Bleh…Just Can’t Do It…

Yesterday I was convinced to join my ‘old guild’ for ICC25.  I say ‘old guild’ because I never really do anything with them anymore.  My Druid, DK and Hunter are in that guild but my Mage, Priest and Warrior are all in other guilds.  They originally asked if I could heal on my druid.  Not a chance.  I have no interest whatsoever in raid healing ever again as long as I live.  Ever.

I told them they might be able to convince me to come on my priest as dps or my druid as a tank.  They took me up on the priest.  What a huge fucking mistake!  I hated every femtosecond in that place.  From the moment I was invited to the raid to the moment I ninja logged I was miserable.  We killed the first boss with little issue and a very nice caster dagger dropped.  I thought ‘well, this might not be so bad after all’.  I was soon reminded that they use a DKP system and my priest was at the bottom of the priority list.

Don’t get me wrong, I much prefer DKP over /random any day of the week.  I didn’t realize DKP was going to be used for that run (as there were other non-guild members there too).  I felt slightly cheated but care so little about raid progression that it didn’t bother me much.  It was then I realized I had nothing to gain from continuing other than frustration.  I don’t particularly like anyone in that guild.  I have no chance at any of the gear.  I don’t care about the fights.  I don’t want to see more bosses.  I hate raiding.  What the fuck was I there for?  I have no idea!  It’s like slave labor in there.  Bleh!

After the first boss kill everyone took a 5 minute afk with the caveat that if you weren’t back in time for the next pull you would get kicked from the raid.  I purposefully stayed afk until after the pull so they would kick me from the raid and I could continue with my evening.  1 pull.  2 pulls.  3 pulls.  Never got kicked.  Alt-F4.  I went to bed.

Sound Off

Blizzard has once again hit the nail on the head with the new LFG tool.  Absolutely amazing – the possible additions they are discussing for it are equally amazing (cross-realm friends etc).  So, when I find an awesome druid healer who was really funny and not a douche I can purposefully try to queue with them another time.  Killer!

If you are a tank in H ToC please note that you must tank all mobs sufficiently far away from their starting door otherwise there is a line-of-sight (LOS) bug that prevents casters from dpsing them and, more importantly, the healer from healing YOU.  Now, if you were unaware of this bug that’s fine.  To claim that you always tank them there and have never had problems before, then refuse to adjust to this blatant problem is not fine.  It’s down right retarded.  Then to get mad at the group and ninja leave is douchedom.  Then to requeue for the same instance only to come back to the same 4 people you just left and then leave again nominates you for douche-bag-of-the-month.  Congratulations, Borntokill (warrior), you packed more doucheness into a single event than I’ve witnessed in a very long time.

To appreciate the truly hilarious is next to godliness.  As a priest you can hover 30 yrds over a flying enemy and cast Devouring Plague and Shadow Word: Pain on them.  Then, very quickly, cast Levitate on yourself to land safely on the ground.  If the enemy remains in their position you can remount and repeat this maneuver until they are dead.  What is truly hilarious is when it’s a druid in flight form who tries to cast Rejuv on themselves and re-pop flight form to get away.  Too bad, buddy, you’re in combat now…and you just fell to your death. 

Having the random daily heroic be Halls of Reflection is unlucky.  Choosing to put a tank with 30k hp in there with us is sabotage.

Speaking of Halls of Reflection, having Sylvannis die on the 4th (last) wall when the last Abom has around 40-50k hp left sucks.  Having it happen 3 times in a row is enfuriating.  The dps necessary for that guantlet is insane.  Like…the average output damage produced by all 3 dps and the tank needs to exceed 3k – for a total of 12k dps, sustained, for the entire gauntlet.  When I tank it, on my druid, I can maybe hit 2300 dps.  That means I need at least one of the other dps to pull nearly 4k dps for the entire gauntlet.  Maybe I just need better gear?  Well, I roll with 40% dodge (up to 55% with cooldowns/procs), 40% crit and 40k hp(up to 65k with cooldowns).  What else do I need?

