Tag Archives: PVE

The solution to the PVP gear problem

5.3 will introduce big changes to the PVP gear : players will no longer need PVP gear to have enough resilience to survive, and there will be an ilvl limitation in BGs. These changes aim to make stepping into PVP easier for new or PVE players, while also inciting players to prefer PVP gear instead of higher ilvl PVE gear for BGs, like you can read on the last MMO-Champion news.

But I don’t think this is enough. The solution would be to remove PVP gear from the game altogether.

No more PVE vs PVP gear : welcome “good for everything” gear.

Each piece of available gear should have all the stats needed for each activities. PVP power and resilience could become primary stats, or they could be removed from the gear and build in a PVP zone buff. With one single type of gear, it’d be easier than ever to go from one activity to another. Mainly PVE player ? You can do your Saturday night horde slaying in your hard-earned PVE gear. Mainly PVP player ? You can get your PVE achievement with your PVP gear. No more gear grinding for an activity you only want to do once in a while. But as it becomes easier to step in and out of each activity, you may want to alternate more often too! You could also choose to do both at a time. Like taking part in world PVP while doing dailies, and being equally efficient for both. No longer need to choose between being one-shotted by the first PVPer passing by or killing monsters quickly.

Choose the activity, not the reward !

Imagine that you can do BGs to farm your valor points instead of dailies and heroics… Don’t know you, but I would certainly like it. Welcome a new game where there only is one type of currencies, that you can get from any activity you’d like to practice in-game. When winning a PVP game, you could get a chance at some loot, be it using the LFR loot system for normal BGs, or with a looting system that allow for master loot in rated PVP.

For example, after winning a Warsong match Alliance side, you could be ported to an instanced Darnassus to get your reward directly from Tyrande Whisperwind, as a thank you for taking part in the victory.

Each BG or arena could have its own loot table, like PVE bosses. It’d be quite simple to balance the rhythm of loot acquisition between PVE or PVP activities by tweaking drop rates or amount of currencies you can get for each activity. And in case it weren’t quite balanced, don’t panic, it won’t affect your open world pvp activities :

PVP should be about skill…

… Not about who have the bigger sword. All the gear should be leveled out in BGs and arenas, like it is in challenge modes. The reference ilvl could increase at each patch though, so that you get bigger number when you advance in the expansion. Getting new gear would allow you to optimize your secondary stat distributions, or to show off your new set, and of course you’d do better in PVE and open world PVP.

The equalization could also help balance healing vs damage vs avoidance, by increasing some stat more than other. For example, you could have spell power at 100% of the reference, while healing power is only at 80%.

And many more benefits

One of the other benefit I can preview, is that Blizzard wouldn’t need to design so many different gear sets at each patch. Ok having different-looking gear is nice, but with 8 year of transmogable gear available, do you really need 2 different set at each patch? One a these you probably won’t obtain until the next patch… if you ever get it. Not that you did choose the one you’d get first because of look.

Of course, there are cons to this method. PVPers might not feel compelled to grind BG if the gear doesn’t matter. But they might also discover that because of not needing to grind gear, they can enjoy other activities too. And grinding random BGs shouldn’t become the new catch up mechanism (which would happen if you could drop gear equivalent to current LFR tier in normal BGs)

This system may also induce some inconveniences which would need to be addressed. For example, it would be nice to be able to preview what your stats will be like in PVP without being in there to be able to choose your gear and reforge accordingly. Also, it would be harder to design set bonus that are balanced and equally desirable for PVE and PVP. But I’m pretty confident Blizzard could come up with an elegant solution for that. For example, you could get a set with a pvp bonus from PVP activities, and a set with a PVE bonus from raids. Or the bonuses could be equally valuable for each activity.

PS : the way honor is gained during BG should also change, but that is another story. You shouldn’t get points for being around when an enemy is killed. You should get Honor points by taking part in the battle for victory. If you can’t imagine another way to attribute honor points for contribution, just look at SWTOR system here. You can earn the equivalent of honor points by completing a variety of objectives, called medals.

Healer design retrospective

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Back in BC, Holy paladins were stuck into casting 2 different single target heals for every needs, including when they needed to heal many different targets. Blizzard decided it wasn’t a great design choice and added diversity to the paladin healing rotation : they now use a variety of single and multi target spells, and are encouraged to alternate between holy power generating spells and holy power consuming spells.

