What in the math is going on here?!

This is going to be a very, very brief post.

I just wanted to say that, as far as gearing my beloved bear...I'm so sick of looking at numbers...

So very sick of looking at numbers.

I've gotten two different staves as upgrades to my Orca Hunter's Harpoon.  Considering that bear is only an off-spec, it's not very often that I can snag upgrades like this, so I was pretty excited.  I'll share them with you later.

But I wanted to tell you that I was up way past my bedtime last night staring at my character screen.

By the time I gave up and logged out, everything on the screen just made me want to scream.  It had begun to look like this...

I couldn't stack stamina like I used to because I found myself unable to reach the hit cap.  When I reached the hit cap, I was too far under the soft expertise cap...when I got to the soft expertise cap...I didn't have enough dodge...

So...by the end of the night...this is what I ended up with:

Defenses

• 51,367 Health - Self-Buffed (Mark of the Wild) and shifted into dire bear
• 47% Dodge
• 26,494 Armor

Melee

•  4555 Attack Power
• 26 Expertise - At least I won't get Dodged while tanking.  
• 255 Hit, which, according to my character screen in-game, means I'm hit-capped
• 50% Crit chance.

I still need to make sure I haven't missed any enchants or gems, but for the time being, I give up.  I've never been so frustrated with numbers in all of my life.  If I tweaked this stat, then that stat fell below cap.  If I nudged this stat, then yet another stat would plummet.  

Out of curiosity, I decided to tank H:AN and see if anyone could pull threat from me.  The group I was with didn't do enough DPS to really test it out...so I'm going to have to wait and take someone I know I've struggled to hold threat against in with me and see how it goes.  Figures...When I don't want my threat generation tested - it gets tested to the max.  The one night I DO want it tested, I get put into a group with a few brand new level 80's. 

I will say that my own dps impressed me.  I was doing roughly 3k single target if I actually followed a steady rotation.  When I didn't care about rotation, it dropped to the mid 2k range.  Yes, I know that tanks don't "need" to worry about their DPS as much as their threat output.  

I'm staring at my character screen feeling like a total noob right now!  I think I might just need a few hours away from the numbers!  I'll be back later or tomorrow to show you the new toys!

With great love and no math,

Des

One Thing Always Stays the Same...

PUGS!  PuGs always remain the same from patch to patch, expansion to expansion.  I have two stories from last night that are, well, very typical PuG stories.

The Nexus

I've been working on leveling my shaman lately because I'd like to have another level 80 healer at my disposal.  She's both resto and elemental at this point, but 98% of the time when I run instances with her, I'm healing.  That's a good thing.  I don't quite get elemental DPS yet.  I need to do a little research.  I'll get to that at some point.  I managed to find a friend as I journeyed from guild to guild who is ALSO trying to level a Death Knight tank.  It works out well for both of us.  We're able to queue almost instantly as a tank/healer combo and life is good!

Well, queue times are good.  We manage to meet some really interesting puggles together, that's for sure.  

We ran The Nexus last night because I had a few quests left there and needed to finish unlocking The Kirin Tor faction so that I can get their tabard, so that when I hit 80 I can grind out rep quickly.  At any rate, we ended up with a pretty decent group, with the exception of the Oomkin.

The oomkin had no mana, would not sit down to drink and refill and for the love of everything holy, I don't think he was aware that he had innervate.  If he did have it, I'm not entirely sure he knew what it was for...because for the first 3 rooms of the instance...he sure didn't use it.

Not sure if you know this, but, Caster dps without mana = useless.  He would throw a moonfire here or there because that's all he had enough mana for.  That's not really helping the group.  When we got into the room with Anomalus, he had made a dumb comment about moonfire spam dps and lawl'd about it.  Well, the tank I run with was having kind of a bad evening due to some RL stuff and I think this just pushed him over the edge.  A second later, a screen pops up asking if we want to kick the Oomkin from the group.  The Reason:  No Mana.

