Well, I thought this blog deserved a send-off of some kind--I really did have a lot of fun with it when I started it now over two years ago. That statement is shocking to me, in and of itself. It's kind of hard to believe that it's been that long just since then, and even moreso, that my time playing WoW spanned nearly six and a half years (!).
I admit, I will miss the old game--the one that began to die slowly with the release of Burning Crusade. Although it had its faults, BC was a fun and expansive addition to the original game. My excitement for Wrath of the Lich King, while still a rather manic excitement for the new features being released, was somewhat muted in comparison to the upcoming release of BC and refocused on somewhat different priorities. In retrospect, beginning with the announcement of WOTLK, my excitement for the new expansion was more towards the hope that it would "bring the magic back," so to speak, rather than the incredible number of new features, additions, tweaks, and so on that so excited me about BC's release.
Then, when Cataclysm was announced and the PR campaign began to ramp up to feverish intensity, I followed it all--but more and more, I began to feel reservations and doubts about the ability of the game to really deliver an epic, original-WoW style experience.
Sadly, it was overall a huge disappointment, at least for me. In their attempt to please every kind of player, Blizzard bit themselves in the ass with a mish-mash of annoyances, blatant attempts at harnessing addictive design elements simply to secure a daily time investment from all players (not just the "hardcore" elements), as well as increasing amounts of "social integration" that fueled the natural tendencies of habitual players to spend time on the game simply socializing, rather than actually playing the game itself. This meta-game style design path was the final nail in the coffin for me, I think.
The amount of drama, elitism, ego, shameless trolling and constant peer pressure to follow the crowd, rather than pursuing whatever personal goals and gameplay styles that each individual player preferred grew and thrived under the guise of "accessibility," "social gaming," "new gameplay mechanics," "guild management features" and a host of other new design decisions that grabbed the game by the hand and took it to corporate-themepark territory. You can literally almost pick out at random any of the major features added between the time just before the launch of WOTLK and early Cataclysm as an example linked to this trend. Over time, that growing trend simply pushed me away from the game (well, again). This time, however, it pushed me away for good.
I liked the unabashedly nerdy, "come as you are," skill-based meritocracy of the original game, with its nearly unlimited avenues of play and options for creative gameplay that it had for each and every kind of player, with the occasional "incredibly grindy but epicly rewarding quest or achievement," that appealed to the gamers with more time on their hands. The original game lacked polish, it's true--but I think that's what made so many people love it. It did the important things well, and focused on the minor issues only if they presented serious problems for the important ones. This is a good way to allocate development resources, and it was incredibly successful, both for the game's developers, subscription numbers, revenue and growth--but also for the players.
However, in Blizzard's rush to meet what I am sure were top-level management-set metrics and standards for subscriptions and revenue, WoW's development focus gradually, but surely, shifted to one based on popular opinion first and foremost. Get enough players to complain about one thing and (appear to) threaten subscriber numbers, and you could always expect an irresistible push from upper level management to appease the masses rather than risk corporate revenue streams. I believe the primary reason that was, and is, driving this top-down micro-designing (micromanagement of game design) was the marketing campaign that WoW was driven on. Subscriber numbers and revenue were largely the basis of that marketing campaign: "Most popular MMO ever!" "The only MMO to reach 10 million subscribers!" "WoW now more popular than ever!" This was surely because the game had little else to promote itself with, having already started to stagnate several years ago, and lacking the innovation that made it so compelling and unique among other games on the market--as I said, shortly after the release of Burning Crusade.
Perhaps you can see how this demagogue approach to development fits in to the more blatant social integration features that gradually became a core component of WoW's development towards the end of WOTLK.
These design decisions and development paths based on social media and blurring the line between "real life" and "in game" ended up killing WoW utterly. By now, that's apparent to most of the general public. It's only a matter of time now. The game I knew is dead and buried; its current incarnation is the walking dead. And yet, despite all that I said here, I am still a little sad to see it go. Despite how much of my time the game sucked up while I was in college and after I graduated, I really did enjoy it immensely for the majority of the time I was playing it. The game, as it was then, I could easily call one of the best games ever created. That is my opinion, but I feel pretty strongly about it.
Thus--this is my formal farewell to WoW. Drums and fanfare. I had stopped playing entirely around early February of this year, but I made the decision to cancel my account for good this past April, and it expired shortly after, only a month later. It is entirely too much to hope for, but I have to hope that at least a few development houses and game designers take some note and words of warning from the path Blizzard took--large game publishing conglomerates and corporate "suits" have been, and will be, threatening every "AAA" title that will be developed from now and into the near future. There is an axiom of game development that states, paraphrased, that you can either create a good game, or you can make a lot of money. There is some middle ground between the two, but in my simplistic terms, it comes down to either luck, or an extremely long design-development cycle (throughout which you will be harangued endlessly by all manner of people who have a stake in the game's release--financiers, fans, investors, and a host of others as well). Money will always be a strong lure for successful products, but once you walk that path, it's extremely difficult, if at all possible, to leave it.
Requiescat in Pace, WoW. And thanks to the few that have, or ever did, read my blog--I miss the days when reading the latest theorycrafting posts or role play stories were a fun daily activity for me. You all made the game much more special than any "Battle.net friend updates" could ever do, and it made me feel like part of the community to maintain my own slice of it here.
Showing posts with label me. Show all posts
Showing posts with label me. Show all posts
Monday, August 8, 2011
Monday, July 26, 2010
Two steps closer to a 10 man drake...
... one more step to go.