Back in WotLK, Disc Priest tended to use a single single-target spell to blanket the whole raid with shields. Blizzard decided it wasn’t a great design choice and improved the disc priest toolbox. They now have many efficient multi-targets spells, each with different goals, being effectively healing the raid or creating preventive shields on many characters.

Back in WotlK, Resto Druids spammed a single-target hot to heal the whole raid. Blizzard decided it wasn’t a great design choice, so they forced the druids using a variety of spells to benefit from their mastery, while providing them new spells to deal with different damage patterns.

Back in BC, Resto Shamans used 2 to 3 different ranks of the same spell (needing different buttons on their action bars) to heal different damage patterns on the tank or stacked people. Shaman were also the only class capable of efficiently healing aoe damage, and thus surpassed all other classes for this purpose. Blizzard decided it wasn’t a great design choice and made Chain Heal less efficient to bring Shaman in the other healers range. They also gave shaman new tools to respond to their single target and stacked healing needs. Today, shaman are stuck using an inefficient single target spell (Healing Surge, mostly) to heal raid wide damage when the raid isn’t stacked (that is, at least one on two fights).

Note : This post is based from my current knowledge and remembrance of other healing classes. I didn’t make research just for it. So it may not be exactly accurate. However, its aim is to be an overview of the situation. Also, I didn’t talk about Holy priests because back in Vanilla/BC they were the most versatile healer, even if they’re not in as a good shape today (again, compared to other healers).

The morale of the story

Overall, Blizzard did a great job at designing healers over time. I remember a day when if you wanted to do timed Shattered Halls (needed for Tempest Keep raid attunement) as a resto shaman, your best chance was to go there with a paladin tank. Now you can do about any content with any spec.

But I’m pretty sure everyone out there is afraid of shaman becoming OP again as they were in Sunwell, and are afraid of making them better than other healers, even in their niche : stacked aoe healing. Since then, shaman were more in range of the other healers, occasionally dipping way below when the fights required a lot of spreading (mainly Ulduar, Firelands and Throne of Thunder).

In MoP, up until today, our emblematic spell, Chain Heal, was our worse spell. It healed for just as much as Greater Healing Wave, for about the same mana cost, had a longer cast time (as CH doesn’t benefit from Tidal Waves), and ran a high risk of only hitting a single target, reducing healing done by the spell by 60% (a lot of bosses hit boxes are so big that a Chain Heal doesn’t jump from the tank to the melees)

Today shamans’ main aoe healing spells were improved. This improvement may make shamans extremely good at healing a stacked raid (the 20% Healing Rain buff is pretty huge on an already strong spell, it may all be Sunwell again : shaman very powerfull in their niche but stuck in there). I understand why these improvements were chosen right now instead of more complex changes. But these don’t solve the true problem : shamans doesn’t have any suited spell for spread raid healing. They are forced burning their mana using an inefficient single target spell (Healing Surge) to aoe heal, or helplessly watching the other healers do the job. This isn’t fun. Healing should be about using the right spell for the right job. For a shaman healing a spread raid, our only right spell is a 3 minutes CD talent (Healing Tide Totem). We need something to fill this hole, be it via a new spell, a glyph or a revamped talent (Elemental Blast, I’m looking at you !). I just hope it comes in 5.3…

Is Wrathion questline Legendary enough ?

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Tzufit recently wrote a post about the Wrathion legendary questline. In this post he complained that Legendaries have become too easy to acquire thanks to the Black Prince, making them no longer legendary. This seems like a valid concern. As he said, when everyone’s Legendary, no one will be!

Well, this depends of what are your expectations concerning Legendaries. If your main definition of Legendary is rare, then effectively, the Wrathion quest is hardly legendary as anyone can complete it.

Although, if you look at the quest reward, these become scarcer. Of course, it’s easy to get your Sha-touched gem. But then ? Not really useful if you don’t have the associated weapon. So yeah, I suppose a lot of players have actually equipped the gem in the most advanced guilds, but if you’re hoping to get your Sha-touched weapon in LFR, it suddenly gets a legendary touch !

But Legendary isn’t just “rare” for me. It’s also epic, fabulous. And what would you call a gigantic questline that’ll keep you involved during a whole expansion ? In this quest you’ll have to do raids (all of them, as it seems), daily quests, battlegrounds, and maybe heroics, challenge modes or scenarios to get your 6000 valor points.

Of course, this can’t replace the legendary items for top-notch guilds (and I hope Blizzard will continue to introduce legendary weapon in future patches). But for the others ? For all the players out there who know in advance that they won’t be able to get the new legendary weapon because they aren’t part of a hardcore raiding guild ? Well, for all these players, the Wrathion questline really have a legendary fell in my opinion.

