Implications of Attunement Removal (and other large and intimidating words)

This is the thing that everyone seems to want to talk about with regards to the upcoming Patch 2.4, and after listening to several viewpoints of various people since the patch 2.4 notes were announced, I feel prepared to write a post on the subject that considers more than just my own opinions. Keep in mind, however, that I'm with a guild that is still in Karazhan, doesn't have enough members at present to seriously consider starting a second Karazhan group, and contains a great deal of people who have only just had their first taste of raid content (I am one of these people).

First off, what exactly is this "attunement removal" thingy? Well, one of the changes in patch 2.4 is that you will no longer need to complete a lengthy attunement quest in order to enter Mount Hyjal and the Black Temple.

What do these attunements require as of patch 2.3? The Hyjal attunement requires that you've completed Serpentshrine Cavern and Tempest Keep: The Eye. The Black Temple attunement requires that you've completed Serpentshrine Cavern, Tempest Keep, and Mount Hyjal. This means that there's a clear line of progression. Serpentshrine Cavern/Tempest Keep rolls into Mount Hyjal, which then opens up Black Temple.

The overall order of progression goes something like this:

Karazhan

Gruul's Lair, Magtheridon's Lair, Doomwalker, Kazzak, Zul'Aman

Serpentshrine Cavern, Tempest Keep

Caverns of Time: Mount Hyjal

Black Temple

With guilds moving down the list, starting at Karazhan and finally ending at Illidan (or disbanding at some point in the middle). After 2.4, people will not necessarily need to do any of the bits in the middle.They could, for example, go straight from Gruul's Lair into the Black Temple. They'd wipe on their first trash pull, or, if they were really lucky, they'd bang their heads against Naj'Entus until they beat a bit of sense into themselves, but they could still do it.

There are arguments for and against attunement removal, which I shall attempt to summarize here.

What are the arguments for attunement removal? Well, an acquaintance of mine is in a 5/6 SSC, 3/4 TK guild who have gotten Vashj down to 63%. He was talking to me about his guild's progress, and happened to mention that they would use gear from Mount Hyjal to down Vashj. The attunement change would help guilds who are stuck on Vashj and Kael'Thas to progress by giving them a gear boost that would be somewhat easier to attain.

The attunement removal will make raid content more accessible. This can't be a bad thing - Blizzard obviously wants as much of its consumer base to experience that endgame content as possible, and making it easier obviously means that people will progress through it faster. This makes it easier on players who are new to raid content to achieve their goals before Wrath of the Lich King comes out, and increases the likelihood that players will be able to enter Sunwell Plateau at all.

Accessibility has always been one of WoW's greatest strengths. Any idiot can pick it up and play it - just look at your last PuG to see how true that statement is. The death penalties are trivial, the learning curve is gentle - hell, the game practically leads you along by the nose in the starting areas, especially now that you can see questgivers on your minimap. Therefore, any move to make content accessible is logical, considering that accessibility is one of WoW's biggest selling points in the first place.

Moreover, the fact that you can waltz into Black Temple and Hyjal whenever you please gives players more choice. Choice is a wonderful thing. I like that we can skip a few bosses in Karazhan to get to Prince quickly because our main healer is on a tight schedule (although I would've liked to have had a shot at getting my tentacle staff of molesty doom last week, but downing Prince was a huge morale booster). I also like the fact that we will be able to, say, spend one night in Hyjal and get a gear upgrade or two to help out with the whatever boss we happen to be stuck on at the time. I would love to have even more choice, in character customization for example (and that's one of the reasons why the introduction of Inscription in Wrath is one of the things that interests me the most).

However, it's not all roses and fluffy kittens that poop rainbows. There's the argument that comes from everyone who has already completed content that gets subsequently nerfed: "It's unfair that they get to go right into Black Temple when we had to do the attunement for it!" It's along the same lines as people who completed the attunements for SSC/TK before they were removed too - and people who killed bosses that later got nerfed.

Personally, this isn't too much of an issue for me, since all those people get bragging rights: i.e., "I did it when it was still hard, noob!" Things get changed. I would be irritated if all my hard work was rendered void too, but think of it this way: all those people who are already in Mount Hyjal/Black Temple are way in front of guilds that aren't in terms of gear, teamwork, co-ordination, ability to deal with technical encounters, and so on. Not only have you progressed further, you have proven that you are capable of getting into the hardest raid content without the need for Blizzard to unlock the door for you.