Downed Heroic Sindragosa in my mage's 10-man last night, and we went on to pick up Been Waiting a Long Time For This as well, which for many people finished off their meta-achievement and stuffed a dead dragon mount in their mailbox. Woo hoo!
Just one more to go for me. All You Can Eat, which I picked up on my paladin instead of my mage when we went for it due to lack of a second healer, seems like a total cake-walk now after having dealt with Heroic Sindragosa.
My wife swears she will never again suffer through that fight, and I can't say I blame her. What an awful combination of unforgiving, irritating mechanics, glitchy code and at times frustrating RNG elements.
Blistering Cold is a perfect example. Several times we had people die from 30k-40k+ hits while standing at the bottom of the stairs. That's a frustrating headscratcher. Then, there's having one healer get blocked and another one get Unchained Magic during phase 3, leaving one last healer to somehow manage to keep the raid alive through relentless AoE damage, chain cooldowns on the tanks at the appropriate moments, and not to mention, keeping those tanks alive and topped off as well.
Eeeew.
Then, you have the stupid boneheaded things that people normally do on Sindragosa for some reason, like when I miscounted Frost Bombs during the air phase and got one-shot by the fourth one. I'm surprised my combat log didn't list that damage source as "stupidity."
Fortunately, we had one hell of a healing squad on point tonight, and we managed to get her taken care of within a mere hour and a half, including one horrifying wipe with the boss at 20,000 hp left. Hooray for awesome healers, and a 30% buff! I'm positive that Heroic Sindragosa is the only fight in which a halfway-competent raid could use the help provided by Strength of Wrynn. Had the buff been only 15%, we may have struggled for twice that amount of time.
Been Waiting a Long Time For This was a relaxing walk in the park after that, taking only two attempts, and that only because of an unfortunate incident involving an out-of-control Shambler while waiting for the plague stacks to build up.
Next week - time to get a dead dragon mount of my own!
Downed Heroic Sindragosa in my mage's 10-man last night, and we went on to pick up Been Waiting a Long Time For This as well, which for many people finished off their meta-achievement and stuffed a dead dragon mount in their mailbox. Woo hoo!
Just one more to go for me. All You Can Eat, which I picked up on my paladin instead of my mage when we went for it due to lack of a second healer, seems like a total cake-walk now after having dealt with Heroic Sindragosa.
My wife swears she will never again suffer through that fight, and I can't say I blame her. What an awful combination of unforgiving, irritating mechanics, glitchy code and at times frustrating RNG elements.
Blistering Cold is a perfect example. Several times we had people die from 30k-40k+ hits while standing at the bottom of the stairs. That's a frustrating headscratcher. Then, there's having one healer get blocked and another one get Unchained Magic during phase 3, leaving one last healer to somehow manage to keep the raid alive through relentless AoE damage, chain cooldowns on the tanks at the appropriate moments, and not to mention, keeping those tanks alive and topped off as well.
Eeeew.
Then, you have the stupid boneheaded things that people normally do on Sindragosa for some reason, like when I miscounted Frost Bombs during the air phase and got one-shot by the fourth one. I'm surprised my combat log didn't list that damage source as "stupidity."
Fortunately, we had one hell of a healing squad on point tonight, and we managed to get her taken care of within a mere hour and a half, including one horrifying wipe with the boss at 20,000 hp left. Hooray for awesome healers, and a 30% buff! I'm positive that Heroic Sindragosa is the only fight in which a halfway-competent raid could use the help provided by Strength of Wrynn. Had the buff been only 15%, we may have struggled for twice that amount of time.
Been Waiting a Long Time For This was a relaxing walk in the park after that, taking only two attempts, and that only because of an unfortunate incident involving an out-of-control Shambler while waiting for the plague stacks to build up.
Next week - time to get a dead dragon mount of my own!
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Explanations, and a New Main
I've been absent from Shadow Priest blogging for a while not because I got bored, or quit WoW (although I've come close a few times, I think). I just switched my main to my mage, located back on Zul'jin where my wife and I were playing last year before transferring to KT in the final months of BC.
Posting about mage theorycrafting doesn't seem to fit in a blog titled "A Shadow Priest," hence the lack of activity. I appreciate that some of my older posts are still getting comments -- I like seeing that I wasn't just talking to thin air (but I wouldn't necessarily care if that was the case, either!).
In the past couple months, I've been dedicated to my mage and finally got back into 25-mans about mid-August. He's about as geared out as one can get without dipping into Heroic 25-mans, pretty much. I also transferred my priest back to ZJ as well. I suppose I should update my bio on the right sometime.
I'm starting to get bored as getting gear is way too easy when you clear 10 and 25 man ToC and 10 and 25 Onyxia every week. Hell, it was easy before I was doing that. After a couple weeks I finally got enough people to get interested in going back to Ulduar, and finally saw Thorim, Vezax, and Yogg for the first time -- sadly enough. We're wiping on Yogg's second phase, but that encounter is everything I was hoping it would be. It beats ToC hands down.
I especially like and enjoy encounters designed not to be brute-forced through gear. They show thought and effort on the part of the design team, and other than Ulduar, that sort of effort isn't really apparent in the raids so far implemented in this expansion. 80s are perfectly capable of wiping even in BWL these days. I've been in quite a few pugs myself who didn't bother listening to warning to avoid standing in front of Ebonroc, for instance, or to avoid Nef's shadowflame.
