Category: Warcraft

The Annoyance of Addons

Posted on by Gazimoff

Once you play Warcraft for any length of time, you end up using addons. These small pieces of software are designed to make them game better, either by presenting new information or showing existing stuff in a clearer way. But just as using some of them can enhance your performance, using them badly can be a millstone around your neck.

For me this all kicked off yesterday when I decided to try out ForteXorcist based on Derevka’s recommendation for priests. I thought the same tool could be used to keep track of Mage cooldowns such as Arcane Power and Mirror Image. This was a big mistake because of two things:

  • I didn’t practice with the addon first to get used to the information it was telling me, how it would help and how I would integrate it into my UI
  • I decided it would be a great idea to go raid ICC with my guild instead and tweak it during the raid

Seasoned veterans will probably be laughing at this right now, and yes it was a schoolboy error. More than that though it’s also got me thinking of how my overall UI layout affects my performance, both as ranged DPS and when I’m playing my healer.

Currently my UI looks something like the chart below, and by all terms it’s crap. It’s evolved over a number of years, where I’ve “just grabbed an addon” to do a particular task and just plonked it in a blank spot on the screen. Some of it’s a hangover from when I was running as a raidleader or officer, while others seemed useful at the time but are now pretty pointless.

The biggest issue with this interface is the sheer amount of wasted space. In my primary role as DPS on my mage, I don’t need to know the health and mana of everyone else in the raid. An overall snapshot might be useful, but this level of detail is too much. When I’m on my priest the unitframes show too much information – I end up having to enable Grid just to get the information at a reasonable level.

The next problem is eye focus. I should be looking at the centre of the screen, making sure that I’m on the right target and that I’m not standing in the bad. Visual prompts near the centre should be helping me in hitting my rotation and maximising DPS – anything else is clutter. I shouldn’t need to look at my button bars unless something outside of normal combat occurs – everything else should be driven from muscle memory. Having things scattered around the screen like some kind of neon buffet doesn’t help either – it means my eyes bounce around and get distracted by all the shiny.

Having to do a lot of eye movement is a bad thing – I’ve felt knackered at the end of farm runs and it’s not because I’ve been focusing. The eye strain from having a badly laid out UI is tiring, making me a slave to the goddess of coffee for the following four or five hours.

The third problem is performance – by running a shedload of addons I’m degrading my computer performance. I’m spending CPU cycles on calculating stuff that I pay no attention to anyway, when I could be spending it on making the game run smoother or look better. By cutting out what I don’t need, the technical experience of the game should improve.

What would an ideal interface look like? I’ve had a rough stab of it, so although it’s going in the right direction it’s nowhere near a perfect ideal. It basically takes the idea of getting rid of the crap I no longer care about, grouping similar stuff together and making everything else optional depending on the role I’m playing.

As a result of all this, I now have a quest. Over the coming weeks I’m going to be working to streamline my UI in order to reach that nirvana of elegance and efficiency. When I find something cool (like ForteXorcist), I’ll share how I’m using it and how it’s configured. Over time this should build up into a collection of posts on how to get the most out of your interface as well as having something that’s fit for those action shots or fraps videos.

At the end of the day, a UI has to bridge that gap between what you want to do and what the game is telling you. If you’re getting overload with information, it’s failing in that basic mission. By being ruthless about what you choose to see, the theory is that you’ll only focus on what’s important. This should lead to better performance, which is what we all want to reach.

The UI Quest Series (in progress):

So You’re a Roleplayer?

Posted on by Gazimoff

There’s already been a huge amount of coverage about taking your first steps into roleplaying. Some of it’s come from players describing their experiences of being on a roleplayer for the first time. Others have tried to provide advice and guidance to help players get started. If you haven’t read them already, this list should get you started:

There’s also entertaining tales from Arrens, Meka, Pilfkin and Protflashes as well as a gripe from a well meaning Pewter. While a lot of this is due to Tamarind making an inspired choice when creating Single Abstract Noun, I think it’s also shown me something else.