This is the problem I have with it: skipping bosses. Guilds will be skipping bosses until they have farmed enough gear from the first few bosses of the next raid dungeon until they have the gear to make the fight they are stuck on easier. Some guilds will skip Vashj and Kael altogether - hell, even Archimonde - and just try to get all the way up to Illidan without downing any of the other main bosses.

Guilds that try this will fall apart when they get to the point that there is no easy gear for them to leapfrog over to. That, or they will have to admit that they have to pull their act together and learn how to do a technical fight without going, "oh, this is too difficult, let's go do an easier boss with better loot instead."

And the people who do attempt to gear up by leapfrogging, but actually do go back and take out the bosses they were stuck on. On the one hand, this seems cheap to me - getting better gear and going back to blaze through content, like doing heroics with a group all in Karazhan gear. On the other hand, it's still easy to wipe if you don't know the encounter - like in Heroic Mechanar, when you don't know that standing next to someone with the opposite polarity will be deadly. Gear, after all, is no substitute for skill and knowledge. Put someone who's never played the game before in full tier 6 and a lavender mageweave shirt and enjoy the show.

On the other hand, I use flasks and other consumables in my current raids. Is that 'cheap'? Of course not. Getting a few pieces of gear is just fine - it might give you that extra edge, like a flask of fortification, that lets you down the boss. What I would have a problem with is if we, say decided to only do Prince Malchezzar once we'd gotten Black Temple/Hyjal gear. That would be cheap. So, say a guild is stuck on Vashj and decides to farm the first few bosses of Tempest Keep, mount Hyjal, and Black Temple... then, once they've got six or seven bosses' worth of gear, they come back and trounce Vashj. Is that cheap? Is that guild going to fall apart as soon as they get to Archimonde because a gear check isn't good enough anymore? It's interesting.

Having said all these things, let's consider that Gruuls' Lair, Magtheridon's Lair and Zul'Aman are all without attunement, while Karazhan does still have an attunement. Are people going straight into Zul'Aman, Gruul's and Maggie's? No, of course not, they'd get trounced without Karazhan gear. Having said that, most (edit: changed from "all") of the bosses in Karazhan are manageable even by a guild that's never raided before. The fights in Gruul's, Maggie's and Zul'Aman are all much complex - whereas Winterchill is an easier fight than Kael'Thas. There is no temptation to go straight to Zul'Aman because doing Karazhan is the logical step. Is farming Hyjal and Black Temple gear now going to be 'the logical step' now? We'll see how the raiders handle this once Patch 2.4 comes out.

may be progressing through 25-man content by then - at least I hope we will. It will be interesting to see how we deal with the change. But we will not, by any means, be killing brain cells on Naj'Entus the day after 2.4 hits, I can tell you that for a fact. Continue reading 'Implications of Attunement Removal (and other large and intimidating words)'

Happy Valentine's Day

So as I sit here on my own at 4 AM on the 15th of February, lamentably alone (I WEEP) after just listening to Casually Hardcore live (THE PAIN) and wondering whether it's even worth getting up tomorrow morning (IT HURTS MAH SOUL SO BAD MOMMAH) I figured I might as well do something at least moderately constructive and update my blog (THE PATHOS). After which I stumbled upon this hilarious video posted by the Big Bear Butt Blogger, whose site I visit with at least moderate, though certainly not regular, frequency (NEEDS MOAR COWBELL?!). Please, listen to it and be merry (TEH AGONIEZ).

So what's today's topic you might ask?

Patch 2.4 is up on the PTRs, and of course WoW Insider is giving us extensive coverage of many aspects of it.

What bits of it are relevant to me? Let's see.

What have we here? "The Sunwell Isle is now available for play. This area includes a new quest hub and 5-player and 25-player instances. Join the Shattered Sun Offensive in shutting down Kael’thas’ nefarious operations. This new force is comprised by both the Aldor and Scryers and is led by the Naaru. Players will take part in claiming Sun’s Reach and setting up a larger base of operation to stop Kael’thas and the Legion." I like this. This is made of win. Progressive content is interesting, and I'll enjoy seeing just how it progresses.

Intellect-based mana regeneration is being introduced. This is good for all caster classes, as they'll be getting a big boost to mana efficiency. I wonder, however, how large the bonus will be. How much of an issue will mana conservation be after this patch? Are caster classes going to have their worry over mana reduced to the point where it is no longer an issue? Will Blizzard nerf existing mana regeneration to stabilize things? Will this make Warlock's health-to-mana mechanic less appealing in the long run? Downtime overall will be reduced for caster classes, making trash packs more palatable, wipe recovery quicker, and soloing easier. But will it be enough to make a visible difference? The good old elitist jerks have posted a theorycrafting thread wherein they speculate as to the differences to mana regeneration the change will have. It goes way over my head for the most part, but perhaps you, gentle readers, may be able to make something of it?