We're not likely to ever do much in H-ToC25, due to too much dead weight on the roster, but H-ToC10 is still a possibility. This is an unfortunate truth, but given the direction raiding has been going since WoTLK launched, and Blizzard's stance towards universal content delivery, it's kind of to be expected, although I'm not a fan of it. Lackluster performance and minimal drive to succeed are simply a natural consequence of the level of (gear) quality being so high these days, compared to what's actually required for the current content. Improving skills and performance in order to push progression content is simply not necessary when your gear is already compensating for so much in the regular runs, but not enough to bridge the gap to the hardmodes/Heroic modes. Many people in the guild who might be interested in Heroic modes for the rewards in doing so aren't interested in putting up with the weaker links that we would have to bring in in order to make those attempts.
Blizzard really, really fucked up with ToC, in so many ways. It's a mistake in every way.
This is turning into a much larger post, so I'll cut it here. Hope to write more in the future. May be mage-related more than priest-related, so fair warning.
Posting about mage theorycrafting doesn't seem to fit in a blog titled "A Shadow Priest," hence the lack of activity. I appreciate that some of my older posts are still getting comments -- I like seeing that I wasn't just talking to thin air (but I wouldn't necessarily care if that was the case, either!).
In the past couple months, I've been dedicated to my mage and finally got back into 25-mans about mid-August. He's about as geared out as one can get without dipping into Heroic 25-mans, pretty much. I also transferred my priest back to ZJ as well. I suppose I should update my bio on the right sometime.
I'm starting to get bored as getting gear is way too easy when you clear 10 and 25 man ToC and 10 and 25 Onyxia every week. Hell, it was easy before I was doing that. After a couple weeks I finally got enough people to get interested in going back to Ulduar, and finally saw Thorim, Vezax, and Yogg for the first time -- sadly enough. We're wiping on Yogg's second phase, but that encounter is everything I was hoping it would be. It beats ToC hands down.
I especially like and enjoy encounters designed not to be brute-forced through gear. They show thought and effort on the part of the design team, and other than Ulduar, that sort of effort isn't really apparent in the raids so far implemented in this expansion. 80s are perfectly capable of wiping even in BWL these days. I've been in quite a few pugs myself who didn't bother listening to warning to avoid standing in front of Ebonroc, for instance, or to avoid Nef's shadowflame.
We're not likely to ever do much in H-ToC25, due to too much dead weight on the roster, but H-ToC10 is still a possibility. This is an unfortunate truth, but given the direction raiding has been going since WoTLK launched, and Blizzard's stance towards universal content delivery, it's kind of to be expected, although I'm not a fan of it. Lackluster performance and minimal drive to succeed are simply a natural consequence of the level of (gear) quality being so high these days, compared to what's actually required for the current content. Improving skills and performance in order to push progression content is simply not necessary when your gear is already compensating for so much in the regular runs, but not enough to bridge the gap to the hardmodes/Heroic modes. Many people in the guild who might be interested in Heroic modes for the rewards in doing so aren't interested in putting up with the weaker links that we would have to bring in in order to make those attempts.
Blizzard really, really fucked up with ToC, in so many ways. It's a mistake in every way.
This is turning into a much larger post, so I'll cut it here. Hope to write more in the future. May be mage-related more than priest-related, so fair warning.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
New widget
I'm a little unreasonably proud of it, but I changed the default label widget to a more trendy cloud-type widget.
It's my first time playing with CSS/XHTML, but it wasn't too hard to figure out.
Woot. :)
It's my first time playing with CSS/XHTML, but it wasn't too hard to figure out.
Woot. :)
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Real life intervenes, again
Going to have to delay part 2 for now, as work is picking up more and more every day. I may have time for a post tomorrow or the day after if I'm lucky.
In my free minutes at work, I'm watching the Priest Q&A thread on the WoW forums as closely as I can. I wish they would allow RSS feeds for forum threads because I'd be all over that feature. Merlot over at Misery had some interesting questions for the developers to answer that I'm looking forward to seeing. Here's hoping they get to them.
In my free minutes at work, I'm watching the Priest Q&A thread on the WoW forums as closely as I can. I wish they would allow RSS feeds for forum threads because I'd be all over that feature. Merlot over at Misery had some interesting questions for the developers to answer that I'm looking forward to seeing. Here's hoping they get to them.
Friday, May 22, 2009
Lack of updates
My upcoming marriage and honeymoon have caused WoW to be put on the back burner (in terms of mental activity and priorities) for the moment, which explains the lack of updating.
I hope to return to serious posting(tm) afterwards. My future wife and I expect to get much more in-depth with raiding. Hopefully this will allow us to push through some of the current barriers we're running into.
Until then... see you later!
I hope to return to serious posting(tm) afterwards. My future wife and I expect to get much more in-depth with raiding. Hopefully this will allow us to push through some of the current barriers we're running into.
Until then... see you later!
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Coming up
Stuff I'd like to accomplish (WoW-related) in the next couple weeks:
- Finish levelling enchanting to at least 400
- Continue working on Netherdrake rep (I seriously want one for some reason. I think I have always been jealous of those people flying around on them in BC). Want to get exalted in two weeks with some lucky egg farming.
- Make a Wispcloak for my healing set.
- Enchant my healing set, including head and shoulders. Consider using Cowl of Vanity (gemmed and enchanted) for my healing helm instead of Cowl of Innocent Delight as I am now. Was going to save Vanity for a DPS helm once I got enough +hit to replace Faerlina's Madness but Ulduar is shifting priorities. I don't want to spend 250g doing that to only replace it in a week.
- If I swap helms, it seems likely I will have to switch in Legwraps of the Defeated Dragon (which is arguably only a marginal upgrade if at all) to replace Leggings of the Instructor, an awesome item even though they come from 10 man Naxx, just to make up that +hit. I was hoping to hold out for Kel'thuzad's leggings, but the likelihood of getting those if they drop is slim. However swapping out Leggings of the Instructor when in Shadow spec will make them into full-time healing legs, a role they excel at.
