A Goal a Day

I'm going to start setting myself personal achievements to accomplish once a day.  Today, with the help of Fragilegoods and Shoryu of Serial Peacekeepers renown, I played the "Only One Must Die" mini-game.

This mini-game is best played in a resource style game, but can be played in any of the available battlegrounds.  So, here's the setup.

1.  The group (3 party members is what we did, you could do anywhere from 1 to 5) charges to the enemy spawn point.
2.  The party leader names the target.  In our particular case it was easy, "Mission" was our target.
3.  You spend the rest of the game guessing where they're going to ressurect after you've killed them and kill them again.
4.  If you win the battleground while doing this, bonus points.

And that's all there is to it.  Here's some twists you can do for flavour:

1.  See if you can get the same target a couple battlegrounds in a row and do a total deaths over the sum of the battlegrounds.

2.  See if you can pick consecutively more difficult to kill targets.

3.  See how many times you can successfully /dance with them prior to attacking and killing them before they leave the battleground.

4.  Shootout: Everyone in your party gets a turn to solo the target.  If they fail to solo it, its the next person's turn.  Person with the claim to the most deaths of the target wins.

Third Level 85

Got my paladin (Eatenyofood) to 85 today.  Only levelled through dungeons and PvP.  And other than one dungeon that I tanked to get from 80 to 81, I healed the entire way.  I enjoyed myself thoroughly and am looking forward to healing in arena and raids in addition to my previous repertoire.

Healing in Battlegrounds

Healing is not what it used to be.  Or so I've been told.  As I level my paladin through random cataclysm dungeons and battlegrounds, it doesn't seem too different.  My mana is essentially infinite as long as I'm not doing something stupid (lol-exorcismspam-ftw-rite?).  And if I get ignored in a battleground, I can keep myself and another guy alive indefinitely.

So where are the healers in battlegrounds? From brackets 10-19 to 85, healers have become more scarce than PvP-Tanks (Thanks largely to Protection being more fun than Retribution or Arms/Fury).  Are stress levels scaring people? Or lack of functionality?

Or perhaps people are lazy.  I'm not sure.

Theoretical Rated Battlegrounds

Back before Cataclysm came out, Blizzard made some general statements on rated battlegrounds and what they would bring to World of Warcraft.  I can't remember if my thinking on them is correct or based in fact, but I'll talk about what I thought they were.

You would have options to queue for a normal battleground and a rated battleground.  Normal battlegrounds you could do any time all week.  You could only participate in a set number of rated battlegrounds.  Your performance in that game would be rated by Killing Blows, Deaths, Honorable Kills, Damage Done, Healing Done, and Objectives completed (Capturing/Defending flags and nodes).  Your rating would go up or down depending on your performance, and go up or down more or less depending on if you won or lost the battleground.

Ultimately, Blizzard deemed that this would either be too much code or would be too prone to number inflation and greedy play (If every player is trying to capture the flag in WSG for a rating boost, what would stop them from ignoring the current flag carrier's well-being in hopes of being able to capture the flag?).  Perhaps this could be solved by making a win exponentially better for your rating than a loss.  I'm not sure.

I like the concept of rewarding players for solid efforts in a winning or losing battleground.  Sometimes players excel in a battleground, getting huge numbers of honorable kills and killing blows and capturing nodes, but are unable to be everywhere on the map.  This has happened to me, but I know that this has happened to a lot of above-average players.  They get stuck with uncoordinated or ignorant teams and are only able to do incredibly well in certain areas where the rest of the team flounders.  Those people deserve a little extra reward than 3 honor more than the next guy.

A couple things

I'm going to cover a couple things really quick.

Baradin Warden's Rep

At Mr. Popularity (Rank 2) or Guild Level 12, you receive an additional 10% reputation reward for killing monsters and completing quests.  That means that if you complete the 12 daily quests available through Tol Barad, 6 on the Peninsula and 6 on the Baradin Hold Island, you will get a total of  4050 reputation.  That means over the course of three days, you can move through the entirety of Revered. 

Matchmaking Value and Rating

 "If you win, Blizzard will drag your rating up to your Matchmaking Value.  If you lose, Blizzard will drag your Matchmaking Value to your Rating."  This is the simplest way I've been able to describe the system between Matchmaking Value and actual team Rating.  Your rating is what matters, it's what you get achievements from and allows you to access higher levels of gear.  Your matchmaking value is what allows you to ascend ratings faster or slower; if you beat teams at a higher matchmaking value, then your matchmaking value will rise and your rating will try to rise with it.