Fireland is great. Or is it really ?

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Be warned, this is going to be a rant post. Small thinks that bugs me in Firelands and 4.2, things that don’t allow me to enjoy the new content as much as I’d like. Anyway, feel free to leave if you really love Firelands and wouldn’t like to have your pleasure ruined by someone who noticed boring flaws.

Want to /suicide each time I look at Skada…

First, there is this thing about resto shaman feeling useless while healing with a resto druid. That isn’t just me, many shaman feel that way. When you do your best at using all your skill in the best possible way, reforge all your spirit away to have BIGGER HEALS, and still can’t manage to do more than 70%-80% of your fellow holy paladin and resto druid on a normal fight, you don’t feel very well. OK, when your raid is doing it wrong and damage is crazy, resto shaman healing is great… until the raid inevitably wipes. But what’s the purpose of being able to heal a lot when you know it’s going to be a wipe anyway ? (like, when the upper team is dead on Beth’tilac…). At least, you know you CAN do it. And you try to persuade yourself than you’re here when the raids needs you, with your mastery @save-the-raid-from-certain-death, but knowing the raid don’t really needs you most of the time is still sad.

Then there was that random crap on Rhyolith

Last time, we tried Rhyolite (or Riz au Lait, as we like to call him) for the second night, and it was a complete disaster. First, we felt like melees managed the driving better: no more lava drinking. But then, we felt like we couldn’t beat bad RNG. We had volcano spawn at inconvenience places, Riz au Lait activating volcanoes he just passed.

Like one time, just on the beginning of the fight, Riz au Lait spawn 2 volcanoes in front of him, one just on the right, and one just on the left. As Riz au Lait came closer and closer to the lava, we decided to make him turn right. Of course, the second he passed the left volcano, he decided to activate it.

Or these time, where volcanoes where all on one another, and Riz au Lait had 10 stacks of Molten Armor…

Ok, that’s just Murphy’s law, I suppose we could handle it if we just get better handling the whole fight.

But then, there was that completely random move from Riz au Lait. He turned 50° in one step, stopped for his stamping, and turned 50° again on the next step. And the gauge wasn’t even full or even near to full!

That seemed so omg volcanoes are random, Riz au Lait driving is random. Why the hell are we just trying to kill a boss where everything is complete random crap?

Plus there are all these urban legends on this boss. Maybe you can avoid the bumping thing if you jump at the right time. Maybe you should avoid dots on the feets. Maybe you should dot both feets. Maybe Riz au Lait’s direction depends on damage done to each feet. Or maybe Riz au Lait’s direction depends on number on hits on each feet. It seems like none really knows. Well, maybe hard core guilds know how it works, but it seems like they either don’t want to talk about their finding before they kill him on heroic mode or don’t have the time to talk about it before they kill Heroic Ragnaros.

Well, I like this boss, because the mechanisms is new and different. But it seems buggy, no one really knows how it works, and while the encounter journal is comprehensive on other bosses, it’s widely lacking for Riz au Lait. Molten Armor isn’t even mentionned in there!

/bored about doing 25-man fights in a 10-man raid

All these add boss where you have to divide dps on 2 or more different tasks seems so much better tuned for 25 man, and much more complicated in 10-man. In 10-man, 1 dps is 1/6 to 1/5 of your total damage. In 25-man, one dps is 1/16 to 1/18 or your total damage. You can easily fine-tune the dps assignment so that everything is dpssed down at the rate it should. Plus if you want to do one boss with one more tank, you only loose a small part of you your raid damage.

In a 10-man raid, fine-tuning dps assignment is much harder. Lets take an obvious example. On Beth’tilac, 4 things must be dpssed down at the same time: Beth’tilac, the drone, the spinners, and the small spiders. If you put one dps on each task, you have one free agent left. But one dps on each task is not enough sometimes. In a 25-man raid, you can have 4 dps on each task, and you can fine-tune it by moving one dps here and there.

So, the random 10-man dps has to handle multiple tasks at the same time, whereas the random 25-man dps can focus on one single task. He needs more awareness, more reactivity, more autonomy than a random 25-man dps.

10-man are harder on the raid leader, because decisions are harder to make and choices are limited. 10-man are harder on each member because they need to handle many tasks at the same time, whereas in a 25-man raid you can assign a single task to each dps (or, at least to the people who can’t handle multiple tasks).