A lot of the players were coming over from their PvE or PvP servers, and were understandably nervous joining in any of that “roleplay malarkey” going on. That quickly changed into abject fascination. You’d end up with a small group of guildmembers – say 2 or 3 – just standing there watching the roleplay take place. This wasn’t so they could point and laugh, it was because they’d never seen this happen in the game before. I guess it’s like showing someone who only does dungeons that they can also do PvP if they want to.

What’s impressed me is the way that newcomers to the concept have started dipping their toes into the roleplay waters. Egged on by others they’ve started to grow in confidence and have a blast while doing so. It’s been great to watch.

But where to go from here? There are a handful of useful tools that can help expand your roleplay, both in terms of finding new opportunities as well as making it more fun. While I might veer into server specifics with a couple of these, the principles are the same for most of them.

  • Get Gryphonheart Items – it allows you to create your own items and share them with others who have the addon. Make ones with on use effects with scripts if you’re feeling creative.
  • Test-drive your character with people you know. Try roleplaying with friends and see how the character fits with you. It’s a bit like wearing training wheels, but it helps you to identify any gaps or problems with your character concept early on. It might also give you ideas on how to flesh out your character further.
  • Look out for the server global roleplay channels – these are usually LookingForRP or LFRP. Get to know the people there and grab opportunities to roleplay with them.
  • Check out your server specific independent website. The Argent Archives, ER.EU and SWC Wiki are all examples of where you can find out what’s going on at the server you’ve chosen.
  • Go to events. Markets, fairs and other forms of entertainment are usually organised to create environments in which to roleplay. If you’re nervous about engaging in spontaneous RP, these events might be ideal for you.
  • Steer clear of Goldshire. Seriously.
  • While it’s sad to have to say it, expect to be propositioned. If idea of adult-themed roleplay is not something you’re after you might want to prepare a suitable response in advance.
  • Try and avoid “emote battles” where possible. These are where “/me swings his sword, aiming for Ziffit’s neck” and so on go back and forth. Trust me, they’re not worth it.
  • Remember that above all you’re playing the game to have fun, and it’s important to treat this aspect of the game as you would any other. If something happens that stops you from having fun or makes you feel uncomfortable with, you have the right to stop.

I’ve mentioned before that Warcraft is made up of a series of smaller games all meshed together. It’s popular not because one of them is outstanding, but because all of them work well together. It doesn’t matter if you’re interested in the single player questing experience or endgame raiding. You can play the auctionhouse or you can battle all-comers in the arenas and battlegrounds. You can dabble in all of the above if you want, collecting achievement points along the way. Roleplay is just like these – another way of playing the game.

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/ghi.aspx

Care For Some Cheese With Your Whine?

Posted on by Gazimoff

Since this is National Whine On Your Blog Day, I’m going to confront the amorphous entity known as Mage Hate head-on. There’s this general feeling I get sometimes that players think mages are scum. Yes we have our ongoing rivalry with Warlocks, but this feeling goes beyond it. It’s like the rest of the Warcraft-playing population think we’re all button-mashing maniacs that struggle with anything more complicated than “Nuke the target as hard as you can.” While some of this is fair, there’s a balance that needs redressing.

So pull up a chair while I go through the biggest gripes I have as an endgame mage. Fellow mages, don’t think you’re getting out of this either. Every time we group up with others we’re ambassadors of our class. We owe it to other mages to play well, play solidly and play as part of the team. If we stop doing some of the things we have a bit of a reputation for, perhaps we’ll get less hate and more love.