Spell haste affecting the global cooldown - great. Can't wait to play around with this when Jinvasha finally gets to 70 and starts getting spell haste gear.

Druid-specific changes! I love this section. What are we getting? Standouts for me are: Lacerate is getting a buff to the DoT component: it will now scale with AP. This will be great for when I have a stack of lacerates on a target and become incapacitated somehow: there will be a greater chance that the mob will stay on me instead of running after some juicy but slightly overeager fire mage. More threat = happy bear.

Mangle (bear) now triggers a 1.5 second cooldown as opposed to a 1.0 second cooldown. I hadn't even noticed this until I read the patch notes and then took a close look during a tanking session. I'm anticipating that the increased threat from lacerate may have been a move to cancel this slight nerf out. No real biggy anyhow.

When a druid in cat form pounces it will now properly animate. I never even knew we had a pounce animation... so I had a look on the WoW model viewer and found that we actually do have a pounce animation. It will be good to actually see what causes the pounce stun and DoT as opposed to just crouching there while it's magically applied through no visible means.

PvP: no diminishing returns on honour. I don't recall the exact math, but this multiplies the potential amount of honour you could gain from killing the same repeatedly by ten. In addition, honour is calculated instantly as opposed to being estimated and then totted up and added to your character once a day. This will be great for farming the PvP items I need to cover armour/weapon slots that I haven't got decent PvE gear for on upcoming characters, lessening the amount of time I need to spend in the battlegrounds getting stunlocked by rogues and chain-feared by warlocks. All good.

FISHING DAILY QUEST. Need I say more?

Herbalism: we're getting a greater chance for a fel lotus to drop from just about all available herb types. However, any herbalists know how, when herbing an ancient lichen node, you'll occasionally get an uncommon ring, about level 56? They're replacing those will fel lotus now; this is a shame in my opinion, for the rings added real flavour. Now, the rings were pretty much useless seeing as how, at that level, you'd be hitting the outlands and getting green rings that far, far outclassed that ancient lichen ring you just picked up - but it was cool to get them.

Moreover, I can now herbalize Warp Splinter's corpse in Heroic Botanica. That drove me crazy, seriously. I loved herbing him in normal mode, and it was gutting not being able to reap my rewards in heroic as well.

The number of patrollers on the Ata'Mal terrace has been halved. Thank goodness. I died more times on that damn terrace than I did in all of Shadowmoon Valley. And if you don't know what I'm talking about? When you get there, and experience the horror for yourself... you shall know. Oh yes, you shall know the terror of multiple corpse-runs and a ridiculous repair bill.

Increased the slots on Old Blanchy's Feed Pouch to 8. All I can say is: OMG. Thank you, Blizzard. This... this just made my day. Excuse my while I weep tears of eternal gratitude.

Non-Corporeal Undead and Mechanical creatures are now susceptible to bleed effects. Okay... fair enough. Maybe the undead bleed essence or mana, or something? And I can see that getting a nasty rip would perhaps damage circuitry, cause a feedback loop in a giant robot's system, cause a quantum singularity in the mega overflux capacitationating hyper overdrive negation duct. I like this, since it means that my cat-form DPS will be greatly increased in Karazhan, which as we know is full of undead.

Right. That's me done for tonight before I fall asleep on the keyboard. Tomorrow I'll clean up and finish off the topic that has noobs all over Orgrimmar aflutter in a tirade of angst: the removal of attunements and Black Temple badge loot.

Until next time! Continue reading 'Happy Valentine's Day'

A New Reason to Gank Fandral Staghelm

Extra! Extra! News from Computer and Videogames (and a comment on it at WoW Insider) about the upcoming expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, for millions of WoW fans around the world to devour greedily and, as they lick their bloodstained lips, raise their bloodshot eyes and howl, "MOAR! MOAR! MOAR!"