It’s a terrible state of affairs for the raiding frost mage – they are too awesome right now and will be getting nerfed (my prediction).  Patch 3.3 gave them a permanent elemental pet and let’s their Deep Freeze ability hit stun-immune mobs (bosses) like a truck.  Unfortunately it’s just too much.  I have a mage with 2 questing greens, about 3 heroic epics and the rest are questing/ilvl175-200 blues who can easily get 3k dps on boss fights.  I have 1300 spellpower and my Deep Freeze can crit for over 17.5k!  I expect nerfs incoming very soon.

The more I do PvP on my warrior the more I hate the fact that I have to do Arena to get PvP weapons.  Arena is just a bunch of counter-comp bullshit.  I sincerely hope rated BGs will be better.  On the bright side I was able to get the two-handed axe from Scourge Lord Tyrannus.  A considerable upgrade, even for PvP.

When you are running a dungeon it’s entirely unacceptable to be a healer and roll need on a healing necklace from the first boss then roll need on a caster necklace from the second boss…during the same run.  I ran Forge of Souls on my shadow priest with a random LFG and a shaman was healing.  We down the first boss and the epic healing necklace drops.  It would have been a side-grade for me so I passed on it when I noticed he had rolled ‘need’.  We continue and kill the last boss.  The epic caster necklace drops and was a considerable upgrade for me.  He rolls ‘need’ again.  Not cool.  Even if his second spec is elemental you don’t need more than one item unless nobody else needs.  It’s just common courtesy.  Luckily my ‘need’ roll surpassed his and I walked away with it.  The audacity still angers me.

A friend of mine and I decided to ‘RP level’ some new alts.  I rolled a shaman (filling out my last character slot on the server) and he rolled a hunter.  Neither of us have any experience doing any RP so it’s not really going well.  What we decided to do to fulfill the ‘RP’ part is to do all the quest lines that lead to the dungeons as we level up.  Then, to challenge us, we have decided to duo the dungeons rather than get a group for it.  I’m rolling elemental and he is hitting up beast mastery (I’ll get dual spec at 40 and go resto).  We got him a crocalisk for his tenacity pet and rolled through RFC at level 13 without a hitch.  It’s surprisingly good experience too.  We leveled from 13 to 15 in one dungeon clear – and got a few upgrades to boot.  Our next ‘RP’ experience will be Wailing Caverns, followed quickly by The Deadmines.  We’ve unlocked all but 1 quest for Wailing Caverns but The Deadmines doesn’t have Horde quests.  Who cares, right?  We just want to kill Smite…and VC.

Averaged Out Awesome

After work I headed home to try and check out the new 5-man dungeons.  To my surprise the server was still down.  I had read that all the servers were back up, which is why I headed home in the first place – clearly mine was still down.  After about 30 minutes it came up (talk about good timing) and I proceeded to jump on with my druid and try and get our group together (3 friends and my wife).  We determined, very quickly, that there was a metric shit ton of people crowding in Icecrown and almost nobody could actually get in.

We fought the loading-screen boss for about an hour and decided to do some 3v3 instead and get our rating up to 1200 real quick so the rogue and priest could unlock another piece of gear.  Our friend lives on PST time and was just getting off work and still needed to grab dinner and download the patch (fortunately just the small 5mb one).  I was a bit hesitant because my addons were acting a bit funny, which is to be expected after any patch.  Fortunately I don’t really use any addons that affect gameplay but rather ones like Chatmod, Gearscore and VanKos…but an error message popping up on your screen, for any reason, is annoying and potentially devastating if it happens in arena play.  They really wanted to do 3s so I reluctantly went along with it.