That motion passed and we were oomkinless.  We probably could have gone on with just the four of us.  My shaman is able to heal and DPS without suffering too bad with her own mana pool, provided I keep an eye on it.   We picked up another healer though, and I switched to dps.  It was actually really fun once we got rid of the oomkin. hehe

The Violet Hold

The Violet Hold is a DREAM for any skinners in a group.  Almost everything in the instance can be skinned and you get a lot of icy dragon scales and tons of Borean Leather.  I used to love going in on my warlock, especially if I was the only skinner.  Because she's not a Leather Worker though, if I notice a druid, hunter, or shaman skinning things, I back off because I assume they're using the leather for their trade, where I'm either selling it or stocking my Rogue with leather for the eventual point when he gets to 80...or 85...that's a long, LONG way off though.

Anyway, I was in a group with a druid and a hunter who were both skinners.  I kind of just minded my own business because, well, I was healing and it was late and I was tired.  I couldn't help giggling at the two of them though.

Evidently, the hunter decided to try and skin something, only to find that the druid had started skinning as well.  The hunter got miserable and started calling the druid a greedy POS.  Had the hunter maybe said, "Hey I'm a skinner too, mind if we alternate or you take one pull and I'll take the next?"  the druid probably would have been alright with it.  But it's pretty universal that, when you start off on the wrong foot and berate people - they're not going to want to work nicely with you after that.

That's just how it is.

At any rate, the hunter decided to refuse to dps and was literally only staying in the instance to roll on items (aka: just to annoy the rest of us and refuse to help us kill our way through the waves of mobs).  He declared this in party chat.

Now, I've said this before and I'll say it again:  I love when you meet someone who doesn't play into the childish nonsense, who takes charge of a situation, and just...well...ends it.  That's what our tank did.

A portal spawned right on top of the hunter and obviously the Portal Guardian aggro'd onto the hunter and his pet.  Well, he tried valiantly to drop aggro onto us, but failed.  I think the tank felt bad for the guy and ended up taunting the mob off so we could kill it (and keep the mobs from breaking down the door - because by this point, there was a small army of dragonkin banging at the door of the hold).  

Shortly after we killed the portal guardian, the window to kick the hunter out pops up.  The reason?  "He's an Asshole."  Yep, that pretty much summed it up.  We ended up getting a rogue for the final few waves who asked where our other dps had gone and laughed when we shared our experience with him.

As much as some people get really bent out of shape over ignorance like that...sometimes it's really just better to step back and laugh.  hehe :)

Oh gods!!! It's broken!!!1!!one!!!1!!!eleven!!!!1

Yes, 4.0.1 is seriously broken.  Well, maybe the patch itself isn't but most of the classes seem to be pretty messed up.  Some classes are ridiculously overpowered where others are aching from the nerf-beating they got.  

I know quite a few players are frustrated, many of which are talking about quitting the game altogether.  I'm guilty of wanting to throw my computer at someone's face over this most recent patch, but that's for a few other reasons as well.  

But there is some good news coming from Blizz Devs.  They've recognized that melee classes took a considerable pounding in this patch and caster classes have gotten buffed quite a bit.  Things were unbalanced and they realized it.  From Blizzard's Cave, I bring you...Ghostcrawler:

Class balance as of Oct 13, 2010   10/13/2010 05:38:58 PM PDT

Rather than try and address multiple threads, I'm just going to plop our current thoughts in this one post. Please excuse the brevity. 1) We think Fury, Arms, Feral cat and Retribution dps is too low and we will be buffing them. 2) We think mage dps is too high, especially Fire, and will be nerfing it. 3) We think Shadow priest dps is too high, but that's largely a result of Shadow Word: Death spam, which is tough on healers. We'll be fixing that. 4) We think Destro warlock dps is too high, but that's largely a result of Searing Pain spam, which is tough on tanks. We'll be fixing that. 5) As we suspected, PvP dps is just too high given that the health pools of Cataclysm haven't kicked in yet. While competitive PvP is over for the moment, we still want the environment to feel better so we will be buffing resilience. This change might be reverted at level 85. There will probably be more changes after another night of raiding and BGs. Many of the bug fixes we have made today will affect dps as well. Stay tuned. Ghostcrawler Lead Systems Designer

