Alas, Dear Hunter, for Thee Suckethe Mightily

There’s a lot of hate going around this weekend, so I figured I’d join in. Who doesn’t want to start off their work week by shaking their heads and saying “boy oh boy, knowing I’m better than someone else makes me feel so good!”

This is a story that actually happened quite a while ago, mostly because I wanted to see if the hunter in question ever decided to become non-stupid. Happily, the answer is no, as Mr. Trollson is still proudly sporting strength gear and a tanking cloak.

But Rip! I can hear the complaints already. What if he just doesn’t know what he’s doing?!

First off, bullshit, he’s been aware of the existence of blogs like BigRedKitty, Hunter’s Mark and Aspect of the Hare since that Naxx run four months ago.

Second off…

Well, settle in, kodo excrement is about to cease being imaginary in status.

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Onyxian Arcane

ZOMGWTFBBQARCANEGOTBUFFED

Please, Rip, make haste to the PTR.

Tell me this makes arcane viable again.

ARCANE IS BACK BABY!!!!

ALRIGHT, ALRIGHT I GET IT.

/exhausted

So you want to know, how’s arcane doing? How does it stack up? How’s it going.

Come one guys, it’s just a PTR. It doesn’t

OkholycrapPUTTHEPYROBLASTDOWN!

Now let’s… let’s all just calm down here. There’s no need to incinerate my flesh quite yet. Besides, Ice Block is off cooldown and it wouldn’t work anyways.

SHUTUPPUTYOURPRIESTALTAWAY.

Alright, ladies and gentlemen. Gather around.

You might want to sit down for this. The news is pretty huge.

You ready?

*Deep Breath*

Arcane and Fireball are equal.

Naturally there’s some fluctuation, as fire is still dependent on RNG and arcane is far less forgiving of screw ups, and you can go into all sorts of debate about which brings more utility, which has stronger AoE, and so forth. But the simple fact remains that Arcane and Fireball produce equivalent DPS.

Now don’t take this to mean that they are equal on every fight, or even every part of every fight. The two still have vastly different styles and skill sets. There’s still lots of factors to take into account, like whether you’ll get more mileage out of multi-target LB or more controlled, on demand damage.

If you are a true raiding min maxer, you will have to have an arcane spec AND a fireball spec to be good at every fight. For the rest of us… some fights you’ll be a little behind the fire mages, other fights you’ll be a little ahead.

And isn’t that exactly how it should be?

Essentially, it has come down to this: which do you like more?

You wanna be arcane? Go for it. You aren’t holding anyone back. You wanna stick with fireball? Rock on, you burning mage you.

I’m… really not sure what else to say here.

Congratulations mages, we now have two perfectly viable and equal end game raiding specs?

Congratulations Blizzard, you’ve managed to do what all thought impossible?

Congratulations cryomancers, there’s hope for you yet?

In any case, Merry Friday, amirite?

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Crutch Versus Enhancement

Disclaimer: This has nothing to do with shamans.

By now, I’m sure most of you are aware of a certain Greedy Goblin and his hilarious exploits. Well, I suppose not everyone finds him hilarious, but I sure do.

Anyway, his most recent posts focus on gear. Or rather, the relative meaningless of gear. Long story short, his guild cleared 10-man Ulduar in blues.

This reveals the strange little issue with how players decide to treat gear. To be blunt, a very large chunk of players view gear as a crutch for their character, rather than something that enhances their character.

Look at it this way. Say you’re a professional driver. You can purchase more responsive brakes, higher quality tires, invest in better fuel and superior engineering, but none of that makes you a better driver. All it does is make driving easier and smoother.

Give an excellent driver a crappy car, and he will produce incredible performance from it. Give a piss poor driver the pinnacle of German automotive engineering, and you will have a finely crafted fireball careening into a ditch.

To put it in WoW terms, getting better gear is not going to suddenly teach you how to play. The quality of your gear can make the difference between, say, 3100 DPS and 3200 DPS, but if you expect gear to make the difference between 1500 and 3000 DPS, you’re either wrong or naked for some reason.

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Drawing the Line

Where do you draw the line? At what point do you say “alright, I’ve had enough of this” and walk away? Or at least try to?

Those of you who have been playing WoW for many years have probably noticed. Every time some sort of major change goes into the game, whether it be revamping the honor system, removing attunements, or that whole Conquest badge thing, there are always hundreds, nay, thousands who claim that this is it.

Hopefully some of you still remember Lhivera, who first brought us the Theorycraft O Matic. He drew the line at talents being immutable, a part of a character’s identity, and dual specialization crossed that line for him. So he quit.

I have heard of those who quit when the honor system was revamped, I’ve known those who quit the game in disgust when attunements to SSC/TK were removed, and I’m sure everyone knows at least a few people who at least left for a few days when heroics started dropping Conquest badges.

All these people drew a line. On one side of the line is the WoW they want to play, and the other side is still WoW, just an iteration of it they no longer wish to have anything to do with.

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Orphaned Post: WoW is the Most Complicated Game Ever

This was written a while ago as a reply to a reader style question that was featured at wow.com. The question itself was along the lines of “WoW is far too complicated. Imagine my shock at discovering that rogues have three separate hitcaps!” That would be for specials (yellow damage), poisons, and auto attacks (white damage), for those not in the know.