We ended up winning a few and losing to a team we really, really shouldn’t have lost to – rogue/rogue/feral druid.  We lost 28 points when we lost to that stupid RRD team.  Well, fortunately we continued to queue…and so did they.  We smashed them the 2nd time around.  And the 3rd.  And the 4th.  And…

Yup, it seemed like they were the only other team in the queue at the time so we were able to nab some really easy wins.  They won the first round and we didn’t lose any others following.  In fact, save the first round, we only had 1 of us die once during the entire rest of the fights against them.  It was pretty sweet.

We did lose to another lame team (disc/resto druid/rogue)…I can’t imagine how we could kill them with the comp we have (disc/rogue/warr).  We simply couldn’t put out enough damage with enough CC to kill either healer.  I’d really like to see a team like that get trashed because I think it’s fundamentally against what the intent of a gladiator tournament really is.  It’s pretty much the same reason why I think it’s incredibly lame when prot pallies wearing healing gear just dominate in arena play.  This is a topic of another discussion altogether.

Our friend finally gets on and we group up and attempt to get in to the new dungeons again.  More errors occur and we decide to just run a few heroics with the new LFG tool.  Holy mother of god that thing is nice.  It’s a significant upgrade from all the previous versions.  Kudos, Blizzard on such a wonderful tool.  It’s fun to use and easy to navigate.  We ended up doing 3 heroics (HoS, VH and AN).  We got a few more achievements, an ass load of gold and had a great time doing it.  It was odd.  We’ve already run those heroics 1091098320987 times but it was still fun.  How does that work?

Well, after these runs we decided to try the new dungeons one last time.  No luck!  The rogue and priest were about 9 and 13 points shy of getting to 1200, respectively.  We jump in some 3s and ran a few.  The rogue hit 1203 but the priest was still 1199.  The rogue quickly purchased the new bracers to ensure he got them (he was honor capped so he needed to spend the honor on something…had been buying epic gems until now).  We jumped in one more and wiped up and got the priest the bracers too.

Being the nice guy that I am I jumped on my DK and enchanted them both up.  Now they are happy, happy, happy.  Hopefully we’ll get them to 1300 by the weekend. 

I’m still only at 1473 on my warrior with the 2s team I’m on.  We need to grind that up to 1800 quick!

Even though we were unable to do the new 5-mans we did have a great time and pulled the arena team up and get some new gear for the rogue and priest.  All-in-all a wonderful night.

Counter Comp in BGs?

As you progress in PvP you realize that every class has a counter-class.  That is, there exists a class, that when played correctly, will utterly destroy you unless you get extremely lucky.  Let’s face it, when you come across players who know how to play their class there simply is no ‘getting lucky’.  You must simply out play them if you expect to beat them.  Period.

So, counter-classes are really just a matter of ‘I know what to do against you’ and it just so happens that when the know-how is there nothing can be done on your part to win.  Nothing*.  Let’s look at some examples.

* Keep in mind I’m talking about equal gear/skill/ability here.  Obviously a toon in full Relentless gear can be given to an infant and it won’t mean squat.

Rogue vs Mage.  Classic counter-comp.  If the rogue knows what to do the mage is dead.  Period.  No matter how good the mage is the rogue will win 90% of the time.  Again, as long as the rogue knows what to do.  Open with garrote/silence.  Finish with a 5 point eviscerate.  Cloak of shadows, sprint.  Dead.

Another great example is Mage vs Warrior.  It is useless for the warrior to try if the mage knows anything about their class.  Charge = Blink.  Spell Reflect = Ice Lance.  Keep up slowing effects and the warrior can never touch the mage.  Never.

What about Warlock vs Paladin.  Death Coil followed by Chain Fear.  DoT, Chaos Bolt, win.  Devour the Hammer of Justice.  Seduce to keep at range.  Whatever works.  Just eat them up.

Every class has them and every class will be faced with them.  Arena is all about figuring out what partners you need in order to out-comp the other team.  It’s simply a game of counter-comps.  This is why I’m all in favor of rated BGs coming in Cataclysm.