  1. I enter the instance and start my Summon Table ritual. I’m then waiting for the rest of the group to click the thing just to get the table to spawn. You no clicky, you no eaty. No point complaining ten minutes later – either click at the start or accept a couple of stacks of strudel in a trade window later.
  2. On the same table thing – if you’re going to demand a table and a buff, wait for me to get some mana back before you start pulling. Going “Table-buff-yum-pull!” just isn’t playing fair. Have a little give and take here.
  3. I know the priests that are getting fed up with mages rolling on crit-haste-spellpower gear. Some rightly think that we should be rolling on hit gear and only hit gear. In a perfect world you’d be right, but since the Arcane tree got buffed mages have been trying to offload hit heavily. This means that gear that was previously a priest exclusive is now very attractive to us. I don’t like having to regear, but I’m also not going to carry around a bunch of wasted itemisation points.
  4. If you’re a Paladin, Shaman or Druid and you’re rolling on cloth gear against cloth-only wearers, hang your head in shame. Get used to not having any mastery bonuses in Cataclysm due to your strange armour choices.
  5. Frostnova–blink–invisibility is not a cheater move. I understand that when groups wipe that it’s a pain to corpserun, but to have a go at me for using my spells to escape a repair bill is just stupid. I’m all for group solidarity, but for you to have a go at me for not eating dirt along with the rest of you is laughable. If you’re a hunter that died because you were too slow with your feign death button, yet have a go at me for being able to press three correctly in sequence, I will point and laugh at you.
  6. If you ask me to crowd control a mob, I will do so to the best of my abilities. I’ll put it on Focus, I’ll use my PoM-Poly macro and I’ll even offer you one of a selection of different animals if you really want. I’m not going to sit there and keep polymorphing if you keep on hitting the target, or if you drop a consecrate underneath it, or it gets dotted up. You spank it, you tank it.

Mages, I told you this part was coming and I’m not going to disappoint. But I think you’ll agree I’m being fair. Some of us are consistently letting the side down and need to raise our game a little. I’m going to say some unpleasant things, but it’s all for our own good. Really.

  • Learn that being able to AoE packs of mobs is a luxury that comes with having a highly geared tank with buckets of threat generation. If you start AoE early and you’re pulling mobs off the tank, pop your iceblock. If it happens again, pop invisibility. If it keeps on happening then throttle back – either put in a delay before opening up with Blizzard or switch to single target damage. Note that for three mobs or fewer you get more DPS from single target damage, so you’ll be doing yourself a favour as well.
  • Install Omen or another threat meter and pay attention to it. There is a fine balancing act between maximising your threat and pulling aggro. Pulling a mob – particularly a boss – off the tank doesn’t mean that the tank is crap. It means that you’re not paying attention to your threat generation and modifying your playstyle accordingly.
  • Don’t expect buffs in heroics. If you’re walking around in Tier 9 you outgear it anyway and won’t really benefit from buffs. Especially don’t wait for a paladin buff – they’re a pain to do and to refresh. The only time you should expect to be fully buffed is in raids, and even then only at boss fights. Anything else is once again a luxury.
  • Don’t obsess over recount in heroics. There is only one time where your DPS contribution is important, and that’s on boss fights. I really don’t care if you can pull 6K DPS on trash – it’s just trash and doesn’t really matter. If you think your performance isn’t up to scratch, talk to another mage in your guild or raidgroup. You can also try EpicAdvice – there’s a really helpful bunch of people there.
  • Don’t pull, EVER. There is only one person that should be pulling, and that’s the tank. If the tank asks you to polymorph something then that’s OK, but apart from that you should not be using Ice Lance to kite mobs over the tank’s consecrate. You have a job, they have theirs. Do it.
  • Learn to dance during fights. Mages are like one of those Martian tripod-death ray things, not a fixed turret that’s bolted to the ground. If there is The Bad under your feet, learn to move away from it. I don’t care if it hurts your DPS to take a couple of steps out of it, because it’ll hurt your DPS even more to spend the rest of the fight warming the floor. Heroics are no excuse to be lazy either – they’re practice for when you’re raiding.
  • Knowing when to stop DPS is just as important as when to go full-tilt nuke. If you’re fighting the Devourer of Souls, remember to stop DPS at the relevant times. If one of your group is mind-controlled, use crowd control instead of nuking them down. And if you die because of spell reflection expect to be laughed at.

