool would it be to ask your pet to go defend your healer, or in a raid/dungeon setting have your pet assist one of the melee DPS or tank. It would totally turn what is still a little bit of a kludgy interface and make it feel like our pets are actually listening to our commands and working alongside us. The immersion factor alone would be enough to make me squeal in delight.
I can only hope that the developers working on the pet changes are thinking something along those lines for a long term plan. Short term the new pet changes are pretty disappointing. Assist mode has your pet actually fighting against your commands at times and defensive mode requires more attention that it did before. New players are going to have a harder time controlling their pets than they did in the past, although they don't have the aggressive mistake to make anymore. I just picture new hunters trying to use the assist mode, getting an add on them while killing another and getting totally frustrated trying to tell their pet to help them get it off.
Oh and while I am listing totally awesome pet enhancements I'd also like to suggest a new commands similar to "go to" called "patrol". Your pet would walk back and forth patrolling between their current location and the location you selected. Basically a carbon copy of a feature that existed in the first three warcraft RTS games. I'm not sure how useful it would be in practice, but it would be fun.
/petattack [@pettarget,noexists,@target][@pettarget,dead,@target]
I've yet to try it as I've only done the Thrall chain and one ZG run on my hunter since the patch. One perk of wiping repeatedly on the last boss in ZG was that I got a lot of practice playing with the new pet stances with all those adds. Assist mode was pretty much useless and I felt my pet spent more time running around than actually hitting anything. Not to mention that when assisting it was near to impossible to get my pet back to pull a new add off of me. Defensive mode was best, but I had to pay a lot more attention to managing my pet's target.
I used to use aggressive for waves of mobs and/or PVP when I really didn't care what my pet hit so long as it did it quickly. I haven't PVPed on my hunter for the longest time, but I fondly remember standing back to back with my pet on aggressive to provide 360 degrees of stealth detection. In other words I won't miss it too much, but still assist mode is certainly no replacement for what aggressive stance provided.
One thing I like about assist mode is that it feels a little more like a pet command than the other stances. What I would like to see replace/augment the pet stances are three commands: assist, defend and heel. Assist would behave much like assist does today with the exception that if I specifically command my pet to attack something else it will do that instead and then go back to assisting. Defend would focus on defending me and turn my pet into a pseudo tank focusing on and switching to targets that are attacking me first (to pull them off). Finally the heel command would call your pet back to your side where it would remain until instructed otherwise (basically a rename of what passive does already).
To extend that one step further the assist and defend commands could be used on another friendly target! How cool would it be to ask your pet to go defend your healer, or in a raid/dungeon setting have your pet assist one of the melee DPS or tank. It would totally turn what is still a little bit of a kludgy interface and make it feel like our pets are actually listening to our commands and working alongside us. The immersion factor alone would be enough to make me squeal in delight.
I can only hope that the developers working on the pet changes are thinking something along those lines for a long term plan. Short term the new pet changes are pretty disappointing. Assist mode has your pet actually fighting against your commands at times and defensive mode requires more attention that it did before. New players are going to have a harder time controlling their pets than they did in the past, although they don't have the aggressive mistake to make anymore. I just picture new hunters trying to use the assist mode, getting an add on them while killing another and getting totally frustrated trying to tell their pet to help them get it off.
Oh and while I am listing totally awesome pet enhancements I'd also like to suggest a new commands similar to "go to" called "patrol". Your pet would walk back and forth patrolling between their current location and the location you selected. Basically a carbon copy of a feature that existed in the first three warcraft RTS games. I'm not sure how useful it would be in practice, but it would be fun.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
__ can do it, how hard can it be?
Heal and interrupt, sure no problem. Wait a second, raid healing and interrupting!? Wipe.
Being a shaman means people look your way whenever the word interrupt comes up. We do it at range, we do it often (more often when talented), we do it off the GCD and we don't have resource constraints slowing us down. Again, who thought it was a good idea to have interrupts that cost rage or energy?
So when it came time to do interrupts last night for Halfus my resto Shaman came up the obvious choice given that all other options required two people. That or require me to usurp a DPS spot and stay on Halfus for interrupts causing the adds to go down slower, but that's a better plan B than taking two DPS off adds and putting them on Halfus.
As I mentioned the first attempt at raid healing interruptus was a pretty triumphant failure. I was paying attention to about three too many things when I should have been focusing more on actually interrupting. The result was I missed half the interrupts and also did half the healing I should have been. So yeah, obviously I should be reassigned to a tank.
Tank healing works out much better while interrupting, only two targets to track and I can still splash the raid once in a while for good measure. I was able to focus much more on interrupting and rely on the other healers to watch the raid more closely than, "ooh a clump of people, healing rain". I found my rhythm and interrupts went much more smoothly. I'd compare it to tanking the beam boss in heroic Blackrock Caverns, while interrupting and beam dancing. It is actually a pretty good recipe for success in a casual group, get a few reliable people to do any and all tasks that require additional thought. The only downside is things go to hell rather quickly when those people aren't available.