It’s a little harsher than most of my other posts, which is partly why it never got posted in the first place.

This orphan post goes live today, as I figured it would be… interesting, in light of changes that were announced at Blizzcon.

Armor Penetration is too “mathy”.

Jesus Christ in a handbasket.

~=~

Now here’s a complaint you don’t see very often.

WoW is too complicated!

I know, right? Ridiculous.

Blizzard has always been in the habit of not telling us players how things work. Stuff like spell hit, crit, things like haste, stats like that were never given an explanation. They were just there, and it was up to the players to figure out what they did. Its always been that way.

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Dear Ghostcrawler

Dear Ghostcrawler,

Recently you’ve posted a few lengthy responses to the mage class and our concerns. I realize you might never read this little letter on this little blog on this little corner of the not so little internet. But I do have one thing to say to you, and I desperately hope that somebody will get this message to you.

Thank you.

I know you and your cohorts took a huge risk in revealing exactly what your thoughts are for mages and the vision you have for us as a class.

I know there are literally thousands of mages taking what you said, turning it against you, and just generally spewing QQ all over the place. Indeed, I have participated in these crying festivals many times.

But not this time.

What you gave us were answers. Maybe not the real, crunchy numbers many of us hope for and want, but what you gave us is worth far more than any paltry buff to this, that, or the other thing.

You were honest with us as a class. You told us “here is how we see the mage class and what we want to do”.  You told us how you want arcane to work, how you want fire to work, how you want frost to work. Maybe some of us don’t like it. Maybe some of us do. Maybe we like what’s going on with spec A, but not B.

But all of us appreciate the fact that you said it in the first place.

I always hear people like Dr. Phil or that relationship advice expert on the radio talk about “closure”, whether it be related to a parent or some failed romantic relationship.

This is what you have given us, the mage community.

No longer do we have to guess, to wonder, to string ourselves along, not having any idea where we’re going. A disconnect between player and developer, if you will.

You’ve given mages worldwide the ability to say “alright, this is awesome” or “well… it’s been fun” or even “this is some goddamn bullshit”. You’ve given us the freedom to decide, right here and now, whether we share your vision, whether we want to continue down the road you are taking mages.

And for that… for that I say thank you.

We’ll see you at Blizzcon.

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“Buff” Your Reflexes

There’s an interesting little mechanic related to key presses and WoW, which some of you probably know all about. But I’d bet currency of some sort that there are many of you don’t. So allow me to enlighten you.

When you press a key, nothing happens. The button itself is lit up on your client, showing you which spell you’ve selected to cast. But it does not transmit the request to cast the spell until you release the key. If you have a button pressed, you can continue using other abilities as normal. The pressed key doesn’t interfere at all.

Most of you have probably noticed this behaviour, but how many of you have actually trained yourself to take advantage of it? If you have, epic kudos to you, you rock so hard.

For the rest of you… consider the following.

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In Defense of the Argent Tournament

I realize this is all probably going to waste, but the entire Argent Tournament is actually extremely logical in it’s execution.

Imagine you are Tirion Fordring. You’ve drummed up a mighty army of soldiers, are equipped with the best equipment your limited coffers can buy, and have thousands of willing volunteers from both the Horde and the Alliance.

You land on Northrend, and immediately begin the final war against the Scourge. You hear word that the alliance and horde both put together an extremely large and well equipped army, marched on Icecrown, and failed dismally.

You grit your teeth, and make your own push into Icecrown. You establish a base, losing hundreds and hundreds of your loyal warriors to get there.You turn to mercenaries, heroes and adventurers of both the horde and alliance, more than willing to lend aid to your cause for some gold or just the chance to do something right.

You fight and you fight, smashing asunder the defenses of Icecrown Citadel, until finally you draw within sight of Arthas’ throne.

You look onto the fortress of your nemesis, the graves of your friends behind you. You set your teeth, and make the call for the final attack.

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Why I WoW

This was (is?) a Blog Azeroth style thingy (I think? Seems like there were a bunch of posts about it), and as usual, I’m weighing in on it absurdly fashionably late.

In short, I play WoW for the challenge. I play the game because it’s capable of providing a fun environment that tests my skills, my knowledge, and my ability to react to situations and puzzles in a strategical and tactical manner.

I’ve mentioned it before, but here goes again.

The style of game I like is a slower, more deliberate style of game. I am not a twitch gamer, and never enjoy myself when playing a twitch game. That is why games like, say, Unreal Tournament or Counterstrike don’t appeal to me in the slightest, but games like Sins of a Solar Empire or Supreme Commander are games I can happily spend entire days playing without break.

I don’t mind having to react quickly to things, what I mind is having to react instantly to things. If you run around a corner and an enemy player is there in Counterstrike, you have… ohh, maybe a hundred milliseconds to win that encounter. Or in my case, usually die horribly before I even registered that there was an enemy.

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Quick Living Bomb Macro

Tired of tabbing? Finding it difficult to find that one last mob that doesn’t have Living Bomb?

While it ain’t perfect, there is a solution, via the incredible powers of macros!

==

#showtooltip

/cast [target=mouseover,harm,nodead,exists] Living bomb; Living Bomb

==

It’s as easy as that!

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