- Run 10 man naxx for some non-dps items to fill out my healing offset. Notably belt and neck. As a corollary, pick up whatever's available in 25 man Naxx. If we actually run it. Otherwise 25 man Naxx is getting pugged like whoa, bads and all.
- Work on fishing and cooking now that those balls-tastic quests to progress past 225 are gone. Considering letting Zerkker be my cook and fisherman, but it will be a while before I can cook useful food for my priest if I go that route.
- Somehow find the time to do enough dailies to fund all this AND pay for progression raids 3 nights a week.
This is all a tall order. The money issue is a big one, as the gear switching, if I go ahead with it, will gain me very little actual improvement in exchange for 500g all told (about 350g for the gems, 160g for the enchantments). Considering I hit 4000 dps fairly easily I don't think anything's particularly wrong with my gear setup that I would need to fix right now. I'm not going to be zerging 10 man Sarth+3 anytime soon, but that wasn't in the cards anyway.
And this is all assuming I have the time to accomplish any of this.
Ignis and XT
Last night we made some attempts at XT-002 Deconstructor and Ignis the Furnace Master. And yes, there were lots of crotch jokes on Ignis. I think we added a couple new words and phrases to our guild lexicon on that one.Although we didn't down either of them, we made some progress. I'm going to go through some of the things we learned both for my benefit and the benefit of any readers (yeah, right).
- There was a rumor going around that killing Ignis adds 1 minute to the enrage timer on XT. This is false.
- Ignis' and XT's trash really isn't so hard on 25 man. At least that, or we've gotten much better at dealing with them.
- Positioning is key on Ignis. For that fight, our best attempt had all of the casters grouped up at the center of the room while the MT shuffles Ignis back and forth in front of the waterfall pool, angling him so that the scorches don't fall into the water. The problem with this strategy is that the Scorch patches make kiting the adds through them difficult for the OTs. Walking right in front of Ignis a whole bunch of times is just asking for it.
- Our sticking point at the moment with Ignis is our kiting strategy. Slag Pot (aka "crotchal") duty is handled. MT heals are handled. We only lose our MT or any crotched player when the buff stack on Ignis becomes too high for us to handle healing the MT and healers have to shift their attention (futilely, but it's the natural reaction). If the MT is going to die, it usually happens during or immediately after Flame Jets.
- I fucking blow at Disc healing (my dual spec). At least I have some good excuses. My offset, while including a couple best-in-slot healing pieces pre-3.1, is really shoddily prepared. I also am using a +hit necklace solely because it has Spirit on it, and a cloak and a belt (the belt with +hit on it no less) with all DPS stats on it simply for lacking a better option. My Shadow spec boots pull double duty as healing boots (best in slot, natch). Thus I heal with Icewalker on my boots like all the pros do. Though, admittedly, Icewalker is a halfway decent enchantment for a Disc healer. Also, Discipline-spec healing is much much different from what I was used to as a long-time Holy-spec healer. Much more fast paced, almost no OO5SR (Out Of Five Second Rule) dancing, spamming Power Word: Shield (which, by the way, is AMAZING with Disc talents)... it's a bit too much too much to process and perform at the moment, although I'm getting better quickly.
- Penance and PW:S are the best spells for a Disc healer on this fight (MT duty and Slag Pot duty). Along with the obvious bouncy-bouncy PoM. Slap your raid leader if you're Disc and s/he puts you on raid healing (gasp) . Actually, if s/he puts you on anything BUT single-target healing.
- Flame Leviathan is much, much more fun with 25 people. :)
I'm confident we'll get Ignis down on Friday (although, myself and my beautiful wife-to-be will not be able to attend). I'm equally confident that Razorscale, once Ignis is down, will suddenly seem to get much easier. She may well go down on Friday as well.
Next up, a general status post.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
On money issues
I'd like to point out that at the moment, I have 146 gold on all of my characters combined. And on top of that, 120g or so is on my level 29 warrior alt.
Dual spec has really cleaned me out. That, and spending 80-100g on repairs on Sunday. Time to grind dailies again tonight I suppose. It would be easier if playing Zerkker wasn't just so much damn fun! I'm sure I'm not the only one to have this issue with their alts.
Dual spec has really cleaned me out. That, and spending 80-100g on repairs on Sunday. Time to grind dailies again tonight I suppose. It would be easier if playing Zerkker wasn't just so much damn fun! I'm sure I'm not the only one to have this issue with their alts.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Thoughts on Ulduar
Wow, I was really unprepared for Patch 3.1 this week. My offset wasn't enchanted, incomplete, and I didn't even have enough money for dual spec! I had several real-life plans this week that conflicted with raiding that I had made thinking 3.1 was still at least a week or two off. I'm sure others did as well, and we had poor attendance as a result.
Now we're stuck on Razorscale, Emalon kicked our ass, and we've gotten a nasty shock about our abilities as raiders on progression content.
As others have observed, Ulduar is much harder than Naxx. Someone said that Naxx made them a worse player. I'd tend to agree.
Fortunately, I think once people get back into the groove of making progression attempts, after having been so long without any, things will get much smoother. For now, though, like last night's raid, progression will be painful. Sort of like going back to the gym after a long hiatus.
Now then, on to specific comments about bosses.
Flame Leviathan - I wasn't present for the 25-man version of the fight, but I did it on 10 man just fine. Very well-done fight. I think this proves that Blizzard is finally getting vehicles, and by extension, vehicle-based encounters, right.