________________________________________________________

• Re: Class balance as of Oct 13, 2010   10/14/2010 11:14:38 AM PDT

We made many changes yesterday. A lot of these were bug fixes, and many bug fixes will affect damage one way or the other. So just because you don't see a specific change referenced below, doesn't mean it didn't change. With that said, here are the specific changes we made in reference to my previous post: 1) We buffed the base points and coefficients of many warrior dps abilities. We didn't do as much to tanking abilities. We buffed the base points and coefficients of many Ret abilities. We buffed the base points and coefficients of many Feral cat abilities. 2) We lowered the base points and coefficients of many mage abilities, but lowered Fire more than the other two. 3) We nerfed Shadow Word: Death, but it is possible we didn't nerf it enough. It should not be Shadow's biggest spell. 4) We returned Searing Pain's damage to its 3.3.5 levels. 5) We increased the benefit of resilience by 50% for players level 80 and below. The tooltips will probably not reflect this change. We don't have any other changes to announce at this time. I am reluctant to mention additional classes or specs that we are looking at currently for fear of instilling excitement or panic. Ghostcrawler Lead Systems Designer

 That's a post on the WoW forums directly from Ghostcrawler, so hang in there kids.  Things will get better.  


Another important item I wanted to mention:  BE KIND TO YOUR TANKS!  Tanking mechanics have changed drastically.  Gone are the days of powerful AoE tanking.  Sorry, folks.  


I got suspicious when I popped into bear form and noticed a six second cooldown on swipe.  Yes, you read that correctly.  6 (six) VI second cooldown...on Swipe - a bear's MAIN AoE threat ability.  After seeing that Tuesday evening, I thought I'd dig a little deeper so I stopped by The Big Bear Butt's blog to find out more.  Go ahead.  Click the link.  You know you want to!


At any rate, it SEEMS like we're heading back to focus fire/tank assist now.  We did it before.  We can do it again.  In all honesty, the tanking shift has revived the itch to get back into tanking so much right now.  You have NO idea.  I remember tanking in Burning Crusade and I remember loving it.  I got away from tanking in Cataclysm because the whole AoE thing was just frustrating to begin with.  Everyone had huge AoE damage and it took me a little while to adjust from focus-fire tanking to AoE tanking.  AoE tanking was easy though.  There was no challenge...

Step 1.  Enrage
Step 2.  Charge
Step 3.  Swipe-swipe-swipe-swipe-swipe
Step 4.  ......
Step 5.  Profit.

NOW, we're getting back to what tanking always used to be and I can't help but be a little excited about it.  I miss HAVING to manage threat on more than just my focus.  Swipe took care of that and tanking became a little too "auto-pilot".  Now, we're reverting back to tab-targeting to keep everyone focused on us.  Personally, I welcome this change.  AoE tanking made most of us lazy and I welcome the challenge of learning wtf2do again.  

Am I going to try to relearn it here in the final days of WotLK?  Not on your life!  Wrath is very AoE friendly.  I'm hearing rumors that Cataclysm will be much more friendly to the not-so-AoE tanking we've got now after 4.0.1.  We shall see.  


Anyway, the whole point of this post was to say, "Keep your chin up and hang in there.  They're trying to fix us" and to ask that you be mindful of the changes in tanking mechanics.  Your tanks will appreciate it.  And hey, dust off that old polymorph spell.  You might want to toss that into the mix here soon.


With much love,
Des

Four Point Oh Point One

Alright kids, I suppose I should stop avoiding Patch Notes at this point in my gaming career because had I read up a little bit before it was installed, I might have been slightly more prepared for what I was looking at when I got logged in. 


Let's take a look at this bad boy though.


First of all, we got a new launcher with a few new capabilities.  I like it.  As the game content is being downloaded/installed, you get a status bar at the bottom of the new launcher that tells you whether or not the game is Not Playable yet, Accessible, or Playable.  RED MEANS STOP!  Ha, scare you?  I didn't think so.  


Not Accessible means that you shouldn't bother trying to launch the game because not enough content has been loaded.


Accessible (Yellow) means that there's enough content installed for the game to launch but your gaming experience won't be ideal or even close to ideal.  


Playable means that either all content has been downloaded and installed or that enough is installed that you can go ahead and play while the background downloader finishes up.  