So what do we have here? More talk about inscription and how it will work, exactly. Great - more ways to pimp our characters. I like it. It's good. Stuff that's already been mentioned, too - the new CoT instance, which I will surely love; the PvP world zone which gives faction buffs... sure, not too interested in PvP, but I might give that a try. New hair styles and dances - gaming gold, people. Gaming gold. Especially if the new dances aren't race-based, so you can have all the races standing next to each other, or perhaps in a circle, and doing the exact same dance move, in sync with each other. I can see the machinima already...
And the mightiest of their warriors did stride forth and, facing off in a geometrically precise line of battle, prepared themselves for the epic confrontation. As one, the warriors of the Horde began to moonwalk. The Alliance clenched their teeth in trepidation. This was going to be a tough one.

Okay, what else? How about a new Hero class? What's that you say? Archdruids? Excuse me while I handcuff myself to the bed so that I do not accidentally throw myself out of the window with glee.

Seriously though - AWESOME. Now, if you haven't read the news that I linked just now, I am going to be an incredibly kind-hearted soul and quote the bit about Archdruids for you. "with any luck, we'll see more Hero classes some time after release, the hot Zitron tip being some kind of Archdruid quest directly connected to Malfurion Stormrage and the much-anticipated Emerald Dream."

I'll give you a few seconds to deal with this. Go on - go shout "ZOMG ARCHDRUIDZ" at a family member, pet, or passing vehicle. I'll wait. Okay, done? Great.

Speaking as a druid, I'm very interested to see what they could give Archdruids that would distinguish them from "normal" druids. Perhaps they will be a kind of further evolution of the class, sacrificing some amount of their versatility for increased prowess in one of their roles- such as becoming more proficient shapeshifters and unlocking different forms, or becoming a bigger, better, faster, stronger oomkin (goes oom 20% faster!), while distinguishing these roles from their main class counterparts even more.

That or they could go the other way and be even more versatile than druids already are, blurring the distinction between them and their animal forms - perhaps being able to cast certain spells in animal form, such as Remove Curse or Barkskin - or even the other way around, such as having Frenzied Regeneration continue to have effect even after you shift out of bear form.

I'd like to just note here that if Archdruids get the ability to customize their animal forms, I would be far more willing to make the Archdruid my main. If they are unable to use animal forms at all - a la Malfurion Stormrage in his Warcraft 3 incarnation - then I will be tempted, but will certainly not abandon Ukwende (Actually, Blizzard are going to have to do something nothing short of earth-shaking to make me abandon Ukwende, so it's pretty much a moot point anyway).

Along the Emerald Dream side of things, perhaps they'll be able to manipulate the real world through the Emerald Dream - that would be very, very cool thematically. In the druid quest for Swift Flight Form, you have to fight manifestations of nightmares that have emerged from the emerald dream. They could, then, become another minion-based class, managing one or more emerald dream manifestations; or even gain the ability to channel the spirit of an emerald nightmare and gain a new Nightmare form or Dream form. I already strongly suspect that druids will be getting a new animal form in Wrath, and that this new form will be in the Feral tree - since the first talented form was the Balance Boomkin and the second was the Restoration Redwood (Okay, I know that tree form isn't a redwood, but I couldn't think of a direct synonym of 'tree' that began with the letter R).

What I really don't want is for archdruids and druids to be homogeneous, with no real difference between them. I can't imagine Blizzard going that far, but it will probably be a fine line to tread between distinguishing them as druids and making them unique. However, Blizzard has shown that they are willing to homogenize with the Burning Crusade adding paladins to the Horde and shamans to the Alliance, eliminating the only real difference between the two factions in terms of gameplay mechanics. Moreover, they have also shown that they don't mind making old content obsolete - really, how often have I seen "LFM MC" in the LFG channel since Burning Crusade was released? Oh that's right, I haven't.

Now granted, they're bringing back Naxxramas in the expansion, but how much of that endgame raid content is never going to be seen again? I've made one foray into UBRS and a few into BRD. I've never set foot inside LBRS, I'm probably never going to see MC, Onyxia's Lair, Ahn'Qiraj 20 or 40, Zul'Gurub... the list isn't endless, but if you consider the amount of time legacy raiders spent in those instances, that is a massive amount of content that's just sitting there not being used. Granted, some of it was pretty terrible - I've heard all kinds of horror stories about Molten Core ("Will you loot the freaking core hounds already?!"), not to mention the infamous Onyxia's Lair attunement quest, as well as C'Thun's eye beam of instant gruesome death.