Ignis - I guess this is what Blizzard meant when they said they were making trash harder in Ulduar. Wow. Still, they are doable. I wasn't present for the actual attempt on this boss, but I wanted to comment on the insanity of these Molten Giants compared to, say, Naxx trash. From the write-ups, Ignis himself seems to be of compareable difficulty to Razorscale, perhaps with less emphasis on healers and more on raid coordination (as I've said before... not our strongest suit).
Razorscale - Fun fight. I did this as both Shadow and Discipline spec (I switched mid attempts). It's definitely a healer-tank fight. Didn't seem particularly hard though. I did have some issues staying out of the fire... I'm not used to having to move when I'm healing. A Penance channel caused me to die because I foolishly waited for the spell to finish before I moved. Keep in mind it's just slightly more than one second with my haste rating. That was enough to end me, shields, heals, and all. We're changing our setup a bit and I think our attempts will get much better. For the moment, 85% is our high score though.
In general, I'd have to say Patch 3.1 brings a lot of welcome changes to the table. I'm still sad that my Death Knight tank was destroyed in the name of dual-wield nerfing, and sacrificed on the altar of tank homogenity, but I'm enjoying the changes they made to Shadow spec a lot. Critting dots, an Unstable-Affliction-like change to Vampiric Touch, an Improved Devouring Plague talent... it's pretty awesome. I killed myself on one of the Emalon trash because I cast DP too early, forgetting the new initial damage component, and crit on the cast at the worst possible time. Hello trash mob... goodbye shadow priest. Definitely a "that guy" moment.
Now we're stuck on Razorscale, Emalon kicked our ass, and we've gotten a nasty shock about our abilities as raiders on progression content.
As others have observed, Ulduar is much harder than Naxx. Someone said that Naxx made them a worse player. I'd tend to agree.
Fortunately, I think once people get back into the groove of making progression attempts, after having been so long without any, things will get much smoother. For now, though, like last night's raid, progression will be painful. Sort of like going back to the gym after a long hiatus.
Now then, on to specific comments about bosses.
Flame Leviathan - I wasn't present for the 25-man version of the fight, but I did it on 10 man just fine. Very well-done fight. I think this proves that Blizzard is finally getting vehicles, and by extension, vehicle-based encounters, right.
Ignis - I guess this is what Blizzard meant when they said they were making trash harder in Ulduar. Wow. Still, they are doable. I wasn't present for the actual attempt on this boss, but I wanted to comment on the insanity of these Molten Giants compared to, say, Naxx trash. From the write-ups, Ignis himself seems to be of compareable difficulty to Razorscale, perhaps with less emphasis on healers and more on raid coordination (as I've said before... not our strongest suit).
Razorscale - Fun fight. I did this as both Shadow and Discipline spec (I switched mid attempts). It's definitely a healer-tank fight. Didn't seem particularly hard though. I did have some issues staying out of the fire... I'm not used to having to move when I'm healing. A Penance channel caused me to die because I foolishly waited for the spell to finish before I moved. Keep in mind it's just slightly more than one second with my haste rating. That was enough to end me, shields, heals, and all. We're changing our setup a bit and I think our attempts will get much better. For the moment, 85% is our high score though.
In general, I'd have to say Patch 3.1 brings a lot of welcome changes to the table. I'm still sad that my Death Knight tank was destroyed in the name of dual-wield nerfing, and sacrificed on the altar of tank homogenity, but I'm enjoying the changes they made to Shadow spec a lot. Critting dots, an Unstable-Affliction-like change to Vampiric Touch, an Improved Devouring Plague talent... it's pretty awesome. I killed myself on one of the Emalon trash because I cast DP too early, forgetting the new initial damage component, and crit on the cast at the worst possible time. Hello trash mob... goodbye shadow priest. Definitely a "that guy" moment.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Updates
Not much to post about recently, unfortunately. I'm working on getting several scattered objectives done in-game in during raid downtime.
I'm finally levelling enchanting, and working on getting that up. It's difficult after selling off most of my BC materials for cash flow long ago, when I wrote off enchanting as ever becoming relevant to me. I'm regretting that decision slightly now. I'm also monitoring the Bookclub channel and hearthing back to Dalaran and snagging the books when people report them up. It's the lazy man's way to a new pet. I quickly found that camping the spawn points was tedious, and time consuming, and not my thing at all.
Finally, I'm running old raids (did part of Sunwell last night) and trying to see the content I didn't get an opportunity to see in Burning Crusade. We wiped on Felmyst three times and almost wiped on Brutallus despite far overgearing the encounter. I can definitely see why Blizzard is moving away from these types of raids. The amount of min-maxing that was necessary to down these bosses at 70 was simply unfortunate. I quit at Eredar Twins (Mary Kate and Ashley?) but it seemed like that encounter was even more demanding than Felmyst was. I'd still like to see Kael'thas and Illidan (Vashj already taken care of). I'd also like to get into a discussion of Blizzard's raid design strategies and how they are changing, but I'll save that digression for a later time.
Updates in the raiding arena include big pushes to get all of our Heroic: Glory of the Raider done. It probably would have been done earlier had our guild been pushed to do so, but getting some people to wrap their heads around the new raiding model seems to be difficult. Completing the current content as-is is no longer "enough" to be considered hard-core. Not that I care about that necessarily, but the fact remains that the content isn't much of a challenge that way. Fortunately, now it's been made clear that completing those achievements is a big deal and as much a part of progression as anything else. We'll see if these pushes will exacerbate the attendance problem that we're having at the moment because most people consider us "done" with 3.0 until 3.1.