So that's pretty cool I think.  The launcher LOOKS sweet too!  See?  I like it.  


Reforging is now available near the enchanting trainers in your faction's cities.  Yes, they're located near the enchanting trainers...and...Yes, Darnassus even has one!  I love relaxing in Darnassus when I'm not doing whatever so the fact that they actually put something useful here so that I don't have to hang out in Stormlag or Lagforge makes me happy.


What's Reforging?  It's probably one of the coolest features that Blizz has given us thus far.  I'll use my bear as an example.


Melee hit cap is ~263 points of Hit Rating.
My druid had ~440 points of Hit Rating.
See the issue here?


And the hit rating that I had for my bear wasn't from gems or enchants.  It was all from her gear and weapons.  It was truthfully very frustrating for a long while because I was SO far over hit cap and couldn't find expertise on leather gear to save my LIFE.  I tried gems and enchants for it but I couldn't even get CLOSE to the expertise cap (which I think is still around 460 points worth of Expertise...ouch!). 


Anyway, I was able to take my tanking gear last night and stop by the Arcane Reforger...IN DARNASSUS YAY!...and exchange +HIT for +EXPERTISE.  I'm still not terribly close to the Expertise cap, but this is a definite step in the right direction for my bear.  So, definitely thank you to Blizzard for giving us a tool that's truly useful. 


This is what Reforging looks like.  Between this and the ability to gem and enchant our gear as we see fit, there is a huge amount of customization that can happen here.  And if you end up screwing up your gear, you can always Restore it back to the original stats. 

Gone are the days of wasted stats.  Okay, well, I'm sure we'll still waste a few points here or there, but not nearly as bad as we did before.  My druid is a perfect example.


They've also added Mastery Rating to the game, which you can see in this example of Reforging.  Currently, Mastery Rating isn't something you'll see on any in-game gear.  That will be coming either in future raids or in the Cata release, but you can reforge your current gear to add Mastery Rating as a secondary stat.


Here's the thing:  I don't want to get into listing off what each Mastery bonus is for every spec of every class.  That would turn this into a huge, huge post and I don't think you'll want to be bothered with reading it here.  You can get the information Here at WoWhead.  Basically, what mastery is going to do is give you a passive "bonus" based on the specialization you choose.  Using my bear as an example again:  My mastery bonus is a 32% increase in damage absorbed by Savage Defense.  Each point of mastery I add to my gear will increase that by 4%.


I'm going to assume they'll change the math on that soon, as they'll discover that it's unbalanced somehow.  But for today, that's what the tooltip says.  I imagine they'll throw a cap on that as well, if they haven't already.  But that's Mastery, in a nutshell.  


Other quick updates:  10 and 25 man raids now share a "Flexible Raid Lockout" and Trial of the Crusader will use the "Dynamic Difficulty System".  Do I know what that means exactly?  


Not...really.  The whole new raid lockout system is difficult to explain, to be completely honest with you and it would take up a lot of time and focus that, well, I just don't have today.  I'll refer you to MMO-Champion for more information.  You'll see a wall of blue text about halfway down the page that talks about the raid lockout system.  They don't really discuss the dynamic difficulty situation, though, but I'm guessing that the boss difficulty will be based on the average item level of your group?  I'm not entirely sure on that and I'll need to research it.  I just need to find the time to do so.


The "Chill of the Throne" debuff has also been removed from Icecrown Citadel.  Not a huge, huge change to the raid, but a noteworthy one.


Moving on...


Currency changes.  Badges, guys,  badges.  We're not talking about a complete overhaul of actual coin currency in the game.  If you've logged in already, you probably noticed that your old Badges of Justice (Burning Crusade) and Emblems of Heroism, Valor and Conquest have been converted into gold for you.  That was a pleasant surprise for most of us, I think.  Your emblems of Triumph and Frost have been converted into...you ready?  Justice Points.  Dun Dun Dunnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn....


