Author: Gazimoff

Being Late to the Party

Posted on by Gazimoff

I know I’m late to the Icecrown Citadel party, and that a ton of people are already doing it in heroic mode. Today I’m pleased to say that I managed to get in there, get some bosses down and bag some loot. I’ve managed to down everything including Festergut so far. And yes, I got some achievements for my trouble too. All in, the ride was pretty smooth despite some upset during the ship-to-ship combat.

I’m now using Frost Needle in my main hand, coupled with Igniter Rod in the offhand and managing to shed even more hit in the process. I’ve been battling to lose hit ever since I made the switch from Fire to Arcane as my primary spec back in the early days of 3.3, but it feels like I’m finally getting close to having all my statpoints becoming useful again.

One thing that I did get reminded of tonight was the concept of gear mastery coming in with Cataclysm. Basically, if a class has proficiency in a particular armour class (cloth, leather, mail and plate) then they’ll get a boost based off the item’s Mastery value. The idea is that it encourages Paladins, Druids and Shamen to stick to their own armour class rather than grabbing ones from a lower bracket.

I don’t think it’ll work.

The downgrading of armour types has been going on since Molten Core, when we had Paladins running around in cloth so that they could heal effectively. I don’t think that Mastery will help discourage them from rolling on gear outside of their armour proficiency. Instead, I think that the classes that loose out will feel even more bitter about missing out on gear and the additional boost from the Mastery stat.

Why not consider instead a penalty based system? Yes, you can wear armour outside your proficiency, but you face a penalty on your stats if you do. The question then changes from “is this an upgrade to me even without the mastery bonus” to “is this still an upgrade once I take the penalty into account?”.

It’s a difficult balance. On the one hand you want to make sure that players feel that they have fair access to gear, while on the other you want to ensure that gear is useful to as many people as possible before it’s trashed or discarded. It’s why I’m not calling for strict limits to armour proficiency to be built into the game.

At the end of the day, it’s about being selective who you raid with. If you’re with a raiding guild make sure you understand their policies on loot distribution, and if you’re not happy with them it might be that the guild’s not suitable for you. It’s when you’re raiding outside of your network of guildmates (pugs etc) that having game mechanics that nudge players in a particular direction can be a benefit.

What the stat?

Posted on by Gazimoff

One of the things that really irritates me sometimes is the huge number of stats that accompany games these days. You tend to expect it a lot in RPGs, where each attribute can be measured, quantified and manipulated by your choice of character class or equipment. Don’t get me wrong, I like the ability to customise and tune my character the way I want. I just think that we’re getting a little stats-crazy these days.

Let me break it down a little. In World of Warcraft, I’ve been playing a mage now for five years. I like the immersive game world, the landscapes and soundscapes. I like the way combat feels when playing a mage, how the class works and what the sweet spots are. I even enjoy the multiplayer aspects of doing dungeons and raids. It’s all good fun, with some cool encounters and a nice bucket of storytelling and lore to go with it.

What I don’t enjoy is the “meta-game”. It’s when you start scratching the surface and digging deeper into the mechanics of using this spell vs. that spell, or choosing one item of gear over another. Pick up an item of loot from your typical raid and you might find five or six different attributes that it can improve. Is it an upgrade? Is it worth me taking? Hang on while I grab my calculator…

This whole theorycrafting part isn’t something I’m a huge fan of doing myself, but I’m grateful that there are others who are happy to run the numbers and share the results. The RatingBuster addon is a huge help for me as it makes identifying gear upgrades much easier. There’s also a shedload of information over at both Elitist Jerks and Epic Advice, with the latter also encouraging questions from players that just want to raise their game.

It’s why I’m slightly worried with the stat changes that are being planned for the latest expansion. It’s not so much the stat changes themselves as the intent behind them that has me confused. I hate having to make predictions based on partial information, but I’d really like to know what Blizzard are trying to achieve:

  • Reducing the overall number of stats I have to track and worry about?
  • Reducing the amount of gear I find appealing so that I stop grabbing stuff that priests and holy paladins want?
  • Increasing the difference between classes?
  • All of the above?

One of the things I really liked in the change from Vanilla WoW to Burning Crusade was that gear choices became a lot more fluid. Class specific gear was replaced with tradeable tokens, while gear that was good for caster DPS also became pretty cool for healers. It meant that it became easier to gear up in dungeons and fewer items got sharded or trashed because they weren’t useful to anyone. With these proposed changes it feels like we’ll be going back to basics, with fewer classes competing for gear and more stuff getting junked as a result. This wasn’t such a big deal back when you had 40 people to distribute loot between, but now that raids are as small as 10 people, making items useful to as many players as possible should be a consideration.

Maybe I’m just getting grumpy in my old age, or maybe I’m missing something, but I’m glad there are still people who are happy to “do the math” and help us all with what we should be doing.

As for me, I guess that as long as I keep seeing big yellow numbers I’ll be OK.

Hello and Welcome!

Posted on by Gazimoff

Yes, welcome indeed to The Mana Obscura. This little blog is to hold my inane ramblings, random outbursts and illogical rants on all things gaming.

Why Mana Obscura? Well, a lot of these games have spellcasters of one form or another. Mages, Warlocks and Priests to name a few. And I end up playing spellcasters. A lot.

Like many gamers, I talk with my friends a fair bit about the games that I’m playing, either with what’s been going on in them or what new stuff’s coming out. There’s also a chunk about the stuff I’m doing in-game, from the basics through to high-end content. I also talk about the classes I play, either discussing how the mechanics differ from one game to another or how a particular character works. There’s a lot of talk here, but it tends to only stick with a small group of people, so I decided to start blogging about it.

It’ll have a heavy World of Warcraft bias, but will also include other games that I’m playing from time to time. It’ll also include stuff that might not strictly be Caster related, but that I think is either interesting or cool.

This place will be updated randomly as I have time and as new things come up. Don’t count on me posting daily, but you can expect a comment from me whenever something interesting is going on.

It’s also a comments-open thing, so if you have something to share (or if you think I’m talking a load of crap) then feel free to sound off.