3 Drake Sartharion is still an issue, despite the fact that we're insanely overgeared for it. We're now able to consistently kill Tenebron before Shadron lands, and yet still lose people to Flame Wall and Void Zones. Execution is a BIG problem, needless to say. The more we practice it, the more we can see that this encounter is really not as hard as it's being made out to be. Seeing that and continuing to fail at it is demoralizing, to say the least. Simply replacing those people that consistently fail at it is unfortunately not an option. If there was a method of penalizing people that fail at Void Zones and Flame Wall in a way that wouldn't contribute to the attendance problem, I can't think of it. Unfortunately, simply completing 3 Drake Sartharion is the least of our problems if we're going to actually finish Heroic: Glory of the Raider.
An even bigger problem we're going to have is with Heroic: You Don't Have an Eternity aka "6 minute Malygos." Our best kill, a one-shot last Wednesday, took approximately 8 minutes, 30 seconds. Although we haven't tried the alternate strategy specifically for a 6 minute attempt (all ranged in one spot on the outer ring, all melee killing the lords), I can only fear for the results when we do if execution in encounters continues to be a problem.
Also, last Wednesday we missed Heroic: Shocking and Heroic: The Safety Dance because of one person (though different people) on both attempts. On Heigan, the fail was so close to the end of the fight we didn't even have time to wipe it and start over. We were that close. The Thaddius fail was right at the beginning of the fight, but at that point our achievement run was pretty much over and I think it was a wise decision to not attempt a second try. Our track record with that encounter isn't the best. I think that says a lot right there. Fortunately, as long as we have the healers, Heroic: And They Would All Go Down Together isn't too bad. The strategy for that fight is much more like the original version of 4 Horseman, and I think it will be equal parts of fun and frustration.
If we manage to get all of those achievements done, I would guess a good plan could be to award the best achievers with Heroic: Subtraction, Heroic: A Poke In The Eye, and Heroic: The Dedicated Few runs. Then we would try for The Immortal.
Ouch. We need three weeks, if we really turn this around, to complete this achievement, and that's if we one-shot The Immortal. I can hope (yeah, right. I know). Otherwise we can practically kiss any chance of getting a Val'anyr any time this millenium goodbye.
I'm finally levelling enchanting, and working on getting that up. It's difficult after selling off most of my BC materials for cash flow long ago, when I wrote off enchanting as ever becoming relevant to me. I'm regretting that decision slightly now. I'm also monitoring the Bookclub channel and hearthing back to Dalaran and snagging the books when people report them up. It's the lazy man's way to a new pet. I quickly found that camping the spawn points was tedious, and time consuming, and not my thing at all.
Finally, I'm running old raids (did part of Sunwell last night) and trying to see the content I didn't get an opportunity to see in Burning Crusade. We wiped on Felmyst three times and almost wiped on Brutallus despite far overgearing the encounter. I can definitely see why Blizzard is moving away from these types of raids. The amount of min-maxing that was necessary to down these bosses at 70 was simply unfortunate. I quit at Eredar Twins (Mary Kate and Ashley?) but it seemed like that encounter was even more demanding than Felmyst was. I'd still like to see Kael'thas and Illidan (Vashj already taken care of). I'd also like to get into a discussion of Blizzard's raid design strategies and how they are changing, but I'll save that digression for a later time.
Updates in the raiding arena include big pushes to get all of our Heroic: Glory of the Raider done. It probably would have been done earlier had our guild been pushed to do so, but getting some people to wrap their heads around the new raiding model seems to be difficult. Completing the current content as-is is no longer "enough" to be considered hard-core. Not that I care about that necessarily, but the fact remains that the content isn't much of a challenge that way. Fortunately, now it's been made clear that completing those achievements is a big deal and as much a part of progression as anything else. We'll see if these pushes will exacerbate the attendance problem that we're having at the moment because most people consider us "done" with 3.0 until 3.1.
3 Drake Sartharion is still an issue, despite the fact that we're insanely overgeared for it. We're now able to consistently kill Tenebron before Shadron lands, and yet still lose people to Flame Wall and Void Zones. Execution is a BIG problem, needless to say. The more we practice it, the more we can see that this encounter is really not as hard as it's being made out to be. Seeing that and continuing to fail at it is demoralizing, to say the least. Simply replacing those people that consistently fail at it is unfortunately not an option. If there was a method of penalizing people that fail at Void Zones and Flame Wall in a way that wouldn't contribute to the attendance problem, I can't think of it. Unfortunately, simply completing 3 Drake Sartharion is the least of our problems if we're going to actually finish Heroic: Glory of the Raider.
An even bigger problem we're going to have is with Heroic: You Don't Have an Eternity aka "6 minute Malygos." Our best kill, a one-shot last Wednesday, took approximately 8 minutes, 30 seconds. Although we haven't tried the alternate strategy specifically for a 6 minute attempt (all ranged in one spot on the outer ring, all melee killing the lords), I can only fear for the results when we do if execution in encounters continues to be a problem.
Also, last Wednesday we missed Heroic: Shocking and Heroic: The Safety Dance because of one person (though different people) on both attempts. On Heigan, the fail was so close to the end of the fight we didn't even have time to wipe it and start over. We were that close. The Thaddius fail was right at the beginning of the fight, but at that point our achievement run was pretty much over and I think it was a wise decision to not attempt a second try. Our track record with that encounter isn't the best. I think that says a lot right there. Fortunately, as long as we have the healers, Heroic: And They Would All Go Down Together isn't too bad. The strategy for that fight is much more like the original version of 4 Horseman, and I think it will be equal parts of fun and frustration.