So what's that mean?  When you kill bosses that are "level appropriate" (ie, heroic bosses in lvl 80 dungeons), you get Justice Points.  It's similar to the Honor Points system that PvP folks used to purchase their gear.  They've revised the Honor points system as well.  Allegedly, in Cataclysm, there will be a cap on the amount of Justice Points you can earn each day/week, so you won't be able to just grind heroics non-stop, day and night, in order to get geared before everyone else.  Good or bad...it is what it is.  I think it's pretty self-explanatory and as far as I know the cap won't be a big deal for most of us, especially considering we're heading into the final month and a half before the expansion releases. 


Right.  Onward.


All of the talent trees have changed.  They're TINY now.  I suppose it's good, in a way.  It's a little less confusing and you're less likely to completely overlook a talent that you NEED for your particular role (ie, tanks missing out on defensive talents because they're smooshed in with a bunch of other crap).  If you visit WoWtal you can take a look at the new talent trees.  

"New talent trees!  DISCUSS!"

 I'm pretty neutral on the new trees if I'm being 100% truthful with you.  First of all, you have to pick your specialization.  This is what you see when you open it up for the first time:

Alright.  you're asked to choose your specialization.  Once you DO that, you are committed to that tree and that tree alone until you have invested 31 points into it.  Eh, seems like they're killing the old Hybrid builds altogether.  There aren't going to be anymore Frost-Fire mages or Arc-Frost mages it seems.  How sad...or something...Anyway, once you've invested 31 points into your primary specialization, you can start putting points elsewhere.  


Let's take a quick look at the druid talent tree, just to get an idea what this looks like and how this works.

First of all, notice that the Restoration and Balance trees are grayed out to me.  (This is a talent calculator image from WoWtal.com by the way).  Once I put 31 points into the Feral Tree, I can open up the other two...

See?  The other two are opened up now.  (Ignore the W in the Balance tree.  There wasn't an Icon for Fungal growth). 


Alright.  Well that's what the new talent trees look like.  Do I think they're amazing?  Eh...Do I think they're terrible?  Eh...Like I said.  I'm pretty neutral on it.  It's less complicated than before, so that's a bonus but I feel like it restricts you to a certain playstyle based on the "specialization" you choose.  There are very limited options right now.  You won't see Dreamstate Resto druids anymore.  Yes, I saw Dreamstate restos throughout Cata.  Interesting healing style, one I wanted to try but never bothered to change spec to give it a go.  


What I had heard, initially, was that Blizzard was annoyed that folks like Elitist Jerks had worked out the numbers and tested endlessly and devised the "absolute best spec" for every class, creating an army of "cookie cutter specs."  Blizz claimed that they wanted to get away from this...uh...Well, you failed with that, Blizz.  Now everyone HAS to have the same spec, good or bad, with very LITTLE choice in customization to suit playstyle.  That would be my only complaint if I was going to complain.  But I'm alright with the talent tree changes.  I don't hate them, don't adore them...I'm just...alright with it.


A HUGE change though, that I wanted to toss out there:  Defense rating has been removed.  Yeah.  Removed.  So, for my death knight, who I recently dual spec'd and threw into tanking gear...the hour I spent agonizing over getting Defense Capped last week was...well.. a waste.


All plate tanks will be uncrittable from talents.


Just like bears.  Jussssssst like bears...My suspicion meter is beeping right now.  Bears have always been kind of a niche tank.  We've been the ones to eat hateful strikes on Patchwerk more often than not.  Why?  Because we're sponge tanks.  We could stack stamina instead of Defense rating like other tanks and this gave us the sponginess to eat big hits without being pressed into plate-tank flavored hub caps.  


The suspicion meter is only beeping a little bit because, now that plate tanks don't have to stack Defense, they can add other threat and offensive stats.  Most plate tank gear ALSO has +Expertise on it.  That means they won't have to dig so deep to find it for their gear, which bumps their threat a little and well...I just wonder if bears will suffer a little because of all of this.  I hope not and I know that if there's unbalance, either bears will get buffed or plate tanks will get adjusted, but there's always a little time before Blizz catches on, does the math, and is able to institute changes to fix these things.


Moving on......


There is a brand new tier of glyphs available and...well you know, this glyph thing is a little ridiculous and/or complicated to explain.  Go back to the MMO-Champion link I gave you and scroll about 2/3 of the way down.  There's another wall of blue and white text that explains it.