Our next conquest was Onmitron, Omnomnomtron, Oomatron or whatever other creative nicknames you can come up with. Someone has to interrupt Arcanotron, and 9 pairs of eyes zero in on my location. Makes sense, shamans are again the only class than can interrupt all of Arcanotron's spells single handedly. I did have to switch to DPS however since I don't have the talent points to lower my interrupt cooldown in my healing spec. Not a problem this time as it might have been on Halfus, all four trons share a health pool so it doesn't matter who hits what. We totally one shotted it, and it was our first kill no less in that group.
On to Magmaw. No interrupts here, but resto shaman still get a chance to shine with telluric currents. We can heal the crap out of the raid during the worm phases and regen with lightning bolts during the head phase. Amplified damage means faster mana return and we can pretty much fill up our whole mana bar and be ready to rock those heals for the next worm phase. First time I got to try this out, before last night it was only something I thought sounded really cool. It was everything I hoped it would be and despite losing our tank twice in one fight we downed him in that very same attempt before we left the head phase. Messy, but effective.
I kind of like mechanics like that where the tank becomes irrelevant for a portion of the fight. It's often boring/annoying for tanks, but it gives DPS a chance to save the day which is always fun for everyone when it works out. Magmaw head phases and Halfus stunned phases are the two situations that come to mind. I've seen Halfus taken out by DPS after the enrage timer no less just because he got stunned and DPS took full advantage.
Being a shaman means people look your way whenever the word interrupt comes up. We do it at range, we do it often (more often when talented), we do it off the GCD and we don't have resource constraints slowing us down. Again, who thought it was a good idea to have interrupts that cost rage or energy?
So when it came time to do interrupts last night for Halfus my resto Shaman came up the obvious choice given that all other options required two people. That or require me to usurp a DPS spot and stay on Halfus for interrupts causing the adds to go down slower, but that's a better plan B than taking two DPS off adds and putting them on Halfus.
As I mentioned the first attempt at raid healing interruptus was a pretty triumphant failure. I was paying attention to about three too many things when I should have been focusing more on actually interrupting. The result was I missed half the interrupts and also did half the healing I should have been. So yeah, obviously I should be reassigned to a tank.
Tank healing works out much better while interrupting, only two targets to track and I can still splash the raid once in a while for good measure. I was able to focus much more on interrupting and rely on the other healers to watch the raid more closely than, "ooh a clump of people, healing rain". I found my rhythm and interrupts went much more smoothly. I'd compare it to tanking the beam boss in heroic Blackrock Caverns, while interrupting and beam dancing. It is actually a pretty good recipe for success in a casual group, get a few reliable people to do any and all tasks that require additional thought. The only downside is things go to hell rather quickly when those people aren't available.
Our next conquest was Onmitron, Omnomnomtron, Oomatron or whatever other creative nicknames you can come up with. Someone has to interrupt Arcanotron, and 9 pairs of eyes zero in on my location. Makes sense, shamans are again the only class than can interrupt all of Arcanotron's spells single handedly. I did have to switch to DPS however since I don't have the talent points to lower my interrupt cooldown in my healing spec. Not a problem this time as it might have been on Halfus, all four trons share a health pool so it doesn't matter who hits what. We totally one shotted it, and it was our first kill no less in that group.
On to Magmaw. No interrupts here, but resto shaman still get a chance to shine with telluric currents. We can heal the crap out of the raid during the worm phases and regen with lightning bolts during the head phase. Amplified damage means faster mana return and we can pretty much fill up our whole mana bar and be ready to rock those heals for the next worm phase. First time I got to try this out, before last night it was only something I thought sounded really cool. It was everything I hoped it would be and despite losing our tank twice in one fight we downed him in that very same attempt before we left the head phase. Messy, but effective.
I kind of like mechanics like that where the tank becomes irrelevant for a portion of the fight. It's often boring/annoying for tanks, but it gives DPS a chance to save the day which is always fun for everyone when it works out. Magmaw head phases and Halfus stunned phases are the two situations that come to mind. I've seen Halfus taken out by DPS after the enrage timer no less just because he got stunned and DPS took full advantage.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
I'm Sorry You're Superfluous
I've been leveling my new worgen priest as disc/holy since I am most interested in healing and don't like the idea of being a shadow priest. Perhaps I'm weird, but shadow just seems evil; it took me rolling a blood elf to justify making a warlock. I guess I'm ok with overcoming an inherent evil taint in my toons so long as they didn't actively choose it and try to overcome it by doing good. My blood elf warlock was forced to fel magics to survive, my death knight had no say in being resurrected as an abomination, and I suppose worgen to some extent also didn't have a choice in what they were to become or what they did before being "cured". So going shadow just doesn't work for me. That said I decided early on to make my disc spec my "DPS" spec and focus entirely on healing for my holy spec.