If we manage to get all of those achievements done, I would guess a good plan could be to award the best achievers with Heroic: Subtraction, Heroic: A Poke In The Eye, and Heroic: The Dedicated Few runs. Then we would try for The Immortal.
Ouch. We need three weeks, if we really turn this around, to complete this achievement, and that's if we one-shot The Immortal. I can hope (yeah, right. I know). Otherwise we can practically kiss any chance of getting a Val'anyr any time this millenium goodbye.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Malygos = STILL ALIVE WTF
Last night was an exercise in patience for everyone. We spent the whole night trying to kill Malygos-25 because lag was so bad the entire raid would freeze up for 20 seconds every so often, and then came the DCs. By the time everyone reconnected, we were dead (shocker).
Other fun things happened. I got killed one pull by an out of control Nexus Lord at the start of phase 2 (no, I was not aoe-ing, I have no idea why the tank lost threat on his primary target). I got a b-rez and almost immediately (within 1-2 seconds) I got double barraged by a Scion. Sheesh.
And the few pulls we got completely free of lag with all 25 people alive going into phase 3 were inevitably ruined because some people STILL cannot get the hang of phase 3 of that fight. He's been on farm for, what, a month and a half now? I don't understand what's so hard about it. God only knows what these drake-retarded people would have done in BWL or AQ. Oh wait, that's it... not raid. I mean, I don't think I'm an especially skilled player, but I went into phase 3 on all but one of our pulls and I consistently rolled 20+ stacks and didn't die till the enrage. I'm sure I'm not the only one who can do this. We should be able to do 6 minute Malygos by now, not still struggling with execution.
Seriously: 3 buttons, 2 directions, 2 enemy abilities to watch out for. How hard is it, really? It's like playing an arcade game. Only the arcade game is for kids. Kids with Downs syndrome.
Other fun things happened. I got killed one pull by an out of control Nexus Lord at the start of phase 2 (no, I was not aoe-ing, I have no idea why the tank lost threat on his primary target). I got a b-rez and almost immediately (within 1-2 seconds) I got double barraged by a Scion. Sheesh.
And the few pulls we got completely free of lag with all 25 people alive going into phase 3 were inevitably ruined because some people STILL cannot get the hang of phase 3 of that fight. He's been on farm for, what, a month and a half now? I don't understand what's so hard about it. God only knows what these drake-retarded people would have done in BWL or AQ. Oh wait, that's it... not raid. I mean, I don't think I'm an especially skilled player, but I went into phase 3 on all but one of our pulls and I consistently rolled 20+ stacks and didn't die till the enrage. I'm sure I'm not the only one who can do this. We should be able to do 6 minute Malygos by now, not still struggling with execution.
Seriously: 3 buttons, 2 directions, 2 enemy abilities to watch out for. How hard is it, really? It's like playing an arcade game. Only the arcade game is for kids. Kids with Downs syndrome.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
New alt
So I just started a warrior ... again.
Currently level 4. Having a Bloodied Arcanite Reaper is a nice dose of nostalgia and OP-ness. You don't even know until you try it.
Currently level 4. Having a Bloodied Arcanite Reaper is a nice dose of nostalgia and OP-ness. You don't even know until you try it.
State of a shadow priest
I suppose my first actual post should be a summary of some kind of where I feel shadow priests stand in relation to other classes and roles in WoW, as well as a biography of my own experience as a priest. Should be easy, right?
Shadow priests have come a long way since vanilla. Even though I was primarily a healer throughout pre-BC content, and almost all shadow spec throughout BC, I have some cross-spec experience in both eras. In vanilla, summarizing shadow priests is fairly easy: we were a diet warlock. One calorie, no carbs. Our best use was stacking Shadow Weaving on targets to boost the damage of the warlocks in the raid. Damage, even in decent gear (which I actually had, surprisingly enough), was abysmal. Vampiric Touch didn't exist, and Vampiric Embrace was a sub-par ability. If you were a shadow specced level 60, most people would call you a noob and tell you to go heal. Of course, this was also the period during which Discipline was an awesome healing tree and Holy, in comparison, was woefully underpowered until Priests finally got their second talent review.
In Burning Crusade, the addition of Vampiric Touch to our arsenal was a huge hook in the opposite direction. Suddenly healing priests were hard to find in the upper echelons of raids. Some top-end guilds completely lacked healing priests of any kind. Shadow priests were the indispensible mana-batteries of the raid. Our damage still sucked, but at least we could do more than a trickle of healing. Instead, we were needed solely to give caster-dps classes and healers the longevity they needed for boss encounters. Our damage abilities were just gravy. It wasn't even until later on in BC, when gear improved, that shadow priests began to do respectable damage. The fantastic scaling abilities of Vampiric Embrace all but guaranteed a raid spot for well-geared shadow priests. I would estimate I spent 90-95% of my raiding time as shadow spec, speccing holy for brief periods for a refreshing change of pace. And then patch 3.0.1 happened.
Everything changed. Shadow priests were finally a dps class, at the cost of our wonderful ability to restore mana. Instead of mana return, gear levels were measured in dps. Mind Flay could crit. Mind Blast no longer drew tremendous amounts of aggro, finally making it the primary dps ability it wanted to be throughout BC. Devouring Plague was no longer the horrendously overpowered racial class ability of undead priests (*tear*). In many respects, we were much more like warlocks.