When have you ever stepped in a BG and realized the other 10/15/40 players were a counter-comp to your 10/15/40 players?  Yeah, never gonna happen.  At a BG scale it’s a matter of organization…for the most part.  I’d speculate about 70% organization/skill and 30% gear.  Sometimes, no matter how well you play or how hard you try, the other team is going to sufficiently out gear yours and they will win.

Notice, however, there is 0% reserved for counter-comp situations.  It just doesn’t happen in BGs.  (unless the other team happens to be a stack of nothing but paladins)

What is a more deserving venue for the best possible PvP gear in the game than BGs?  I’m not talking about stupid /afk honor grinds but rated BGs.  Ones that you get with your guild, organize, strategize and conquer.  That is where the skill will come in.  Once you get to high rated BGs it will be 100% organization/skill and 0% gear.

The current arena setup is just a bunch of counter-comps destroying other counter-comps.  Lame and lamenting.

Where’s The Appeal?!?

With the recent arena activity I’ve been involved in with my warrior I’ve had to do a great deal of BGs to get the honor to buy all the Relentless off-set pieces.  Those things are damn expensive!  Each costs either around 48k honor or 62k honor.  Considering a single BG yields 800-1600 honor (for a win) you can do the math yourself to see that even one single 62k honor grind can take a while. (3 pieces that cost 62k and the 4 pieces that cost 48k = about 375k honor)

While doing some BGs and WGs with friends yesterday we decided to take a break and run H ToC to get our rogue another dagger.  It’d be great for him.  Currently he wields it in the main hand but it would be a significant upgrade for his off-hand too.  Why can’t he just get a PvP weapon?  Well, because you can’t get any PvP weapons with honor.  Lame!

Anyway, we jump in H ToC.  We’ve got the priest healing, druid tanking, rogue and my warrior dpsing.  We needed a fifth and my wife helped us out by jumping on her DK.  Off we go to get his dagger (or a second Edge of Ruin for me).  We do the jousting and are ready to fight the first three mobs.  It’s the Rogue/Warrior/Hunter combo.  No heals to deal with, which was nice, but that is a lot of incoming damage.  It turns out the rogue dropping poison on the ground really hurts everyone.  With 4 melee the priest was overwhelmed and the tank died.  Followed by the rest of us in short order.

We discussed movement and tried again.  Everyone moved out of the whirlwind and off of the poison.  I disarm the warrior.  I intervene to the priest to mitigate how much damage he takes.  I charge back in for the critical Mortal Strike.  Things were going great.  We kill the warrior (2nd target) and jump on the Hunter.  Hot damn, I must be pulling aggro!  Hot damn, the tank isn’t taunting!  Hot damn, the tank is dead!  Oh, snap…well I have about 32k hp in my PvP gear (which is really the only gear I have) and figure the priest can probably heal me through the Hunter with little issue.  Hot damn, I’m not getting any healing!  Hot damn, the healer is dead!  Well, I pop Enraged Regeneration and my Herbalism Heal and we end up killing the hunter with me still at around 80% health.  On to the 2nd boss…

We start on the adds and I’m running in circles around them.  Disarm.  Intervene.  Bobbing in and out in between my swing timers.  You know, doing the whole “PvP thing”.  It was during the first trash pack I realized I can just stand behind them and swing.  hahahaha…I seriously had forgotten that NPCs just stand there and let you beat on them.  They don’t care if they take a Mortal Strike to the back.

I couldn’t do it…I found myself running back and forth behind them just to stay interested.  How remarkably easy and boring it is to PvE.  During the boss fights I was trying to Charge/Intercept for interrupts, Intervene for mobility, Shield Bash/Pummel for silences, Spell Reflect for mitigation and confusion.  Turns out I didn’t need to do any of that because all the bosses were immune to interrupts/silences (for the most part) and nobody was targeting me so Spell Reflect wasn’t needed.  I literally had no idea what to do when I wasn’t trying to stay alive.

So, I just sit here and push my buttons whenever they are off cool downs?  Gah, so boring!  Where’s the appeal?

