Decoding Dragons

And now for something completely different

I’ve not been able to post partly because the response to the monster post has been somewhat overwhelming. I’ve learned quite a lot, I’ve been told things I already knew a lot, as if I should be surprised that the ‘world is dominated by men and therefore they are going to market to men because that is what sells.’*

Also the idea that I go around looking for things to be offended by is kinda old. I don’t do that. I spend most of my time playing and ignoring the nekkid elf on the mail box. However I’m also observant and if I notice something and want to talk about it, I will.

Pewter in Beta

I was going to do videos! And fabulous screenshot posts! And analysis of how well Unleashed Weapon functions! And then the Sexism post kind of got a lot of attention and I started playing Beta to have fun. So far I have arsed around in the Goblin and Worgen starter areas, and levelled my main to 81 in Vashj’ir. I am not good with flying sims in general, and swimming in Azeroth has always been a headache, but I think Blizzard have done a fabulous job with Vashj’ir. The underwater mount doesn’t feel awkward, and the depths and heights don’t feel too bewildering. The initial starting sub-zone has some really fun quests, although I can see some gamers who have better reflexes than me being bored to tears IF they aren’t engaged by the storyline or entranced by the underwater fantasy land that Blizz have created.

So far I am not enjoying the Lava Surge mechanic. It comes into it’s own on mobs that live longer, but spending all my time watching for that proc and trying to keep track of Flame Shock and Unleash Elements with the base UI is kind of not that fun while questing. I find myself wasting those procs, and the timing of Unleash Elements I shall have to reserve judgement on until I actually get into a dungeon. I also wonder whether my gear is really….correct because even with totems my spells feel underpowered. I’ve deliberated started replacing some of my gear with greens in order to get some Mastery Rating, but I might just switch back to my purples.

Temporary Short Cuts

I did make the mistake of going to Vashj’ir and then hearthing out. If you have a 310% mount you can fly back to the zone from the mainland, but as an Alliance character I can’t find any easy teleports (that work, and continue to work after you’ve been to the zone for the first time) and the flightpath that connects the zone to Ironforge seems to be only one way. I’ve now moved on the Mount Hyjal, although I’m facing the same issue. I guess I might actually have to take a portal from Darnassus and travel there in a more traditional way! It’s funny, with the changes to levelling and LFD I’ve gotten so used to instant travel that the idea of getting to a zone the old fashioned way because I left to train seems strange and alien. My Vanilla self is probably cackling loudly somewhere.

Creepy Clones vs Irreverent Nasty

I started the Worgen and Goblin starter areas. Of the two, the Goblins were light hearted and silly but I don’t really care about them at all. They’re nasty and ruthless, and literally everything is a bad pun or a joke, so they are nasty, ruthless and trivial and I just don’t care about them enough to want to know what happens. Of course, my Goblin is only level 5 at the moment, but I just didn’t find myself sucked into the story in the same way that Vashj’ir sucks me in. This is not to say that the Goblin zone and story isn’t appealling, it just doesn’t appeal to me personally in the same way that the Worgen zone des.

The Worgen starting area is beautiful. I love the atmosphere, and I can’t wait to see the polished, live version. As a zone it feels much more linear so far – the Goblin starter zone definitely has a dynamic feeling to it, while the Worgen Zone is much more like a graphic novel or a movie. I like the British accents, except for the female voice actor who sounds very Dick Van Dyke – the mockney accent is very grating and I ended up paying attention to her voice instead of what she was saying. It sounded wrong. Currently you can’t change the look of your worgen, so every player character is a bald male with a beard, and once they start congregating it definitely starts to look like Attack of the Creepy Clones.

I think both starting zones are a lot of fun, and they definitely put the old world zones to shame. This worries me, because I know a few people who trial the game via Vanilla. My experiences in the Dwarven starting zone were very lacklustre (although better than the ‘live’ version) and it’s these original races that new players will initially start with, rather than Draenei, Blood Elves, Goblins or Worgen. I think if Blizzard wants to retain more players from the trial, they need to put much more work into making these original race zones compelling (please note that I haven’t played with the other revised starting zones yet.)

So why no beta videos Pewter?

Uh. I kind got distracted.

worms inna cup

What. I HAD to make a gif out of it. It’s from the Worgen starting zone. I was innocently questing, trying to find a child and tell her to run to her mother, and I turned around and there was a giant pot of worms that twitched in fascinating ways.

* And as if it should come as a surprise to me that the Worgen female jokes are funny because they are puns on being a dog! If you can’t see that part of the humour in them is misogynist I don’t really know what else I can say about that (and no this is not the right post to tell me I’m wrong.)

And now for something completely different was published on August 9th, 2010, with the tags , , , , under the Meta-blog, Warcraft category. There are currently 17 comments on this article so far.