At first, I found this confusing, and annoying. "What good is 0.25% mana per second?" I asked. Replenishment seemed a pale shadow of Vampiric Touch, a woefully inadequate bone thrown to what I saw as a spec gutted to the core. I could see my raid spot fading away as I competed with pure dps classes now instead of having a niche of my own. Wrath of the Lich King came out and I started a Death Knight, spending most of the first months of the expansion levelling the Flavor of the Month and making half-hearted attempts to return to my priest. I lamented the loss of our indispensibility and waxed nostalgic about our halcyon days of yore.
When I finally returned to my poor, neglected shadow priest (after a brief flirtation with levelling as Holy) I found something shocking--doing damage was fun. All I needed was a fresh perspective. Once I got my head out of the past and wrapped my brain around the new, improved shadow priest, I found myself actually enjoying it. Now, you couldn't tell me different. I finally saw the incredible improvements made to the spec, including the Shadow Weaving change (it never really made sense as a debuff on the target), a phenomenal AoE ability in the form of Mind Sear, the threat reduction while in shadowform, the talent to reduce and virtually eliminate spell pushback (one of my major complaints in BC), and many others I won't bother to continue to list. I cut my Death Knight out of my regular play experience, only hopping on to tank heroics and raids when desperately needed, and haven't looked back since.
Now, here I am almost fully Naxx-25 geared, averaging 3300 dps in a sub-optimal spec. I frequently outdamage mages (mages!) and never pull aggro, a common experience in BC. I can still restore your mana, and pew pew while doing it.
We've come a long, long, way baby.
Shadow priests have come a long way since vanilla. Even though I was primarily a healer throughout pre-BC content, and almost all shadow spec throughout BC, I have some cross-spec experience in both eras. In vanilla, summarizing shadow priests is fairly easy: we were a diet warlock. One calorie, no carbs. Our best use was stacking Shadow Weaving on targets to boost the damage of the warlocks in the raid. Damage, even in decent gear (which I actually had, surprisingly enough), was abysmal. Vampiric Touch didn't exist, and Vampiric Embrace was a sub-par ability. If you were a shadow specced level 60, most people would call you a noob and tell you to go heal. Of course, this was also the period during which Discipline was an awesome healing tree and Holy, in comparison, was woefully underpowered until Priests finally got their second talent review.
In Burning Crusade, the addition of Vampiric Touch to our arsenal was a huge hook in the opposite direction. Suddenly healing priests were hard to find in the upper echelons of raids. Some top-end guilds completely lacked healing priests of any kind. Shadow priests were the indispensible mana-batteries of the raid. Our damage still sucked, but at least we could do more than a trickle of healing. Instead, we were needed solely to give caster-dps classes and healers the longevity they needed for boss encounters. Our damage abilities were just gravy. It wasn't even until later on in BC, when gear improved, that shadow priests began to do respectable damage. The fantastic scaling abilities of Vampiric Embrace all but guaranteed a raid spot for well-geared shadow priests. I would estimate I spent 90-95% of my raiding time as shadow spec, speccing holy for brief periods for a refreshing change of pace. And then patch 3.0.1 happened.
Everything changed. Shadow priests were finally a dps class, at the cost of our wonderful ability to restore mana. Instead of mana return, gear levels were measured in dps. Mind Flay could crit. Mind Blast no longer drew tremendous amounts of aggro, finally making it the primary dps ability it wanted to be throughout BC. Devouring Plague was no longer the horrendously overpowered racial class ability of undead priests (*tear*). In many respects, we were much more like warlocks.
At first, I found this confusing, and annoying. "What good is 0.25% mana per second?" I asked. Replenishment seemed a pale shadow of Vampiric Touch, a woefully inadequate bone thrown to what I saw as a spec gutted to the core. I could see my raid spot fading away as I competed with pure dps classes now instead of having a niche of my own. Wrath of the Lich King came out and I started a Death Knight, spending most of the first months of the expansion levelling the Flavor of the Month and making half-hearted attempts to return to my priest. I lamented the loss of our indispensibility and waxed nostalgic about our halcyon days of yore.
When I finally returned to my poor, neglected shadow priest (after a brief flirtation with levelling as Holy) I found something shocking--doing damage was fun. All I needed was a fresh perspective. Once I got my head out of the past and wrapped my brain around the new, improved shadow priest, I found myself actually enjoying it. Now, you couldn't tell me different. I finally saw the incredible improvements made to the spec, including the Shadow Weaving change (it never really made sense as a debuff on the target), a phenomenal AoE ability in the form of Mind Sear, the threat reduction while in shadowform, the talent to reduce and virtually eliminate spell pushback (one of my major complaints in BC), and many others I won't bother to continue to list. I cut my Death Knight out of my regular play experience, only hopping on to tank heroics and raids when desperately needed, and haven't looked back since.
Now, here I am almost fully Naxx-25 geared, averaging 3300 dps in a sub-optimal spec. I frequently outdamage mages (mages!) and never pull aggro, a common experience in BC. I can still restore your mana, and pew pew while doing it.
We've come a long, long, way baby.
Hi
Hi, and welcome to the inaugeral post of A Shadow Priest. This is my first attempt at blogging since I had a Livejournal back in high school, so I wouldn't be surprised if it's a little touch-and-go for a while. Mainly this will be a World of Warcraft blog about my favorite class (Priests) and my primary spec (Shadow), but there will be a fair amount of other random assorted crap thrown in. At the moment I don't really have a more specific focus, so I suppose I'll just see how it goes.
If you are easily offended by profanity or dirty jokes you probably shouldn't read any of this blog. Fair warning.
If you are easily offended by profanity or dirty jokes you probably shouldn't read any of this blog. Fair warning.
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