More BGs, Please.

My warrior has recently entered the arena scene.  It’s been frustrating, fun, stressful and satisfying…all at the same time.  He runs in a 2v2 bracket and a 3v3 bracket.  My 2s partner is a BiS disc priest (guess who’s getting carried).  My 3s partners are two RL friends of mine (disc priest and rogue).

In one week we’ve gotten my 3s team up to 1100+ and my 2s team up to 1400+.  I’m very satisfied with that.  A little more time and I’ll have my 2s team at 1800+ so I can finally get my relentless weapon.  Then, hopefully, I can land a very good 5v5 team and get up to 2200+ and get full relentless.  (hey, one can dream, right?)

The only unfortunate aspect of this situation is that with my personal rating at 1400+ I have unlocked 3 relentless pieces (boots, waist and bracers) but they cost more honor than I had available (62k, 62k and 38k, respectively).  Well, I was able to turn in marks and Stone Keeper’s Shards to buy the boots and waist right away.  I’m currently about 15k away from the bracers (not too bad, imo).  Sadly it doesn’t stop there…

I’m sure we are going to get my 2s team to at least 1500+ by the end of the week (Tuesday) and hopefully to 1700+ or even 1800+ by the end of the next week.  That will unlock a metric shit ton of relentless gear and I need to farm an equivalent metric shit ton of honor to buy it.  Oh, my…I have a lot of BG grinding to do.  All is not so bad…

…unless you consider that BG queue times are ridiculous.  What is the deal here?  I’ll spend 30 minutes waiting in queue for Strands of the Ancients or Isle of Conquest.  Meanwhile Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin have 2 minute queues.  Sometimes.  Depending on the time of day WSG and AB even have 20 to 30 minute queues.  What is the deal?  I hate that we have to turn in 1 of each mark type in order to complete the “For More Honor…” quest.  It’s obvious that very few people enjoy IoC or SotA, but we are forced to suffer through them if we want to stay competitive in our gear.

Couple all this with the fact that retribution paladins are still OP and I’m just pissed.  Fortunately I have had little trouble with ret paladins as my arena rating increases.  It turns out that once the gear levels get high enough they become less and less of a threat.  My disc priest partner can pretty much kill a ret paladin without my assistance.  haha…did I mention I really like my 2s partner?

3.3 Coming Soon

The word is out.  Patch 3.3 lands this coming Tuesday, November 24th. (Edit:  Apparently it was postponed two weeks.  Now it’s Tuesday, December 8th.) Will the random LFG work as well as people have been claiming?  Apparently the PTR reviews of the new LFG tool is nothing but positive.  Perhaps I’m too much of a skeptic, cynic or a pessimist but I just can’t imagine it’s going to be much more than 1000 DPS and 20 healers and 30 tanks.  We’ll see…

I’m looking forward to seeing what the new Ice Crown Citadel 5-man is.  The raids can go shit on themselves for all I care.  (what a magnificent was of time they are)

I also like the idea of getting rewarded for using the random LFG.  I’m all about that.  From what I’ve heard players will get rewarded ‘more’ the fewer non-PuG players they have in the group.  Since I run the majority of my 5-mans with two (or three) RL friends we may not actually see much of this reward.  Meh…whatever.  I’m just happy they are putting more players into the pool as options.

What about the new class buffs/nerfs?  Well, I’m not overly concerned with any of that because I don’t care for the ‘hard-core’ aspect of the game.  Haste affecting DoTs?  I don’t care how non-hard-core you are that will be awesome.  I did a test run on my friend’s rogue last night.  If I can land a VT, SW:P and DP on him and let him ‘fly away’ he will die about 15 seconds later.

What does that mean?  That means when I’m in WG and I see an alliance hovering above me on their mount I can actually kill them as they fly away. 

