Need....more....RAGE!!!!!!

On the eve of the change, I thought I'd reflect a bit on rage normalization.


Rage is a warrior's resource. Paladins (and most classes, really) have mana, which can be thought of as magic points, druids also have rage when in bear form, druids and feral cat druids use energy, and Death Knights use runic power. Mana is basically just as I said, magic points. Magic spells and abilities use these. You start with 100% of it. And it recovers over time or with potions. Energy starts at 100% and is used for physical abilities at great expense most of the time, but it also recharges quite fast. Runic power is WEIRD, and it's coupled with runes as well. It....builds up according to damage received and done, as well as depending on certain actions taken, but it can taper off back to 0 if left dormant for too long; the runes have a short cooldown, and there are six of them. This is changing too.

So back to rage. Rage is a little red bar that starts at 0 but is built up by getting hit, by doing damage, and oftentimes, by a few abilities, one of which is my favorite: bloodrage. Basically, warriors and Druid bears can do more powerful attacks given POOR ANGER MANAGEMENT. They flip a lid and go APESHIT on everything.


I am a fan of this resource, because I wish I could act on fits of rage. It's one capital sin I will never understand. What's so wrong with rage? or ire?? I dunno. I like it a lot as a resource. I guess it makes more sense to me as a resource than mana, and truth be told, Jura would always go out of mana fast, and it was always a struggle until I learned how to play the class somewhat, but with warriors, it's never an issue. Sure, I go out of rage, I go dry sometimes, but it's not something that happens often.

And apparently they are normalizing rage. Now, the way some people have explained this is that they are making it so that you supposedly run out of rage less or so that it's less difficult to start off. Starting off a fight with a warrior is a bit of an issue. Like melting an ice cream cone, it can either take a looooong time at medium temperature, or, given enough heat, a few seconds. Sorry for the shitty analogy.

Either way, I am neither for nor against the rehaul that the entire game is getting, because I have no IDEA how it's going to play, my imagination cannot bend that way for whatever reason, and I have no point of reference (meaning, this is my first MMO, and aside from LOTRO, the only one I've played so far) with which to gripe about how Blizzard is ruining the game. A few repeated assertions about what the changes are going to bring to the table seem to stick out in my mind. One is that the game is going back to the style of gameplay of Burning Crusade. This sounds wonderful to me, as I regret having missed the formative years of this MMO. What this means, or what is meant by this statement, is that crowd control will be given a bigger importance once more. I am a FAN. I love rogues. Rogues are much maligned nowadays, underplayed, and oh so powerful. Where a rogue shines is in that it does damage, fast, and it can cripple and control their target with poisons, statuses, interrupts... it's a lot to take in. They do suffer in that they are EXTREMELY squishy....which is why they are probably underplayed. Who would want to go through the pains of dying so much when you could make a mage and nuke things from afar. No....apparently the rogue will have his day again. Also, as a budding warrior tank, this is very exciting. While Deathtanks have lots of statuses and mitigation they can bring to a fight, the blood spec is not that great at crowd controlling. Some of the statuses inflicted are pretty good though. Pallies suffer from only having one stun, and one judgement that slows movement if running away. Kinda lame. They are getting a nice shield reflection ability, so that's one way of fixing the lack of crowd control. Druids, I dunno, but it doesn't seem like they have much on their arsenal either....warriors have one stun, one cast interrupt with a jokingly short cooldown, gag order which causes shield slam to interrupt I believe, charge which stuns, intercept which stuns as well, shockwave, which stuns, and thunder, which slows attack speed. They also have an aoe fear, a disarm...oh, and if you can pop into arms stance, you can do hamstring, and slow movement speed.

....need I say more? Warriors will either be severely gimped or they will be the most sought out tanks again ( I say again and not still because they used to be, and then pallies and warriors kind of shared the spot, depending on who tyou ask)

Another consequence of crowd control being important again is that it will weed out the excess of players who concentrate on just doing bigger badder numbers on raids and five mans, and hopefully, maybe, crank down the pace that's expected out of a run nowadays: Nowadays, people expect a 530 soft cap for heroics. What. The. Fuck. I did NOT have 530 when I started doing NAXX! And I did JUST FINE. The difference between having that much defense (which won't matter in less than 24 hours) and not, is that you can afford to go at a faster clip. Hopefully the elitism will go out the window, in a way, and, undoubtedly, give way to a NEW elitism. I am sorta hoping that the old, vanilla veterans will start heckling all of us for being newbs. That'd be awesome.

Another little ditty that's going around is that threat is being reworked. To the point where it's going, again, back to the basics. Back in the day, you had to allow the tank 5 seconds, the time it takes for 2-3 sunders, to establish aggro, then you could jump in. Tanks aren't made to inflict lots of damage, that's not the idea. They deal lots of damage in long hauls, this is true (and I've become used to doing #2 dps as a warrior. Hehhee) and because they deal damage to groups, rather than individuals as some dps classes might. This will...change the game, for sure. In combination with CC being important again, this will make DPS as a role have to be PATIENT. A quality I seldom see on this game. I believe that it will become an acute symptom, and in some cases we will still see impatient DPS asking us to gogogog, and acusing the tank of not holding aggro. And well, those people will be blocked. By me. And other tanks. In the long run, they will be left to super long queues. Just thinking about that fucking druid that stole a fucking tank ring from under me, sitting around, waiting for a healer to queue for just a fucking random, waiting for 45 minutes, makes me happy. While I, in 45 minutes, could get almost two randoms done.

It seems to me like some of these changes have been designed to shift the roles dynamics that became a plague in WOTLK. While the tank and the healer are basically the two intrinsic, without-us-there's-no-run, roles, DPS was and is running the show, through bullying. And we can trace to this becoming an acute problem when the LFG tool was implemented. Back in the day, you would have to wait for a tank and a healer to show up. Why? Why not just roll tank or healer? Uhhh, because they are incredibly fastidious roles to play. Especially healing. Guh. Fuck that. So you would sit around, waiting....waiting....when Jill finally decided to roll as healer, we used to get invited into groups super fast. And people would beg for multiple runs. Or, at the most, people would stave off their criticism until the end, until multiple wipes, or just be nice or silent for a run and then ninja loot at the end. But this abuse, this gogogo mentality...it became worse off when we got to WOTLK, where all the roles were available in some sort of abundance in Northrend, compared to the earlier zones. And then with the tool it just became a way to get in contact with douchebags....faster.


But maybe the bullying will stop now? I can always toggle walk, bwahhahaha! Or as I once told a druid who insisted on doing pushback- Don't piss off the healer, if the tank and the healer came into the run together.