(WoW) State of Affairs
So it's been almost a month since patch 4.2 came out. How can I tell? I'm almost to the end of the Molten Front quests. Heh.
Questing
Thirty-ish days feels a bit grindy, but most of the quests themselves aren't that bad. Some are even fun. Convalescence of the Winds may be my favorite buff of the game - being able to leap around like crazy. The questline end vendors have some (relatively minor) upgrades and a few vanity items. I have enjoyed watching Hamuul make his comeback, Anren and Tholo being reunited, and viewing the past of Leyara's fall.
I think I've commented on Thrall's quests before. Decent lore, but lacking a feeling of accomplishment for me as a player.
Raiding
That we have been in the Firelands at all means our guild is ahead of the curve compared to 4.0, though success there thusfar has been limited to trash. The nerfing of 4.0 raids has made those a good deal easier and regularly doable, though Cho'gall remains about a 3-attempt fight and one that borders on maddening for me simply because of my own role in it:
Pull, fight, hope the other tank times the taunt right after the Fury debuff, wince as people remain mind controlled longer than they should, fret about usage of Avenger's Shield for DPS/threat versus stopping worship (if people are close enough for once), break off to move add, struggle for threat as DPS attacks add, attempt futily to interrupt Depravity while fighting for threat and moving, watch add go down and rush back to taunt trade back, curse Vengeance mechanics whilst struggling to maintain aggro after taunting, GOTO step 3...
It's sort of a frantic pain in the tail. But I find the Nefarian fight harder. I wonder if we would have done either by now if they hadn't been nerfed. Hard to say.
I could say that our recent attempts at Beth'tilac in the Firelands amounted to a wakeup call, but that implies a surprise to me, which it wasn't. Maybe for others. After several attempts and some switching of assignments that may not have been necessary, We got one really good, solid try in. We hit our marks for the most part (though perhaps the spiders should die faster) and got into phase 2 going pretty strong. But when we died, the big spider was still at about 40% health. If the spiderlings had all been dead, it would have been closer to 30%. Unfortunately, that's still a ways off - enough that a few people took a step back and said "We might not have the DPS for this." Beth'tilac is a bit funny in that two strategies have formed, but neither really helps: if the group can down all the spiderlings fast, you can send an extra DPS up to get a head start on the boss... but if your group can do that, you probably have the damage output to ignore the spiderlings at the transition and just burn the boss in phase 2.
That's been a concern of mine since we first poked the Firelands bosses a couple weeks back. I put combat logs online. They's sometimes hard to analyze, but I can look and see our overall group average DPS hovers around 80k. The average group DPS of recorded kills on Firelands bosses is around 100k. I don't think it's impossible at our level of damage, but it definitely means longer fights, with a lot less room for error.
So how do you collectively increase the DPS of a raid group by 25%? Heck if I know that one. Gear can help a little, and we're making slow improvement there via crafting and valor points, but it won't help that much. A fair chunk of that has to be player skill - knowing what buttons to push when and doing so, moving at times and in ways that are optimal, and whatever else. But even if I could look up how everyone is supposed to play to maximize their potential, I don't have a good way to find what they're doing now. I have enough trouble just judging my own performance.
So... I don't know. I may re-extend the offer I made back in Wrath to help compile information for people who ask, but that only does so much. If we're not going to make progress against most Firelands bosses, do we bother to farm rep from trash for a while, or go back to tier 11 content more, or what? Probably the best immediate suggestion I heard would be to clear trash to summon Shannox, put in some attempts on him, and if not making headway after some number of tries, go back to a tier 11 raid where we can stomp several bosses for morale purposes. Better to end on a high note, right? But I don't know if that works as well as a long-term solution.
Dungeoning
I'm making an effort to be more available for running 5-man dungeons, and even came close to the valor point cap in the last week. Even the 4.1 instances are becoming easier, and I've been on a few runs that were pretty quick (under an hour rather than over). I've seen Kilnara, who was a lot of trouble the first time around, blitzed with disregard for her panther adds, just burning them down when they became active - that was a ridiculously fast fight. I've been on a couple ZA runs that were very close to making the timed event.
Such speedy runs often involve one or more non-guild members. The Kilnara fight involved a shaman who was putting out so much damage (20k DPS by Recount, I recall) that I was struggling to maintain aggro most of the run - but it didn't really matter because it was going fast. I also saw a death knight in pretty much bare minimum gear to run Zandalari dungeons doing about 50% more DPS than our most experienced hunter. Maybe the classes aren't fully balanced, but I have to wonder how they do that.