Recount

Recount is the only addon that I ever recommend to other players.  It is the quickest and best way to gauge how you are performing.  Let's say the following:

You are doing a boss fight in a dungeon with guild mates.  You are spec A.  You wipe on the boss fight.  Your Recount informs you that you did DPS-A.  After the wipe, your guild mate asks you to switch specs.  You are now spec B.  You wipe on the second attempt.  Your Recount informs you that you did DPS-B.

So, now you compare your Recounts.

On Damage Dealt, DPS-A was higher than DPS-B.  On Damage received, DPS-A took more damage than DPS-B.  On Interrupts, DPS-B was higher than DPS-A.  What does this tell us?

It tells us that DPS-B was able to take less damage likely due to the increased number of interrupts over DPS-A.  If another person were able to pick up on the interrupts, then you should respec back from DPS-B to DPS-A for the higher numbers.

So, that's a highly controlled situation but it covers why I love Recount.

PvP vs. PvE: The Endless Tug-O-War

Blizzard has received a lot of flak over changes made in the two hemispheres of World of Warcraft.  These hemispheres are, of course, the Player vs. Player and Player vs. Environment hemispheres.  Let's not get these confused with how realms are denoted (Kel'thuzad being a PvP realm and Aerie Peak being a PvE realm) but rather how the game is played.

Blizzard has 10 classes with 30 specs.  These 30 specs are meant to be unique from one-another while comparable in value.  The way they are valued is how effectively they can do their respective jobs.  That means that all 30 specs need to be competitive at the same time as comparable.  A Raid Leader or a Battleground Leader should, when forced to make a decision, pick a player rather than a class.

This means that Blizzard has one god-damned-fucking-difficult job.  30 unique specs, covering 4 roles, all doing similar jobs without beating each other out? Sounds difficult.

Now, multiply that difficulty by two.  As every class should be able to pick any spec for either hemisphere; a warrior should be able to PvP and PvE as Fury and not feel handicapped in anyway.

So, we reach an inevitable conclusion: One (Potentially two or even three) spec is not "balanced."  Balance can't PvP because it lacks the on-command burst of a mage or warlock.  Beastmaster can't PvE because it lacks the sustained DPS.  And the list goes on and on, essentially for every spec.

Blizzard has done, as far as I'm concerned, a superb job of maintaining best-possible balance.  You still see minorities of certain specs in both PvP and PvE environments.  This may or may not have anything to do with gross undertuning or overtuning of specs; more likely than not, the specs have never been closer for effectiveness.  Instead, there is a slight difference that is over-exaggerated; If one person tells you that Destruction is 5% better than Affliction, and you tell the next person, and they tell the next person, eventually nobody is specced Affliction because Destruction is 100% better and a million others agree with that false-conception.

The big issue for me and many others is gear.  If you didn't know, Blizzard has not released the 2200 rating weapons.  This isn't for lack of desire to release the gear.  It's just that PvE players are not currently mowing down raid content.  Blizzard has delayed the release of the 2200 rating weapons to prevent a swarm of raiders from rushing Arena and Rated battlegrounds to get, what would be, the Best in Slot weapons for both PvE and PvP at the same time.

The reverse of this happened in Wrath of the Lich King.  With the release of the expansion, guilds powered down the entry level raids.  226 weapons were available to drop from Kel'thuzad and 213 items were attainable across the board throughout 25 man raids.  PvP, on the other hand, was behind by an entire tier and users were forced to achieve high ratings just to get top quality PvP gear.

So, in the balancing Tug-O-War, PvE beat PvP in WotLK.  And in Cataclysm, they tried harder to balance it.  No weapons for PvE nerds, I suppose.

Great Grandma Darbles and a Beginner's Guide to WoW: Part 1a

I'm going to do a couple updates kind of at a whim with a focus on a Beginner's Perspective to WoW.  They're not going to be in any particular order or follow any path of logic/reason.  They'll mostly just come to me when they do and hopefully, at the very least, they'll be entertaining to read.

So, without further adieu...afk Pizza needs to go in the oven.

Right, here we go...

Choosing Your Class

Overview:  Choosing your class, when you first pick up the game, is going to be a difficult task.  You're going to have conceptions of what each class does or doesn't do prior to ever playing the game.  The name "Warrior" says a lot; that you're going to hit people and monsters with an assortment of weapons is probably an understatement.  You might also have a thought that the Warrior is "brainless," that they do not posses the skills to work magic.

Blizzard has done an excellent job revamping the Character Creation screen:

Features:

In the top left corner we see the factions, Alliance and Horde.  Portraits below represent the different races available for each faction.  In the screenshot, I have clicked the Gnome portrait.