I would still, however, have loved to see that content - and I bet lots of pre-BC raiders would love to see it brought back and updated so that the rewards for actually doing them aren't completely worthless. Would it be too difficult to retune the encounters for 25 or even 10 players? Heck, MC has been cleared with by three! Of course, that kind of rehashing old content is unlikely, as Blizzard has stated that they aren't interested in it. And I can understand that - it wouldn't be fun to have all the instances in Wrath be like, "Sethekk Halls... but TEN LEVELS HIGHER!" Seriously kids. Say no to Sethekk Halls. And drugs. And deranged, carnivorous, homicidal birdmen who want to KILL AND EAT YOU. Seriously. Common sense here.

Of course, doing the same thing with an entire class would be... very surprising. I don't think that there is a real danger of it happening.

No - Blizzard won't make the Archdruid just an overpowered version of a druid. That would be insane. What I think is a danger is veiled homogeneity. Take my earlier speculation about what the Archdruid's abilities will be. If they took all these different ideas and applied them to the druid formula... what would you get? Perhaps you'd get the Nightmare, Dream and, I dunno, Delusion, talent trees. The Nightmare talent tree - you are able to empower your animal forms using the Emerald Dream; the Dream tree - you can enter a Dream State, in which your healing abilities are greatly amplified; the Delusion tree - the very essence of the Emerald Dream flows through you, allowing you to bring its wrath down upon your enemies.

So you've got a slightly different form of the Feral, Restoration and Balance trees, perhaps with different talents and models for forms, but with essentially the same base class. And there is even room for overlap. For example, I just said "Dream State" - can anyone say shadowform? Can anyone say enraged shadow priests and exploding WoW forums? Then again, this overlap problem is also true of the Death Knight.

How do they get around this? By designing an entirely new class mechanic, as they have done with the death knight's rune system.

I could go on speculating indefinitely, but this post is becoming a tad lengthy, and so I believe I'll wrap it up here and save some of my speculation points until more information on this Archdruid class comes to the fore.

Signing off! Continue reading 'A New Reason to Gank Fandral Staghelm'

The Penguins of Eternal Damnation are out to get me.

So here's another blog on the internet, that vast series of intartubez clogged to the brim with hatemongering idiots like a drainpipe overflowing with rotten sewage. Really, the number of people we have on the internet that don't appear to have more than two or three brain cells to rub together is simply astounding. Maybe I'll get onto some reasons for that in a later post, but for now let me just say that I will try to put out material of a quality that does not drive you to gouging your eyes out with a rusty spork. You're welcome.

Now, what will this blog be about? Probably whatever happens to occupy my mind when I update it. The majority of it will be about World of Warcraft, since that's my biggest current time sink and, after one and a half years of playing it, I feel I know enough about the game to perhaps be able to enlighten a person or two. Indeed, this will also be a forum in which I can ask questions of the readers, and learn new things about the game (in lieu of going to the WoW general forums which, as we all know, are a cesspit of festering intellectual decay).

I've got a few things lined up for this blog. I have my first few posts in mind, and I'm going to be doing my banner for the top of the site so that it doesn't look completely blank. I'm going to look at setting up some audio content in the form of a possible podcast, if I can get the hardware, software, and whatever other wares I might need to start up, because A) My rants would be far more effective if delivered in a form where listeners could hear the emotions (mostly annoyance) behind them, B) Because the warcraft radio sites have spawned inspiration in me (go check out wcradio.com if you haven't already, and listen to their variety of shows, every single one of which is worth listening to - SHAMELESS PLUG SHAMELESS PLUG) and C) Because I just love the sound of my own voice, and I wouldn't want to deny my audience the chance to love it either.

To round off this introductory post, I shall introduce my Azerothian avatars.
Ukwende, level 70 Tauren druid
Jinvasha, level 30 Troll mage
And a variety of alts who I may or may not decide to level at any given time.
I'm currently part of the guild on Aman-Thul US. Come look us up if you feel like it, for we are a wonderful, wonderful guild. As you may or may not know, Blizzard recently opened up the realm Caelestrasz, and people on Aman-Thul got the chance to transfer over there, free. A great deal of Soulbound Horde's members decided to jump ship, which crippled the endgame for a few months. Last weekend, however, we got back into Karazhan and, despite the fact that over half of the raid (including me) had never even been in there before, we cleared all the way up to the Chess event before it bugged out on us and we decide to call it. Yay us!

That's it for now, and I'll be looking to push out some more posts in the near future. (Note that, although Ukwende is my main, people have a lot of trouble actually pronouncing that - so I'll be signing the posts as Jinvasha, because it's easier)

Continue reading 'The Penguins of Eternal Damnation are out to get me.'