How do I do this?  Well, I start with a 1.3 second cast of Vampiric Touch.  The moment it lands I put on a Shadow Word: Pain.  Then, as soon as the global cool down is released, I land a Devouring Plague.  Theoretically I can get all three up in about 2.5 seconds or so.  If they aren’t on their toes and flying away as soon as I start casting they could find themselves with 3 DoTs on them.

Who cares?  3 DoTs…big whoop.  Well, Mr. Sassy-Pants, it just so happens that in my PvP gear my 3 DoTs will do just over 26k damage to someone wearing 400 resil.  If they are wearing more resil those numbers will go down but 400 resil isn’t that small of an amount.  So, unless the person is a tank or has a ton of resil they likely can’t live through my 3 DoTs.

I love it.  I’m killing some elementals.  An alliance players swoops low to scope the scene.  I immediately cast my 3 DoTs on them.  They fly off.  I continue killing elementals and about 15-20 seconds later I see “Killing Blow” flash across my screen.  With the haste to DoTs that number may drop to 10-12 seconds.  Such fun!

A Perfect World…of Warcraft

When contemplating what would be the ideal WoW situation I come to a few enlightening conclusions.  All of these conclusions are basically derivatives of the opposite of what drives me nuts about WoW.  Basically, I’m easy like Sunday morning.  That is, if I’m not getting pissed I’m happy.  There are many people out there that operate on three levels – sad, content, happy.  I only operate on two – sad and happy.

If I find a PuG group that makes it through an instance without anyone talking in chat or being a douche I’m completely happy.  Most would call that boring but I call it a god-send.  Recently I’ve been getting the urge to tank on my druid during heroic runs.  I have 2 or 3 friends who consistently join me – rogue, spriest and sometimes a druid or warlock.  Unfortunately the druid is a tank so I end up healing when he goes with us.  When he’s not there, however, I get to be the bear.  GRRRR!

Two of the most recent PuG healers we’ve come across have said a total of 1 word for both runs.  Seriously, one druid, when asked if he would be healing, responded with:  “mhmm”.  That was all he said the entire time.  Even when asked a direct question he wouldn’t answer.  The other healer (remember I said 1 word for 2 different healers) didn’t say anything the entire time.  Not a single word.  It was lovely.  Heal, dps, tank and get out with some badges and a few extra gold.  Lovely, I say.

This got me to thinking.  My idea of the perfect MMO would be one where I didn’t have to communicate with the other players.  In fact, there was no avenue of communication whatsoever.  No chat.  No forums.  No websites.  No vent.  Nothing.  It would be absolutely amazing if everyone knew exactly what they were supposed to do and I didn’t have to hear your squeaky voice over vent or read your piss-poor grammar in chat.

Side note:  Everyone I see who types some derivative of “you fail”, “oh hai”, “l2play” or “noob” gets launched to the ignore list with haste.  If only the ignore list didn’t have a limit of 100 players.  I’m sure there are well over 1000 players worthy of ignore on my server alone.

When I put my idea to brass tacks it comes down to this:  I can’t wait until A.I. is to the point that I can play an “MMO” game comprised of me and a bunch of really smart NPCs.  Granted it wouldn’t be an MMO but you get the idea.  I have very fond memories of a game that was very, very close to this – Oblivion.  Man, that game was awesome.  The NPCs learned, changed and interacted with you like a real player without any of the asshatery.

I suppose it just comes down to the simple fact that a person with a platform for free speech coupled with anonymity ends up being a complete prick.  Granted this isn’t an original observation but I find it interesting how so much of my online satisfaction stems from this.

Fun In The Head

Recently some friends of mine have become a bit more active playing WoW.  This has, in turn, provided me with more structure when I play WoW.  We don’t have anything formal scheduled but we do like to run the heroic daily, regular daily, BG daily and maybe a quick heroic ToC whenever we can.  It’s been fun and I’ve made significant progress on my gear via emblems.  Sadly there isn’t any gear in heroics that are useful to me (especially my druid) but I’ve been tweaking my tanking gear with upgrades from conquest and triumph.  (hurray for 2 piece T8.5 bonus)

While I sit here and reminisce about my recent gaming accomplishments and what has provided me with the most entertainment I notice that WoW is pretty short on the list.  I play WoW more than any of my other games solely due to the diversity of things I get to do.  On a daily basis there are my crafting cool downs (epic gem transmute, moonshroud etc) there are the profession quests (fishing, cooking, JC etc) and a plethora of other things I can do to occupy my time.

