Holy....tanks.

I feel like I can formulate an honest opinion about tanks once more.


I've been playing on my paladin, Sigridus, for a few weeks where I took a dive off the deep end and went from level 21 to 45. Pretty good progress.


Paladins. Where do they stand now? Oddly enough, they stand in a similar place to where they stood before. When it's all said and done, a few tenets still remain true:

1.It's easier as a paladin to sustain aggro (compared to a warrior) in a smoother fashion, but...
2.It's still harder to get aggro back once lost. We still lack abilities that enable an aggro bomb, so to speak. (there IS Holy Wrath, but it is not the same as Revenge on warriors. It is good, better than thunderclap is now, but thunderclap before was better)
3.It's still markedly easier to play a paladin than a warrior.
4. Tanking groups is WAY easier on a paladin.

Now...they took away the 6969 rotation away altogether. There is...a SORT of priority system. Shield of the Righteous has come off the mana cast and was made into a proc of sorts: you have to use certain abilities to generate holy power. At first I thought, well, it's best to generate 3 holy power to get the most bang for your buck. But it turns out that every time you hit the ability, ShoTR will trigger what used to be holy shield. So I guess it's best to just keep that proc up. We'll see.

This time around, when I got consacration, I was bemoaning how much mana it consumes (basically like 1/3 of the mana bar) but you can talent into it and have it just take 1/10 of it, which is much better and puts consacration back into the rotation. Avenger shield is now given to you for a minimal, quite minimal mana rate at level 10. It's basically your pull now, and the cd was lowered to 15 seconds, so it means you hit it as much as possible. Holy Wrath is new, and it's a sort of aggro bomb, but very situational.

Hammer of the Righteous generates holy power and is tied to the GCD, which means you hit it all the time possible, and it costs basically no mana.

...all this geekness.

My main concern is the mana pool vs. aggro, as I have not found an ability, seal or talent that will allow me to replenish mana without sacrificing aggro.

Basically, they have made pally tanks more versatile, less laissez faire, and I can accept that. Tanking on a paladin was markedly lazy when compared to tanking on a warrior. Now, that has changed, for the better I would say. It's still incredibly easier to tank on a paladin, not to mention...paladins feel way less gimped than warriors....Jill keeps bothering me that Im going to want to stay on my paladin...but ...I miss all my situational buttons when I'm away from my warrior! I guess it's why I enjoy my rogue when not tanking so much.

Next week? Druids!

Tanking break

After what was about two weeks of manic profession leveling, I saw myself wishing that the next three weeks would go by faster in WoW.

The classes changed, and so did the stats, but the game remains somewhat the same so far. The Cataclysm, so to speak, has not come. One thing we were looking forward to was the change in classes. I look forward to making a Tauren pally and a Blood Elf warrior. Should be fun. But alas, without those changes, were back to the same old grind at level 80. And it gets old.

I decided early on that I didnt want to acumulate badges with heroic runs, and I didnt want to upgrade my armor any further than what I have on Akarius. What's the point? A month from now, I will either learn how to make myself a better shield, or get one off of a quest giver, for killing 15 Naga butt scratchers, so what's the point of grinding heroics and raids right now, other than it is fun? None. And it wouldn't be fun for me, as a tank. It would actually be gruesome.

So once I got to 450 on jewelcrafting, and to a comfortable skill level with skinning, I luckily had a PS3 game to keep me entertained during the weekends. About a week and a half ago, Blizzard graced us with mini events related to Cataclysm, which I thought was absolutely delightful. The earthquakes were a nice addition, but now, elemental rifts open up at random, there are doomsayers all over.... it's very cool, in my opinion.

I had been toying with the idea of playing with alts while I waited for the chance of leveling to 85, or leveling a worgen druid, or leveling my paladin in a new and improved Azeroth, or leveling Hordies (such a long to do list...) And there are a few go to classes, as I've said before. I don't know if I'm interested in playing with hunters any more, but I've always loved playing rogues, and I've become interested in playing with a mage. The idea of conjuring food and teleporting is just too enticing.

I'm dead-set on making a gnome mage, and I'm waiting for the gnomes to getting a facelift with the changes in Cataclysm, so I set to play a rogue. I already had made one, a human, who, for some reason, was not much fun. I don't know why not. Just wasn't. I promptly deleted him last weekend and made the same rogue over, now a dwarf. This time it stuck, and my obsession has taken over. I don't know what it is this time around, but for one thing, I have only died once on that rogueling, which is strange for a rogue. Rogues die. A lot.

I've also taken to alchemy, which is not the best choice, but I want to leave leatherworking to the druid. This means that my rogue depends on quest rewards, dungeons and the auction house. Yuck. Alchemy is a weird profession though.

