Weaksauce!? No, Just Equilibrium

I see a lot of people complaining on forums about their class being too underpowered with the release of the 3.0.x patch. The weird thing to me is that every class is saying this. And no class is getting weaker than they are now. So people are assuming that other classes are getting more buffs than their own class is. How paranoid can you get?

Having never been forced to sit out due to min-maxing, it's a lot easier for me to see the buffs at face value. I can understand how people would be worried that they will get side-lined, but if Blizzard's statement about role equity is taken as true no class will be sidelined. Only certain players will be sidelined. I support this change.

As I understand it (and have seen for myself), there will still be "specialization" among roles for each class, but these abilities won't be head and shoulders above the other classes in those areas. Since tanking is my "forte," I'll give some examples of that.

• AOE tanking - Thunderclap and swipe will now hit all targets, but consecration will still be more threat per target.

• Off tanking - Druids will still have a "larger-than-average" health pool, but paladins and warriors scale with stamina exceptionally well compared to non-tanks.

• Main tanking - Every boss will be tankable by every class. Warrriors still have the most tricks up their sleeves, but that gap is narrowing fast.

I haven't mentioned death knights in these comparisons because I don't have a 70, and haven't done enough playing on one to know exactly where they fit. But everything I've read indicates that they will be a high avoidance/low(ish) health tank class. Threat won't be different to any significant degree on a single target, and will only slightly vary on AOE targets, between all classes.

I can't see any reason for anyone to worry about their class not being wanted by a raid. Except perhaps healers, but that would be a rare case indeed and would require serious construing of raid makeup.

I admit that the ones hit hardest by the changes are dps players. With healers and tanks able to do some notable damage, dps have to bring some truly remarkable damage to be beneficial to the raid. But I think this is a great change. One of my biggest pet peeves is a dps class who can't do more damage (or dps) than my tank. Having a reason to push those players to do even halfway decent damage can be nothing but good.

So to all the people who think that they won't be able to get a spot in a raid after the changes, maybe you should consider whether the problem is your class, or your ability.

Just Say "No" to PuGs?

I've taken to PuGing Kara with my warrior lately. He still needs 40-odd badges, and can get a few offspec upgrades in there as well. What I'd really like to do is see him in ZA, but he's nowhere near as geared as my druid and with the new content coming soon, it'd be a waste to have a "geared enough" tank in there in place of an "awesomely geared" tank.

With that said, are PuGs getting better now, or just more geared? I haven't had a Kara run not make it to Shade (even though that's about when everyone just gives up because it requires more than button-mashing) in a few weeks, and we've even gotten Illhoof down a couple times. I'd like to think that my hotness that is tanking makes a huge difference in that, but it's more likely that the gear level of the group is going up on average.

The thing about that being true that I don't understand is how I still manage to get in a group with at least the other tank in nothing but quest greens. And how Kara senses that this person needs gear so drops nothing but that person's spec/class loot.

I ended up running the show Sunday night, since I was apparently the only one who had been inside Kara before. We started with 4 (Count them! FOUR!) Ret pallies, so when we hit Maiden we only had a small issue with Holy Fire almost killing our healers. All our dps could cleanse it from themselves.

By the time we got to Curator though, we had lost all of the paladins, and the dps were having a hard time coping without Blessing of Salvation. I think we degenerated into name-calling and POM-pyroing around the 3rd flare from Curator, and called it after struggling with Illhoof, but killing him finally.

As frustrating as this was, in a normal PuG, or just a few months ago, I wouldn't have expected to get farther than Moroes. And this was all done with an offtank who effectively doubled his tanking gear value by picking up 3 pieces. Oh, and he thought that this [Good Luck Charm] was for rogues. I just about left the group after that comment.

The bottom line is that PuGs are geared enough now to accommodate just about any heroic or Kara. PuGing ZA probably would get a boss or two down. As long as you're willing to put up with a few wipes and don't expect anything spectacular, you can probably get a group for anything now that nobody's raiding.

Struck Down Before They Had a Chance

I just read that the Feat of Strength titles associated with reaching level 80 first on a realm have been removed. I love it! I think that this change demonstrates Blizzard's willingness to listen to its customers about what they want from the game.

I also read some changes that are planned for warriors (specifically protection) and I'm very excited to see the end results. The only problem I see so far is that it might come close to equalizing damage done for tanks compared to some dps. Now I personally don't have a problem with this, but I don't want to listen to all the dps people whine and complain about how "sum n00bz0rz warr tnak just did 2x damg then me! NERF WARR NAOW!!!!" or similar for druids/paladins/. . .death knights (I guess. . . . .bleh).