I'm sure glyph prices are going to skyrocket soon, along with gems and...well pretty much everything we need on the Auction House is going to probably spike in prices for a bit.  Now's a good time to get in touch with guildies and make friends with jewelcrafters and scribes.  I know that the majority of my glyph spots are empty, especially prime and major, for all of my level 80 characters.


I'm just not finding any of the glyphs I'd want or need yet.  I think I'll spend some time working on my shaman's Inscription this weekend so that I can make the ones I need and hopefully help out some friends if they need it.  


I'm not going to talk about each of the class changes right now.  This post is already a hundred miles long and I won't make you sit through it.  Besides, I really need to take a look at some of the talent changes (especially for my own level 80 crew and my shaman) and then I can talk about it a little.


The improvements they've made to the graphics in the game, particularly water texture, are amazing.  Yes, I literally sat in Darnassus and looked at the water for awhile.  It looks so much better now, more real.  Not that this is a change that affects anyone, but, well it's interesting enough, right?  Next time you log in, take a really good look at the improvements they've made to the scenery (but try not to throw up with the earthquakes that occasionally happen now...go go Cataclysm!)


They've changed the UI a little, too, Adding: Raid frames, an enhanced SpellBook, Spell Alerts (to indicate when something procs or an ability is ready to use - so you don't need to have addons for this anymore), New Level Alerts have been added (alerting players of new spells, talents, or abilities that are now available to them)...and a few other interface enhancements have been made.


Unfortunately, I'm finding the new layout bulky.  My spellbook takes up half of my screen, completely blocks out my chat window, and I can't MOVE it.  It frustrates me, especially with a few of the projects I've taken on for the guild now.  I don't want to miss communications from other Circle members...so this spellbook and I are not getting along.


I intend to keep working at it until I find some way to get some of the bulkier things out of the way so that I can see what's going on.  I think that the LOOK of everything is better, but it's all just so BIG.  Not a fan of that.  I like to be able to see what's going on in chat or in front of me if I need to pop open some random window.  


All in all, the patch brings a lot of cool changes.  I'm excited about most of them, a little less excited about others and I'm sure that this is true for most players.  I know from talking to another feral druid that the kitties have been pounded with a nerf bat.  Whether or not that was intentional remains to be seen, but here's to hoping that they restore balance for us all.  


I hope that this post has been informative and helpful.  We all know how much I hate discussing patch notes, right?  hehe.


Have a happy Wednesday all and good luck with the post-patch apocalypse!

Returning to my Azerothian Antics

You had to know it was only going to be a matter of time before I got myself back into trouble once I returned to WoW.  While I haven't done anything incredibly stupid...I've definitely had a few noob moments.


Let's start with ICC.  My guild had decided to run "Heroic Lootship", so after one wipe, we did manage to get it down.  The wipe was indirectly my fault, for not being able to keep our off-tank alive with all of the adds on him...but I digress.  Midnight Sun dropped and I rolled for it and won it.  There was another druid who had taken my place in the raids during my little hiatus who had mentioned something on vent about wanting to see if it would be worth picking up that dagger along with the off-hand he had.  I was down with handing it over, since I like the haste and spirit on my staff (Midnight Sun has Mp5 on it, which is junk for restos...ask any of us).  So, this other druid and I argued at great length over who was going to take the dagger.  While we were arguing, and while we were walking on our way up to face the Blood Queen, the rest of the group stopped walking...but I was reading his most recent whisper...and I kept right on trekkin'.  Next thing I know...BLAM!  I'm getting pelted by a bajillion trash mobs!  Whoa!  


I felt really bad...and the group wiped...I mean, one healer to keep ten people up who weren't even expecting the pull yet...yeah and those mobs hit hard.  I apologized, but that doesn't make it any less stupid.  (So if any of you are reading this, I'm still really, really, really sorry.  I feel TERRIBLE!).

That's really the only major special moment I've had since my return.  I'm sure I've had a few other bumps and bruises along the way, but I try to behave.

Soon, I'm guessing I'll have some Horde-flavored stories to share since I've started working on my Tauren Druid again.  We shall see and only time will tell. 


At any rate, that's all I've got for right now.  I'll keep you updated.


With great love,


Des