Final ranting: I’m doing it wrong too!

There was a bit on ranting on the blogosphere lately about the need to do things you don’t like, bet it farming dailies or heroics to cap your weekly valor points. As Windsoar, I’m doing it wrong. I don’t do heroics anymore because I hate that. I already spend 30 to 50 minutes each day doing Molten Front dailies and not leveling my toon of the moment, I’m not going to spend another hour doing something I already did 15+ times. Farming valor points in T11 was ok : the instances were still fairly new and they still could be a bit of a challenge (at least if you did the Zandalari random in 4.1). But now, I did these instances a lot, and there isn’t any difficulty left.Plus, my play time available to do instances is limited, be it with Zahia or with an alt.

I wish Blizzard could be inventive for that, and find a new way to obtain valor points for raiding toons, without having to run the same old instance again, and again, and again. Like, there could be a chance to get valor points from Fireland trashes. Or Molten Front daily quests could award a chest, were you would have a chance to find valor points. Or they could have added the Zandalari instances and Fireland at the same time, so that all the useless valor points I got while doing the new troll instances would have served buying my T12 set, instead of some crap for my offspec.

But I don’t think Blizzard will do that ever. For the Looking for Dungeon tool to be successful, there needs to be enough people queuing for these instances, otherwise it takes too long to find a group. So, they must be pretty happy with how valor points currently work, because it allow the LFD to work well, and casual players can do dungeons, get new gear at each new patch, and they still wish to play the game and pay their subscription.

But still, for casual raiding guilds, with casual raiders, this system is complete crap. I don’t even want to know in how many weeks I am going to get my T12 valor pieces while killing 2 bosses each week (that is, Shannox and Baratin Hold)

Short Strategy: 7 steps to Omnotron

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These short strategy posts aim at explaining each T11 fight with the less possible words and phrases, focusing on what is important only. These should be especially useful for someone wanting to explain a fight in a pick up raid.

Roles and Positionning:

Spread out when Electron is active, else you better stay close from each other to help healers.
Don’t let any boss (generally it’ll spawn under Arcanotron) stand in the pink puddle

Fight!

Stop all damage on current boss (switch to the next one) when energy bar drops to 50% and for 10 seconds after that.
Interrupt Arcanotron Arcane Annihilator
Lighting Rod target stand away from anyone else
Kite, slow down and kill the slimes (named Poison Bomb) that spawn at Toxitron feets
The target of Magmatron red ray should position herself so that there is nobody on the line going from Magmatron to her.

Additionnal tip:

As usual, don’t stand in the bad! That includes the green cloud. But you can stand in the pink puddle, and should stand in it whenever possible (that is, don’t stack in it when Electron is active)

Short strategy: 6 steps to Magmaw

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When explaining a fight strategy to a raid, you need to be as short as possible. Otherwise, you’ll loose the attention from people already knowing the fight, and people who don’t know it won’t remember whats really important about the boss after a 5 minutes explanation.

With the 4.2 nerf bat, we may see a lot more pug raids going into the tier 11 raids, and you, me, anybody could be in one of these raids and have to explain the fights (may it because you’re the lead or because the raid leader has no clue about what a raid leader is supposed to do). In these pick up raids, it’s especially important to be concise while explaining the strategy. Plus you may not be on vent and have to use raid chat.

That’s why I start this series of short strategy posts. I’ll aim at explaining each T11 fight with the less possible words and phrases, focusing on what is important only. These short posts should suit me as I don’t have the commitment to write long posts with screenshots and all that at the moments, but still am sad to completely give up with this blog.

Let’s start with Magmaw :

Roles and positionning :

Only one tank.
Every body stand in melee range except one ranged dps standing at max range. (let’s call him the kiter)
2 dps jump on Magmaw’s head when available and use the chain on the peak before Magmaw

You're lucky this time, you've got a map too !

Fight !

Kiter dodge the fire pillar (and eventually kite the worms that’ll spawn on the pillar location)
All range dps kill the worms when they spawn on the kiter position and slow them
Whole raid dodge the smokes when needed (go to the tank position)

Additional tip :

Tank use cooldowns while eaten (not needed if your tank and healers are good enough, but you never know in a pug raid…)

That’s all. 6 simple steps to kill Magmaw. Let’s see if I can do better for the other bosses…

Warlock Gnomes are evil²

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Gnomes are evil. Warlocks are evil. Warlock gnomes are evil². If I was a Blizzard developer and had to imagine an evil boss for Cataclysm, here is what I’d do:

Evil Gnome and his Eredar Twins minions (Ugly picture because Wow model viewer won't work... Sorry!)