As others have said, though, the dungeons are getting a bit old. If you want maximum rewards, you run a Rise of the Zandalari random. That means you get either Zul'Aman or Zul'Gurub. Two is a very small selection and both of those are revamped from old raids (not that I had much experience with them as such). I like some of the bosses, and mechanics like the cauldrons are neat, but the same two dungeons over and over again? The novelties are starting to wear thin. So even if they are the best way to get valor points right now, I don't know how long I'll keep that up.
Guild
There are still some tensions there, along familiar lines. While it hasn't exploded recently, it continues to bother me. I've actually recently found myself considering dropping group to avoid listening to the insults and ego-waving. Of course, no one sees personal fault to rein in their own behavior. Le-sigh.
Less Time/Guild-Specific Musings
It's obviously perception bias, but it only recently really clicked with me just how integral PVP is in WoW. I mostly play it as PVE, I barely even touch PVP battlegrounds, and there are two points I hear come up among players (who probably share my perception of the game) in complaint relatively often: Why can't we do more player customization visually and why can't PVE and PVP skill sets be separate so they don't have to keep balancing both aspects at once.
Well, visual customization is a choice certainly. Blizzard could up and decide to change directions on this point, but their current line is that looks and profiles are important. They want races to have distinct looks (hence worgen forced-shifting in combat). They want gear to be somewhat recognizable. I can get a rough idea of a character's progress through the game just by looking at them. And that's a larger issue in PVP, where you don't have time to size up your enemy beyond glancing at him and opening fire. Until/unless that core concept of distinct profiles changes, we are not going to get to wear "costumes" over our armor and whatnot, that's just the way it is.
And skills? At a glance, that seems a great idea. It's easier to balance PVE sets and PVP sets separately. Guild Wars already does that. There's two problems, though. One, it means there's potentially two versions of every skill for a player to know - and that's a lot. More importantly, though, PVP is not segregated in WoW. Even on a PVE server, you can get flagged just about anywhere. GW can separate the two skill sets by zone because the zones are all instanced - zone in and you get a notification that you're suddenly using the PVP versions of skills. But when you can engage in PVP anywhere (and on the flip side, you can be PVP flagged while dealing with most of the PVE content) that just doesn't work from a technical standpoint.
Questing
Thirty-ish days feels a bit grindy, but most of the quests themselves aren't that bad. Some are even fun. Convalescence of the Winds may be my favorite buff of the game - being able to leap around like crazy. The questline end vendors have some (relatively minor) upgrades and a few vanity items. I have enjoyed watching Hamuul make his comeback, Anren and Tholo being reunited, and viewing the past of Leyara's fall.
I think I've commented on Thrall's quests before. Decent lore, but lacking a feeling of accomplishment for me as a player.
Raiding
That we have been in the Firelands at all means our guild is ahead of the curve compared to 4.0, though success there thusfar has been limited to trash. The nerfing of 4.0 raids has made those a good deal easier and regularly doable, though Cho'gall remains about a 3-attempt fight and one that borders on maddening for me simply because of my own role in it:
Pull, fight, hope the other tank times the taunt right after the Fury debuff, wince as people remain mind controlled longer than they should, fret about usage of Avenger's Shield for DPS/threat versus stopping worship (if people are close enough for once), break off to move add, struggle for threat as DPS attacks add, attempt futily to interrupt Depravity while fighting for threat and moving, watch add go down and rush back to taunt trade back, curse Vengeance mechanics whilst struggling to maintain aggro after taunting, GOTO step 3...
It's sort of a frantic pain in the tail. But I find the Nefarian fight harder. I wonder if we would have done either by now if they hadn't been nerfed. Hard to say.
I could say that our recent attempts at Beth'tilac in the Firelands amounted to a wakeup call, but that implies a surprise to me, which it wasn't. Maybe for others. After several attempts and some switching of assignments that may not have been necessary, We got one really good, solid try in. We hit our marks for the most part (though perhaps the spiders should die faster) and got into phase 2 going pretty strong. But when we died, the big spider was still at about 40% health. If the spiderlings had all been dead, it would have been closer to 30%. Unfortunately, that's still a ways off - enough that a few people took a step back and said "We might not have the DPS for this." Beth'tilac is a bit funny in that two strategies have formed, but neither really helps: if the group can down all the spiderlings fast, you can send an extra DPS up to get a head start on the boss... but if your group can do that, you probably have the damage output to ignore the spiderlings at the transition and just burn the boss in phase 2.