When I’m not on WoW what do I prefer to play?  Rock Band, of course.  I’m pushing myself into expert drums rather rigorously these days.  I refuse to play on hard when I play by myself.  That isn’t to say that I can play all the songs on expert but rather I play the easier songs so that I can force myself into the expert mindset.  When I play with others I often down-grade to hard to ensure we can play all the songs we want – and survive!  Guitar, on the other hand, has become my formitable bread-and-butter.  I’m at the point where I can beat almost every song on expert – and beat them convincingly.  That is, my worst case scenarios end up being about 85% or so, and the vast majority of songs end up being above 90%.

The list of songs that I can’t beat have shortened considerably.  I recently beat Green Grass and High Tides, which took about 3 hours of back-to-back attempts to do.  Vicious!  The list has widdled it’s way down to 5.

Painkiller – I’m convinced I can beat this now I just haven’t tried in a very long time.

Panic Attack – This is my current project.  I’ve spent about 1 hour with it and am fully confident I will command and conquer on my next set of solid attempts (damn that organ solo).

Warriors of Time – Does the solo need to be that long, fast and difficult?  Really?  I honestly can’t foresee myself completing this without a solid afternoon of attempts.  It’s cool though because it’s a great song and fun to play.

Snow, Hey Oh! – Can someone explain how this isn’t a tier 7 song?  Mother of some-other-son-of-a-pain…

Visions – Whoever suggested this song as mandatory in order to complete the endless setlist needs to have a vice grip attached to their balls (or punched in the boob if it was a girl).  Speaking completely from the music theory perspective this song is terrible.  There is no well defined beat, melody or harmony.  It’s composition is sloppy and it’s just a shitty song to play.  Some chick just grumbles into the mic for 4 minutes and the guitarist just hits random strings…not to mention what the drummer is doing…

Other than that I’ve downed every other song (that I have) on expert.  I’m sure there are some DLC songs that would be very challenging but I haven’t come across any that sounded appealing to me.  It’s sad how a great deal of the very challenging songs consist of people just screaming at the mic.  Perhaps I’m getting too old but when it comes to music I’d like to have feelings aroused.  The songs I end up liking are songs that I find moving – either by lyric or note.  Screaming incomprehensible words means very little to me.

When thinking back on what I’ve done, as far as gaming goes, in the last few weeks I must admit that Rock Band sticks out as the game I’ve had far more fun playing.  Why is it that I choose to spend so much more time on WoW?  A mystery…

GC is Pretty Awesome

Some of my readers may not know who Ghostcrawler (GC) is.  Those of us who follow theorycrafting are very familiar with him.  He is a developer for Blizzard who interfaces with the public on a regular basis.  He is pretty much the “go to guy” for anything coming down the pipeline.  You can find his posts on the official WoW forums.  He typically discusses class changes that are being looked at or implemented.

As you can imagine, his job could be difficult.  Not necessarily on the Blizzard side of things (I can only speculate here) but rather having to deal with the hundreds of thousands of shit heads who complain on the Blizzard forums.  In fact, he recently psuedo-resigned from his forum posting responsibility as many of the forum trolls were starting to attack him personally – and questioning his abilities as a Blizzard employee.  Come on, as if he is the one behind all the decisions…I expect he has some input but he’s ultimately just the messenger.

GC recently posted some information regarding the current PTR Paladin changes.  The PTR (Public Test Realm) is a server set up for testing purposes of the next patch.  The next patch planned in 3.3 and if you log on to the PTR you will see the content they have “planned”.  Of course, everything on the PTR is subject to change but it should give you an idea of what they are trying to implement.

It turns out that Paladins are getting the nerf bat…again.  Thank God!!!  They have been getting nerfed almost every patch since 2.3 rolled around in TBC and they are still over powered.  I don’t care what you say or think but if a 600 resil warr with 25.5k hp, unbuffed, can get killed within one Hammer of Justice stun then the class is over powered.  That is completely ridiculous.

I have nothing against the Paladin as a class so much as I have something against the people who play them.  Yes, you heard me correctly.  In my experience the people who play Paladins (especially Ret) are whiney little bitches who just like face rolling everyone.  A troll on the WoW forums started spouting off about the incoming Paladin nerfs and essentially tried to bash GC.  Perhaps the best come back of all time – GC simply said:  “Dear OP, Bye.  Hugs, GC.”

That man is a shining example of awesome.  Not only do trolls deserve to be put in their place like this, most Paladins do as well.  The original justification behind this particular nerf is that Blizzard had intended the Paladin to be a support class from the beginning.  A support class is basically one that supplies buffs and helpful spells for the group but doesn’t necessarily contribute directly with a kill.  (healers are generally considered a support class)  With the buffs they received in 2.3 they wanted to bring them out of 100% support and have them be competitive when DPSing and tanking.

The current problem with the Paladin OPness is they gave them all the tools necessary to be seen as a force to be reckoned with but didn’t actually nerf their support abilities.  As GC put it (paraphrase):  “…all their abilities over time have contributed to making the class feel like a one-man army.”  So very true, indeed.  They are next to impossible to kill in a one-on-one situation.

I’d like to give an example.  I have several well geared characters – hunter, druid, dk, priest and warrior in full epic gear.  Each of those characters has a PvP set ranging from about 300 resil (priest) up to around 600 resil (warrior).  Now, I’m fully aware that 600 resil isn’t spectacular, nor would I claim it is, and 300 resil is on the low-end of things.  Given the itemization in PvP gear it’s very clear, upon first inspection, how much PvP gear a player is wearing.  One only need look at the health pool.  It’s possible to have a great deal of hp and little resil but it’s kinda tough to have a great deal of resil and no hp – because all the resil gear has a ton of hp.  Of course one needs to take into account armor class – clearly a mage is going to have less hp than a hunter with similar amount of resil simply because mail generally has more hp than cloth.  One learns to pick out how much health implies solid pvp gear.

I see a Paladin rolling around with 21k hp self buffed.  I know immediately one of two things is occurring.  Either he is running around in full PvE gear or he has very few PvP pieces.  If it’s the former he could have anything from leveling blues up to teir 9 epics (a bit of an exaggeration but you get the idea).  If it’s the latter I would suspect he has no more than 250 resil and a mix of PvE gear.  On my warrior I see 21k hp and know it’s going to be an easy kill – for any class but the paladin.  I see another warrior with 21k hp and it’s a slaughter-fest, dk with 21k hp and I’m going to have fun dancing around them while they die, priest, mage, hunter…whatever…if you have 21k hp you are going to die by my axe within moments of engagement (for the most part).  Except the Paladin!

I’ve learned that a paladin with 20k hp on up to 40k hp or more is a character I won’t mess with unless I have to.  Period.  Simply because they are just so OP.  Now, I love to pick on the Paladin running around with 16k hp…only because I love to watch them die.  This isn’t only true for my warrior either.  I’ve heard people counter with “warriors aren’t supposed to be able to kill paladins”.  What about my 30k druid with 480 resil?  What about my 26k dk with 400 resil?  What about my 26k hunter with 500 resil?  What about my 22k priest with 300 resil?  All of them will generally get slaughtered by a paladin who has little to no resil.  This isn’t a matter of one class being the “counter” of another but rather a bunch of paladins running around as one-man armies.

Blizzard is taking the correct steps in bringing the Paladin back down out of godhood.  I only question whether it’s enough…