25-man VoA forming up. I was on my paladin at the time, so I figure what the hey. Ret DPS isn’t exactly difficult (read: easy as crap) and I could use the Relentless gear, it would save me some honor farming. So I join in, do literally all of the summons myself (thanks guys), though thankfully I did at least have a dedicated clicker.

Gah, big advantage to 10 man raiding right there. Summoning is so easy when you have to deal with 8 people at absolute maximum.

Anyway, so in we go. Trash drops like nothing. We get to Koralon.

Our two tanks are Rhyokin (a well geared orc warrior with the title Gladiator) and Iliad (tauren DK, also well geared and also a Gladiator). Now, I respected both of these guys a great deal. They raid hard, they PvP hard, they seemed like pretty cool guys, overall. It’s also worth taking note of Nhiosis, a fantastic warlock with 85k lifetime kills.

If you bothered to armory them, you’ll notice they are all from the same guild.

First red flag goes up when the healers ask for healing assignments.

Rhyokin says: Iliad is MT, I’m OT

No, no, like who are we healers healing?

Rhyokin says: Iliad is MT, I’m OT

No… like, ok, I’m a disc priest, this guy’s a paladin, this other dude’s a resto shaman, and

Rhyokin says: Iliad is MT, I’m OT

No, ok, like who’s on the

Rhyokin says: Ok pulling!

And then he pulled.

And then he died during the very first Molten Fists.

And then he was all “WTF our healers suck.”

And behold, for the healers said “lol”.

Anyway, he demanded (and got) a battle rez.

But honestly, I have never seen such inept tanking of Koralon before.

Fire = bad. You can’t stand in fire. Alright, so, now the tank isn’t standing in fire. What about the melee DPS? Nope, they’re fine. Hey wait a minute, why aren’t any melee DPS hurting the boss?

I exaggerate a little. It was possible to DPS Koralon, it was just really, really hard, and there were lots of “attack from the side and pray it doesn’t count as the front” moments.

Relentless gear was handed out, and off we go to Emalon.

Rhyokin pulled.

Rhyokin died.

Iliad picked up everything.

Then the healers got there, and behold, for the healers said “wait what?”

First overcharge comes along. The add dies, but just barely in time.

Second overcharge. There isn’t nearly enough DPS on the add (only one death to nova of didn’t-you-guys-run-HoL-already) and it blows up, killing everyone.

Hamkins says: sry, i g2g, gl!

Nhiosis says: G2G!

Rhyokin says: G2g!

Iliad says: LATER SCRUBS! G2G!

Then they all left the raid.

Huh.

Ok, so. Yeah. There was a wipe on Emalon. More on that later.

But really, abandoning the raid right then and there? You drag a bunch of people together (Rhyokin was the raid leader) and effectively use them to give you the possibility of twinking you out with relentless gear?

I used to respect these people for being top-of-the-line PvPers.

What does it say about the old days when I just assume top PvPers aren’t complete cockmonkeys?

Anyway I put them all on ignore because really… I don’t have time to spend on cockmonkeys.

But god damn.

HOW do you wipe on Emalon?

Iliad says: That’s what happens when you don’t swap targets!

Words of wisdom, dearest cockmonkey.

So? You know what those incompetent farts that called themselves DPS says?

“Maybe we can tank the adds apart from the boss?”

“Yeah, it would make it easier to switch.”

Ok. Maybe I’m just an old fogey here, but I seem to remember there once was a time where, in order to call yourself DPS, you had to… I dunno, be vaguely competent at the job. Yeah, rose-tinted sunglasses.

But come ON. There are only five fucking targets in the room! You only need to attack one of them at a time! When you need to switch DPS, the add in question triples in size! There’s a huge fuckoff raid warning that says OVERCHARGE! IT EVEN HAS A SKULL OVER IT!

How… how do you even screw that up?!

“But I’m melee and my camera-”

Yeah bullshit. Bull shit. I’m calling you out here and now, you are an embarrassment to the label “DPS”. There is literally two mechanics on lengthy cooldowns you need to worry about. TWO. How the hell did you even get to 80 without being able to keep track of two things?

But I didn’t leave the raid. I typed off a snippy, sarcastic remark, ran back in, buffed up, and got ready for the next pull.

Cause I’m not a cockmonkey.

A douche, yeah, I’m a pompous douche. I admit that.

But…

God damn. IT HAS A SKULL OVER IT PEOPLE. DO NOT MAKE ME AGREE WITH THE COCKMONKEYS.

Then a ret paladin pulled the boss and bubble-hearthed, killing a bunch of people.

It wasn’t me, you goofs.

…

Stop looking at me like that.

IT WASN’T ME!

It had better be important.

I don’t think I’ve ever been flat out booted from the game and forced to download an emergency patch before. Seems like this must be something hugely important, what with booting me in the middle of a hard-fought WG, costing me the honor and tokens for winning. 20 minutes of hard fighting, wasted. Thank god I have time to do three WGs a night. I don’t know how I’d deal with this if I actually had something like a social life.

The forums say this is just a tools update, for the launcher (which I don’t use, and haven’t for years) or downloader or something.

Why this couldn’t wait literally ten hours for patch night boggles my mind.

Oh well. At least by punting me in the middle of the evening, this gives me time to deal with all the real life stuff like going to the bathroom or making dinner that I already did so I could play WoW all evening. So instead I’m just reading about Bat Boy and how Mel Gibson is to become the next pope. There is literally nothing else constructive left to do except sit here and watch the patch fail to update correctly over and over again.

Or, more accurately,try to start wow.exe, watch it do absolutely nothing whilst it demands access to fully control explorer.exe, and when given permission, instantly crashed explorer.exe.

Whelp, I’ma restart this here computer, and hopefully I don’t have to wait through that 50 minute download again.

See you on the flipside with an exciting story about how I put some guys I used to respect and revere on ignore.

In regards to playing the game wrong…

Picture raiding like a jigsaw puzzle. We all have to put it together, the only real differences is in the details. My approach is to study the picture on the outside of the box, know how many pieces there are, and know what every single piece looks like before I even consider putting it together.

I’m feeling significantly better, and have prepared a time line of my illness:

Saturday: start feeling a little ill, thinking I might have a minor cold.

Sunday: feeling really bad, ugh this is horrible.

Monday: went to school, suffered greatly, extremely ill.

Tuesday: did not go to school, stayed at home.

Wednesday: tried to go to school, gave up due to abdominal pain.

Thursday: stayed home, but felt better.

Friday: went to school, felt more better.

Saturday again: went to work, still sick but definitely much better!

Sunday again: still some coughing and stuffy nosery, but now it just feels like a mild cold. No problemo!

So was it swine flu?

SYMPTOMS!

Fever? Check.

Cough? Check.

Runny or stuffy nose? Check and check.

Sore throat? Check! It actually got so bad I lost my voice completely, and I had Rorschach voice for a day when I got it back.

Body Aches? Check, and boy was that not fun at all.

Headache? Well… not really. I was too nauseous to notice if I had a headache or not.

Chills? Check! This was the worst part. Freezing cold under a massive quilt in a water bed set to a hundred degrees does not bode well.

Fatige or Tiredness? Check and check! Sixteen hours of sleep! It does nuthink!

Diarrhea and vomiting? Check and check. Film at eleven (not really).

I’m guessing it was, in fact, swine flu. My medical expertise at completing check lists I found on the internets tells me so. So HAH. I beat you swine flu! Bring on the zombie apocalypse! I got this!

Get it?

H1Z1 virus?

Eh? Eh?

Nevermind.

I like watching raid fight videos. I like watching arena and PvP videos. I quite enjoy myself, as I can really get into them. I get that some people can’t watch people play WoW, but I can. Provided it’s interesting.

I’ll show you what I mean.

Consider this video. It’s not a clean kill. Nearly everyone dies, and the raid is mere seconds away from a total wipe when the boss goes down. This is the best kind of raid video ever.

It gets boring extremely quickly to just watch a superior raid utterly crush an encounter without effort. It is far, far more entertaining to watch a raid struggle, to see four DPS suddenly bite the dust, to watch the only remaining tank alive come so close to death over and over again… but he just barely hangs on an OHMYGODTHETANKDIEDOHNOOOOOO.

There’s something to be said for watching flawless execution videos, but it’s just more fun to watch a video where suddenly a mage dies out of freaking nowhere.

And when the tank dies (skip to 8:50 to watch the poor feral druid get one shot) and the boss lazily starts killing off raid members one by one… man. Just golden.

I even like the music, being a big fan of “electronic” styled musics. Screw musical taste. Gimme some powerful bass or get out!

So much rage over such an inconsequential little thing. You can now buy vanity pets for real cash. Big whoop.

Ok, seriously, what the hell people. What so many of these complainers seem to forget is that microtransactions in WoW isn’t even a new concept. Don’t you guys remember paid race change? Paid faction change? Paid character recustomization? Paid SERVER TRANSFER?

Paying real cash for something in-game is not new. If you’re comparing WoW, with the whole pets thing, to all those microtransaction style “korean” MMOs, you are years too late.

What about the card game and the “loot cards”?

Here, lemme go to ebay and search for “spectral tiger mount”.

BOOM. A thousand fucking dollars.

Ten bucks is nothing for a very high quality vanity pet. I mean, Lil’ K.T. will laugh at players you kill in PvP. These two are among the very best pets in the game. But eh. Cost is beside the point.

You get all worked up about them directly selling pets for cash. A vanity item. A vanity item that, by it’s very definition, doesn’t change game play at all. A vanity item that isn’t even new or unique, but instead follows a very long string of other vanity items and services that have been part of WoW for years.

What is wrong with you?!

How many people bought the Blizzard feed for the pet alone? I know of at least 3 in my 10-man guild. How many people get the collector’s editions for the pet only?

But I get it. I do. You think Blizzard crossed a very serious line here, and nightmares of “slippery slope” dance in your head (please note the part where the concept of slippery slope is a logical fallacy). Selling pets directly is a little bit different from selling them indirectly, you say. You’re just wrong, is all.

Blizzard will never sell actual, game altering items for real cash. You will never be able to buy your tier sets for twenty bucks, you will never be able to buy fifty badges of I-already-did-this-content-goddamnit for a one time credit card payment. It’s just never going to happen.

The pet shop is only the beginning. I expect there will be many more pets added, and more than likely mounts and tabards and the like. I can almost guarantee that there will soon be a huge Hummer mount available that costs fifty bucks to get and awards you the title “Isn’t Compensating”.

But to think this is just the first step towards buying gold or gear? You’re wrong.

I’d like to direct you to a post over at Righteous Orbs, though really the only relevant part to my own post is this part:

When I hear the words ‘Flame Leviathan’ I’m thinking kraken meets phoenix, you know? I’m think tentacular wings dripping fire. I’m thinking awe. I’m thinking terror.

I am most assuredly not thinking GOLF CADDY.

If you don’t read Righteous Orbs yet, sucks to be you because NaNaDuraCell or whatever it’s called hates you.

Anyway, point is, Tamarind went into Ulduar-25 without even knowing what Flame Leviathan looked like. Poor Tamarind had no idea what was going on, what to expect, nothing.

Changing gears a little bit, I was chatting with me DK friend, and was all “didja see the green dragon fight?!” and he was all “Nah, man, I never look at that stuff” and I was all “What? Why not?” and he was all “I prefer the new fights to be a surprise, you know?” and I was all “. . . ?”

See, to me, going into an instance without knowing what to expect is equivalent to going into an instance with unkempt gear or terribad talents. Knowing your own class, having the right gear and talents, and knowing everything you can about the next boss fight are all one and the same to me.

Say the guild is doing Jaraxxus for the very first time. I’ve already watched the fight videos, usually both the 25 man and 10 man versions, have read up on the strats, and studied (if possible) every single ability he has. Before 3.2 was even live, I already knew every trick to the Jaraxxus fight.

This is how I raid. When Ulduar was on the horizon, I had effectively stopped raiding and had no plans to continue. I had no plans to ever do Ulduar, or seek out a guild with which to raid it. But I watched the fights for every single boss in there anyway.

Every single thing possible I can do outside of a raid to be successful, I do it. I theorycraft. I perfect my gear, my rotations, my mana consumption. I spend hours on test dummies and any and all theorycrafting tools available to me. I watched the Leotheras fight over a dozen times before I actually, physically did the fight.

Not knowing as much as possible about every fight long before you get to it? Not watching all the PTR streams for every boss being tested? That is insane! Why would you not do that? You’re intentionally crippling yourself!

Aren’t you?

Me DK friend gets along perfectly fine without obsessing over boss strats. Tamarind got along fine, if panicked, without having already created a mental DBM timer for every boss ability before he actually saw the boss in person.

I explained earlier what raiding is for me, and I think this attitude of “you must reach batman levels of preparedness” falls into the same boat. Showing up to a boss fight without having the slightest idea what’s going to happen is incomprehensible. I cannot even imagine raiding that way.

Saying “yeah, I don’t watch the PTR boss fights” is like saying “yeah, I can levitate at will if I drink at least one glass of milk a day.” Something so utterly foreign that the brain simply shuts down and daydreams about a sitcom starring paperclips.

And yet…

Obviously Tamarind isn’t full of fail. Obviously he didn’t single-handedly wipe the raid over and over again due to ignorance. In fact, he’s at the point now where he can heal HToC with a fishing rod equipped, and do it so well that the rest of the group doesn’t even bother to inform him because he’s so damn good at what he does, they thought he had left the fishing rod equipped intentionally*.

You know how the saying goes. If you think everyone around you is crazy… chances are, you are the crazy one.

So is it me? Am I the one going off the deep end into hyper obsession land? Am I the one (le gasp) playing the game wrong? Or am I simply playing it my way, a way that leaves other people thinking “what the hell is wrong with that dude?”

* Seriously, the hoops healers in good gear will jump through to have something interesting to do. Our holy paladin will often pop a second set of worms in the trash leading up to Hodir in an effort to stave off boredom. I’ve known healers to encourage tanks to take off their pants so they get hit more.

In a way I can see that. I mean, when you reach a point where you can heal HVH start to finish using only power word: shield as a holy priest, chances are you’re going to be rather bored. But what if something goes wrong? OH THE EXCITEMENT! But what if something goes really wrong? What if you disconnect? THEN EVERYONE DIED BECAUSE OF YOU AH MA GAHD! This is why you PvP, people!

Just… if you’re a healer, don’t PvP alone. It’s not safe. Grab a friend to protect you. You are infinitely more powerful with a guard dog willing to die to keep you standing.

If you aren’t a healer, find one. Find a healer, and stick with them. If anything even shoots funny looks at your healer, destroy them. Destroy them utterly. Leave nothing but a bloody smear on the ground to attest to their impunity.

-=-

The lack of updates recently has been due entirely to sickness. I’ve been riotously (that’s a word?!) sick since Saturday, and every day brings new, hilarious symptoms, like coughing up blood or intense abdominal pain. I swear to every deity ever that if this turns out to be swine flu I will personally find a child with a balloon and ruin all of their hopes and dreams.

A few nerfs to holy paladins were announced last night, though I suspect most of them won’t make it through. The LOH one, for instance, has already been removed.

I play a paladin, but I’m not going to talk (much) about the repurcussions to paladins. Rather, I’m going to talk about what such a change has revealed about players in PvP.

My sample size, so far, is limited to the vocal, posting members of the official forums, MMO Champion, and Arena Junkies (AJ).

The two nerfs “everyone” (used in the loosest sense) is talking about are as follows:

• Sacred Shield can now only occur every 30 sec. (up from 6. The holy talent, Infusion of Light, will reduce the frequency back down to 6 sec.)
• Lay on Hands can no longer be cast on yourself.

The LOH nerf has already been reverted, the SS nerf is just being thought about. Something is going to happen to SS that doesn’t impact deep holy paladins, but does impact everyone else.

Both of these changes have almost universally been met with loud cheering. Everything from “thank god, finally” to “suck it, paladins” to “finally nerfs to the most unfair class in the game”.

Personally, I wonder what, precisely, Blizzard is aiming to fix. SS hits the PvP prot/holy healing build extremely hard, but that spec is only viable in 2s, and extremely specific comps in 3s where it’s role is primarily offensive support. Which leads me to believe it wasn’t nerfed for PvP reasons at all, due to everyone (including Blizzard!) not giving a damn about 2s anymore.

Considering “legitimate” 3s and 5s PvP, this change hits ret paladins the most.

And herein lies the difference in attitudes. Naturally, the folks at AJ don’t care at all about LOH, the SS nerf being the only thing that matters. Essentially, the attitude there is “good change, add a talent to deep ret to do the same thing (back down to proccing every 6 seconds) and we’re good.”

Everywhere else, on the other hand… oh my god.

On nerfing PvP:

Paladins are hated cause everybody when fighting them thinks the same thing: “Unfair”.

On this I agree. Those poor paladins have no idea what hit them when I’m done with them.

Oh wait, you meant the Paladins were overpowered? Read the full post here.

I’m probably going to pick on you quite a bit, dearest Taekrys, but your post is exemplary of everything that is utterly wrong with those cheering the LOH nerf.

I’ll state this up front, just so we can get it out of the way and move on to more “intelligent” (used in the loosest sense) discussion: L2play. Srsly.

Alright then. Here we go.

First off LOH is on such a long cooldown it can be used once, maybe twice in a BG. It’s only ever a game breaker if the Paladin was vastly superior to you in the first place (see Hofflerand’s PvP videos for this) and you were playing wrong. If you’re fighting one and he uses LOH while you’re there, you just got unlucky. And frankly, if you lose because of LOH, you would’ve lost anyway, you just wouldn’t have been able to complain about LOH when you did.

Second off, why is a shaman of all things complaining about paladins? Do you have any idea how easy it is to destroy paladins with access to offensive dispels? I mean, I have spellsteal, which dispels ONE buff at massive cost, and it’s enough to absolutely ruin a paladin.

Third, Divine Shield (the bubble everyone loves to hate) is an immunity ability, the primary function being to reset the fight. If you just stand there, waiting for bubble to come off… I don’t even know what to say to you. My left eye muscles are twitching out just thinking about such stupid.

I get that some classes have more, or different, options than others. As a mage, for instance, I either disappear around a corner and evocate, or even drink, or pop invisibility and then evocate/drink. Or, more often than not, do nothing as the paladin hasn’t even touched me yet. As a paladin myself, forcing the other paladin to bubble first is called “I win, thanks for trying.” As a rogue I wait out 6 seconds and stealth.

Forcing a paladin to bubble is how you beat a paladin. Once Divine Shield wears off, they are effectively helpless against whatever strategy you were employing before the bubble.

You say LoH is strong “just” on 1v1? Aside from the fact that it isn’t true (you can easly shot down two enemies in a road-fight 1v2 using all your CDs)

Ok, wow. First off, if two people are fighting a paladin on a road, they deserve to die for failing strategy forever. Second, if a paladin blows all of his cooldowns, he should be able to kill shit. That’s what cooldowns DO. That’s why you have your own cooldowns!

And again, need I remind you of purge? Don’t talk to me about dispel protection, that’s why you push purge more than once. Or hell, hex them and purge them. CC doesn’t break if you aren’t damaging them. On a related note, a sheep looks hilarious with glowing angel wings.

Besides, a paladin who uses all of his cooldowns protecting a road is an idiot.

And complaining about 1v1 in the first place is rather dumb, considering even 2v2 “balance” is irrelevant anymore.

The changes themselves don’t really bother me one way or another. LOH is what it is, I almost never use it in BGs anyway, and in PvE it’s always been used as an emergency tank heal. The SS change will probably permanently kill the prot/holy healing spec, meaning my 2v2 team is officially obsolete. Which is fine, it’s an alt, I’ll just go PvP on my horrendously overpowered warrior or something.

What really “grinds my gears” is the amount of people who celebrated such a change, when every single one of them is wrong. Gah!

Going frost for PvP is so Burning Crusade. The new hotness? Arcane, baby!

I prefer arcane over frost for general PvP, largely for the following reasons:

• Mobility
• Mobility
• Did I already say mobility
• Cause Seriously
• This spec is MOBILE
• Also stupidly powerful crits

Specifically, I use a specific kind of arcane spec, known as “arcane shatter”. It’s a kickass spec, full of ass kicking, though it’s honestly a rather cheap spec to use against the undergeared and underskilled. It’s possible to defeat most opponents by using only slow and arcane barrage. That poor ret paladin…

Anyway, the spec itself is rather simple. 51/0/20, picking up all the good stuff arcane power, icy veins, slow, ABarr. It detours from a “normal” arcane PvP spec in that it doesn’t use arcane blast or arcane missiles. The main nuke is, in fact, frostbolt.

Game play is a simple affair. General combat revolves around liberal use of slow, arcane barrage, and frostbolt spamming where possible. The primary power of the spec comes from using shatter combos, just like a deep frost spec, but using arcane barrage instead of ice lance.

And, of course, using PoM+FFB and AP to produce shatter numbers that edge dangerously close to “what the hell just hit me” territory.

To put it another way, I have killed prot pallies with 35k hitpoints and 900+ resilience in five spells.

Arcane shatter does not have PoM Pyro, though it might as well considering how hard PoM-FFB hits. I use a macro, bound to Q, which will blast my hand-mounted pyro rockets (Engineering: most overpowered profession ever? Discuss), activate PoM, then fire FFB. I almost always use this macro exclusively on rooted/frozen targets, in order to unleash the almighty shatter combo we all know and love.

Shatter, of course, provides an extra 50% crit. By activating PoM, I am granting that FFB an extra 30% crit. Factoring in my base crit rate, this gives that FFB a 102% chance to crit before resilience. Then, of course, stack ice shards and spellpower for 225% critical strikes.

Usually, this results in a wall of huge numbers, something like an 8k frostbolt crit, 9k FFB crit, 3k HMPR crit, which is almost always enough to end the fight right then and there. Keep in mind that all this takes a mere 4 seconds to pull off, even less if I don’t use frost nova and use a frostbite proc instead.

And that’s just one trick, if a pretty good one.

Mage Armor is the armor of choice; switch to ice armor when fighting warriors and rogues. The frostbite procs will help you more.

Glyph choices are a personal thing. Glyph of Evocate, obviously, but the other two are up to you. I use glyph of polymorph, as DKs, warriors and rogues are AoE happy fiends, and glyph of mana gem. The extra mana is astoundingly good, and combined with a 2 minute evocate it’s extremely hard to run yourself oom, even if you’re using mana shield a lot (which I do).

Glyph of IV is a good choice, even glyph of AP has its uses, and I can even see glyph of ABarr if you’re spending a lot of time slow dancing.

Oh, right, mayhaps you don’t know what that is.

Ignoring cooldowns, there are two very distinct forms of playing arcane shatter. The first involves spamming frostbolt, and throwing in ABarr whenever you need to move or whenever you get a frostbite proc.

The second is when you don’t frostbolt at all, but spend 100% of your time moving, essentially spamming ABarr and slow. I call this slow dancing, as that’s essentially what it is. You’re at maximum range for your arcane spells, keeping slow up on your target whilst hitting them with ABarr.

The idea is that this keeps you out of range of melee while stil hurting them, and is even ruthlessly effective against any caster that relies on casted spells, by “dancing” in and out of range of them.

In both cases this is merely a delay tactic. You can win fights this way, though most opponents will figure out how to counter this behaviour fairly quickly. Why delay? For a number of reasons.

Forcing cooldowns – case and point, ret paladins. By essentially spamming slow on them as fast as they can cleanse it, the vast majority of ret paladins will, sooner or later, say “screw this” and blow freedom to come pound your face into the dirt. Then freedom gets spellstolen, then you destroy them utterly.

Waiting for your own cooldowns – perhaps most importantly, frost nova. Keeping a melee class at bay until you’re ready to hurt them is a legit strategy, even if it drives them up the freakin’ wall.

Killing healers is also a simple task. Catch them in a cast (it’s surprisingly easy to do this, with the combined pressure of constant damage, slow, and spellsteal) counter them, then a single shatter combo is enough to either flat out kill them or put them in straights dire enough you’ll be able to finish them off in a couple more casts.

Personally, I find this spec, quote unquote, better than the 51/17 arcane/fire style specs. Gaining huge shatter crits and twin snares outweighs the advantages of burning determination and impact for me.

So far this expansion, arcane has generally been a brutal counter to other casters, whilst being kinda terrible against melee. Arcane shatter doesn’t change this too much, as you’re still powerful enough to be considered a hard counter to many casters, but you are better at fighting melee than any other arcane pvp build.

I’d say “go on, give it a try”, but after telling you I can deal nearly 20k damage in 2 GCDs you probably already did. Have fun!

I’ve railed against RNG before, and it remains my hugest complaint about WoW.

RNG is a necessary component of an RPG, or so I’m told by my past self and others. Which I can definitely see, I mean Hot Streak would be less fun it was simply a button you pushed every six seconds, and I think we’ll always fondly remember the T8 machine gun*.

I get all grumpy when RNG crosses the line from fun, mix-it-up mechanic to game breaking, why the bleeding hell did that just happen territory.

Killing Pokemon the Fire Watcher (or whatever his name is), and he drops warlock pants when warlock is the only class not present in the raid is frustrating. Getting feared and watching as the fear path takes you around a pillar then directly into a wall, ending only once you are out of LOS and fifty yards away from your partner is the pinnacle of frustration.

How many people, honestly, really liked random mace stun procs? How many people saw some poor priest get randomly stunned, and exclaimed “OH MAN LOOK AT THAT SKILL!” or “Well played!”

Me, March 23, 2009.

My opinion has not changed. Game breaking RNG is not healthy. A weapon like the ROFLHERALD adds nothing but arbitrary stupid to PvP. (If science can be a verb, then stupid can be a noun.)

Losing because of RNG is not fun, it’s frustrating, if not utterly disheartening and demoralizing.

Winning because of RNG isn’t really fun either, not for me anyways. It feels hollow, arbitrary.

I played a D&D campaign once where I, the token orc barbarian (yes, full orc, none of this half-orc business), one shot the final boss. To save tedious explanations, essentially I rolled three twenties in a row and instantly killed a boss monster easily ten levels higher than I was.

It was funny, it was fun. But it wasn’t a victory. The evil bad dude lay dead, her loot resplendent in its mighty stat allocation. But the boss was not defeated, it was merely killed.

There’s a very clear distinction between a victory that is legitimate, and a victory due entirely to luck. By the same token, there’s a very clear distinction to losing legitimately, and simply being screwed over by random dice rolls.

Maybe this is another instance where I diverge drastically from the general WoW populace, but I don’t mind losing in the slightest. What I mind is losing because of RNG. What I mind is when success and failure are hinged completely on the almighty gods of the d20.

Being defeated by superior strategy, being crushed due to tactical mistakes, these are legitimate losses, and I am not saddened or frustrated by them.

A pair of arena matches (losses, both of them, for the exact same reason), illustrate this point so precisely I might as well have scripted them.

Me, pally healer, me partner, death knight goofball (face pulling thorim trash since 2009), in Nagrand arena.

First match, it’s me desperately queuing a Holy Light on me partner. I get smacked with a full duration fear, with no way out. All cooldowns have been used. The RNG fear path takes me directly to the nearest pillar, around said pillar, then directly at the wall.

Me partner, of course, being tagged with roots, can’t get anywhere. Me being out of range of healing him, can’t anyway due to the pillar in the way. He dies before I can even get back in range, let alone LOS.

Second match, it’s me desperately queuing a Holy Light on me partner. It’s a paladin/DK team, perfect mirror match, me partner being nearly dead, but their pally in dire straits as well. Their DK runs around a pillar, away from us, and we let him go unharassed, staying on the paladin.

This is, what we in the hindsight industry call a BIG MISTAKE.

A mere .2 seconds before my HL finished, and the DK, which we let go, death grips me out into the middle of nowhere, out of LOS of me partner. Where the pally then kills him.

The difference? The first instance was due to RNG, the second due to being outfought.

Well, the paladin was in full relentless gear and a 258 weapon/shield, but meh.

And here’s the rub. The first match, we lost directly because of RNG. Would we have lost anyway? If a situation is dire enough where a single failed HL results in defeat, is it even possible to recover from that?

We’ll never know, because RNG screwed us over before we even had the chance to lose legitimately.