Turns out disc does pretty decent damage at lower levels, even at 48 I am still competitive with other DPS in pugs. When I flush out the disc tree and get to take a few points in shadow I'll be able to use spirit for hit and with any luck be able to hold my own in normal dungeons. Apparently I'm also ok with tossing the occasional shadow spell in the heat of battle; chalk it up to the worgen curse, but embracing shadow fully is where I draw the line.
So given that I know I can put out more that my fair share of damage I don't feel the least bit guilty about checking that DPS checkbox when queuing for a random dungeon. I always have healer checked as well, but apparently once in a while the DPS queue is shorter and I get into a dungeon as DPS. So I focus on maximizing damage instead of healing when that happens which pretty much means I use my penance for damage and apply dots instead of tossing a heal to accompany my smite and holy fire spam. In either case atonement does a ton of healing and under normal circumstances covers all the healing. Only during a particularly bad pull is any direct healing required; therein lies the one problem, what does the healer do when I DPS?
One of three things from my experience: roll with it and take a nap, do some DPS in the downtime or throw a fit and drop group. The latter is usually quite hilarious, but I can't help but to feel a teeny bit sorry for them; while I am laughing of course. Honestly there is nothing funnier than a healer just blowing up after a few pulls and typing something profane along the lines of, "screw this, you guys don't even need me", and dropping group. That's like the DPS dropping group because the tank is doing all the damage, which I have seen happen. Although the tank and healer above all the DPS is pretty amusing to look at, but I've never seen a DPS drop because the healer is beating them.
Disc priests just got stuck in a really awkward position, When we heal it's like there are 4 DPS and when we DPS the healer becomes a 5th wheel unless they also go DPS. Really a disc healer is like having 5 DPS at lower levels because tanks usually beat out most the DPS for damage. It all balances out for the end game from what I've heard/read, but while leveling it's pretty overpowered. Really any group without a disc healer is at a disadvantage and for purposes of min/maxing disc is hands down the best spec for regular dungeons.
I guess I am a little greedy for checking DPS to occasionally shave that little bit of time off my dungeon queue, but if I can do my job as good or better than the rest of my group and on top of that indirectly keep everyone healed up, how is that my problem? When I first got atonement I thought how crazy overpowered it was as I smite healed my way through dungeon after dungeon while topping the DPS meters by a fairly large margin. I told myself this can't possibly last as I continued to level only having to actually heal when I got into a dungeon slightly over my level and even then only a few times total. Then they buffed atonement to work with holy fire as well and I got even better. My relative damage has tapered off a bit, but I can still generally get first or second for damage on boss fights. We'll see what happens once I hit outlands, but the way things are going it looks as if DiscPS will remain not only viable, but flourish.
In fact when I was leveling up my warlock I had a disc priest not only heal and DPS, upper blackrock spire, they tanked it as well. They had obviously queued with the tank and the pally tank hung back and healed while that disc priest tanked everything and held decent aggro as well all things considered. I'd seen tanking classes tank worse. I get all giddy with excitement thinking that I will still have that much power in 10 more levels. I may step on healers toes without hesitation, but I still usually let the tank do their job for the most part. I've always been known to pull as a healer when my tank is going slower than I would like and being a disc priest has certainly only encouraged that behavior. I remember I did cause a tank to drop for doing that in Uldaman. I just continued to tank/heal/DPS until we got another tank from the queue (that next tank did a much better job).
There certainly is a lot of leeway in a regular dungeon for what a good player can get away with. On one hand it is kind of stupid that tanks and healers can be made obsolete without any real consequences, but on the other that is the price we pay for having content tuned toward learning how to play instead of tuned to be challenging like heroic or raid content. I remember fondly running dungeons in outlands with 5 death knights before the dungeon finder.
Obviously the point of all this is that you shouldn't be discouraged or upset by someone doing better than you, or even outright carrying you, in a learning environment such as regular dungeons are. If you are the tank and people are tanking for you without any ill effects then just use the time to practice. It's a no pressure environment, you can try pretty much anything you want and it won't matter. If you are the healer and no healing is needed then work on seeing how much damage you can do or perhaps even flip specs and heal from a DPS spec as needed. Healers are given the opportunity to DPS more often than you'd think so getting some practice with it isn't a bad thing. Regular dungeons are just as much learning to deal with the strengths and weaknesses of other players in your group as they are about how well you can perform at your role individually.