Identity is not a static thing

I’m somewhat fed up with seeing people complain about losing class or spec uniqueness. In The Burning Crusade I played a niche class, and was one of the only raiders who did so. I played on a crap computer and this caused my guild to take me along despite poor DPS, and a very low frame rate that caused me to have problems seeing stuff that was going to kill me. When the Replenishment mechanic was spread around the classes, I QQed because it was the only thing saving my raid spot.

Then I got over it. No more guilt for denying my guild a needed ability when I needed a night off. As a Shadow Priest I was no longer just about utility, and because of that I was able to contribute to DPS in my own shadowy way, and not as a mere supplemental warm body. Blizzard talks about iconic abilities so much, but I think we often make the mistake of confusing abilities for identity. A Shaman is more than their Heroism/Bloodlust. They do not lose their ability just because Mages are allowed to DANCE THE NIGHT AWAY.

Matticus points this out nicely with reference to healing, and healer identities. A single ability is not the backbone of class identity, and as the WoW community changes and grows over the years, the niche of a spec changes. Remember the time when BM was the joke of the whole community, it was the levelling spec and nowt more? And then BRK and some other bloggers came along and showed us what it was capable of and the identity of BM hunters changed.

Remember when Discipline was for PvP? Hell, when Shadow was for PvP? The players change the classes as much as the developers do, because they figure out what they want from a spec and use it that way, and the developers respond. These are complimenting strengths and specs that are growing out of what the player base enjoys doing. The way we see ourselves as a class changes over time. Shadow Priests have not turned into Warlocks. Warlocks are not really mages. Any change that enables a group of people to adapt and play what they want to play, without being forced to bring a certain composition is a good thing.

[quote]We are scaling back the magnitude of some of the buffs, as we did with Sunder Armor. We want you to feel awesome when you have strong good synergy, but we don’t want the buffs to overwhelm say your gear or skill. We’re also planning on getting rid of any talent that buffs a buff. Any buff that is earned solely by talent needs to have a selfish component thrown in so that you don’t feel like you should respec if someone else with that buff comes along.[/quote]

The above was posted by Ghostcrawler, of course, and is a good indicator what utility is really going to mean in Cataclysm. Instead of ‘utility’ being the identity for a given spec, such as it was at one time for discipline and the shaman class as a whole, utility is something everyone can bring. Identity is buried instead in play style and not a single all-encompassing thing like ‘utility’. Elemental has identity rooted in fire and lightning, in turret style play with great burst damage and sustained DPS. Enhancement is quick-hitting, a real dazzling whirlwind of shocks and spirits. Restoration is the power of the spirits replenishing and spreading through allies.

What we think our class is about, lore wise, is not always what the Devs see. All the grumbling over Shamans losing their ability to remove poisons and diseases was answered with this snippet. I’ve underlined what I feel is relevant.

[quote]It’s dangerous territory trying to defend game changes (or arguing against game changes) for lore reasons. While we take the lore very seriously, it’s a slippery thing that can be used to justify opposite points of view. For example, in our minds the mystical, yet perhaps provincial nature of druids and shaman make them well-suited for focusing on healing afflictions of the spirit (curses). Meanwhile, priests and paladins have a connection to urbanized society and advanced medicine (relative to a medieval / Renaissance / fantasy time period anyway), and are therefore more qualified to heal afflictions of the body (disease). Druids have a strong connection to animals and plants, so perhaps understanding the nature of toxins and venom makes sense. While shaman have an affinity for elements and spirits, you can stretch that too far and say that because they are tribal healers they should be capable of removing any malady that might strike down their people. It’s all very malleable stuff. We’re also not above evolving the lore when we think it’s absolutely necessary.[/quote]

I made the mistake of connecting Shamans too closely with nature, and priests with the mind. I still think that Priests with all their will and spirit focused spells are better for curing the spirit, but arguing with Blizzard’s interpretation is fruitless at this stage. They’ve taken one angle on the identity of shaman, and stuck to it. And I’m not displeased – it is so easy to confuse the Elements with Nature that more distinction between Druidic Identity and Shamanic Identity. This is a re-evaluation!

Edit: It seems like the mages are also tired of the QQ.

Identity is not a static thing was published on April 13th, 2010, with the tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , under the Meta-blog, Warcraft category. There are currently 4 comments on this article so far.

Third Glyph: Irrelevant

This post is piggy backing off the current status of our ‘third choice glyphs’. This post is a rant, and it is not always going to be logical. While I love the changed that 3.3.3 is bringing to my life, the changes to our third glyph slot feels somewhat irrelevant. While many other classes glyph and re-glyph to suit a certain play style, we get away with picking our 3 main glyphs and not changing our playstyle in any noticeable manner. Elemental, as much as I love it, is one of the most cookie cutter play styles and specs there is.

Glyphs as PTR v2

I am not totally familiar with the glyphs of other classes at this time, but most class/spec combos will have a set of 2 glyphs that are perceived as must have if you want to do good dps. For Elemental Shamans, this is Lightning Bolt and Totem of Wrath (as of 3.3.3.) The DPS/healing throughput increase from these two glyphs often far outweighs any others available to a player, making them somewhat mandatory.