That's been a concern of mine since we first poked the Firelands bosses a couple weeks back. I put combat logs online. They's sometimes hard to analyze, but I can look and see our overall group average DPS hovers around 80k. The average group DPS of recorded kills on Firelands bosses is around 100k. I don't think it's impossible at our level of damage, but it definitely means longer fights, with a lot less room for error.
So how do you collectively increase the DPS of a raid group by 25%? Heck if I know that one. Gear can help a little, and we're making slow improvement there via crafting and valor points, but it won't help that much. A fair chunk of that has to be player skill - knowing what buttons to push when and doing so, moving at times and in ways that are optimal, and whatever else. But even if I could look up how everyone is supposed to play to maximize their potential, I don't have a good way to find what they're doing now. I have enough trouble just judging my own performance.
So... I don't know. I may re-extend the offer I made back in Wrath to help compile information for people who ask, but that only does so much. If we're not going to make progress against most Firelands bosses, do we bother to farm rep from trash for a while, or go back to tier 11 content more, or what? Probably the best immediate suggestion I heard would be to clear trash to summon Shannox, put in some attempts on him, and if not making headway after some number of tries, go back to a tier 11 raid where we can stomp several bosses for morale purposes. Better to end on a high note, right? But I don't know if that works as well as a long-term solution.
Dungeoning
I'm making an effort to be more available for running 5-man dungeons, and even came close to the valor point cap in the last week. Even the 4.1 instances are becoming easier, and I've been on a few runs that were pretty quick (under an hour rather than over). I've seen Kilnara, who was a lot of trouble the first time around, blitzed with disregard for her panther adds, just burning them down when they became active - that was a ridiculously fast fight. I've been on a couple ZA runs that were very close to making the timed event.
Such speedy runs often involve one or more non-guild members. The Kilnara fight involved a shaman who was putting out so much damage (20k DPS by Recount, I recall) that I was struggling to maintain aggro most of the run - but it didn't really matter because it was going fast. I also saw a death knight in pretty much bare minimum gear to run Zandalari dungeons doing about 50% more DPS than our most experienced hunter. Maybe the classes aren't fully balanced, but I have to wonder how they do that.
As others have said, though, the dungeons are getting a bit old. If you want maximum rewards, you run a Rise of the Zandalari random. That means you get either Zul'Aman or Zul'Gurub. Two is a very small selection and both of those are revamped from old raids (not that I had much experience with them as such). I like some of the bosses, and mechanics like the cauldrons are neat, but the same two dungeons over and over again? The novelties are starting to wear thin. So even if they are the best way to get valor points right now, I don't know how long I'll keep that up.
Guild
There are still some tensions there, along familiar lines. While it hasn't exploded recently, it continues to bother me. I've actually recently found myself considering dropping group to avoid listening to the insults and ego-waving. Of course, no one sees personal fault to rein in their own behavior. Le-sigh.
Less Time/Guild-Specific Musings
It's obviously perception bias, but it only recently really clicked with me just how integral PVP is in WoW. I mostly play it as PVE, I barely even touch PVP battlegrounds, and there are two points I hear come up among players (who probably share my perception of the game) in complaint relatively often: Why can't we do more player customization visually and why can't PVE and PVP skill sets be separate so they don't have to keep balancing both aspects at once.
Well, visual customization is a choice certainly. Blizzard could up and decide to change directions on this point, but their current line is that looks and profiles are important. They want races to have distinct looks (hence worgen forced-shifting in combat). They want gear to be somewhat recognizable. I can get a rough idea of a character's progress through the game just by looking at them. And that's a larger issue in PVP, where you don't have time to size up your enemy beyond glancing at him and opening fire. Until/unless that core concept of distinct profiles changes, we are not going to get to wear "costumes" over our armor and whatnot, that's just the way it is.
And skills? At a glance, that seems a great idea. It's easier to balance PVE sets and PVP sets separately. Guild Wars already does that. There's two problems, though. One, it means there's potentially two versions of every skill for a player to know - and that's a lot. More importantly, though, PVP is not segregated in WoW. Even on a PVE server, you can get flagged just about anywhere. GW can separate the two skill sets by zone because the zones are all instanced - zone in and you get a notification that you're suddenly using the PVP versions of skills. But when you can engage in PVP anywhere (and on the flip side, you can be PVP flagged while dealing with most of the PVE content) that just doesn't work from a technical standpoint.
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