I just get so excited thinking about my disc priest, they are like the caster healer/DPS equivalent of the melee tank/DPS hybrid role that feral druids fill. Not quite as flushed out on the DPS side, but it's as close as any other class/spec comes to filling two roles.
Turns out disc does pretty decent damage at lower levels, even at 48 I am still competitive with other DPS in pugs. When I flush out the disc tree and get to take a few points in shadow I'll be able to use spirit for hit and with any luck be able to hold my own in normal dungeons. Apparently I'm also ok with tossing the occasional shadow spell in the heat of battle; chalk it up to the worgen curse, but embracing shadow fully is where I draw the line.
So given that I know I can put out more that my fair share of damage I don't feel the least bit guilty about checking that DPS checkbox when queuing for a random dungeon. I always have healer checked as well, but apparently once in a while the DPS queue is shorter and I get into a dungeon as DPS. So I focus on maximizing damage instead of healing when that happens which pretty much means I use my penance for damage and apply dots instead of tossing a heal to accompany my smite and holy fire spam. In either case atonement does a ton of healing and under normal circumstances covers all the healing. Only during a particularly bad pull is any direct healing required; therein lies the one problem, what does the healer do when I DPS?
One of three things from my experience: roll with it and take a nap, do some DPS in the downtime or throw a fit and drop group. The latter is usually quite hilarious, but I can't help but to feel a teeny bit sorry for them; while I am laughing of course. Honestly there is nothing funnier than a healer just blowing up after a few pulls and typing something profane along the lines of, "screw this, you guys don't even need me", and dropping group. That's like the DPS dropping group because the tank is doing all the damage, which I have seen happen. Although the tank and healer above all the DPS is pretty amusing to look at, but I've never seen a DPS drop because the healer is beating them.
Disc priests just got stuck in a really awkward position, When we heal it's like there are 4 DPS and when we DPS the healer becomes a 5th wheel unless they also go DPS. Really a disc healer is like having 5 DPS at lower levels because tanks usually beat out most the DPS for damage. It all balances out for the end game from what I've heard/read, but while leveling it's pretty overpowered. Really any group without a disc healer is at a disadvantage and for purposes of min/maxing disc is hands down the best spec for regular dungeons.
I guess I am a little greedy for checking DPS to occasionally shave that little bit of time off my dungeon queue, but if I can do my job as good or better than the rest of my group and on top of that indirectly keep everyone healed up, how is that my problem? When I first got atonement I thought how crazy overpowered it was as I smite healed my way through dungeon after dungeon while topping the DPS meters by a fairly large margin. I told myself this can't possibly last as I continued to level only having to actually heal when I got into a dungeon slightly over my level and even then only a few times total. Then they buffed atonement to work with holy fire as well and I got even better. My relative damage has tapered off a bit, but I can still generally get first or second for damage on boss fights. We'll see what happens once I hit outlands, but the way things are going it looks as if DiscPS will remain not only viable, but flourish.
In fact when I was leveling up my warlock I had a disc priest not only heal and DPS, upper blackrock spire, they tanked it as well. They had obviously queued with the tank and the pally tank hung back and healed while that disc priest tanked everything and held decent aggro as well all things considered. I'd seen tanking classes tank worse. I get all giddy with excitement thinking that I will still have that much power in 10 more levels. I may step on healers toes without hesitation, but I still usually let the tank do their job for the most part. I've always been known to pull as a healer when my tank is going slower than I would like and being a disc priest has certainly only encouraged that behavior. I remember I did cause a tank to drop for doing that in Uldaman. I just continued to tank/heal/DPS until we got another tank from the queue (that next tank did a much better job).
There certainly is a lot of leeway in a regular dungeon for what a good player can get away with. On one hand it is kind of stupid that tanks and healers can be made obsolete without any real consequences, but on the other that is the price we pay for having content tuned toward learning how to play instead of tuned to be challenging like heroic or raid content. I remember fondly running dungeons in outlands with 5 death knights before the dungeon finder.
Obviously the point of all this is that you shouldn't be discouraged or upset by someone doing better than you, or even outright carrying you, in a learning environment such as regular dungeons are. If you are the tank and people are tanking for you without any ill effects then just use the time to practice. It's a no pressure environment, you can try pretty much anything you want and it won't matter. If you are the healer and no healing is needed then work on seeing how much damage you can do or perhaps even flip specs and heal from a DPS spec as needed. Healers are given the opportunity to DPS more often than you'd think so getting some practice with it isn't a bad thing. Regular dungeons are just as much learning to deal with the strengths and weaknesses of other players in your group as they are about how well you can perform at your role individually.
I just get so excited thinking about my disc priest, they are like the caster healer/DPS equivalent of the melee tank/DPS hybrid role that feral druids fill. Not quite as flushed out on the DPS side, but it's as close as any other class/spec comes to filling two roles.
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