I fully expect that if a tank is well-geared and can play his character decently, a lot of dps will find themselves out of a job. Or just relegated to PvP where they'd rather play, anyway. 

This change won't bother the actual good dps (all 4 of them on our server), since they know how to play their classes and will just scale up with the changes. It will just serve to weed out the people we always seem to PuG. . . full S2 and 300 dps. >.<

Hooray for good news day!

Holding Pattern

In talking with my brother about the coming expansion and what we want from WoW, it came up that once we get to see end-game (with the new 10-man raids) there really isn't a reason to keep playing. Sure, we could join a larger guild and do the same raids for better gear, but it loses it's charm after a while. I know that doing Kara for the last year solid has sort of burned me out, but I still enjoy going in with friends.

I think that this ties in with my dislike for PuGs. I just came out of a Kara PuG tonight that took 6! hours. . . and we didn't even kill Prince or Netherspite. I don't like grouping up with people who really don't care about doing well themselves, as long as the group is good enough to get them their l33t 3p1x that they can show off.

I like the trend that Blizzard is heading toward with the 10-man raids. It means that every person's contribution matters four times as much as when Molten Core and Onyxia (and the old, er, current Naxx!) were the big things to be doing. But while my contribution is more than it used to be in a raid, that also means that the guy who's in full S3 but can still only put out 400 dps also has his contribution amplified by 4 times what it used to be.

I would very much like to play a game with my friends and family that is like World of Warcraft, without having to deal with all the idiots who populate its servers. The appeal of "private" servers is becoming greater every time I have to deal with some moron who either can't communicate in my language, or can't communicate well enough to assure me that they understand what I want them to do in a particular fight.

I know that this is supposed to be a Massively Multiplayer RPG, but sometimes more just isn't better. What I would like to see from a game is something where individual ability is appreciated more than the ability to wrangle a mass of people together and have them sit through something for 20-40 hours per week. My view of raiding might be severely skewed, but the only "raiding" guild I was in required 4 hours a night, 4 nights a week of raiding, and that you bring all your buff items with you (food, flasks, elixirs, potions, etc.). This meant that if I wanted to see endgame content, I had to first go out and farm for things that I wouldn't otherwise use and then I had to endure hours of what passed for progression that mostly consisted of everyone complaining about how so-and-so took too long, or was afk for something, or whatever. I only got about 3 or 4 hours of actual boss-killing and raiding out of the 16 that were required, and spend another 3 or 4 preparing myself for those. So 20 hours a week spent just to boast(?) that I had seen MH and BT.

In a sense, I like the approach that Blizzard had when World of Warcraft was first released and only 5% (or whatever) of the population of the server saw the inside of Naxxramas. Make the encounters difficult. Make the skill of the player count. Make it even more worth it to hone your tradeskills to max level, and get the rare plans/schematics/recipes/formulas/designs/patterns. That way, when someone says "I have full T9" it actually means that they're good, not that they got into a good guild.

Unfortunately, this is a two-edged sword. It means that to get these awesome items that I want, I have to be good at what I do. Not only do I have to be good, but the friends and family that I play with (who range from the equivalent of a 10-year-old girl gamer to the really cool father of a friend who really doesn't know that much about gaming) also have to be good. And for them, being that good at a game just isn't fun; it's work.

Anyway, maybe I'll put down the keyboard (for gaming! I still need it to publish my inner secrets about life, the universe, and everything) and take up cribbage instead. At the very least it'll help me build tighter relationships with people that I currently forsake to kill demons and alien orcs.

One Final Patch Day

All I heard about today from random scrubs on the server was how the patch was coming, like it was some kind of digital messiah. While I'm as excited as anyone to have a new hairstyle (OH, and a 51-point talent), is this the kind of thing that really warrants incessant chatter in trade?

As I stated before, I'm really looking forward to the new Prot Warrior and Resto Druid trees. This patch will also include the ability to level inscriptions to 375, and a few other random (but appreciated) changes. But what's the big deal? Blizzard hasn't even set an approximate date for the patch to go live. Or patch notes, for that matter. I'm not enough of an optimist to think that this will solve all the problems that exist. I'm tentatively hopeful that it will treat some of the symptoms that WoW has, but a complete cure is probably too much to ask.

At any rate, I'm looking forward to having new toys to play with. I just don't expect a godsend.