At the beginning of the fight, the boss has 10% hp¹ and will drain the life from all players in range. When all players are alive, the life he gains through his Drain Life aura will be more important than the life he loose through the damage done by the raid and thus the boss will gain life.

But as this gnome is evil², he love to kill people. Like: “Eh dude, you’re going to die in a few seconds, and there’s nothing you can do about it.” So at the beginning of the fight, he cast Curse of Doom on a random target. The target of the Curse of Doom will take 1 million damage after 1 minute. And the curse with jump on every target within 30 yards of the cursed target at the moment it does its damage. With reduced duration. And increased damage. And if the curse doesn’t jump, the gnome boss gain a 100% buff to his damage. (When I said gnomes were evil…)

Thus, after beginning the fight people are starting to die. After a few deaths, the raid start doing more damage than the life drained, and the health of the gnome start dropping. Yes. Warlock Gnomes are such evil than they’re eager to use an evil way² to kill people, even at their own risk! But gnomes are intelligent. This gnome did the math, and he knows perfectly than after 5 minutes of fight, everybody in the raid will be dead.

But these 2 evil spells are not his only skills. He have toys too. Demon toys. And he is easily bored, so he summon a new very often. But Evil² Gnome doesn’t choose anybody as a minion. He choose the most powerful of all demons.Thus, every 20 seconds, the raid has to deal with a new demon between Lady Sacrolash, Grand Warlock Alythess, Mother Shahraz or Supremus, each one having a special ability to help his Master or destroy the raid.

You have to tank the Lady Sacrolash minions, but if there are too many of these alive your offtank will soon have his healing received reduced by 100%. Grand Warlock Alythess will cast Conflagration on random targets. Mother Shahraz will have an aura reducing one type of damage taken by the Evil Gnomes and all his minions. Supremus will need to be kited.

And, as the evil² Gnome is still bored, he smash random buttons : Unstable Drain Mana (a mix between Drain Mana and Unstable Corruption), Seed of Corruption and Corruption of Weakness being his favourite ones.

During the whole fight you’ll need to make choice : do you dispel the Unstable Drain Mana ? Do you kill the demons ? Perhaps you can handle the kiting of Supremus and the mortal strikes, but if there are a few Lady Sacrolash the mortal strike debuffs can become huge on your off tank. You also need to choose wisely the sacrificed players in order to keep an balanced raid during the full fight.

Here is the full description of the Evil² Gnome skills :

Drain Life Aura : every one in range get their life drained at a rate of 10% life per second.
Curse of Doom (non dispellable) : After 1 minute, the target take 1 million damage. The curse will jump to anyone in a 30 yards radius when it ends, with a duration reduce by 20%. If their isn’t anyone in range, or if the target die before the end of the doom, the doom get back to the boss, increasing his damage dealt (and life drained!) by 100%.
Seed of Corruption (non displlable): Casted on the main target. Inflict shadow damage over time. After 30 seconds the seed explodes, dealing 100k damage in a 20 yards radius. The target of Seed of Corruption can’t be targeted by Curse of Doom.
Corruption of Weakness : reduce the damage dealt and healing done by 50%, increase damage taken by 50% and reduce running speed by 50% (and life drained !)(magical debuff)
Unstable Drain Mana : drain 10% mana every 2 seconds, last 10 seconds, inflict 50k damage to the dispeller ans silence the dispeller when dispelled.
Invocation of doom : summon a random demon every 15 seconds.
- Lady Sacrolash : inflict heavy melee damage. Have a strike that reduce healing taken by 5%, stack up to 20 times
- Grand Warlock Alythess :Castes dire volt at random raid targets and cast Conflagration on a random target, confounding her and all targets within 5 yards
- Mother Shahraz : Prismatic aura: decrease damage of one type (including physical damage) and increase damage of another type on the evil gnome and all jus minions.
- Supremus : Attack a random target within very high melee damage. Supremus move himself very slowly and must be kited by his target.

And you, what evil boss would you imagine if you had to ? Take part in the Shared Topic for this week and design your own evil boss

Warlock Gnomes are such evil² that they life tap to death between fights, all healers know that! ↩
Waiting for the healer to go oom to wipe the raid is so classical. It’s not worthy of a gnome. ↩