The second match was a legitimate loss. A team with a MMR rating over 100 higher than ours that vastly outgeared us, but we didn’t lose because of that. We lost due to superior tactics on their side. Which is exactly how it should be.

Sure, I did release a cry of “Nooooo!” as I was being yanked through the air, but there were no lamentations of “damn it blizz this game is retarded”. DG is a tool, and if it’s used to yoink a healer out of LOS with their partner, that’s a legitimate strategy.

Perhaps most importantly, strategy and tactics can be countered. RNG cannot. You can’t effectively fight that which is random and completely unpredictable. All you can do is react and hope you don’t get screwed too hard.

There’s a reason why random stun procs died a swift death, and why Seal of Justice needs to get the same treatment.

The primary purpose of losing is to become better. That’s why you lost, you weren’t good enough, so you have to become better in order to secure victory.

What do you learn from a random mace proc? What strategies do you come up with to counter completely random events utterly beyond your control?

In short, you don’t, really. You come up with a few damage control ideas, then hope it doesn’t happen again.

Losing legitimately, to superior tactics/strategy, teaches you things. You lost to things you can control, you lost because of things you are capable of adapting to and defeating. In other words, you learn, and become better.

You learn nothing from losing to RNG, you do not become better, only more frustrated and angry.

Losing properly has the opposite effect. You learn, you become better, you come up with new ideas that inevitably lead to success.

* As you know, the T8 set bonus allows for your specs random proc to not get consumed when using it. Worthless for arcane, say, but absolute gold for fire mages. My best record was five pyroblasts in a row.

No post yesterday, due to history mid-term today. Apparently, no matter how much you read, how much you cross-correlate to other books, there will always, always be something you missed.

Such a thing as complete knowledge does not exist. Which makes it all the more embarrasing when you spent a day studying something and then it doesn’t even come up on the exam.

This is the best major ever. Screw math, I wanna learn about german economics in the 19th century!

Needless to say, there were a few questions that I just did not know the answer to. You know how sometimes you see a question, but you can make an educated guess or take a stab at it, and usually get close? Yeah. Not even that.

So Rasputin was a famous french romantic painter obsessed with shipwrecks, labour unions are called “le labour unions” in France, and a potato was the cause of the russian revolution in the 19th century.

At least there wasn’t a question on chartism or entarchy. Gaaaah.

Some interesting thoughts sparked by the last post.

Right now, at end game, mages have two truely viable specs: fireball and arcane.

Yes, FFB has fallen out of favour, at least for end game. Essentially, it’s the “I wanna spec fire but don’t have enough hit gear to spec fireball yet” spec, almost always used by brand new 80s. It just runs into scaling issues (shock!) and doesn’t measure up to the big two at end game (mostly).

So I been thinking. Just how many viable specs do mages want, and how many should we have?

We’re right on the cusp of having the Big Three end game viable, that is arcane, fire, and frost. Is that enough? Or do we want to see the dream of an elemental spec become true?

Think back to the LK beta, back when FFB was the new shiny and we were crunching specs like 0/33/37 for end game content. A true elementalist spec, a perfect hybrid of fire and frost. Turns out, such a spec was stupidly bad. FFB didn’t scale nearly as well as we’d hope, and all in all it was far worse than frost.

Then Empowered Fire was brought into being, and the 0/53/18 spec was born. Not an elementalist spec at all, just a fire spec that was kinda blue.

So what if mages had 4 (or more) raiding viable specs?

• Arcane
• Fireball
• Frost
• Elemental

The first two we already have. The third is probably happening in 3.3.

And strangely, the foundation for Elemental exists.

Imagine, if you will. Imagine a spec such as, say, 0/39/32, or 0/24/47 not only existed, but was its own distinct spec and was end game viable.

Imagine a world where elementalist was more than just a gimmick PvP spec that showed up every now and then.

Such a spec would be extremely mana efficient, due to combo of Frost Channeling, Master of Elements and a very high crit rate. As with the current FFB spec, ignite stacked with ice shards will result in very high crit damage, but a true elementalist spec would also make use of shatter combos, possibly greatly lessening the strength of crit as a stat.

Then again, a hybrid spec could very well be using Ice Lance a great deal to get Frozen Core procs, fueling rapid fire frostfire bolts. As in the 0/24/47 spec, it could very well have Brain Freeze, too. Haste, too, could be weakened as a stat.

Could be an interesting dynamic. We could have arcane slavering over every point of haste, fire gemming crit rating into every slot, and elemental cramming nothing but spellpower into everything.

An interesting think, to be sure, though I think we’re a long way off from four viable raid specs.

Seriously guys, three is enough. What kind of precedent are we setting here, if as soon as our prayers are answered for three viable specs we immediately demand a fourth?

Maybe Cataclysm, where talents Fire Power and Piercing Ice won’t exist, we’ll see the advent of more than three viable raid specs.

Imagine:

• Pure Arcane
• Fire TtW (FB))
• Fire IV (FFB)
• Pure Frost
• Frost Ignite (FFB)
• True Elemental

And then we can let the madness flow freely. A deep arcane spec that uses fireball and missile barrage procs?

Nah.

Three’s fine.

I mean I’ll probably only ever play pure arcane at this point. It just feels so good.

And really, just imagine the QQ from other classes if we ended up with more viable raiding specs than we had talent trees.

Then again, druids have four end game specs viable at every tier…

• Deep Freeze: This spell now deals a large amount of damage to targets permanently immune to stuns.

Translation: Deep Freeze: This spell now deals a truck load of damage to raid bosses and many trash mobs.

Obviously this won’t work against enemy players, ever. It’s a PvE only thing, and frankly this is good, as the damage it deals is HUGE.

How huge?

REALLY HUGE.

As in, self buffed only, it will hit harder than frostbolt crits, and itself will crit for ludicrous numbers like 18k. Yes, 18k. Yes, self buffed only.

It’s bugged right now in that it doesn’t benefit from Ice Shards, but even without it, Deep Freeze is still happily critting away in the 13k, 14k area. Again, I must stress that this is without any raid buffs whatsoever.

With raid buffs up, 13% more spell damage, Totem of Wrath… oh man. It’s just… I mean… wow. Fully raid buffed we’re looking at DF crits of around 24k. This right here, even using DF once every 45 seconds is still going to result in an increase of about 10% to a frost mage’s personal DPS (not including WE), which is about 6% for overall DPS.

Even if nothing else happens, even if the permanent WE and this DF thing are the only changes that make it live, these are HUGE changes.

RIP Frozen Core changes, all hail our new Deep Freeze overlords.

Again, I’m basically sure Frozen Core isn’t going live, as it doesn’t really do anything for PvE. And GC agrees with me!

Philosophically, this is representative of a number of paradigms.

Most obviously, Blizzard desires to have multiple specs perfectly viable, and is pushing very hard to get different specs “close enough” for most players.

If frost is still, say, 5% behind arcane (which, with this DF change, it is), top end raiders aren’t going to spec frost. But a gap of 5% is practically nothing for the majority of raiders.

Three viable end game raiding specs for mages before the release of cataclysm? Who’da thunk it? This is… unprecedented. It’s awesome, to be sure, and fills me with a certian level of the warm and fuzzies.

This isn’t just good for mages. If Blizzard can get three viable end game mage specs, which it is on the cusp of doing, then there is nothing stopping the same from being true for all other classes.

Even if the DF changes don’t make it in, even of the WE glyph doesn’t make it in, it shows that Blizzard is not only aware of our sadness, but is actively attempting to give us lollipops.

Secondly, a change like this means that Blizzard is willing to change their minds.

Anyone remember when they said they wanted to keep abilities as close to identical between PvE and PvP, using the defence “we don’t want WoW to be too confusing for noobs”?

An admirable goal, says I, but PvP and PvE are already vastly different. Two completely different gear sets, completely different mechanics, PvP and PvE might as well be separate games. Consider taunts and diminishing returns, resilience, spell penetration and hit rating.

And here Blizzard is creating two completely different behaviours for a single ability in PvP and PvE.

I don’t think this is Blizzard abandoning their “PvE=PvP” policy, but it shows they are willing to compromise when they need to.

The divide between PvP and PvE will increase substantially in cataclysm, what with essentially “flavour” talents being the only ones left, and that whole “path of the titans” business providing an absurd level of customization. Which I, personally, am fine with. The bigger the difference between PvP and PvE, the better.

Enough philosophical rambling. To conclude:

DF done got buffed. It be more better now.

Fine, more philosophical rambling.

Has the frost rotation really changed at all here? With Frozen Core out and DF in, the frost rotation will still be spamming frostbolt while hitting DF whenever possible. Wasn’t the whole point to get Shatter combos into PvE and stop spamming the same button over and over again?

Which brings to light a very interesting question. If it isn’t possible, then which do frost mages want first?

Frozen Core doesn’t make frost end game viable, but it gives it shatter combos.

DF makes frost end game viable, but it does not give it shatter combos.

Or does it? With DF being instant, only usable with a FoF proc, and hitting harder than anything else in the game, will it actually feel like a proper shatter combo? It’s usable on the FoF ghost charge, obviously, there’s really no way for Blizzard to fix that (unless they make FoF a limited duration affair with none of this “charges” business).

A FoF proc could easily be: FrB, FrB, DF, resulting in something that (maybe) feels like a shatter, albeit a shatter than can be performed a maximum of once every 30 seconds.

Personally, I think getting frost end-game viable is the priority. Anyone who’s still frost is more than willing to put up with more frostbolt spam by now, especially if it suddenly doesn’t suck anymore. Those who haven’t played frost in a while, but still love the spec, would probably return as fast as they can press the respec button.

At least, most of the cryomancers-at-heart I know do.