Having fun, taking a break from tanking. Hopefully it won't be permanent.

edit- I take that back. I am dying. A lot. I had forgotten that worgen in Darkshire apparently do not have a word in their worgen vocabulary for 'fair fight'. Or maybe they're selling themselves short, and feel that 4 worgen scouts, level 27 and up, are no match for 1 dwarf rogue, level 24. These worgen need a self help book or something, a la Stuart Smalley.

Just feel its kinda balls to have every encounter be 4 vs 1...seriously.

The sky fell, and we're still here

The patch hit, and one would think that they had turned the game into hello kitty adventure island or something. People really need to realize one thing....if you don't like a product, don't get it. WoW is not a necessity, it's a luxury. It is not the ONLY MMO out there.


It's not as if bread was only available without crusts one day, and people who love crust on their bread were left in the dust forever and were forced to make their own bread so they could eat crust.


Anyway.

Changes. Lots of fucking changes.

Visual changes- the game looks crisper, and right now it's running on low settings, and it still runs beautifully. Ish. I'm convinced that my laptop would not have handled the tech requirements.

UI changes- some menus were streamlined, and I can say that I like it a lot. It looks fresher. A lot of add ons were rendered idiotic and superfluous. Also, when abilities proc, they light a glowy shine. It's a bit distracting, but I'm a fan.

Random stuff- They made dual speccing 100g, coming down from 1000g. Too much freedom all at once, but I sure as hell got dual spec on both my warrior and death knight. They also allow you to see the abilities you will gain in the coming levels, and when you ding, it tells you what you can learn at your trainer. They added a new tier of flying, making flight training beyond the basic training a whopping 10k g. A bit daunting. Glyphs were reworked, to my delight. Glyphs are now a permanent thing, which I imagine scribes hate. The economy will be in shambles for a few days, but who cares. It will stabilize.


Classes-
A. Hopped on to my death knight, just to respecc him. Blood is now the defacto tank spec. I haven't tanked with him, and I won't lie, I'm a bit scared to do so. Didn't do much else on that toon, other than respec and get the dual spec at the trainer.

B. Warriors- I spent the majority of my evening playing around with my toon. Wow. We ran two instances, and they went by passably well. One was UK,for which we were overgeared and overleveled, and then COS, which is basically what we should have been doing to begin with. I did not wipe, but I am far squishier. Hopefully it has to do with the fact that you are now penalized for mixing and matching plate armor with mail and leather pieces. Some abilities were removed, most noticeably mocking blow and bloodrage. Some abilities were reworked. I noticed that basically threat is more difficult to keep and establish, a fact that gives me a bit of the jitters in foresight: if DPS doesn't learn that you now need a few moments to hit shit with a stick before they can jump in on the fun, it will make this game a living hell. I have also noticed that I hit a LOT harder, and right now I'm getting hit a lot harder too. It's to be expected- I'm losing stam and armor from wearing a leather leveling piece, and I'm adjusting to the new way threat works, and my favorite healer is relearning how to heal, which she's taken to as a duck to water. Overall, I think I'm falling in love all over again.

C. Druids- I am still waiting to make a druid in December, but apparently these were REWORKED the heck out. We'll see.

D. Pallys- wow. Ok. So I logged into Jura, and the tree now is....well.... paladins now have holy power in addition to mana. I don't get it. Sadly for Jurakan, this seals his fate in a lot of ways. I get to use crusader strike ...as prot. Maybe it's that I haven't played a paladin in so long...but it felt like a lot to take at level 80. Jill agreed with me. So we agreed to reroll as human pallys in Silver Hand. This works, in a way, for me, as I wanted all my tanks in that server. It will suck if I ever have to move to another server. Holy power looks like some very pretty glyphs on top of your screen. I equated it to runic power for death knights, but we'll see.

I spent most of the evening figuring out stuff and fighting that nagging feeling whenever I looked at something that had changed. I spent 30 minutes trying to figure out that my #3 hotkey in bar 2, which was now blank, had been Bloodrage. I became a bit saddened, but then I figured that the shouts now generate rage. =D


All this game needs now is actual shouting, a la LOTRO.


ps- Hunters start with pets, wtf.

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.

Rocky reacquaintances...

If reacquaintance was a word. Is it? Let's say I looked for it in the dictionary, didn't find the noun 'reacquaintance', but say that it IS a word, ok? Ok.


I've been back to Azeroth for a few days now. My first few sorties were awkward. Playing on a better computer rather than a laptop is part of the shock. The key layout, and the fact that everything looks crisp and clear...like being able to taste ' salty' all of a sudden. I hopped into Akarius, and it was odd at first. It felt ungainly. Brewfest was going on, so I hopped on to Mendrick. I ...had forgotten that DK tanking is odd. But then again, I have my hotkeys in a way that I could faceroll and still tank something. I then decided to hop on to my other toons, perhaps in other servers-

I revisited Cairne, and I took to playing my rogue like duck to water. It's eerie how fast I picked up on some of the questing. I still regret having left Felwenn behind, and I think I will level him on my down time, for certain. He's more of a solo project to begin with.

Then I tried playing Jurakan...boy. Paladins have so much crap to take into consideration other than aggro. I basically queued for an instance, which ended in disaster. I could not keep aggro and I went OOM in two minutes. I forgot auras, seals, blessings....everything. It's something that I will need to review.

Either way, I've narrowed down why I prefer warrior tanking. I think it's got to do with the fact that warriors can stun fairly often, thus humiliating their opponents. I am all about humiliation.

Maybe I'll expound on this some other time, but I feel like I should get a good grasp on druids first, and then I could come back and maybe take a stab at all the tank classes, and analyze them.

WoW: the off again on again (off again) MMO love affair

So it seems like I will be steppin into Akarius' boots once more. I cannot deny that I am excited.


In video gaming there are characters that are already fleshed out (Ezio Auditore da Firenze, Niko Belic, John Marston, Naked Snake) and there are characters that are left blank, for you to create. Normally, and because of technology restraints, you are only able to flesh out the appearance of a character and left to imagine a personality. Some companies have taken steps toward a more interactive approach, such as Bioware, where you are able to flesh out your character's temperament through choices in conversation responses, as well as actions, and subsequent repercussions. I normally have a love/hate relationship with making my own character. On the one hand, it allows for better suspension of disbelief, on the other, it makes connecting with a character in itself more difficult. Maybe you made the character look too dumb, maybe you didn't put too much thought behind the character creation process...all in all, it's led me to have a lot of characters on WoW that I never really played, because I didn't " feel" them.

I normally didn't like the nelf models, and the nelf lore is sorta boring to me. I tried making a night elf druid, a night elf mage, a night elf hunter etc. Why? because as much as I could have disliked night elves, I disliked humans and gnomes more. =/

I made a night elf rogue that took me a long time to level, and I finally made a night elf warrior. At first it was odd, it felt like an odd choice (a spindly, nature loving being doesn't strike me as spartan in nature) but he eventually grew on me. And I eventually learned to play the class somewhat well, even with crappy gear. And I eventually geared him correctly. And right before I quit the game, he was becoming incredibly powerful, even for his level, to the point where we could be bullies in pugs (got tank? will pug)

And now, given this on again off again attraction we have to WoW....it seems we will be stepping into Azeroth again, after a quite brief respite...and I will be able to take my shield up yet again, and get hit in the face, be it for praise, be it for glory.


Good hunting!

MMO withdrawals

I've been feeling it. I haven't seriously played an MMO in roughly a month. Uh, well, that's counting my stint coming back to LOTRO under a free trial account. I'm not sure that counts... If not, then it's been a long time. A few months at any rate. I've been missing my warrior.


And every time I miss WoW, I'm reminded of all the douchebags, all the lag, all the elitism.... and it kind of goes away. It's also left me a bit broken on the whole MMO as a multiplayer thing front. One thing I am totally looking forward to in SWTOR is how story heavy it will be. I know my girlfriend loves end game, she loves raid (truth be told, I LOVE end game lewt, seriously) but I get a bit cranky at the amount of dedication required. I'd rather do my own thing. And this game seems to allow for that for longer than WoW.

Anyway, SWTOR is still like 6-9 months away, so.... anyway, I tried Guild Wars this weekend. I was....delighted, but unimpressed. It seemed fun, the class repertoire was fun as heck, the surroundings were lush and attractive, but something was missing. There was something missing. Even...missing from LOTRO. LOTRO invited me to jump RIGHT in. GW is not ....it's missing something. I can't pinpoint it yet. Maybe it's the pace?


Well, we spent a good part of last week trying to play the FF14 beta. We were not able to get into it because our graphics card sucks. After roughly 50 hours of downloading, and prodding, and waiting for a key...we didn't meet the systech requirements.


...there was a battery test to check if your computer could handle the game, and it seems as if our computer passed it.


I dunno, Squaresoft...if you're going to make someone wait in line for a hot dog for an hour, you should let them know they need to have a drink already at hand in order to eat their hot dog. Just a thought, you know? (I want a hot dog)


We tortured ourselves and saw some of the intro videos for the classes and the races, and just went absolutely gaga over the game. It's so sad, because we both LOVE Final Fantasy...but with this fiasco, on top of all the accounts of how bad the beta was.


Currently cello is waiting for GW 2 and SWTOR. I think I'll just keep my candle lit for swtor. Im a bit concerned that Im just not into mmos anymore. It would suck, because it's something easy and low impact to do with your significant other. Plus, my gf is a paramount star wars geek.


And so am I. Or I was. Ish. Like Ben Kenobi.