So there you have it, a whine about both how mages are treated and how we treat others. While this has been fairly therapeutic, I’m not expecting much to change. My only hope is that other classes understand that not all mages are the same, and that some of us will try our best to play well with others.

Of course, there have probably been things that I’ve missed on both sides of the coin. If there’s something you’ve seen that really annoys you as a mage, or if it’s a particular thing mages do that really annoys you, feel free to share it in the comments.

(image credit: User:Arnaud 25 from Wikimedia Commons)

Escaping the Vortex of Suck

Posted on by Gazimoff

Lets be honest, the Dungeon Finder tool can be an invitation to torture. What started out as a way to find groups and gain some excellent rewards quickly deteriorated into an all out slugfest. Nowadays you’re as likely to find a group where the players are openly hostile to each other, or where some use it as a tool to deliberately cause grief to others. The worst thing is there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight.

It probably started easily enough. The tank complains to the healer that he’s having trouble keeping up. The healer has a go at the DPS for being mindless zombies that should goddamn move out of the void zones. The DPS moan at the tank for failing to keep aggro on fifteen mobs while they’re going full-tilt on three different targets. The complaints, taunts and snide remarks go round in a circle, with everyone blaming everyone else. It’s a circle of despair – a loop of misery that feels endless.

It doesn’t end there. The proliferation of addons to measure, calculate and assess an individual’s performance means that players can be subjected to intense scrutiny – more than they’d have with their own raid group. People are now using Recount and GearScore to check a character out, even though the dungeon might have incredibly low requirements. Fail to come up to scratch and you’ll soon know about it, either by being booted from the group as soon as it’s possible or being subjected to humiliation for the entire run.

Why should people care though? I mean, it’s not as if you’ll regularly come into contact with the people you find in your random group. Most of the time they won’t even be on your server, so what have you got to worry about? Besides, if people behaved like an asshole to you then you have every right to be an asshole to anyone else that doesn’t measure up.

It leads to a Vortex of Suck. The conditions in the random groups continue to get worse. You try to suck it down, grow a thick skin and ignore anything said in party chat. After all, if it’s only used for hurling insults why should I even have it in my chat window? You end up at the Eye of Bitterness – the quiet at the centre of the Vortex. It’s where no-one says a word because everyone has just one mission on their mind – get in, get the badges and get out with as little pain as possible.

Of course, you may decide you’ve had enough of pugging. Your experience has left you hating the Dungeon Finder tool with a passion, and you find yourself wandering the Plains of Pug Exile. A good guild or group of friends may help fill the gap, but you won’t always be able to rely on them being around or wanting to run instances. If you’re determined to cut loose from the Dungeon Finder, you may find yourself with a fair bit of free time.

Does this represent a failure of the Dungeon Finder? Does it demonstrate that social design collapses when confronted with Gabriel’s Theorem? Or is there something wider here, that without some kind of release or control valve you end up with a chaotic system that starts to collapse in on itself?

I’m not sure if the Dungeon Finder can be classed as broken, or if it can truly be fixed. There seems to be a general feel that something needs to be changed. But what that something is or how it should change remains difficult to answer. It seems that for a while at least we’ll have to weather the storm.

Nostalgia Is A Double Edged Sword

Posted on by Gazimoff

Two of my characters have been trekking though Thousand needles recently. Jupplar has been going back to the Old World to grind some gathering skills, while my Blood Elf mage has been finishing the quests at Freewind Post and the Mirage Raceway. All the while this nagging reminder kept on creeping up in the back of my mind. All this is going to change.

Don’t get me wrong though – change is not always a bad thing. The planned Gnomeregan Offensive is something I’m looking forward to enormously, partly because it closes a storyline that’s been left hanging since I first rolled my Gnome mage five years ago.

At level five you get a class quest to introduce you to your trainer. All the Gnomish ones have a similar feel to them – they talk about either preparing for an impending offensive to take back Gnomeregan or helping to resettle the evacuated population. The mage one – Glyphic Memorandum – starts with a letter.

To: New Students of the Arcane Arts:
You are required to seek out and study under the gnome Marryk Nurribit until such time comes that you are called upon to aid your people in re-establishing themselves in a new habitation. Please, without trepidation, prepare yourself for rigorous testing procedures and a difficult acclimation process as you find a domicile and/or any form of companionship with the local denizens.

Questions regarding your duties and abilities should be directed to Marrek Nurribit.

From a roleplay point of view, every Gnome’s life has been building up to the Offensive. It’ll be the most exciting thing to happen to the race, with the possible exception of Gnome priests becoming playable in Cataclysm. While I’m expecting the landscape and questing around Gnomeregan to change and become some kind of starter area, I’m not worried about it. For me it feels like the end of a chapter rather than the end of a story.

Nostalgia can cut both ways though. A fond memory of mine is when the guild I was in took a break from running dungeons to pay a visit to the Mirage Raceway. I remember watching the races and cheering on the Gnomish rocket-car, eating ice-cream and buying a chicken. Being there again on new characters reminded me of the good times we had, but then up crept the reminder that the entire zone will change.

Outside of Warcraft, I sometimes visit places that I haven’t been to for a time. They remind me of events that happened in my past, both the good and the bad. Places like where I grew up, where I used to meet up with friends as a kid. Places like where I heard the news my grandfather died, or where I struggled through difficult times in my life. Sometimes when I return to a place the entire landscape has changed; the buildings have been bulldozed or the green fields have turned to office blocks. It’s weird and possibly a touch melodramatic, but it feels like the memory I have no longer has an anchor – that the reality of it has started to fade.

The crazy thing is that I feel the same thing about some locations in-game as well. I know that Cataclysm is coming and that with it large changes will be made to the game world. I also know that logically it’s a great thing – quest hubs that have been problematic for years will get remade, huge unused locations will be brought to life and we’ll finally be able to use flying mounts everywhere. But at the same time I won’t be able to go back to the races, sit on the benches and cheer on the rocket cars.

Now I know I should get over myself – after all, it’s just a game. None of it is real – it’s all just bits and bytes, people and pixels. Then again, just because the environment is virtual doesn’t make the emotion any less real. The pride in getting a strong arena ranking, the cheer of taking down a new raid boss – they’re still real emotions that shouldn’t feel any less valid because they’re in a virtual setting. The fun we have with others, either as silliness in guildchat or testing new skills in dungeons, is just as authentic.

I’m still looking forward to Cataclysm and the changes it’ll bring. Being part of an evolving and changing world is more than I was hoping for when I started playing, even though I surprise myself when I realise I’ve been playing this for five years. The bittersweet taste is something that will fade in time, as new experiences flood in and push the old ones into the dusty corners at the back of my mind. For now, I’m making sure that my screenshots folder is backed up.

See you at the races.

Charting the Curve of Awesome

Posted on by Gazimoff

I’ve been levelling up a newbie mage using the Refer-a-Friend feature, and it’s been a slog. We’ve gone Hordeside and have no heirloom gear, so we’re relying on instance gear, random greenies and quest rewards to gear up. The slog is worth it though – I’m now getting to the stage where the new spells remind me how cool the class is. I even reckon that this coolness gets better as you level up, like mages have some kind of awesomeness amplifier built-in.

Let’s compare it with deathknights. With these guys it feels like all the awesomeness is blown in the first five minutes. It’s similar to a fireworks display – great to look at, but you’re picking up crap from the floor for weeks afterwards.

This is probably a symptom of what happens when you have a Bored Mage with PowerPoint. But it also reminds me of how things might change in Cataclysm. Will the Curve of Awesome look the same, or will the reshaping of the game world change how we feel about our favourite classes?

Honestly, I don’t have a clue. I just like graphs.

It’s The People That Make It

Posted on by Gazimoff

I get up to some silly things in-game. Usually it’s just messing around with strange game mechanics like using Slow Fall then jumping from the Temple of Storms. Once in a while though, it’s something that’s shared around that’s equally silly, and makes the game even better.

I’m going to kick off with something that happened on Curio, one of my mages. I got asked if I’d help out a couple of people with making a portal to Dalaran so that they could set their hearthstones there and find it easier to get around the world. Heading over to Ironforge I picked up that this was a roleplay group, so I thought that I’d best be ready for some impromptu roleplay.

Since last year’s Children’s Week, Curio has constantly had a Gorloc pet with him. Affectionately named Ernie-fu, there’s a dialogue between them as Curio says something, then watches as Ernie emotes a response. As a result, Ernie doesn’t say very much but he does an awful lot. And one of those things is eat.

So when one of the portal-seeking roleplayers throws Ernie a hunk of bread to eat, Curio pulls out a tube (don’t ask) of jam in order to sweeten it a little. This then leads to questions being asked about why Curio has jam in a tube, which went to experiments in jam delivery systems. This then went to discussions around jam explosives, jam mortars and jam limpet mines. Curio then pipes up that he’s scared the Horde may have stolen his research, so he’s working on ways to protect Stormwind from a jam-based attack. The session finished with Curio suggesting that baking a large crumpet to cover the city may be the only way to protect it from jam-based artillery.

They couldn’t use the portal in the end – they didn’t have the Wrath expansion on their accounts.

Another one is mentioned by Ercles in his blogpost about Single Abstract Noun. Bear in mind that I’m Juplaar in the screenshot he’s included. My response was based on the question “Are hippopotamuses really hip, or are they just really cool potamuses?”

I guess the point I’m trying to make is that I do some crazy stuff in-game, from random roleplay encounters to campaigns for cheese-sculpting to be added as a profession. I get some immense fun from these moments of randomness, some real pleasure from being silly. But I couldn’t do it at all without other people to play alongside. A good set of guildmates or friends in the game are fantastic to have, and worth seeking out.

Although great game mechanics and cool effects can help to pull people into a game, it’s the people that you play alongside that will keep you hooked and eager to return. It doesn’t matter if it’s a close knit community or just some people you bump into for a while, the important thing is to have fun with others regularly.

When I’ve unlocked my last achievement and killed the last boss, I’ll still be around. As long as there’s silliness to be shared, I’m in.

Evolution or Revolution?

Posted on by Gazimoff

I’ve been thinking recently about something that Tobold mentioned on his blog about Blizzard’s continued game development cycles. In it, he rightly describes that Starcraft 2 has a similar look, feel and playstyle to the original game. He also mentions that the Diablo 3 gameplay footage has a similar look and style to the original game, and that he expects it to play in a similar way. My question is “is this such a bad thing?”

Look at it this way. Starcraft is often held up as an example of fine game balance in a complex system. You have three different races, each with their own units and playstyles, yet they remain on roughly equal standing with eachother. In making a sequel, would you radically change things and risk destroying this balance, or would you try and evolve the concept instead by adding new mechanics and possibilities?

From another angle, I remember when Diablo 3 was originally announced. Fans were concerned that the game world didn’t look “Diablo enough”, that it was too bright and colourful. Samwise ran with the theme, creating the artwork for this T-shirt. It’s a really tough act – on the one hand you want to be creative and fresh, but on the other hand you want to keep the tone and feel of the game world that you’ve created. Mechanics and user interaction make up a lot of that look and feel – mix things up too much and things “just don’t feel Starcraft” any more.

Mind you, after ten years of working on the same franchises I’m expecting that Blizzard’s designers and developers are yearning to try their hand at something new. They’ve announced that they’re working on a next-generation MMO, but have little else to share. Currently circling the planet Rumour, it remains a black hole of speculation.

I’m hoping that what they’re working on is a brand new IP. A new game world that we’ll get to dive in and explore, with new stories to tell and new armies to battle. I’m hoping that they’ll innovate on existing ideas, making a game with deep and rich mechanics that aren’t completely alien to players, but still provide plenty of surprises and unique aspects. After all, in the time since Warcraft was launched we’ve seen an increase in computing power, graphics capability and broadband speed.

It also makes little sense for the new MMO to be Warcraft in Space, as players will just migrate from one to the other. What they need is a game that’s sufficiently different that players will want to try out and regularly play both instead of having to pick one or the other. It’s why Blizzard have spent so much time perfecting Battle.net, and why cross-game communication is on the cards. Playing the new MMO, but your old guild need a hand with the latest raid dungeon? No problem, it’ll all be in-game.

So while I share Tobold’s assesment of Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3, I’m not sure I agree with the feelings it evokes. My own experience from playing the Starcraft 2 beta is that it hits every single nostalgia button perfectly. I was able to play Terran quickly and comfortably, while I (still) suck at playing Zerg. But that’s what I want – a refreshed and evolved experience instead of a radically re-imagined departure.

Where I do hope we get something completely different is with this new MMO. After all, it makes sense for everyone to have two different games to play instead of just migrating from one to the other. And while I hope that some concepts remain, I really hope that it’ll be revolution rather than evolution that we’ll be experiencing.

The Melee Misfit

Posted on by Gazimoff

As I’ve probably mentioned before, I’ve been trying out a new guild on a new server. Single Abstract Noun is on the Argent Dawn servers in both Europe and US. It’s a guild for warcraft bloggers, the people who read them and anyone else involved in the community. It’s got a great feel, and provides a welcome alternative to running raids or heroics. The European branch is also on a roleplay server, making for entertaining results when PvE or PvP server players encounter roleplay for the first time.

I’d originally intended to roll (yet another) mage. I got a blood elf to level 10, but left it there as I’ve also got other mage projects that I’m working on. I was beginning to feel that I needed something different if I was going to make it challenging enough to be worthwhile.

So I rolled a Deathknight called Juplaar.

But there’s a problem. Melee classes and I don’t get on. I have tried – I have a rogue in the mid 50s and a warrior languishing in Hellfire Peninsula. By far my best attempt is my Protection/Retribution specced Paladin, who’s currently in the mid 70s. I’ve even tried feral druids without success. It’s worth pointing out that these characters only got as high as they did due to Refer-A-Friend boosts.

So far, it’s been a somewhat confusing experience. I’ve had real difficulty in choosing a simple talent spec or even working out which buttons to press – I just tend to mash things randomly and mobs fall over. I guess it’s like anything else – I’ll need to do some research, maybe find a “Deathknights for the Complete Idiot”.

Maybe I’m just being too picky – I want to understand how a class works, what mechanics constrain it and where the opportunities are. I don’t want to be handed a talent spec and a rotation and be told that they’re the best, because it doesn’t tell me why. It also means that I don’t get the picture of how itemisation fits in, how stats complement talent choices and how patches and changes will affect the class.

I’m going to keep with it, as I want to prove to myself that I can actually do this. I’m just expecting a bumpy ride along the way. Luckily the guild is fantastic in providing help and support.

Let’s see if I can get away from being a melee misfit.

More on Mastery

Posted on by Gazimoff

In what feels like a healthy dose of rumour control, Blizzard today released a huge update on how Mastery will work in Cataclysm. While there are no mage specifics, there’s a ton of information available to allow us to predict how Mastery will work. It’s also worth looking at what problems Mastery won’t solve for mages and other DPS caster classes.

A key disclaimer though: while I’ve covered the basics of Mastery, the impact on mages is largely educated guesswork. Where I talk about a specific stats or spells these are just examples rather than official intended changes. For the official line, read the blue post.

Mastery will be made up of three bonuses:

  • A boost related to the role we play. Since our single purpose in life is to deal damage, this will probably be a straight increase in spell damage. It also means that our spell damage can scale outside of intellect, which will be the main contributor to spell damage in Cataclysm. Even mages with sub-optimal gear should have a solid baseline from this bonus.
  • A boost related to the stats we look for in gear. Bearing in mind that spell damage is only going to appear on weapons in Cataclysm, this will probably be stats like Haste or Crit. I’m really hoping that we don’t end up with a Hit bonus, but I have a feeling it’ll creep in somewhere.
  • A boost related to the tree that we spec into, in order to provide funky additional affects. For arcane this might be a play on Arcane Concentration, Fire will probably get an increase to the DoT affect of their spells and Frost is likely to get some kind of boost to slowing or snaring abilities.

There’s also some important information about how these bonuses will grow as you develop your character:

  • The first two bonuses (the generics) will increase as you sink talent points into the various trees. It’s not yet clear if you’ll get the same level of bonus if you sink all 71 points into a single tree or if you spread them across all three.
  • The third bonus (Spec Mastery) will increase based on the gear that you’re wearing. Some of it will come from come from wearing gear relevant to your class – this means moonkin in leather, holy paladins in plate and elemental shamans in mail. If they start downgrading (wearing cloth gear) then they lose the mastery bonus. In addition, new gear in Cataclysm will have a further +Mastery stat on it. This stat will go directly to the Spec Mastery bonus – as long as it’s your armour type. Moonkin wearing cloth with +Mastery on it will be wasting the stat points

With all that in mind, what does it mean for mages?

  • Hopefully this will mean the end of bland “increases this stat by x%” talents like Precision, Arcane Focus and Piercing Ice. The Generic Mastery bonuses can take care of sliding scale stat boosts such as these instead of players feeling forced to take “mandatory” talents. I’m also hoping that “pop” talents like Arcane Power and Icy Veins still remain, as they provide the opportunity for burst damage when needed.
  • We should get a bit more free talent spend to help with picking up playstyle-based talents, and there should be more wiggle room for experimentation.
  • Mages that focus on PvE and PVP should be able to dualspec comfortably, as Spec Mastery gear bonuses will apply to both specs, with each tree specialisation providing it’s bonus when that spec is active. Of course, resilience is another issue entirely. It might also mean that just as you have Discipline/Holy dualspec priests, you might end up with dualspec mages that use different specs depending on the shape of the raiding encounter (static fight versus constant movement).

What questions still exist?

  • There’s still the question of how the Spec Mastery bonus will scale with the number of talent points in the tree, if at all. Will it be something that’s activated purely on whichever tree has the most points? Will we have to hit a 51 point talent in order to select it? I’m nervous about ending up with 76 point Arcane mages, purely because it’s the only way to maximise the Spec Mastery stat.
  • With a number of talents being eliminated, will we end up with thinner talent trees in Cataclysm? If that happens, will the number of points in our talent pool go down, or will we end up with more spread between trees?
  • Are we throwing away the idea of hybrid specs such as Frostfire?

All in, the further detail is making me quite excited for mages in Cataclysm. I’m hoping that it’ll mean that more of the stuff that we need to do our job will be built into our class as standard instead of being chosen by our spec. I’m also hoping that with the changes to how stats affect each class (e.g. mages no longer benefiting from Spirit) that we’ll see an easing of the loot competition that’s plagued a lot of Burning Crusade and Wrath.

On the other hand, I’m expecting to see a lot of gear that “could” be useful to someone with current itemisation end up being sharded or junked in the expansion. Also, depending on how Reforging works, you may end up with only those characters with skills such as Tailoring or Blacksmithing being able to re-tool a soulbound item and make it useful. I’m hoping that it’ll work in a similar way to Enchanting, but we’ll have to see.