This is somewhat at odds with the original point of Glyphs – which was things that would allow players to customise a character to a greater extent. If they are just there to improve on the spec, then what is the point, why not build the effect of the Glyph into the talent tree?

Question though. Why did you decide upon using Glyphs instead of Talents? This feels more like squeezing “mandatory” Glyphs down their throats.

Glyphs are typically less “mandatory” than talents. If the glyph proves to be a bad idea for someone, say it doesn’t improve damage or healing or it does but in a frustrating way because your rotation is painful, then players can just not use that glyph. If they want to swap glyphs from day to day or even fight to fight, they can do that. Changing the talents is a bigger deal and harder to avoid.
- Vaneras

So at this point we can view Glyphs as a test bed for future Talents, I think. Already we’ve seen many ‘glyphed’ things eventually become part of the base mechanics of a spell or talent tree. I can understand why the design team does this, but it somewhat sucks the fun out of having this additional customisation in the first place. Couple this ‘testing ground for changes philosophy’ with the following;

Glyphs are always going to feel mandatory for dps classes in PvE. Whichever glyphs are proven to be the highest dps increase will be the mandatory ones. That will only cease to be true if there is somehow so much variation in the trees that say some Fire mages use Scorch and glyph it, while others go with Living Bomb or Pyro or something and glyph those. But even within those sub-builds, certain glyphs would always be the right choice.
- Ghostcrawler

Choices With No Consequences

As the title of this post suggested, I am now calling our third glyph choice irrelevant. This may be the curse of the three way hybrid, but where a holy priest or paladin can glyph and spec differently, and as a result excel in a different healing situation, the Elemental glyph choice is a passive improvement. I’m not sure I am explaining this too well, but let me try and use Restoration Shamans as a contrast here.

Not only are there are a myriad of somewhat viable specs for Resto, but they have a choice of 3 glyphs for that third slot that will somewhat empower their preferred healing style/niche.  I know a lot of resto shamans moan, but I think they are one of the better designed and most fun classes/specs in the game at the moment. Or that might just be healers in general, I don’t know. This is, admittedly, because healing needs to be fun. I could envisage, as a pure healer, having two different resto specs and glyphs so that I can switch back and forth depending on the fight or healing niche.

Can I imagine that for Elemental? Not really. I imagine it is somewhat harder to balance different possible elemental specs. I’d love to see a return of Resto as the viable ‘second’ tree, for example. I am someone who does carry around stacks of glyphs in case I decide one would be more beneficial for a given fight, but I am a lazy elemental shaman and don’t bother using thunderstorm Glyph for trash.

Objects May Be Closer Than They Appear

While different encounters boost the value of a certain Glyph more than other glyphs, there is no implication or change to the way an Elemental Shaman will DPS inherent in the use of a different Glyph. A stand and nuke fight ‘boosts’ Flametongue Glyph, but it doesn’t change how we DPS. A high movement, multiple add fight requiring a lot of initial burst damage but less sustained DPS will logically favour Glyph of Lava. Yet that doesn’t mean a different spell priority is likely to be used for the most part.

What we know about 3.3.3 so far indicates that the gap between Flametongue and Lava is very tiny, and likely to be cancelled out by movement or lag. Even further, it shows that Flame Shock plays catch up at high levels of gear. While this is great, because it means we can go by personal preference, it doesn’t truly give us any flexibility or increase our capacity to do something different. That is partly a limitation of the PVE DPSer, I must admit. There are not many niches left in the DPS world these days, what with various classes bringing utility, burst dps, sustained dps, all in one.

I am well aware that I sound somewhat whiny, but if Glyphs are now PTR mk2 for Elemental Shamans, it somewhat takes the fun out of them. That is, if Glyphs are meant to be fun and interesting. I suspect that is a pertinent question: are there fun glyphs out there? What would make a glyph fun, as opposed to just mandatory for PVE.

What Would I Change?

I’m not entirely sure. Perhaps I would introduce a Glyph of Chain Lightning that did the following:

  • Decrease multi-target Damage/Jumps
  • Decrease Mana Cost
  • Increase Cooldown
  • Increase Single Target Scaling.

However I am not a game designer, and couldn’t begin to model how to balance such a Glyph.  I am sure such a think would be extreme difficult to balance against existing Glyphs, so that we have a viable choice in Glyphs and could pick something else to suit another fight better. I am, overall, happy with the changes to Elemental as it has made us much more competative. Having a choice of different glyphs that we can change to suit our gear and SOMEWHAT to suit the fight is a step up from ToW/FS/LB or bust. I’m just feeling somewhat underwhelmed by the Glyph system for Elemental over all.

Third Glyph: Irrelevant was published on March 24th, 2010, with the tags , , , , , , , , , , , under the Meta-blog, Warcraft category. There are currently 5 comments on this article so far.