Below the factions and their associated races, you have a choice of gender.  In the screenshot, the male gender was chosen arbitrarily (Though I will admit that I'm totally sexist).  And below that, you will find the classes that the selected race can choose.

Over on the right you will find descriptions of the race (Including racials and a brief summary) and below you will find Blizzard's description of the class.  In the screenshot, it describes a rogue.  It describes roles that the class plays, the armor-type that they wear, a general description of the class' style of play, and the resource system that the class employs.

So, with that all out of the way, let's get into it.

Class	Tank	Healer	Damage	Plate	Mail	Leather	Cloth
Death Knight	X		X	X
Druid	X	X	X			X
Hunter			X		>Level 40	<Level 40
Mage			X				X
Paladin	X	X	X	>Level 40	<Level 40
Priest		X	X				X
Rogue			X			X
Shaman		X	X		>Level 40	<Level 40
Warlock			X				X
Warrior	X		X	>Level 40	<Level 40
Total: 10	4	4	10	3	2	2	3

There are 10 classes in World of Warcraft.  Of those 10, the following is true:

• There are only 4 pure classes (Hunter, Mage, Rogue, and Warlock).  All other classes are hybrids.
• Only 2 classes can hybrid over all 3 roles (Paladin and Druid).  All other hybrid classes only cover 2 roles.
• Only 1 class can cover 4 different raid or PvP positions (Druid).  All other classes are limited to 3 or less positions.
• 4 classes change armor specialization at level 40 (Hunter, Paladin, Shaman, and Warrior).  All other classes specialize in the same armor type from level 1 to level 85.
• Death Knights remain the only hero class.  They become available to play with the purchase of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion and a level 55 character.

Brb, want to eat the pizza I put in the oven.

Delicious!

Now that I have befuddled you with a lot of information that you may or may not take anything away from, I'm going to describe each class (Much from personal experience).  We'll go in reverse-alphabetical order just to spite the above chart.

Warrior:

Warriors are a hybrid class (Despite argument).  They cover the roles of melee damage dealer or tank.  They specialize in mail armor until level 40 and then specialize in plate armor.  They can use the largest assortment of weapons in the game, only excluding wands and relic items.  They are also the closest thing to a 2nd hero class, as all races from both factions are able to choose warrior.

Warriors as Damage Dealers:

Warriors live in the fray.  If they are not up and in your face, hitting you with any weapon that they can grab a hold of, then they aren't at their computer or are on your team.  Because of this fact, Blizzard has designed the warrior class to be highly mobile.  They are able to charge great distances to meet an enemy or to save a teammate.  They also have a lot of tools and options in order to keep enemies close to them, as it's just unwieldy to fight an opponent in hand-to-hand combat when they're half a mile away.

They tend to prefer two-handed weapons. either using a single two-handed weapon or dual wielding them through Titan's Grip.  

Warriors as Tanks:

Warriors were the first class to be built for tanking.  Throughout the Vanilla World of Warcraft, and a larger portion of Burning Crusade, encounters were built and designed for Warrior tanks.  As a result, they are the most thoroughly and carefully designed of the 4 tanking classes.  They have a large toolbox of abilities to work with in order to close gaps on enemies, lock them down through stuns and silences, and to retain health through assorted defensive abilities.

Warrior tanks use a single-handed weapon along side a hefty shield.  

Warlock:

   (Note: It's pretty fucking obvious that I do not have a decent levelled warlock.  This section will be done mostly from the eyes of an ally or enemy to warlocks, rather than from the player perspective)

Warlocks are a pure damage class.  They cover a single role of ranged caster damage dealing.  They specialize in cloth armor from level 1 to level 85.  Rather than weaponry, Warlocks use a large number of spells in order  to destroy their enemies and devour their souls.  It is important to note that Warlocks and Hunters are the only classes with dedicated pets.

Warlocks as Damage Dealers:

Warlocks can specialize in three ways: Their damage dealt over time, their pet demons, or their burst damage.  The Damage over Time (DoT) specialty warlock, or Affliction Warlock, will wear an enemy down through consistent application of  different sources of damage.  And, as you're about to die, they will steal your soul for their own purposes.  The warlock who loves their pet demon, or Demonology Warlock, will use their demon to do their dirty work.  And, as you're about to die, they will steal your soul for their own purposes.  Lastly, the burst damage warlock, or Destruction Warlock, intends to blow you up through massive fire damage.

And they, too, will steal your soul as you're about to die.

SNEAK PEAK FOR NEXT BLOG: Great Grandma Darbles and a Beginner's Guide to WoW: Part1b

Shaman: