No, that isn't a 3v3 arena team. Though it could work decently, I guess. It'd be better if we got a Rogue or a Hunter to replace the.. um.. well, the Moonkin.
I've been working on leveling two of my least favorite classes to PvP against - a Frost Mage, and a Shadow Priest. So here are my current impressions:
Frost Mage
Frost Mages are gods of control. No one gets close to them, thanks to a permanent uptime of chills and the frequent freezes. What makes them quite overpowered, however, is not just the control - it's that controlling their target goes hand in hand with bursting them down, thanks to talents like Shatter and Fingers of Frost.
Survivability is also amazing. Blink, Ice Barrier, Ice Block, and Mana Shield guarantee that it will be a while before I die, so long as I have mana. My Mage is a Gnome, so I have extra mana, and a racial to make me even harder to catch.
Shadow Priest
Shadow Priests are a bit less about control, and more about melting faces. I kill mobs my level simply by applying DoTs and wanding, and there are still a few seconds to go on both SW:P and Devouring Plague when the mob dies. 1v1 PvP is ridiculously easy - keep PW:S up, apply DoTs, cast Psychic Scream, cast Mind Blast, spam Mind Flay. You dead yet? Yeah you are.
Mana was an issue at the lower levels - I'd have to drink every 1-2 pulls, despite Spirit Tap. Attacking two mobs at the same time meant almost certain OOM-induced death. Now, however, my mana is much better thanks to the Replenishment effect. Health is never an issue - Improved Vampiric Embrace is way overpowered.
Versus Moonkin
The gameplay is quite different, that's for sure. My Moonkin's PvE control is fine, mostly thanks to Typhoon and Entangling Roots. However, my PvP control with the Mage or Priest is much, much higher. It feels so good to Counterspell / Silence some poor fellow trying to heal.
That being said, it all does feel a bit awkward - mostly because I am so used to playing as a Moonkin. When my health is plummeting, my reflex is to shapeshift the hell out of there while spamming HoTs on myself. When I am getting close to dying on either of my alts, I feel a rising sense of panic - usually, I've no idea what the hell to do.
Not being able to heal on my Mage feels dangerous, as I haven't yet been accustomed to their way of surviving: controlling their opponent to death, mainly.
I can heal on the Priest, yet the style is different and also feels bizarre. If Psychic Scream and my bubble are gone and on cooldown, I feel at a loss. There is some strange force that makes me hate dropping out of Shadowform to Renew or Flash Heal - definitely not a problem I have on my Druid. But we will see how it turns out at end game, when I have more survivability talents and Dispersion.
All in all, I still stay true to what I've said before. Mages and Priests are overpowered. They might not be downright facerolling classes, but they are very, very complete classes. They have all of the tools they need to melt faces, and more.
Friday, December 24, 2010
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
The Alliance in battlegrounds, pt. 2
Part 1 is here.
A few weeks ago I wrote about the terrible state of Alliance PvP. I described it purely from the point of view of Random Battlegrounds - no premades included. The conclusion was that the Alliance performed dreadfully in RBGs. I explored some reasons as to why that might be, but arrived to no certain explanation.
But, as it turns out, there's a very simple reason.
Population outside the battleground
There are more Hordes on my server than Allies. In fact, it seems this may be true of most existing servers. This causes Hordes to have longer (sometimes much longer) queue times for RBGs. Getting into a battleground on the Alliance side is a matter of clicking the queue button - the invitation is almost always instant. My guildmate, on the other hand, tells me that he must sometimes wait 30 minutes to get into a battleground on his Horde alt.
This difference causes Hordes to perform better than Allies. If an Ally loses, he knows he can just re-queue and immediately try again. A Horde, on the other hand, has to make it count. They will try harder - simply because they don't get as many attempts. They've already waited 30 minutes to get into the damn battleground, so they're not about to let Allies win so easily.
Population inside the battleground
The population outside the battleground also affects the population inside it. More Hordes outside means more Hordes inside - there's always a full queue of Hordes ready to go, but not necessarily so for Allies. Furthermore, Allies are more prone to ignoring the battleground invite, seeing as they might have started something new and figure they'll just queue again in a few minutes. Hordes won't do this as much, because they are subject to the whims of the queue.
Population inside the battleground can mean different things, the first of which is total imbalance. Too bad I deleted my screenshot of an Alterac Valley with only 6 Alliance players versus 40 Hordes, because it would have been perfect here. Though that particular example might be a little extreme, other numbers such as 20 v. 40 are actually quite common on my realm. This sort of imbalance obviously impairs the Alliance side - by the time more players stream in, Hordes are already defending all our towers and camping us at our base.
On the other hand, this phenomenon only happens in high-population battlegrounds - namely, Alterac Valley. Although 10 v. 15 Arathi Basins or Eyes of the Storm might also occur from time to time, smaller battlegrounds are usually full, which puts Allies back on a more level ground.
Population inside the battleground implies something else, as well. This time, however, I am not talking about the total amount of players that happen to be in the group, but the maximum amount. More players mean that it is easy for the small amount of good players to get lost in the cacophony of the poorer players. In small BGs, however, it takes just 1 or 2 good players to turn the tide of the entire game. I consider myself a good player, and because lately I've taken the habit of queuing with a few other players (usually 1-3), we've ended up winning about 80% of every battleground that is not Alterac Valley.
Call to Arms: Warsong Gulch
For three days, the Call to Arms battleground was WSG. During that period of time, I earned an insane amount of honor - everyone queued for WSG, including myself and friends, and we only lost maybe 1 match out of every 10 we played.
It didn't really matter whether the rest of our team was good - of course, it helped, but it wasn't as necessary as in bigger battlegrounds. I usually ran the flag - for all my talk about how Moonkin survivability is sh*t, I still like to carry the flag. I have 30.8k health unbuffed, 1300 resilience, and unless you put me against a Death Knight or a Frost Mage, I am very good at kiting/escaping (aren't all Druids?), so it works out alright - especially when I have a Disci Priest friend on my back and a MM Hunter keeping everyone off my back.
The only times we would lose was when a low-geared player would try to carry the Horde flag while the rest of our group would ignore our own flag being easily carried to the enemy base. (By the way, I have nothing against players with low-level gear, but if you're one of those players you should be playing support).
Conclusion
Anyways, all this to say that the main problem of Alliance battlegrounds is population. The players themselves aren't really that bad - not worse than Horde players, anyway. They just have the disadvantage of less people (or the advantage, whichever way you want to see it (faster queues)).
A few weeks ago I wrote about the terrible state of Alliance PvP. I described it purely from the point of view of Random Battlegrounds - no premades included. The conclusion was that the Alliance performed dreadfully in RBGs. I explored some reasons as to why that might be, but arrived to no certain explanation.
But, as it turns out, there's a very simple reason.
Population outside the battleground
There are more Hordes on my server than Allies. In fact, it seems this may be true of most existing servers. This causes Hordes to have longer (sometimes much longer) queue times for RBGs. Getting into a battleground on the Alliance side is a matter of clicking the queue button - the invitation is almost always instant. My guildmate, on the other hand, tells me that he must sometimes wait 30 minutes to get into a battleground on his Horde alt.
This difference causes Hordes to perform better than Allies. If an Ally loses, he knows he can just re-queue and immediately try again. A Horde, on the other hand, has to make it count. They will try harder - simply because they don't get as many attempts. They've already waited 30 minutes to get into the damn battleground, so they're not about to let Allies win so easily.
Population inside the battleground
The population outside the battleground also affects the population inside it. More Hordes outside means more Hordes inside - there's always a full queue of Hordes ready to go, but not necessarily so for Allies. Furthermore, Allies are more prone to ignoring the battleground invite, seeing as they might have started something new and figure they'll just queue again in a few minutes. Hordes won't do this as much, because they are subject to the whims of the queue.
Population inside the battleground can mean different things, the first of which is total imbalance. Too bad I deleted my screenshot of an Alterac Valley with only 6 Alliance players versus 40 Hordes, because it would have been perfect here. Though that particular example might be a little extreme, other numbers such as 20 v. 40 are actually quite common on my realm. This sort of imbalance obviously impairs the Alliance side - by the time more players stream in, Hordes are already defending all our towers and camping us at our base.
On the other hand, this phenomenon only happens in high-population battlegrounds - namely, Alterac Valley. Although 10 v. 15 Arathi Basins or Eyes of the Storm might also occur from time to time, smaller battlegrounds are usually full, which puts Allies back on a more level ground.
Population inside the battleground implies something else, as well. This time, however, I am not talking about the total amount of players that happen to be in the group, but the maximum amount. More players mean that it is easy for the small amount of good players to get lost in the cacophony of the poorer players. In small BGs, however, it takes just 1 or 2 good players to turn the tide of the entire game. I consider myself a good player, and because lately I've taken the habit of queuing with a few other players (usually 1-3), we've ended up winning about 80% of every battleground that is not Alterac Valley.
Call to Arms: Warsong Gulch
For three days, the Call to Arms battleground was WSG. During that period of time, I earned an insane amount of honor - everyone queued for WSG, including myself and friends, and we only lost maybe 1 match out of every 10 we played.
It didn't really matter whether the rest of our team was good - of course, it helped, but it wasn't as necessary as in bigger battlegrounds. I usually ran the flag - for all my talk about how Moonkin survivability is sh*t, I still like to carry the flag. I have 30.8k health unbuffed, 1300 resilience, and unless you put me against a Death Knight or a Frost Mage, I am very good at kiting/escaping (aren't all Druids?), so it works out alright - especially when I have a Disci Priest friend on my back and a MM Hunter keeping everyone off my back.
The only times we would lose was when a low-geared player would try to carry the Horde flag while the rest of our group would ignore our own flag being easily carried to the enemy base. (By the way, I have nothing against players with low-level gear, but if you're one of those players you should be playing support).
Conclusion
Anyways, all this to say that the main problem of Alliance battlegrounds is population. The players themselves aren't really that bad - not worse than Horde players, anyway. They just have the disadvantage of less people (or the advantage, whichever way you want to see it (faster queues)).
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Twinking at level 1
Level 1 twinks have been intriguing me ever since I saw Roskmeg's LevelOneTwink's channel on YouTube, advertising his guild for level 1 twinks only.
I made a Human Rogue (might change to Night Elf Rogue for the +5 extra agility). High agility at level 1 gives ridiculous crit chance and dodge. Here's my wishlist:
Head: Ruby Shades.
Neck: Voice Amplification Modulator.
Shoulder: Stained Shadowcraft Spaulder.
Back: Wispy Cloak. Enchant: Lesser Agility.
Chest: Stained Shadowcraft Tunic Enchant: Greater Stats.
Wrist: Cracked Leather Bracers. Enchant: Superior Stamina.
Hands: Cracked Leather Gloves Enchant: Superior Agility.
Waist: Squealer's Belt.
Legs: Haliscan Pantaloons. Enchant: Rugged Armor Kit.
Feet: Cracked Leather Boots. Enchant: Lesser Accuracy.
Trinket: 2x Arena Grand Master.
Main hand: Venerable Dal'Rend's Sacred Charge. Enchant: Lifestealing or Unholy Weapon.
Off hand: Sharpened Scarlet Kris. Enchant: Agility.
Ranged: Charmed Ancient Bone Bow. Enchant: Standard Scope.
Professions:
Herbalism 150 for Lifeblood, and Skinning 150 for Master of Anatomy. And, of course, First Aid for the Mageweave Bandages.
Consumables:
Rumsey's Rum Black Label.
Rough Sharpening Stone.
Elixir of Lion's Strength.
Weak Troll's Blood Elixir.
Scroll of Agility.
Because stats are calculated so differently at level 1, the enchants make my Rogue a very formidable opponent, considering the level. In full Agility gear, I can already reach 50% physical damage mitigation (and that's without the shoulder heirlooms), 77% dodge, and 50% critical strike chance. In full Stamina gear, I'm currently close to 500 health, without the Gurubashi trinkets (which would give +240 HP).
In my "compromise" gear, which is the one sacrificing a bit of stamina and agility for hit rating, I have +6 hit rating, which at level 1 is the equivalent of a little over 15% hit chance.
I've dueled some players and so far I have beaten several level 10-15s, as well as a level 20 Warrior. Too bad there's no battleground bracket for 1-9!
I made a Human Rogue (might change to Night Elf Rogue for the +5 extra agility). High agility at level 1 gives ridiculous crit chance and dodge. Here's my wishlist:
Head: Ruby Shades.
Neck: Voice Amplification Modulator.
Shoulder: Stained Shadowcraft Spaulder.
Back: Wispy Cloak. Enchant: Lesser Agility.
Chest: Stained Shadowcraft Tunic Enchant: Greater Stats.
Wrist: Cracked Leather Bracers. Enchant: Superior Stamina.
Hands: Cracked Leather Gloves Enchant: Superior Agility.
Waist: Squealer's Belt.
Legs: Haliscan Pantaloons. Enchant: Rugged Armor Kit.
Feet: Cracked Leather Boots. Enchant: Lesser Accuracy.
Trinket: 2x Arena Grand Master.
Main hand: Venerable Dal'Rend's Sacred Charge. Enchant: Lifestealing or Unholy Weapon.
Off hand: Sharpened Scarlet Kris. Enchant: Agility.
Ranged: Charmed Ancient Bone Bow. Enchant: Standard Scope.
Professions:
Herbalism 150 for Lifeblood, and Skinning 150 for Master of Anatomy. And, of course, First Aid for the Mageweave Bandages.
Consumables:
Rumsey's Rum Black Label.
Rough Sharpening Stone.
Elixir of Lion's Strength.
Weak Troll's Blood Elixir.
Scroll of Agility.
Because stats are calculated so differently at level 1, the enchants make my Rogue a very formidable opponent, considering the level. In full Agility gear, I can already reach 50% physical damage mitigation (and that's without the shoulder heirlooms), 77% dodge, and 50% critical strike chance. In full Stamina gear, I'm currently close to 500 health, without the Gurubashi trinkets (which would give +240 HP).
In my "compromise" gear, which is the one sacrificing a bit of stamina and agility for hit rating, I have +6 hit rating, which at level 1 is the equivalent of a little over 15% hit chance.
I've dueled some players and so far I have beaten several level 10-15s, as well as a level 20 Warrior. Too bad there's no battleground bracket for 1-9!
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Moonkin PvP: Shooting Stars
There is one change I am excited about in Cataclysm, in regards to Moonkin PvP. As of 3.3.5, as is made clear by my earlier posts, the state of Moonkin PvP is terrible, and it doesn't look as though Cataclysm will bring us up to par.
My one excitement rests with Starsurge and the Shooting Stars proc. Considering I keep my DoTs up nearly all the time in PvP, I imagine that Shooting Stars will proc frequently enough to keep my enemies on their toes. The reason I'm really excited about it is simple: it's instant. For the first time, Moonkins will have the possibility of having an instant nuke. Uninterruptible and powerful - two words that before Cataclysm could never have been used together when speaking of Moonkin PvP. For the first time, we may even have controlled burst.
And damage isn't just damage in PvP - it's pressure. If I am able to pressure my opponent in PvP, the balance tips in my favor. He is forced in the defensive, and I don't have to worry about keeping myself alive as much, which is one of our main problems in 3.3.5. It has been for so long too easy to put the pressure on us - but that was not just a result of our poor control and survivability. It was also because it was very difficult putting the pressure on them.
Shooting Stars is my Moonkin PvP silver lining.
My one excitement rests with Starsurge and the Shooting Stars proc. Considering I keep my DoTs up nearly all the time in PvP, I imagine that Shooting Stars will proc frequently enough to keep my enemies on their toes. The reason I'm really excited about it is simple: it's instant. For the first time, Moonkins will have the possibility of having an instant nuke. Uninterruptible and powerful - two words that before Cataclysm could never have been used together when speaking of Moonkin PvP. For the first time, we may even have controlled burst.
And damage isn't just damage in PvP - it's pressure. If I am able to pressure my opponent in PvP, the balance tips in my favor. He is forced in the defensive, and I don't have to worry about keeping myself alive as much, which is one of our main problems in 3.3.5. It has been for so long too easy to put the pressure on us - but that was not just a result of our poor control and survivability. It was also because it was very difficult putting the pressure on them.
Shooting Stars is my Moonkin PvP silver lining.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Engineering
On my first Moonkin, my two professions were Enchanting and Herbalism. I'd picked both of these up before I really understood the world of professions. I never regretted Enchanting - once I hit 80, it has positively, erm, enchanted me. Hehe. I loved the ring enchants for both PvE and PvP reasons. Furthermore, any serious player needs enchants on their gear - having the profession saved me the hassle of finding and paying an Enchanter every time I had a new piece of gear. Herbalism had Lifeblood, but the utility was nowhere near as good as those provided by main professions.
On my 2nd Moonkin, I picked up Enchanting again, but this time chose Jewelcrafting as my secondary profession. The prismatic gems were very appealing. However, due to an epic case of laziness, I never got it past Journeyman. My Warrior alt is a miner, and I figured I would obtain the required materials through him, but never really got to it.
Three days ago, I decided - screw Jewelcrafting, go Engineering. And then I think I set a small record: I unlearned Jewelcrafting, trained Engineering, and skilled it up from 0 to 450 in about three hours. I concede, however, that I was greatly helped by my alt, who not only had a bank full of bars (until the Mithril level), but also an entire, unused guild vault at his disposition.
Oh, crap. I forgot to explain that one bit. Long story short: I was guild master of The Lightbringers. The guild was small and most of the members were inactive. I was invited to a somewhat serious raiding guild named Mutual Hatred. I brought along my active members and disbanded Lightbringers, leaving only my alt as the guild master. As a result, I inherited 800g and four guild tabs of materials.
So after three hours, 3k gold spent, and many, many relogs between my main and my alt, my Engineering was 450. And so far, I'm loving it. Here are some of the perks that come with the profession:
I think that's it for this post. Cheers :)
On my 2nd Moonkin, I picked up Enchanting again, but this time chose Jewelcrafting as my secondary profession. The prismatic gems were very appealing. However, due to an epic case of laziness, I never got it past Journeyman. My Warrior alt is a miner, and I figured I would obtain the required materials through him, but never really got to it.
Three days ago, I decided - screw Jewelcrafting, go Engineering. And then I think I set a small record: I unlearned Jewelcrafting, trained Engineering, and skilled it up from 0 to 450 in about three hours. I concede, however, that I was greatly helped by my alt, who not only had a bank full of bars (until the Mithril level), but also an entire, unused guild vault at his disposition.
Oh, crap. I forgot to explain that one bit. Long story short: I was guild master of The Lightbringers. The guild was small and most of the members were inactive. I was invited to a somewhat serious raiding guild named Mutual Hatred. I brought along my active members and disbanded Lightbringers, leaving only my alt as the guild master. As a result, I inherited 800g and four guild tabs of materials.
So after three hours, 3k gold spent, and many, many relogs between my main and my alt, my Engineering was 450. And so far, I'm loving it. Here are some of the perks that come with the profession:
- Handed-Mounted Pyro Rockets
- Hyperspeed Accelerators
- Frag Belt
- Nitro Boosts
- Springy Arachnoweave
- Wormhole Generator: Northrend
- Jeeves (took me a while to get everything together for that guy)
I think that's it for this post. Cheers :)
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
The Alliance in battlegrounds
As I continue to rack up the honorable kills in battlegrounds, it has occurred to me the terrible state of Alliance PvP. While I still played at Spermik, I had already noticed that the Alliance faction lost much more often than the Horde. This is something that has carried over at Molten. However, up until recently, I never really gave it any particular attention - at the back of my mind, I simply attributed the losses to poor luck, bad team composition, 1-2 very bad players, etc, and assumed that I probably wasn't losing as often as it appeared.
But although those factors may be included, there is something larger at hand here. Just type "Hordes terrible at PvP" in Google - the first search result is a link to a thread titled "Alliance so terrible in pvp." In fact, there are countless threads complaining about the terrible performance of the Alliance in battlegrounds, but only few about that of the Horde's.
So I looked at my in-game statistics and found that the numbers were absolutely dreadful. Here they are:
Alterac Valley:
34 out of 155 (22%) games won.
Arathi Basin:
25 out of 76 (33%) games won.
Eye of the Storm:
26 out of 79 (33%) games won.
Strand of the Ancients:
9 out of 22 (41%) games won.
Warsong Gulch:
30 out of 60 (50%) games won.
Total:
124 out of 392 (32%) games won.
That is pretty damn terrible.
Why?
I've done some online browsing in order to find out what could be the cause behind the Alliance's poor performance in battlegrounds, which, at this point, I believe is not just a product of chance.
There are many suggestions out there, but none of which are very convincing:
But although those factors may be included, there is something larger at hand here. Just type "Hordes terrible at PvP" in Google - the first search result is a link to a thread titled "Alliance so terrible in pvp." In fact, there are countless threads complaining about the terrible performance of the Alliance in battlegrounds, but only few about that of the Horde's.
So I looked at my in-game statistics and found that the numbers were absolutely dreadful. Here they are:
Alterac Valley:
34 out of 155 (22%) games won.
Arathi Basin:
25 out of 76 (33%) games won.
Eye of the Storm:
26 out of 79 (33%) games won.
Strand of the Ancients:
9 out of 22 (41%) games won.
Warsong Gulch:
30 out of 60 (50%) games won.
Total:
124 out of 392 (32%) games won.
That is pretty damn terrible.
Why?
I've done some online browsing in order to find out what could be the cause behind the Alliance's poor performance in battlegrounds, which, at this point, I believe is not just a product of chance.
There are many suggestions out there, but none of which are very convincing:
- Children / females are more likely to choose an Alliance race. This argument makes the assumption that children / females perform less than male players, which I just can't agree with. There are many outstanding female players out there. In fact, I believe females are more inclined to favor cooperative play. Perhaps children, depending on their age, would cause a team to underperform, but there is nothing indicating that there are more children on the Alliance side than on the Horde side. Amusingly, however, demographics show that females are more likely to roll an Alliance character (Night Elves, Draeneis, and Gnomes are among their favorite races).
- Hordes are better-geared. Although at this point, I can only agree with that, it has to be considered that the only reason Hordes are better-geared is because they started winning in the first place. These days, Hordes easily make 2-3x as much honor in a day as Alliance players - the better gear from all this honor most likely helps, but what started it?
- Horde races have more PvP-oriented racials. This is an interesting one. The way I see it, Alliance racials are more focused on defense or escape, while Horde racials generally focus on control and damage. However, as it is, all of these attributes are important for PvP, and I don't assume racials are really what make the game.
- Mature players are more likely to roll Horde. I have seen the argument that Horde races are less appealing (i.e. they are ugly) than Alliance races. "Mature" players are apparently more inclined to choosing the rougher-looking Hordes. But why? For the racials? There's really no reason. Besides, children (the "less mature") are just as likely to choose Blood Elves for their looks or Trolls for their coolness as they are to roll Night Elves or Dwarves for the same reasons.
To be totally honest, I have no real idea why Hordes dominate Alliance in battlegrounds so much. There are a few more possibilities to which I have given more thought.
What personality-type would be more inclined to roll Horde? In my experience, I have found that Alliance players are more interested in the social aspect of World of Warcraft, whereas Hordes are more goal-oriented. In other words, Hordes get down to business. Of course, this is a gross generalization and probably not very accurate - that said, it does seem to be slightly balanced that way, nonetheless.
Another thing I have noticed (ironically, when compared to my above paragraph), is the high level of hostility present in Alliance battlegroups. Players never listen to each other. Everyone is always playing on his own, doing whatever he wants, either insulting the person giving directions or ignoring him. There are always arguments about tactics or players' individual performances. From what I've seen, however, Hordes are less inclined to start internal feuds and they just get it over with. Like I said - they get down to business.
That is not to say that Hordes always know what to do. I have seen them, countless times and just as Allies, assault the Lumber Mill and leave it undefended before it has been captured, allowing me to just sneak in and defend it without trouble. Ah, how I love the Lumber Mill, my fellow Moonkins.
Anyways - there is very poor leadership in Alliance battlegroups. In fact, when a good leader comes along, we either win or come close. I have a joke with a Rogue named Arcea - each time he joins Alterac Valley with me, I cheer and say that we have an increased 10% chance of victory. What he does is simple: he knows what to do, and encourages others to do the same. He gives simple directions, and shares Deadly Boss Mod updates for those who don't use the addon. Many people don't realize that destroying towers is a 75-point loss for Hordes - hell, I didn't know when I started playing in AV. So he explains it, and our chances to win significantly improve.
Looking at the numbers
Looking at the statistics I wrote above, I see a pattern. The Alliance loses the most when lots of players are involved, and the least when only a small amount of players participate. I've only won AV a mere 22% of the time - that is a horrible number. On the other hand, I've won WSG a solid 50% of the time, and the remaining 15-player battlegrounds are in the middle.
Why is that? Do the greater numbers cause less cooperation?
Before I wrap up this post, there is one final thing I want to bring attention to. Each time I join a Random Battleground, the Hordes always outnumber the Allies. Sometimes it's as bad as 15 vs. 40 Alterac Valley games. This is caused by Alliance players queuing and not entering when they are invited. Why would so many of them do that? By the time the numbers equalize, the Hordes will already have the upper ground.
There is also the issue of AFKers, though I don't know if they are more prevalent on either faction. Regardless, I think I might make a post about them in the future.
In the meantime, take care.
That is not to say that Hordes always know what to do. I have seen them, countless times and just as Allies, assault the Lumber Mill and leave it undefended before it has been captured, allowing me to just sneak in and defend it without trouble. Ah, how I love the Lumber Mill, my fellow Moonkins.
Anyways - there is very poor leadership in Alliance battlegroups. In fact, when a good leader comes along, we either win or come close. I have a joke with a Rogue named Arcea - each time he joins Alterac Valley with me, I cheer and say that we have an increased 10% chance of victory. What he does is simple: he knows what to do, and encourages others to do the same. He gives simple directions, and shares Deadly Boss Mod updates for those who don't use the addon. Many people don't realize that destroying towers is a 75-point loss for Hordes - hell, I didn't know when I started playing in AV. So he explains it, and our chances to win significantly improve.
Looking at the numbers
Looking at the statistics I wrote above, I see a pattern. The Alliance loses the most when lots of players are involved, and the least when only a small amount of players participate. I've only won AV a mere 22% of the time - that is a horrible number. On the other hand, I've won WSG a solid 50% of the time, and the remaining 15-player battlegrounds are in the middle.
Why is that? Do the greater numbers cause less cooperation?
Before I wrap up this post, there is one final thing I want to bring attention to. Each time I join a Random Battleground, the Hordes always outnumber the Allies. Sometimes it's as bad as 15 vs. 40 Alterac Valley games. This is caused by Alliance players queuing and not entering when they are invited. Why would so many of them do that? By the time the numbers equalize, the Hordes will already have the upper ground.
There is also the issue of AFKers, though I don't know if they are more prevalent on either faction. Regardless, I think I might make a post about them in the future.
In the meantime, take care.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Moonkin PvP: Upon Cataclysm
I've been making a lot of Moonkin PvP posts lately. I suppose this is due to some sort of snowball effect - I started writing about classes that trumped me in PvP, which led me to talk about our PvP issues, and which has now brought me to this post: what is PvP going to look like in Cataclysm?
Granted, there are a lot of unanswered questions out there, and the next expansion is still subject to change. But the bulk of the Moonkin changes have been made now. We got new/modified spells and talents, including a totally new Eclipse mechanic, which was much-needed.
However, many problems remain. Although, in regard to the history of WoW, I am a fairly new Moonkin, I've done enough reading to grasp that many old Moonkins out there have grown frustrated and pessimistic about the state of their spec in PvP. As it turns out, Moonkin PvP has been broken from the start, and despite all of the amazing feedback, the detailed, comprehensive posts, and the constructive suggestions that were made on the topic, and which you can find all over the internet, Blizzard has never showed any sign to bring us up to par. In fact, Blizz nerfed us a few times.
In their defense, I would gauge that balancing Moonkin PvP is a delicate matter. The way I see it, Moonkins have a huge potential to be overpowered, and it would only take a few, minor buffs in order for us to trump every other class out there.
Still, Blizzard has many tools to tweak the classes they have created, and as I have mentioned previously, many Moonkins have made constructive, reasonable posts in order to salvage Moonkin PvP. It shouldn't be that difficult to make us viable after three expansions, yet we are still behind. Cataclysm offers us some changes - let's look at how they'll impact us.
New abilities
Three new spells are tossed our way. They are:
Starsurge is a welcome change. In earlier Beta builds, it used to have a knockback, and I was sad to see it go - but I suppose having a knockback passively attached to a big nuke might be overpowered. It's nice having a new nuke. It does a lot of damage, and we will be able to use it for our burst. My only question about it, though: because it causes "Spellstorm" damage, which is both Arcane and Nature, do I get locked out of both schools of magic if I am Counterspelled as I am casting it?
Solar Beam, at first, was exciting. Finally a silence. But - it's not really. I don't understand what it is about Blizzard not being able to give us the simple tools we need - just give us a damn silence! Solar Beam is unique from other silences in a few ways - first, it's an AoE silence, the only one in the game. Second, it's a full, 10 second duration, which is quite long. Third, it's on a 1 minute cooldown, which is also very long.
In other words, Solar Beam is poor. There are so many things wrong with it. You know what? I'll list them:
Though Solar Beam may have its utility in PvE, I find its PvP use to be very limited in most situations. It might be fun in cloistered environments like Alterac Valley, but it will be difficult to find its place in smaller fights.
Wild Mushroom is a new ability at which I can't help but laugh. Qieth from Qieth's Quips has already established that taking the time to cast Wild Mushrooms is a DPS loss in PvE, and I really don't see myself using them in PvP. Though the detonation hits hard, the radius is tiny (3 yards, smaller than melee range), and would require meticulous placing in order to be able to hurt anyone with them. Furthermore, the cast time, albeit short, prevents us from casting it on the move.
Additionally, the Mushrooms won't detonate unless I command them to - in other words, a Horde Warrior might be furiously coming after me, stepping on my Mushrooms, but they won't explode until I press the button. Hell, he could sit on top of them and be safe if I don't notice it.
Finally, the Mushrooms are also targetable and have very low health, so they are easily one-shotted.
Though all of these new abilities are welcome (it's always nice to have new tools in the toolbox), with the exception of Starsurge, they are weak.
Changed abilities
We've received some modifications to our current abilities, as well. And to be honest, I don't like most of them. Here are some:
Let's look at them more in detail, now.
The Moonkin Form changes are, at this point, a little confusing. As I understand it, armor levels are normalized in Cataclysm, so that cloth-wearers are much closer to plate-wearers than ever before. That said, 120% seems like a rather small modifier. Coupled with the removal of the 15% damage reduction while stunned, it looks like we have lost some survivability, which is currently one of our biggest problems in PvP.
The Eclipse changes, though welcome in regards to PvE, are a little difficult to gauge in a PvP environment. Regardless, one thing I really love about the new Eclipse is how we will not lose the buff until we actually use it - so if I gain Eclipse, and then I am stunned or forced to move, I will still be able to benefit from it later. My worry with the current Eclipse is with how difficult it might be to achieve it. I have to build up to it - how easy will that be in PvP? Will I ever be able to reach 100 on the Lunar or Solar power meter?
Our healing spells have been changed. No more using Nourish as a flash heal - instead, Regrowth has taken its place. I don't know how effective that will be. Regrowth costs a lot more mana than Nourish. This change will also limit the amount of healing spells I use - Nourish now being a 3-second cast, I will never use it in PvP anymore. Using Regrowth as a flash heal seems awkward - but I suppose we will see how that turns out. I'm really not sure what to think about this, yet.
Lunar Shower is definitely a nice addition to our talents, albeit not a very stylish one. Promoting Moonfire spam, it will allow us to actually do some measure of damage while we are moving.
Wrath, our fast nuke, had its cast time increased to 2 seconds. This was a predictable change, because the previous, very short cast caused issues in PvE, as the spell stopped benefiting from haste very quickly. Though now this problem is gone, it does make me worry about how fast I am going to be able to output damage in PvP. Starfire is still a long spell and hardly viable without the Wrath of Elune proc. How am I going to be able to dish out quick damage? Moonfire spam? I guess we'll have to see.
DoTs and HoTs scaling with crit and haste is a really nice change. It will improve our damage a bit, as well as our healing (survivability). That said, Shadow Priests already had scaling DoTs in Wrath of the Lich King, and Warlocks already had the crit benefit. So Moonkins are going to be the ones benefiting from this change the most.
Conclusion
It's been said several times before, and I will say it myself. We're always an expansion behind. The new Moonkin changes, though welcome (Glyph of Entangling Roots is nice, for example), would hardly be enough to make us viable even in 3.3.5. The main three points of PvP, as outlined in my last post, are these:
Granted, there are a lot of unanswered questions out there, and the next expansion is still subject to change. But the bulk of the Moonkin changes have been made now. We got new/modified spells and talents, including a totally new Eclipse mechanic, which was much-needed.
However, many problems remain. Although, in regard to the history of WoW, I am a fairly new Moonkin, I've done enough reading to grasp that many old Moonkins out there have grown frustrated and pessimistic about the state of their spec in PvP. As it turns out, Moonkin PvP has been broken from the start, and despite all of the amazing feedback, the detailed, comprehensive posts, and the constructive suggestions that were made on the topic, and which you can find all over the internet, Blizzard has never showed any sign to bring us up to par. In fact, Blizz nerfed us a few times.
In their defense, I would gauge that balancing Moonkin PvP is a delicate matter. The way I see it, Moonkins have a huge potential to be overpowered, and it would only take a few, minor buffs in order for us to trump every other class out there.
Still, Blizzard has many tools to tweak the classes they have created, and as I have mentioned previously, many Moonkins have made constructive, reasonable posts in order to salvage Moonkin PvP. It shouldn't be that difficult to make us viable after three expansions, yet we are still behind. Cataclysm offers us some changes - let's look at how they'll impact us.
New abilities
Three new spells are tossed our way. They are:
Starsurge is a welcome change. In earlier Beta builds, it used to have a knockback, and I was sad to see it go - but I suppose having a knockback passively attached to a big nuke might be overpowered. It's nice having a new nuke. It does a lot of damage, and we will be able to use it for our burst. My only question about it, though: because it causes "Spellstorm" damage, which is both Arcane and Nature, do I get locked out of both schools of magic if I am Counterspelled as I am casting it?
Solar Beam, at first, was exciting. Finally a silence. But - it's not really. I don't understand what it is about Blizzard not being able to give us the simple tools we need - just give us a damn silence! Solar Beam is unique from other silences in a few ways - first, it's an AoE silence, the only one in the game. Second, it's a full, 10 second duration, which is quite long. Third, it's on a 1 minute cooldown, which is also very long.
In other words, Solar Beam is poor. There are so many things wrong with it. You know what? I'll list them:
- 5 yard radius. Because the silence is only active when the target is beneath it, it would only require one simple sidestep to be un-silenced, effectively making Solar Beam the shortest silence in the game. It would really only be an interrupt. Also, it's unlikely that I'd be able to silence more than one person.
- AoE reticle. This makes the spell very clunky to use. How easy is it going to be placing the reticle around your moving target as you are moving yourself? Probably not very easy at all. Even if you'd become good at it, you're still losing time because you have to manually target.
- To make Solar Beam viable, it would have to be used in conjunction with Entangling Roots. This would make it the only silence that requires two global cooldowns to be effective.
Though Solar Beam may have its utility in PvE, I find its PvP use to be very limited in most situations. It might be fun in cloistered environments like Alterac Valley, but it will be difficult to find its place in smaller fights.
Wild Mushroom is a new ability at which I can't help but laugh. Qieth from Qieth's Quips has already established that taking the time to cast Wild Mushrooms is a DPS loss in PvE, and I really don't see myself using them in PvP. Though the detonation hits hard, the radius is tiny (3 yards, smaller than melee range), and would require meticulous placing in order to be able to hurt anyone with them. Furthermore, the cast time, albeit short, prevents us from casting it on the move.
Additionally, the Mushrooms won't detonate unless I command them to - in other words, a Horde Warrior might be furiously coming after me, stepping on my Mushrooms, but they won't explode until I press the button. Hell, he could sit on top of them and be safe if I don't notice it.
Finally, the Mushrooms are also targetable and have very low health, so they are easily one-shotted.
Though all of these new abilities are welcome (it's always nice to have new tools in the toolbox), with the exception of Starsurge, they are weak.
Changed abilities
We've received some modifications to our current abilities, as well. And to be honest, I don't like most of them. Here are some:
- Moonkin Form. Armor contribution reduced to 120%, down from 370%. 15% damage reduction while stunned was removed. Mana return from crits was also removed.
- Eclipse. Eclipse was totally changed - it's not RNG-dependent anymore. Rather, you build up your Solar or Lunar energy until you reach 100 energy of either type, and enter Eclipse, which buffs either your Arcane or Nature spells until the meter has dropped back down to 0.
- Healing spells. Nourish isn't a flash heal anymore - Regrowth is.
- Lunar Shower. A welcome talent that buffs Moonfire.
- Starfall damage reduced.
- Wrath cast time and damage increased.
- DoTs and HoTs scale with crit and haste.
Let's look at them more in detail, now.
The Moonkin Form changes are, at this point, a little confusing. As I understand it, armor levels are normalized in Cataclysm, so that cloth-wearers are much closer to plate-wearers than ever before. That said, 120% seems like a rather small modifier. Coupled with the removal of the 15% damage reduction while stunned, it looks like we have lost some survivability, which is currently one of our biggest problems in PvP.
The Eclipse changes, though welcome in regards to PvE, are a little difficult to gauge in a PvP environment. Regardless, one thing I really love about the new Eclipse is how we will not lose the buff until we actually use it - so if I gain Eclipse, and then I am stunned or forced to move, I will still be able to benefit from it later. My worry with the current Eclipse is with how difficult it might be to achieve it. I have to build up to it - how easy will that be in PvP? Will I ever be able to reach 100 on the Lunar or Solar power meter?
Our healing spells have been changed. No more using Nourish as a flash heal - instead, Regrowth has taken its place. I don't know how effective that will be. Regrowth costs a lot more mana than Nourish. This change will also limit the amount of healing spells I use - Nourish now being a 3-second cast, I will never use it in PvP anymore. Using Regrowth as a flash heal seems awkward - but I suppose we will see how that turns out. I'm really not sure what to think about this, yet.
Lunar Shower is definitely a nice addition to our talents, albeit not a very stylish one. Promoting Moonfire spam, it will allow us to actually do some measure of damage while we are moving.
Wrath, our fast nuke, had its cast time increased to 2 seconds. This was a predictable change, because the previous, very short cast caused issues in PvE, as the spell stopped benefiting from haste very quickly. Though now this problem is gone, it does make me worry about how fast I am going to be able to output damage in PvP. Starfire is still a long spell and hardly viable without the Wrath of Elune proc. How am I going to be able to dish out quick damage? Moonfire spam? I guess we'll have to see.
DoTs and HoTs scaling with crit and haste is a really nice change. It will improve our damage a bit, as well as our healing (survivability). That said, Shadow Priests already had scaling DoTs in Wrath of the Lich King, and Warlocks already had the crit benefit. So Moonkins are going to be the ones benefiting from this change the most.
Conclusion
It's been said several times before, and I will say it myself. We're always an expansion behind. The new Moonkin changes, though welcome (Glyph of Entangling Roots is nice, for example), would hardly be enough to make us viable even in 3.3.5. The main three points of PvP, as outlined in my last post, are these:
- Survivability. With the Cataclysm changes, our survivability doesn't seem to have improved. Our armor is almost gone and there is no more damage-reduction while stunned. On the other hand, our HoTs are more powerful. I'd be inclined to say we have lost survivability.
- Control. Not many changes here. We are meant to gain control through Solar Beam, the Glyph of Entangling Roots, and Fungal Growth. Unfortunately, Solar Beam is very weak, and because Wild Mushrooms are so difficult to use efficiently, I'm going to assume that the benefit from Fungal Growth is also very reduced (our Treants are on a 3 minute cooldown and we never decide where they die, so I hardly believe we could use them to proc Fungal Growth either).
- Damage. Our damage looks better, thanks to Starsurge, Lunar Shower, and Shooting Stars. In fact, I really love the Shooting Star talent. Although 4% isn't a very high chance to proc, our DoTs should be ticking often. That said, we'll have to see how our damage compares to the other classes, and how Eclipse works out in PvP.
Even though in Wrath of the Lich King we are poor in each of these three categories, the buffs we have received will only provide the improvements necessary (maybe) that we needed to be viable in 3.3.5 PvP. In Cataclysm, the other classes are also receiving new toys - we'll have to see how it turns out.
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Moonkin PvP: The problems
Let's do this.
I'm excited. I've wanted to make this post for a few months now, since long before I even began this blog. Ever since I started PvP with my Moonkin, I knew that at some point in the future, I would write this. As a serious Moonkin who happens to love writing, it's inevitable. Over the last many months, I have done a lot of research - I've read countless threads and blogs about both Moonkin PvE and PvP, the QQ rants, the oh-my-gosh-Starfall-is-buffed posts, the guides, etc. I read Qieths' Quips, Gray Matter, Restokin, and Shifting Perspectives - and if you're also a serious Moonkin, chances are you've come across any of these blogs at least once.
Now, before I get started, I should give a brief overview. This post is not going to be a guide - I will simply explain, to the best of my ability, all of the Moonkin issues in PvP as of patch 3.3.5, and hopefully convince you - if you don't already know it - that it is the most difficult PvP spec in the game. Granted, retail just patched to 4.0.1, and this seems like quite a redundant activity. However, like I said, I've always wanted to write this, and although it may even be outdated - I simply don't care. At the very least, this will have satisfied my writing pleasure, and may even serve as good reading for others. Maybe you will read this in several years, after two new expansions have been released, as a way to reflect on what Moonkin had once been (which would qualify you as an uber-nerd, such as I am). One thing though - my apologies for the links.. please keep in mind that the tooltips in this post will most likely be inaccurate due to showing Cataclysm tooltips.
And hell, I might even add a section to include my thoughts on our Cataclysm changes. We'll see.
All right, let's get this started. Moonkin PvP. The problems. May I suggest a little music?
Introduction
What? A second introduction?
No, silly! What I wrote above was an introduction to this post. Now I am writing the introduction to Moonkin PvP.
Let's look at what makes PvP what it is - its essential components. These are:
I'm excited. I've wanted to make this post for a few months now, since long before I even began this blog. Ever since I started PvP with my Moonkin, I knew that at some point in the future, I would write this. As a serious Moonkin who happens to love writing, it's inevitable. Over the last many months, I have done a lot of research - I've read countless threads and blogs about both Moonkin PvE and PvP, the QQ rants, the oh-my-gosh-Starfall-is-buffed posts, the guides, etc. I read Qieths' Quips, Gray Matter, Restokin, and Shifting Perspectives - and if you're also a serious Moonkin, chances are you've come across any of these blogs at least once.
Now, before I get started, I should give a brief overview. This post is not going to be a guide - I will simply explain, to the best of my ability, all of the Moonkin issues in PvP as of patch 3.3.5, and hopefully convince you - if you don't already know it - that it is the most difficult PvP spec in the game. Granted, retail just patched to 4.0.1, and this seems like quite a redundant activity. However, like I said, I've always wanted to write this, and although it may even be outdated - I simply don't care. At the very least, this will have satisfied my writing pleasure, and may even serve as good reading for others. Maybe you will read this in several years, after two new expansions have been released, as a way to reflect on what Moonkin had once been (which would qualify you as an uber-nerd, such as I am). One thing though - my apologies for the links.. please keep in mind that the tooltips in this post will most likely be inaccurate due to showing Cataclysm tooltips.
And hell, I might even add a section to include my thoughts on our Cataclysm changes. We'll see.
All right, let's get this started. Moonkin PvP. The problems. May I suggest a little music?
Introduction
What? A second introduction?
No, silly! What I wrote above was an introduction to this post. Now I am writing the introduction to Moonkin PvP.
Let's look at what makes PvP what it is - its essential components. These are:
- Survivability
- Control
- Burst damage (damage-on-demand)
You could argue against burst damage by saying that slow, over-time damage (while kiting, for example) works well enough against classes that cannot heal, like Rogues or Mages. But most classes have some way to regenerate health, even those that are considered non-healer classes, such as Destruction Warlocks and Blood Death Knights. Furthermore, if you can take down your opponent with slow damage, that's great! But what's being done to you meanwhile? It won't be very effective if you are being nuked at the same time. Essentially, you still want to be able to blow up the other player faster than he can.
Survivability is, of course, a must. Some classes find survivability in being able to control their opponents very well. Others absorb damage, and others simply heal through. Control is important in that it allows you to either reduce the amount of damage you take, or set up your burst.
Moonkins are good at none of these three things. Well - it's not that we're bad at it, but rather that we lack the proper tools to be as good as the other classes.
Survivability
For the sake of not mixing survivability and control (seeing as crowd-control abilities can provide survivability), I will keep this section to abilities that provide damage mitigation, healing, avoidance, etc. The following are our survivability tools:
Survivability is, of course, a must. Some classes find survivability in being able to control their opponents very well. Others absorb damage, and others simply heal through. Control is important in that it allows you to either reduce the amount of damage you take, or set up your burst.
Moonkins are good at none of these three things. Well - it's not that we're bad at it, but rather that we lack the proper tools to be as good as the other classes.
Survivability
For the sake of not mixing survivability and control (seeing as crowd-control abilities can provide survivability), I will keep this section to abilities that provide damage mitigation, healing, avoidance, etc. The following are our survivability tools:
- Barkskin (-20% damage taken)
- Moonkin Form (+370% armor, -15% damage taken while stunned)
- Travel Form (+40% speed)
- Shapeshifting (breaks movement-impairing effects)
- Restoration spells
- Healing Touch (long heal, not PvP viable)
- Nourish (flash heal, benefits from HoTs)
- Regrowth (medium heal with a HoT portion)
- Rejuvenation (HoT)
- Lifebloom (short HoT with a bloom - blooms when dispelled)
- Tranquility (channeled heal, not PvP viable)
- Abolish Poison (tries to remove 1 poison every 3 secs for 12 secs)
- Remove Curse (removes a curse)
- Balance of Power (-6% spell damage taken)
- Endurance (+5% stamina, for Taurens)
- Quickness (-2% chance to be hit, for Night Elves)
As you can see, save for our healing spells, we only have two buttons we can push to help our survivability - Barkskin and Moonkin Form (though Moonkin Form only helps against melees, and can't be cast while incapacitated). There are no "oh-fuck" buttons. However, considering our arsenal of healing abilities, it may seem as though they aren't needed.
Nonetheless, none of these abilities make us resilient. It is apparent that Blizzard intended us to be able to remain alive through healing, but it is ineffective. Our health plummets at absurdly fast rates, and our heals are not potent enough to keep us alive through it, especially if there are Mortal Strike, Permafrost, or Wound Poison effects on us. Furthermore, healing forces us to be defensive, and it is impossible for us to effectively keep our opponent from damaging us while we heal - this results in a situation in which our enemy is pounding on us as we struggle to remain alive, only to eventually die without even having put a dent in him. This problem is related to burst damage, which I will explain in greater detail later.
Another problem with our healing is that it costs a lot of mana, which is not a resource we have in great quantities in PvP. In PvE, Moonkins are exceptional at mana-efficiency because of the mana return on crits - with enough critical strike rating and intellect, it is impossible for a Moonkin to go OOM. Unfortunately, in PvP, both crit and intellect are low, and resilience makes crit even lower - in fact, you could see resilience as a straight Moonkin mana nerf. We go OOM exceptionally fast, and it hurts even more when Innervate it dispelled.
Additionally, other classes have tools to reduce the capability of our HoT healing and Barkskin, with abilities such as Dispel Magic, Purge, Spellsteal, Shield Slam, and Devour Magic.
And furthermore, there is the issue of dropping all of our armor to heal. Dropping Moonkin Form to heal near a melee is like giving him a huge armor penetration buff, complete with a taunt. You can only pray you won't get stunned in caster form.
All in all, Moonkin survivability is nothing short of terrible. The only button we can push if we are in trouble is Barkskin. In the past, I've found that running away from melees in Travel Form and then casting Rejuvenation on myself, followed by three stacks of Lifebloom, has been moderately effective - but once the melee catches up to me, he will usually be able to do enough damage that my health will not be going up.
Control
Druids are often cited for their amazing crowd-control tools. Here's the list:
Nonetheless, none of these abilities make us resilient. It is apparent that Blizzard intended us to be able to remain alive through healing, but it is ineffective. Our health plummets at absurdly fast rates, and our heals are not potent enough to keep us alive through it, especially if there are Mortal Strike, Permafrost, or Wound Poison effects on us. Furthermore, healing forces us to be defensive, and it is impossible for us to effectively keep our opponent from damaging us while we heal - this results in a situation in which our enemy is pounding on us as we struggle to remain alive, only to eventually die without even having put a dent in him. This problem is related to burst damage, which I will explain in greater detail later.
Another problem with our healing is that it costs a lot of mana, which is not a resource we have in great quantities in PvP. In PvE, Moonkins are exceptional at mana-efficiency because of the mana return on crits - with enough critical strike rating and intellect, it is impossible for a Moonkin to go OOM. Unfortunately, in PvP, both crit and intellect are low, and resilience makes crit even lower - in fact, you could see resilience as a straight Moonkin mana nerf. We go OOM exceptionally fast, and it hurts even more when Innervate it dispelled.
Additionally, other classes have tools to reduce the capability of our HoT healing and Barkskin, with abilities such as Dispel Magic, Purge, Spellsteal, Shield Slam, and Devour Magic.
And furthermore, there is the issue of dropping all of our armor to heal. Dropping Moonkin Form to heal near a melee is like giving him a huge armor penetration buff, complete with a taunt. You can only pray you won't get stunned in caster form.
All in all, Moonkin survivability is nothing short of terrible. The only button we can push if we are in trouble is Barkskin. In the past, I've found that running away from melees in Travel Form and then casting Rejuvenation on myself, followed by three stacks of Lifebloom, has been moderately effective - but once the melee catches up to me, he will usually be able to do enough damage that my health will not be going up.
Control
Druids are often cited for their amazing crowd-control tools. Here's the list:
- Entangling Roots (roots the target)
- Nature's Grasp (roots the target upon melee hit)
- Hibernate (puts a Beast-type target to sleep)
- Cyclone (makes the target immune to everything for 6 seconds)
Moonkins also have Typhoon, which is .. sort of .. a CC. Its damage is extremely poor considering the mana cost, and because the knockback has a travel time, it hardly works as a spell interrupt. Typhoon works primarily as a peel, and the daze effect can be useful against melees.
There are some huge problems with these tools. First of all, none of them are stuns, silences, or interrupts (with the exception of Typhoon if you are lucky). Nature's Grasp requires you to be hit to proc, and more often than not, this causes situations in which the melee I have just rooted is standing right next to me, killing me as he keeps me stunned (Rogues and Warriors come to mind, especially).
The other CCs require a cast time, which seriously hinders their efficiency. Hibernate is only usable against Feral Druids, Hunter pets, and Shamans in Ghost Wolf form, which is already limited, and will break upon damage. Entangling Roots is almost never useful against casters, and it is rare that I can keep a melee rooted very long - they can usually remove them somehow, or my own damage will break them, or they will break on their own. Roots are extremely unpredictable.
Finally, Cyclone. Cyclone is often considered the best crowd-control in the game, as it renders the target totally immune, and the only way to get out of it is by using a PvP trinket or with Ice Block. Unfortunately, in PvP, Cyclone is really just a double-edged sword with harsh diminishing returns. The immunity prevents me from damaging the target, and Cyclone doesn't work well as a button I push when I really need to get the pressure off me to heal. Because it is my only incapacitating tool, the first application is usually when my opponent will trinket - after which I can only cast Cyclone again twice, for a 3 second duration, and then a 1.5 second duration, which is hardly enough time to do anything.
Furthermore, all of these CCs (and all of my heals) are of the Nature school of magic. If I get locked out of Nature spells, my ability to do - well.. anything - is seriously reduced.
Burst damage
Moonkins are sometimes affectionately known as "crit chickens." This is because in a PvE setting, we are able to chaincast back-to-back Starfire crits while Lunar Eclipse is up. This is not the case in PvP. Let's look at our damaging spells:
There are some huge problems with these tools. First of all, none of them are stuns, silences, or interrupts (with the exception of Typhoon if you are lucky). Nature's Grasp requires you to be hit to proc, and more often than not, this causes situations in which the melee I have just rooted is standing right next to me, killing me as he keeps me stunned (Rogues and Warriors come to mind, especially).
The other CCs require a cast time, which seriously hinders their efficiency. Hibernate is only usable against Feral Druids, Hunter pets, and Shamans in Ghost Wolf form, which is already limited, and will break upon damage. Entangling Roots is almost never useful against casters, and it is rare that I can keep a melee rooted very long - they can usually remove them somehow, or my own damage will break them, or they will break on their own. Roots are extremely unpredictable.
Finally, Cyclone. Cyclone is often considered the best crowd-control in the game, as it renders the target totally immune, and the only way to get out of it is by using a PvP trinket or with Ice Block. Unfortunately, in PvP, Cyclone is really just a double-edged sword with harsh diminishing returns. The immunity prevents me from damaging the target, and Cyclone doesn't work well as a button I push when I really need to get the pressure off me to heal. Because it is my only incapacitating tool, the first application is usually when my opponent will trinket - after which I can only cast Cyclone again twice, for a 3 second duration, and then a 1.5 second duration, which is hardly enough time to do anything.
Furthermore, all of these CCs (and all of my heals) are of the Nature school of magic. If I get locked out of Nature spells, my ability to do - well.. anything - is seriously reduced.
Burst damage
Moonkins are sometimes affectionately known as "crit chickens." This is because in a PvE setting, we are able to chaincast back-to-back Starfire crits while Lunar Eclipse is up. This is not the case in PvP. Let's look at our damaging spells:
- Wrath. A fast nuke, with low damage.
- Starfire. A slow nuke, with medium damage.
- Moonfire. Does initial and DoT damage, but both are weak, and the spell itself is mana-costly.
- Insect Swarm. This is actually a good DoT when glyphed, on par with a Shadow Priest's Shadow Word: Pain (except that it can't crit, of course). It is also extremely mana-efficient.
- Typhoon. As discussed above, Typhoon is only used for the knockback and daze effect - I hardly ever use it as a way to deal more damage.
- Force of Nature. Situational, and on a 3-minute cooldown. The treants can be great against non-plate wearers, and if they are able to remain alive, or near the target. Their damage is good, and they are useful to cause spellcasting pushback. Never to use against Warriors.
- Starfall. Can be quite amazing. Unfortunately, it will break every snare, and will not take effect the moment we are incapacitated - which is quite often.
Let's look at these in a PvE context. In a raid setting, Wrath and Starfire are our primary nukes, together comprising around 70-75% of our total damage. This is thanks to Eclipse, which we try to proc as often as possible, and which buffs both Wrath and Starfire. I cannot link Eclipse in this post because it has been totally changed for Cataclysm. In 3.3.5, this is what Eclipse does:
The problem with this mechanic is that we require it to be on par with the DPS of other classes, and that it is totally dependent on RNG (random-number generation, i.e. chance). In PvP, Eclipse procs are much, much more rare than in PvE - in fact, some Moonkin PvPers don't even bother picking it up in our talent tree.
Additionally, because PvP is such a movement-intensive environment, even if we do manage to proc Eclipse, it is likely that we will not be able to benefit from most of the buff.
In PvP, our DoTs play a much bigger role than in PvE, as we are often forced to kite our opponents, or prevented from casting Wrath or Starfire - neither of which hit very hard if not Eclipsed. Unfortunately, we aren't a DoT class like Shadow Priests or Affliction Warlocks, and although Insect Swarm does good damage when glyphed (and so does Moonfire, but the Glyph of Moonfire is undesirable in PvP because we still want to be able to finish off targets on the run), neither of our DoTs crit or benefit from haste. This leaves us with our other instant casts, all 3 of which are on a cooldown, and which will not necessarily be enough anyways.
We end up unable to do much damage, as our main damage buff - Eclipse, which we need to do as much damage as the other classes - suffers from both movement and the reduced critical strike chance found in PvP.
TL-DR
Player vs. player is about three things: survivability, control, and damage. Moonkins are good at none of these.
Our survivability is solely invested in our armor buff from Moonkin Form and our healing - neither of which are efficient, in part because the two are mutually exclusive, and because our healing is weak and mana-expensive. We also lack any sort of "oh-fuck" button to push when we are in trouble.
Furthermore, our control is very poor. We are not equipped with any stun, silence, or interrupt. Roots break too easily, Nature's Grasp requires us to be hit, and Cyclone has harsh diminishing returns, on top of that it doesn't allow us to damage our opponent.
Our on-demand damage is nerfed by resilience and movement. We need Eclipse to be on par with the damage of the other classes, but it rarely ever procs in a PvP setting. We have few buttons to push to increase our damage (Starfall, Force of Nature (situational)), and we cannot burst anyone down faster than they can kill us.
Moonkin PvP is broken in 3.3.5. I will make a post about Cataclysm later :)
- When you crit with Wrath, you have a 60% chance to proc Lunar Eclipse. Under the Lunar Eclipse effect, your critical strike chance with Starfire is increased by 40%. Lasts 15 seconds. 30 second internal cooldown.
- When you crit with Starfire, you have a 100% chance to proc Solar Eclipse. Under the Solar Eclipse effect, your damage with Wrath is increased by 40%. Lasts 15 seconds. 30 second internal cooldown.
- Both effects are separate, meaning you cannot proc one type of Eclipse while you are already benefiting from the other.
The problem with this mechanic is that we require it to be on par with the DPS of other classes, and that it is totally dependent on RNG (random-number generation, i.e. chance). In PvP, Eclipse procs are much, much more rare than in PvE - in fact, some Moonkin PvPers don't even bother picking it up in our talent tree.
Additionally, because PvP is such a movement-intensive environment, even if we do manage to proc Eclipse, it is likely that we will not be able to benefit from most of the buff.
In PvP, our DoTs play a much bigger role than in PvE, as we are often forced to kite our opponents, or prevented from casting Wrath or Starfire - neither of which hit very hard if not Eclipsed. Unfortunately, we aren't a DoT class like Shadow Priests or Affliction Warlocks, and although Insect Swarm does good damage when glyphed (and so does Moonfire, but the Glyph of Moonfire is undesirable in PvP because we still want to be able to finish off targets on the run), neither of our DoTs crit or benefit from haste. This leaves us with our other instant casts, all 3 of which are on a cooldown, and which will not necessarily be enough anyways.
We end up unable to do much damage, as our main damage buff - Eclipse, which we need to do as much damage as the other classes - suffers from both movement and the reduced critical strike chance found in PvP.
TL-DR
Player vs. player is about three things: survivability, control, and damage. Moonkins are good at none of these.
Our survivability is solely invested in our armor buff from Moonkin Form and our healing - neither of which are efficient, in part because the two are mutually exclusive, and because our healing is weak and mana-expensive. We also lack any sort of "oh-fuck" button to push when we are in trouble.
Furthermore, our control is very poor. We are not equipped with any stun, silence, or interrupt. Roots break too easily, Nature's Grasp requires us to be hit, and Cyclone has harsh diminishing returns, on top of that it doesn't allow us to damage our opponent.
Our on-demand damage is nerfed by resilience and movement. We need Eclipse to be on par with the damage of the other classes, but it rarely ever procs in a PvP setting. We have few buttons to push to increase our damage (Starfall, Force of Nature (situational)), and we cannot burst anyone down faster than they can kill us.
Moonkin PvP is broken in 3.3.5. I will make a post about Cataclysm later :)
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Moonkin PvP: Those we hate
I wanted to make a post about the classes I, personally and as a Moonkin, hate to face. Those classes that I find myself at a total disadvantage against - and although, considering my own spec, that is potentially every class, there are still those out there that seem so extremely more powerful than me, that they may make me wonder how anyone else can take them down, or why they even have the abilities they have in the first place.
Now of course, this sort of feeling often just rises after being facerolled by one of such classes, and for that reason, it is usually an unreasonable sentiment. Blizzard puts a huge amount of time and effort in balancing the classes, and not just when it comes to ability types - for example, every damaging ability has a base range of damage, and a power coefficient that comes with it. All of those numbers are very precise, and Blizzard has to come up with them.
This is not to say that Blizz has made everything perfect, far from it, though one of the main issues seems to come from the PvP environment itself. Blizzard prioritizes balancing the game around PvE, and if you pay attention, you will notice that all of the classes are much more balanced in PvE than in PvP. I don't believe PvP is terribly unbalanced, but I do believe there are some mechanics that are overpowered (such as Dispel Magic).
This post will be to reflect upon certain class/spec combinations that I often find myself at a loss against. This isn't a rant - I've had my rants in the past enough already :) Well.. it still feels good to justify myself for losing feathers against certain other players. Some issues are not L2P. Some issues are, well.. Moonkin.
Shadow Priest
I will start with Shadow Priest, because it is the first spec that made me face the terrible reality of Moonkin PvP. I've had my good moments against them, but these moments are rare, even while playing other classes.
Let's go over what makes them, in my opinion, quite potentially overpowered:
Now of course, this sort of feeling often just rises after being facerolled by one of such classes, and for that reason, it is usually an unreasonable sentiment. Blizzard puts a huge amount of time and effort in balancing the classes, and not just when it comes to ability types - for example, every damaging ability has a base range of damage, and a power coefficient that comes with it. All of those numbers are very precise, and Blizzard has to come up with them.
This is not to say that Blizz has made everything perfect, far from it, though one of the main issues seems to come from the PvP environment itself. Blizzard prioritizes balancing the game around PvE, and if you pay attention, you will notice that all of the classes are much more balanced in PvE than in PvP. I don't believe PvP is terribly unbalanced, but I do believe there are some mechanics that are overpowered (such as Dispel Magic).
This post will be to reflect upon certain class/spec combinations that I often find myself at a loss against. This isn't a rant - I've had my rants in the past enough already :) Well.. it still feels good to justify myself for losing feathers against certain other players. Some issues are not L2P. Some issues are, well.. Moonkin.
Shadow Priest
I will start with Shadow Priest, because it is the first spec that made me face the terrible reality of Moonkin PvP. I've had my good moments against them, but these moments are rare, even while playing other classes.
Let's go over what makes them, in my opinion, quite potentially overpowered:
- Powerful damage-over-time spells: Vampiric Touch, Shadow Word: Pain, and Devouring Plague. Only Vampiric Touch has a cast time, but the others can be placed while on the move, and cannot be interrupted. Once they are on, no amount of kiting / pillar-hugging will get rid of them. They all benefit from crit (and 100% crit damage) and both Vampiric Touch and Devouring Plague benefit from haste.
- Control. Due to the passive nature of DoTs, Shadow Priests are able to focus on survival and control without sacrificing much damage. Crowd-control tools include: Psychic Scream, Psychic Horror, Silence, Mind Flay. Though Mind Flay, in terms of CC, only reduces movement speed, this makes running away out of LoS more difficult. Some will argue that Shadow Priests suffer from lack of burst damage, however, they can easily chain all of these abilities, and keep casters unable to do anything for an extended period of time, all the while casting Mind Blast when it's off cooldown, and spamming Mind Flay in between.
- Dispel Magic. Mass Dispel. A caster Druid's main source of survivability is his heal-over-time spells, and Priests can simply dispel them. Lifebloom provides some measure of protection against this, but it is inefficient to use it in the long run. They can, of course, also dispel Innervate, and remove the debuffs I place on them. Recently, I even found out that they could reduce my healing thanks to their Improved Mind Blast talent.
- Survivability. Shadowform grants 15% overall damage reduction, and Vampiric Embrace allows 25% (when talented) of the damage a Shadow Priest causes as healing, in addition to the 15% healing already gained from Devouring Plague. On top of that, they have a potent Power Word: Shield, and if I am somehow able to get my nukes rolling, they still have Dispersion to absorb the brunt of my burst. Moonkins are sometimes compared to Shadow Priests in that both have a damaging form that locks them out of healing spells - however, a good PvPing Moonkin will be out of form more often than not, but you'll rarely see Shadow Priests outside of Shadowform.
I feel extremely impotent when it comes to Shadow Priests. Their DoT damage is extremely powerful, and they have many control and survival tools they can use while they are ticking on you. They have passive damage reduction and healing, and lots of instant buttons to play with. I can hardly ever dent a good Shadow Priest, as I can hardly have the time to cast any damaging spells, and my DoTs are laughable in comparison to theirs - not to mention they can also dispel those.
Arcane Mage
I've dueled Arcane Mages many, many times, just like Shadow Priests, and have encountered them often in PvP environments. I'm not as familiar with all of their abilities as I am with those of Shadow Priests, though I know enough. They have, mainly, two spells that make it insanely difficult for me to defeat them. Funnily enough, those spells are available to all types of Mages, not just those who spec Arcane. However, I've never really encountered Fire Mages in PvP and do not know much about fighting them, and though Frost Mages have a lot of control, my Polymorph immunity and my ability to shapeshift out of Frost Nova reduces the amount of burst they can output against me - whereas in comparison, I find Arcane burst to be nothing short of insane.
The two spells are:
The two spells are:
- Counterspell. And God forbid that it be Improved. Because half my nukes, all of my heals, and all of my CCs are from the Nature school of magic, Counterspelling a Nature spell hurts a lot. I can only do my best to run away and hide behind a pillar, though that may be difficult when he can Blink right next to me, spam Slow, and use Frost Nova if needed.
- Spellsteal. First, the Mage steals my Mark of the Wild buff, giving him a bonus to his already extremely high innate magic resistance. He can also steal my Innervate and any of my HoTs. He can steal Barkskin. If I need to heal and I am out of LoS, short of spamming Lifebloom I am a dead chicken, as trying to cast any healing spells to avoid using HoTs will result in a swift Counterspell.
What makes Arcane Mages so deadly is that they have enough burst-on-demand to kill me during that 8 second duration of nothingness after the Counterspell. Fakecasting is useless against a good Mage, as well as popping Barkskin and then casting Starfire, hoping he would use his cooldown on an Arcane spell instead. Good Mages won't fall for that.
Faced against abilities/cooldowns like: Presence of Mind, Torment the Weak, and Missile Barrage, combined with Arcane Missiles, Arcane Blast, and Arcane Barrage, having lost my magic resistances to his spellsteal, and being locked out of 90% of my spells for 8 seconds when I try to heal, it is, in my opinion and as a Moonkin, quasi-impossible to beat a decent Arcane Mage without heavily abusing LoS. If no pillars are available, run if you can.
Destruction Warlocks
Lately, Destruction Warlocks have been going up my most-hated/run-away-when-you-see-them list. It's hard to do anything against such a resilient, powerful class.
Let's go over why:
Destruction Warlocks
Lately, Destruction Warlocks have been going up my most-hated/run-away-when-you-see-them list. It's hard to do anything against such a resilient, powerful class.
Let's go over why:
- Demonic Embrace + Fel Vitality ~ +13% HP. That's more than what I get on my Protection Warrior.
- Nether Protection. Nether Protection procs a ridiculous amount. In fact, it almost guarantees the Warlock an additional 30% resistance to whatever school of magic is being used against him. The uptime is much too high for any balance to be found in this spell.
- Soul Link. If you see a Warlock, kill his pet. Though this will probably make him hate you because he'll then need to resummon him and use a Soul Shard, you're hardly every going to be able to kill a Warlock while his pet is out and taking 20% of the damage you're dealing. Unfortunately, this does bring up the issue that you won't be focusing on the Warlock himself, and he is free to do whatever he wants to you. DoT the minion, use Nature's Grasp and Starfall, and hope that he will die in the process.
- In addition, Destruction Warlocks are actually fairly well equipped for self-healing: Death Coil, Soul Leech, Fel Armor, and Fel Healthstone talented.
- Though you won't often find PvPing Warlocks using their Voidwalker, if they ever do, they can benefit from Sacrifice. Yes, you read that right. 8,350 damage absorption.
- All other minions grant them other abilities. The Imp, though not ideal, provides extra health through Blood Pact. The Succubus allows the use of Seduction, and the Felhunter, which I hate the most, can use Devour Magic and Spell Lock. One of the really annoying things about those minions is that their abilities don't share the same global cooldown as those of the Warlock, allowing simultaneous actions, and even if I get out of range of the Warlock or Cyclone him, he can still annoy me with his minion.
- Burst damage. This is really a problem Moonkins have against all casters, but Warlocks get pretty insane. They do have to cast, like Moonkins, but on the other hand, they have a spammable Fear to keep us controlled for a while, as well as Shadowfury and Death Coil. While I'm controlled, they can cast Immolate > Conflagrate > Chaos Bolt, and that is a hefty chunk of all my HP gone - provided he crits, I'm almost dead.
Destruction Warlocks are easily one of the most nonmobile casters in PvP. This is important to them, due to the bulk of their damaging abilities requiring a cast time, just like Moonkins. However, unlike Moonkins, they can actually pull it off, with abilities such as Fear, Death Coil, and the movement reduction that comes with Conflagrate when talented.
Conclusion
Yes, there actually is a conclusion to this. As I was writing this post, I had to force myself to stop after the above three classes. I also wanted to write a section about Elemental Shamans, and Marksmanship Hunters. The central theme behind this is casters. Moonkins are heavily disadvantaged against casters - though we aren't that much better against melee, we at least have decent mitigation through our armor, and capability for kiting through our shapeshifting, roots, and heal-over-time spells.
Against casters, we have nothing but a mere 6% damage reduction with Balance of Power, which is extremely poor compared to the tools of the other classes, as described above. While all casters (and all melees) have at least one instant-cast stun, interrupt, or silence, Moonkins have nothing. We can kite melees to an extent, but we are nearly helpless against casters, all of which have more control, more survivability, and more on-demand damage than we do.
Against casters, we have nothing but a mere 6% damage reduction with Balance of Power, which is extremely poor compared to the tools of the other classes, as described above. While all casters (and all melees) have at least one instant-cast stun, interrupt, or silence, Moonkins have nothing. We can kite melees to an extent, but we are nearly helpless against casters, all of which have more control, more survivability, and more on-demand damage than we do.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Protection Warrior builds
I've been having some trouble deciding where I want to put my final talent points in my Warrior's Protection tree. I've decided on glyphs and after having done research and critical thinking of my own, this is what turns out to be my cookie-cutter spec:
That leaves me with 4 points left to spend. The choices are:
Originally, the first 3 seemed like no-brainers to me. Why wouldn't I get them? Then after further thought, I realized Concussion Blow would be totally useless against both bosses and trash. Bosses can't be stunned, and one stun won't help me against trash packs - Shockwave is the tool to use there. I guess it might be useful if I needed some time to recover threat from one lone mob pounding on my healer or DPS, but that would be pretty situational, and 2 of our 3 charges have stuns already. The main reason to pick up Concussion Blow would be for the access to Vigilance.
But - how useful is Vigilance? It's entire purpose is to help generate more threat. At this point I don't know how well I'll be able to hold threat at level 80 and so I can't get a full grasp on its limitations. The Taunt cooldown refresh seems useless, though, as I don't see myself needing to use it more often than it comes off cooldown in the first place. I figure if I'm a good tank, the DPS wouldn't come close to my threat anyways, and that extra 10% will be negligible.
Improved Disciplines is simply for the reduced cooldown on Shield Wall, dropping it from a 5-minute cooldown to a 4-minute one, which is situational at best. In truth, this talent confuses me a little. Recklessness and Retaliation are only usable in either Battle Stance or Berserker Stance, neither of which I will be using while tanking, which leads me to think this is a PvP talent more than a PvE one. However, the talent is pretty far down the Protection tree, and I don't imagine Arms or Fury Warriors going that deep into it to pick it up. So my conclusion is that this talent is purely in favor of PvP stance-dancing.
At this point, however, I've decided I would skip Deep Wounds in favor for the other talents, giving me a temporary spec that looks like this:
Warrior (12/3/56)
Once I have geared some more and have become more comfortable with my threat-generation and damage mitigation, I will switch to Deep Wounds for this final spec:
Warrior (15/3/53)
PvP
PvP's obviously a different story, and I have been having trouble deciding whether I want to spend my remaining points in the Arms tree or the Fury tree. This is the spec I am leaning toward:
Warrior (15/3/53)
But, there is an alternative spec that has also caught my attention.
Warrior (2/14/53) with 2 floater points.
The main reason for this last spec is Blood Craze. Being a class without healing capability except for Enraged Regeneration every 3 minutes, I feel like this ability should be a must. However, I cannot help but wonder how much of my reasoning is affected by my experience as a Moonkin. I'm used to being dependent on constant healing for survival, and on my Warrior I often find myself at a loss when my health is dropping, having no way to regain it, except by using Intimidating Shout and bandaging - though this is useless if there are any DoTs on me.
I'll have to see when I'm level 80 and have PvPed for a longer amount of time. I will start with the first spec, and switch to the second if I feel I am not surviving as much as I should (though that seems a little contradictory seeing as I am a Protection Warrior).
In the meantime.. I should get my ass to 80, now shouldn't I? ;)
Cheers.
But - how useful is Vigilance? It's entire purpose is to help generate more threat. At this point I don't know how well I'll be able to hold threat at level 80 and so I can't get a full grasp on its limitations. The Taunt cooldown refresh seems useless, though, as I don't see myself needing to use it more often than it comes off cooldown in the first place. I figure if I'm a good tank, the DPS wouldn't come close to my threat anyways, and that extra 10% will be negligible.
Improved Disciplines is simply for the reduced cooldown on Shield Wall, dropping it from a 5-minute cooldown to a 4-minute one, which is situational at best. In truth, this talent confuses me a little. Recklessness and Retaliation are only usable in either Battle Stance or Berserker Stance, neither of which I will be using while tanking, which leads me to think this is a PvP talent more than a PvE one. However, the talent is pretty far down the Protection tree, and I don't imagine Arms or Fury Warriors going that deep into it to pick it up. So my conclusion is that this talent is purely in favor of PvP stance-dancing.
At this point, however, I've decided I would skip Deep Wounds in favor for the other talents, giving me a temporary spec that looks like this:
Warrior (12/3/56)
Once I have geared some more and have become more comfortable with my threat-generation and damage mitigation, I will switch to Deep Wounds for this final spec:
Warrior (15/3/53)
PvP
PvP's obviously a different story, and I have been having trouble deciding whether I want to spend my remaining points in the Arms tree or the Fury tree. This is the spec I am leaning toward:
Warrior (15/3/53)
But, there is an alternative spec that has also caught my attention.
Warrior (2/14/53) with 2 floater points.
The main reason for this last spec is Blood Craze. Being a class without healing capability except for Enraged Regeneration every 3 minutes, I feel like this ability should be a must. However, I cannot help but wonder how much of my reasoning is affected by my experience as a Moonkin. I'm used to being dependent on constant healing for survival, and on my Warrior I often find myself at a loss when my health is dropping, having no way to regain it, except by using Intimidating Shout and bandaging - though this is useless if there are any DoTs on me.
I'll have to see when I'm level 80 and have PvPed for a longer amount of time. I will start with the first spec, and switch to the second if I feel I am not surviving as much as I should (though that seems a little contradictory seeing as I am a Protection Warrior).
In the meantime.. I should get my ass to 80, now shouldn't I? ;)
Cheers.
Monday, October 4, 2010
The story of my alts
So I've been 80 with my new Moonkin for a while now and have already gotten my hands on a good chunk of gear. I hopped on the Random Battleground wagon when I hit the level cap, and although I'd been gaining reputation with the Northrend factions in order to buy myself decent PvE gear, I still obviously got facerolled by the full Furious/Relentless players.
Nonetheless, the system makes for some easy honor (and lots of frustration-inducing AFKers), and I'm now fully outfitted in Wrathful/Relentless off-gear (Relentless for the boots and belt, Wrathful for the neck, back, wrists, and ring). All I'm missing now to be in full PvP gear is the Furious set - I would buy the Relentless one, but I do not have enough arena points, as I haven't been adamant about finding a good arena partner yet. Additionally, I've gotten my hands on Battlemaster's Ruination, which is a trinket I really enjoy having.
I've also been working on PvE gear. I'm in full T9 and sporting a friendly Ashen Verdict ring and Unspeakable Secret from Pit of Saron normal. I'm now slightly over the hit cap and sitting at a comfortable 5k GearScore. That said, my real GS is more around 4k, due to a total lack of gems and enchants, which will come later. Seeing as I just got my last T9 item, I've slowed things down and been working on other things. I hadn't worked on any professions while leveling up due to the 3x rates, and so I've picked up Enchanting and Jewelcrafting. I've hit 375 with Enchanting and I'm waiting for my Blacksmith friend to feed me some rods to continue. I'm quite low on gold so I am trying to minimize all my costs, and so consequently my Jewelcrafting skill is close to nil - however, I have been leveling an alt with which I am farming materials with the Mining profession.
And this alt is what I want to talk about. But first -
History of my alts
While I played at Spermik, I used to have a philosophy about alts - I wanted them only for the purpose of knowing how to better defeat them with my Moonkin main. I had created a character of each race and of each class, with the intention to level them all, so that I could become the best PvP Balance Druid ever.
What a laugh :)
First, I had created each alt based on a race/class combination I found "typical." This meant that when you logged on my Spermik account, you could see this:
Conclusion for now
Nonetheless, the system makes for some easy honor (and lots of frustration-inducing AFKers), and I'm now fully outfitted in Wrathful/Relentless off-gear (Relentless for the boots and belt, Wrathful for the neck, back, wrists, and ring). All I'm missing now to be in full PvP gear is the Furious set - I would buy the Relentless one, but I do not have enough arena points, as I haven't been adamant about finding a good arena partner yet. Additionally, I've gotten my hands on Battlemaster's Ruination, which is a trinket I really enjoy having.
I've also been working on PvE gear. I'm in full T9 and sporting a friendly Ashen Verdict ring and Unspeakable Secret from Pit of Saron normal. I'm now slightly over the hit cap and sitting at a comfortable 5k GearScore. That said, my real GS is more around 4k, due to a total lack of gems and enchants, which will come later. Seeing as I just got my last T9 item, I've slowed things down and been working on other things. I hadn't worked on any professions while leveling up due to the 3x rates, and so I've picked up Enchanting and Jewelcrafting. I've hit 375 with Enchanting and I'm waiting for my Blacksmith friend to feed me some rods to continue. I'm quite low on gold so I am trying to minimize all my costs, and so consequently my Jewelcrafting skill is close to nil - however, I have been leveling an alt with which I am farming materials with the Mining profession.
And this alt is what I want to talk about. But first -
History of my alts
While I played at Spermik, I used to have a philosophy about alts - I wanted them only for the purpose of knowing how to better defeat them with my Moonkin main. I had created a character of each race and of each class, with the intention to level them all, so that I could become the best PvP Balance Druid ever.
What a laugh :)
First, I had created each alt based on a race/class combination I found "typical." This meant that when you logged on my Spermik account, you could see this:
- Night Elf Druid
- Draenei Shaman
- Dwarf Hunter
- Human Paladin
- Gnome Mage
- Undead Warlock
- Troll Rogue
- Tauren Warrior
- Blood Elf Priest
- Orc Death Knight
The Orc race and the Death Knight class being my least favorite, I had decided to put them both together. And as you can guess, I never got really far with any of these characters.
My Shaman made it to level 12, until I got bored with the Draenei starter place (though in retrospect, I think I would enjoy it if I tried it again). Not to mention it felt too much like my Moonkin, with Lightning Bolt being too similar to Wrath (same cast time, same travel time, same sound - it's even from the same school of magic).
I didn't enjoy Paladin that much either. I felt my melee damage was weak and as though I didn't have enough buttons to press, due to cooldown limitation. To be honest, I can't remember that much about it, though. I stopped at level 10.
Hunter was a little different. I actually thought I'd get somewhere with it, because I easily breezed through the first 15 levels and quickly had enough buttons to work with that had decent synergy. But I gave up on it after that, with my Moonkin stealing my attention and because I am not such a fan of the Hunter style. I don't like the sound and feel of the gunshots, and although that may seem like a minor thing, I wasn't about to start seriously playing a class whose playstyle I didn't really enjoy.
I'll skip talking about my Priest and Death Knight. I didn't get past level 9 with my Priest, and not past level 56 with my Death Knight. I found Priest boring and Death Knight confusing - not confusing in the sense that I didn't know what to do, but rather in the sense that everything was a right decision. I just mashed buttons and killed stuff. It sucked. I didn't feel like I was really doing something definitive. Every ability felt the same.
I got to level 16 with my Troll Rogue. I enjoyed it a little, but Barrens was just too boring, and as time went by, I became more and more hostile to the idea of playing a Horde character. In fact, today I've decided I'd never play a non-Alliance toon.
And now, finally, we're left with the classes that I actually liked. Let's start with the Mage. He was the first character I began leveling with heirlooms. And by that, I mean full heirlooms. Chestpiece, shoulderpads, staff, trinket, trinket. I loved the control I didn't have with my Moonkin. I feel much more in control with Shatter than with Eclipse, though the animation is, of course, not so epic. I made it to level 41, but there were some things I didn't enjoy - like Frostbolt spam. Not only was this not fun, but I didn't like the casting sound, either. Maybe that should be negligible, but I figure that if you're going to be constantly spamming a spell, it should have a decent sound to boot. Maybe I just don't like the Frost theme.
Then came the Warlock, an Undead, who didn't make it past level 6. Again, I didn't enjoy the starter place - probably because I wasn't reading the quests and the entire area is gloomy. As with Azumeryst Isle, I'm sure that if I made an effort to appreciate the area, I would greatly enjoy it. I remade a Warlock later, a Human that time, and gave it my Mage's heirlooms. Quite some time had passed between the 1st Warlock and the 2nd, and my mastery of the game had increased. On the Undead toon, I didn't like the Imp. He slowed me down, as I tried to juggle between controlling both my character and my minion. On the Human toon, however, it sped me up. I macro-ed Firebolt and Shadow Bolt and burned down mobs before they got near me. I got to level 25 and stopped there. And it wasn't because I didn't like the class - it was because I started getting tired of always playing casters.
So then came my final alt. The best one.
Protection Warrior
As time went by, I really started wanting a tank. There were several reasons for this, I think. One of them was that my guild was growing, as well as my interest in PvE. I wanted to do guild raids, but although we had good DPS and healers, we didn't have one, single guild tank.
Furthermore, I was getting increasingly frustrated at the incompetence of other tanks, such as those who love to turn Sartharion around in all sorts directions, constantly exposing the entire raid to Tail Lash and Flame Breath. In fact, I'd hardly been able to find OS runs with tanks who actually knew how to do the job right, resulting in endless wipes when the raid would take lots of unnecessary damage while the healers were stunned. To top it off, this failure was often attributed to lack of gear. Please -.-
Tanks like a very particular Draenei Protection Paladin that still sticks out in my mind, with whom I spent a whole night running 5-man heroics for Emblem farming. Without the good healer we had, we would have wiped several times. He spoke enough English to get himself in groups, but not enough to understand anything else. He would run into mobs when no one was ready, attacking those flagged for CC, and when we tried to explain to him that he should slow down, he would respond with "?" and zoom into another pack of mobs.
One final reason I wanted a tank was the responsibility aspect of it. You always need a tank, and you always need that tank to be good. If you're not a great DPS, the other DPS can pick up your slack. If you're not a great healer, it matters a little more, but that can always be compensated by having more healers, or someone off-heal, someone throwing you an Innervate, or having other healers that are really good. But if you're a tank, you can't be bad. That responsibility, that challenge, is something I find quite appealing.
And so I made a Human Protection Warrior (and deleted my previous Tauren Warrior, whose spec I had not decided on anyway). And oh, did I love it. The heirlooms most likely helped with the experience. Here is what I had:
My Shaman made it to level 12, until I got bored with the Draenei starter place (though in retrospect, I think I would enjoy it if I tried it again). Not to mention it felt too much like my Moonkin, with Lightning Bolt being too similar to Wrath (same cast time, same travel time, same sound - it's even from the same school of magic).
I didn't enjoy Paladin that much either. I felt my melee damage was weak and as though I didn't have enough buttons to press, due to cooldown limitation. To be honest, I can't remember that much about it, though. I stopped at level 10.
Hunter was a little different. I actually thought I'd get somewhere with it, because I easily breezed through the first 15 levels and quickly had enough buttons to work with that had decent synergy. But I gave up on it after that, with my Moonkin stealing my attention and because I am not such a fan of the Hunter style. I don't like the sound and feel of the gunshots, and although that may seem like a minor thing, I wasn't about to start seriously playing a class whose playstyle I didn't really enjoy.
I'll skip talking about my Priest and Death Knight. I didn't get past level 9 with my Priest, and not past level 56 with my Death Knight. I found Priest boring and Death Knight confusing - not confusing in the sense that I didn't know what to do, but rather in the sense that everything was a right decision. I just mashed buttons and killed stuff. It sucked. I didn't feel like I was really doing something definitive. Every ability felt the same.
I got to level 16 with my Troll Rogue. I enjoyed it a little, but Barrens was just too boring, and as time went by, I became more and more hostile to the idea of playing a Horde character. In fact, today I've decided I'd never play a non-Alliance toon.
And now, finally, we're left with the classes that I actually liked. Let's start with the Mage. He was the first character I began leveling with heirlooms. And by that, I mean full heirlooms. Chestpiece, shoulderpads, staff, trinket, trinket. I loved the control I didn't have with my Moonkin. I feel much more in control with Shatter than with Eclipse, though the animation is, of course, not so epic. I made it to level 41, but there were some things I didn't enjoy - like Frostbolt spam. Not only was this not fun, but I didn't like the casting sound, either. Maybe that should be negligible, but I figure that if you're going to be constantly spamming a spell, it should have a decent sound to boot. Maybe I just don't like the Frost theme.
Then came the Warlock, an Undead, who didn't make it past level 6. Again, I didn't enjoy the starter place - probably because I wasn't reading the quests and the entire area is gloomy. As with Azumeryst Isle, I'm sure that if I made an effort to appreciate the area, I would greatly enjoy it. I remade a Warlock later, a Human that time, and gave it my Mage's heirlooms. Quite some time had passed between the 1st Warlock and the 2nd, and my mastery of the game had increased. On the Undead toon, I didn't like the Imp. He slowed me down, as I tried to juggle between controlling both my character and my minion. On the Human toon, however, it sped me up. I macro-ed Firebolt and Shadow Bolt and burned down mobs before they got near me. I got to level 25 and stopped there. And it wasn't because I didn't like the class - it was because I started getting tired of always playing casters.
So then came my final alt. The best one.
Protection Warrior
As time went by, I really started wanting a tank. There were several reasons for this, I think. One of them was that my guild was growing, as well as my interest in PvE. I wanted to do guild raids, but although we had good DPS and healers, we didn't have one, single guild tank.
Furthermore, I was getting increasingly frustrated at the incompetence of other tanks, such as those who love to turn Sartharion around in all sorts directions, constantly exposing the entire raid to Tail Lash and Flame Breath. In fact, I'd hardly been able to find OS runs with tanks who actually knew how to do the job right, resulting in endless wipes when the raid would take lots of unnecessary damage while the healers were stunned. To top it off, this failure was often attributed to lack of gear. Please -.-
Tanks like a very particular Draenei Protection Paladin that still sticks out in my mind, with whom I spent a whole night running 5-man heroics for Emblem farming. Without the good healer we had, we would have wiped several times. He spoke enough English to get himself in groups, but not enough to understand anything else. He would run into mobs when no one was ready, attacking those flagged for CC, and when we tried to explain to him that he should slow down, he would respond with "?" and zoom into another pack of mobs.
One final reason I wanted a tank was the responsibility aspect of it. You always need a tank, and you always need that tank to be good. If you're not a great DPS, the other DPS can pick up your slack. If you're not a great healer, it matters a little more, but that can always be compensated by having more healers, or someone off-heal, someone throwing you an Innervate, or having other healers that are really good. But if you're a tank, you can't be bad. That responsibility, that challenge, is something I find quite appealing.
And so I made a Human Protection Warrior (and deleted my previous Tauren Warrior, whose spec I had not decided on anyway). And oh, did I love it. The heirlooms most likely helped with the experience. Here is what I had:
- Polished Breastplate of Valor
- Polished Spaulders of Valor
- Venerable Dal'Rend's Sacred Charge
- Charmed Ancient Bone Bow
- Swift Hand of Justice x2
I felt absolutely overpowered. Nothing could kill me. I'd purposely run into huge packs of mobs, because 1v1 was just too bland. At level 32, I soloed the level 40 Colonel Kurzen quest, without dying once, which was nothing short of exhilarating. Especially because after I finally downed Kurzen, his level 38-39 goons started spawning again and attacked me before I could get my HP back to full. I ended up juggling between cooldowns and bandages for a steady 1 minute at about 10% health, and came out victorious.
Once I hit level 35, however, is when I quit Spermik to head over to Molten. But now that I've outfitted my main with decent gear, I've made my Human Protection Warrior again, and although this time he has no heirlooms at all, I'm still greatly enjoying it.
Conclusion for now
At the time of posting this, he is currently level 66. Now I will admit, I'm really not good at PvP with it. I've had several confrontations and most did not go so well - though that has improved ever since I picked up Warbringer. I'm currently deciding on a PvE build as well as a PvP one, and I will talk about these later. That said, at this point I'm not focusing too much on PvP, as I created my Warrior with the purpose of doing PvE content.
When I started this post, I originally intended to talk about Protection talents and abilities, which ones I liked / didn't like, which ones gave me doubts, and I wanted to compare them to those of my Moonkin. However, in light of how long I've dragged this out, I'll keep it for a later post.
So in the meantime - have a good day :)
So in the meantime - have a good day :)
Sunday, September 19, 2010
The 70-79 bracket
Northrend is quite an interesting place. The gear disparity between a player just exiting Outland and one about to hit the level cap is incredible. Blizzard just throws gear at you. In the ten levels between 68 and 78, I've nearly doubled my stamina and intellect, tripled my spell power, and gained a decent amount of hit, crit, and haste, which were before quite low, if even existent.
This is very fun, and an effective way to motivate players through the drudging 1.5 million experience points required to make it past each level.
There are a few problems caused by this, however. Everyone knows you shouldn't play in battlegrounds if you are in the bottom of a bracket, but this is even truer in the 70-79 bracket. In lower brackets from Classic WoW, there might be a few attribute points of difference between non-twinking players, but nothing major. At that level in the game, significant factors come from class abilities and hit chance. At the WotLK level, the differences between gear are huge. Every other quest throws new gear at you, and because it takes so many quests to level up, gear disparity between yourself and a player just one level above might be as great as what you would have seen before when compared to a player ten levels above or more.
But if that didn't already complicate things for PvPers who don't want to wait to level to join battlegrounds, there are other things to consider that make the 70-79 bracket difficult for anyone not very close to 80.
Level 78 PvP sets
On my first Boomkin, I had farmed leather for several days with my leatherworking friend and guildmate, so that he could make me my Overcast set. Granted, this set is better suited for Restoration Druids, but this wasn't such a problem. The spirit to spellpower from Improved Moonkin Form compensated fairly well for the total lack of critical strike rating. In fact, it gave me an additional 90 spell power, which is a nice amount at that level.
Level 78 PvP sets require a lot of materials, but somehow everyone has them anyways. Several of my friends had them, and from what I could tell, so did a substantial amount of other players. They're great as an introduction to PvPing at level 80. I imagine Blizzard introduced them to compensate for the even greater gear disparity you can find at the level cap.
But in essence, these sets are ridiculous. I had all 8 pieces of it ready and waiting when I hit 78, and equipped them all at once. I suddenly found myself with 4k additional health, a considerable spell power boost, and went from 0 to 300 resilience. Excited, I joined a Warsong Gulch and I was amazed at the difference it made. Suddenly, I felt like a walking tank. I hit hard and it was more difficult to take me down than ever before.
Farmers
But if having to fight against full blue PvP-geared 78+ players wasn't bad enough for lower level players in that bracket, as it turns out you often won't find anyone in the bracket that isn't level 78+.
A lot of people at that level have the notion that farming honor at 80 is insanely hard due to epically geared veteran 80s, and choose to stay at 79 for a while to build up honor. Not to mention that players generally join in battlegrounds when they are among the higher levels of that bracket.
Conclusion
If you just dinged 70 and you're so PvP-hungry that you don't want to wait until you've leveled up a few times to start doing battlegrounds again, here's a few tips.
This is very fun, and an effective way to motivate players through the drudging 1.5 million experience points required to make it past each level.
There are a few problems caused by this, however. Everyone knows you shouldn't play in battlegrounds if you are in the bottom of a bracket, but this is even truer in the 70-79 bracket. In lower brackets from Classic WoW, there might be a few attribute points of difference between non-twinking players, but nothing major. At that level in the game, significant factors come from class abilities and hit chance. At the WotLK level, the differences between gear are huge. Every other quest throws new gear at you, and because it takes so many quests to level up, gear disparity between yourself and a player just one level above might be as great as what you would have seen before when compared to a player ten levels above or more.
But if that didn't already complicate things for PvPers who don't want to wait to level to join battlegrounds, there are other things to consider that make the 70-79 bracket difficult for anyone not very close to 80.
Level 78 PvP sets
On my first Boomkin, I had farmed leather for several days with my leatherworking friend and guildmate, so that he could make me my Overcast set. Granted, this set is better suited for Restoration Druids, but this wasn't such a problem. The spirit to spellpower from Improved Moonkin Form compensated fairly well for the total lack of critical strike rating. In fact, it gave me an additional 90 spell power, which is a nice amount at that level.
Level 78 PvP sets require a lot of materials, but somehow everyone has them anyways. Several of my friends had them, and from what I could tell, so did a substantial amount of other players. They're great as an introduction to PvPing at level 80. I imagine Blizzard introduced them to compensate for the even greater gear disparity you can find at the level cap.
But in essence, these sets are ridiculous. I had all 8 pieces of it ready and waiting when I hit 78, and equipped them all at once. I suddenly found myself with 4k additional health, a considerable spell power boost, and went from 0 to 300 resilience. Excited, I joined a Warsong Gulch and I was amazed at the difference it made. Suddenly, I felt like a walking tank. I hit hard and it was more difficult to take me down than ever before.
Farmers
But if having to fight against full blue PvP-geared 78+ players wasn't bad enough for lower level players in that bracket, as it turns out you often won't find anyone in the bracket that isn't level 78+.
A lot of people at that level have the notion that farming honor at 80 is insanely hard due to epically geared veteran 80s, and choose to stay at 79 for a while to build up honor. Not to mention that players generally join in battlegrounds when they are among the higher levels of that bracket.
Conclusion
If you just dinged 70 and you're so PvP-hungry that you don't want to wait until you've leveled up a few times to start doing battlegrounds again, here's a few tips.
- Be discreet. Don't get yourself noticed, and you might be able to provide good help to the team. That means you probably shouldn't try to carry the flag yourself. The main issue with being a lower level is that you are very easily killed, so try to get yourself focus-fired the least amount possible.
- Stay close to someone. If a high level player singles you out, you're done for. Stay close to someone who can help you if needed, and who you might also be able to help.
- Play a healer. At first, this may seem contradictory, because ideally, the opposite team should always be focus-firing either your flag carrier or your healer. But that said, we don't live in an ideal world, and most players - especially not before 80 - don't know how to play smart, and you can usually get away with healing without having the entire opposite team suddenly concentrate on you. Furthermore, you're a healer. If you play the role well, you can survive decently well under fire, even if you're lower level. That said, you should still abide by the first tip - be discreet. If you're a Resto Druid, you might want to stay out of Tree Form, unless you're already being meleed.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
A bitter taste
I'm currently very disappointed with the Molten server. I switched to it from Spermik expecting high quality, open and scripted instances, and professional support. I expected these things because the Molten site encourages visitors to look forward to them. But the reality is, so far, leaving a bitter taste in my mouth.
Here is why.
I am now level 77 and I have, at this point, entered four different dungeons on Frostwolf. Leveling is fast, so I haven't taken the time to savor more dungeons yet, which is something I intended to do with an alt. Keep in mind that at Spermik, I had obtained the Classic Dungeonmaster and the Outland Dungeonmaster achievements, and was close to soloing Outland Dungeon Hero. All of these dungeons were open and properly scripted. I say this to point out that I know these dungeons fairly well and what to expect. I'm not someone who just ran into instances that were totally foreign to me and is about to rant because I sucked at them.
Zul'Farrak was the first dungeon I entered on Frostwolf. I completed it twice and there were no issues, so I won't linger there.
The following three dungeons, however, were nothing short of disastrous.
The Nexus
I like The Nexus. It was the first ever Northrend dungeon I entered on my first character and I had a good time. It had its own, unique flavor and I liked that the bosses kept me on my toes. Molten's Nexus bosses, however, only kept me frustrated.
The first thing I noticed was that Keristrasza wasn't there. Okay then, that's weird. Maybe he's bugged and they're working on him, I thought. Let's go tackle this dungeon.
The group and I made our way to Ormorok the Tree-Shaper, without much trouble. I did notice a Spermik-like bug, however. The small, Crystalline Frayers wouldn't die when attacked - rather, they would disappear at low health and a new untargetable Frayer would spawn and attack. This caused some combat bug issues but we made it to the boss and started getting ready to engage.
By the time we were past the first spell reflect, I suddenly noticed that my girlfriend, our Restoration Druid, was getting hit - but I didn't see anything around her. But it got worse. Soon, her Tree of Life looked like it had begun a crazy, twitching dance, being hit by what could only have been dozens of invisible mobs, her health rapidly depleting. In fact, we wiped.
We were all a little surprised and decided to try again. We hoped this was just an exceptional, one-time thing. But it happened again and we wiped for the second time. So, we decided to skip that boss and we went all the way to Grand Magus Telestra.
We wiped at 50% when she split herself. Aside from my girlfriend and I, the group was a PuG composed of three Paladins that had never done Nexus before, so this was expected. We made our way back, and we were distraught when we saw Telestra standing in the middle of her room, accompanied by her three copies.
We gave up and disbanded. Nothing more to do there, the instance was obviously plagued with bugs, and persevering wouldn't lead to much.
Magisters' Terrace
Yesterday, two guildies were going to do Magisters' Terrace normal-mode as DPS and asked me to be the final damage-dealer. I said sure. I like dungeons. Our group was composed as such: a level 76 Paladin tank, a 75 Discipline Priest, a 72 Blood/Unholy Death Knight, a 70 Retribution Paladin, and myself, a 76 Boomkin. Not a bad group for a simple MT normal.
Unfortunately, we encountered issues right from the start. Gripy, the DK and one of the guildies, had his ghoul out and it somehow went through the platform we were on, aggroing Priestess Delrissa and her guardians below. We managed to kill them all as they came up to us, except for one which stayed down there and kept us flagged in combat.
Gripy ended up dying and our Priest left the instance to get rid of the attack bug and resurrect him, because I didn't want to waste my Rebirth in case it would be needed later. When he tried to reenter, he was teleported to Dalaran. And so were the rest of us when we tried ourselves. In fact, the only way not to be sent to Dalaran was by having Gripy release.
We reformed the group outside the dungeon and tried again. We got to Selin Fireheart's room and we wiped. At first we weren't sure why, because we were all killed very quickly, and we ended up assuming that we had somehow accidentally pulled the boss. As it turns out when we wiped again later, even after having taken the time to be careful with our pull, it was the trash that had been one-shotting us.
So we left, and tried another dungeon.
The Violet Hold
I'd never been in The Violet Hold before, because it was still being scripted at Spermik. But I did my research and I got the gist of it. We start a script, and random bosses and mobs get thrown at us, until we finish with Cyanigosa. Pretty straightforward, and actually sounded kind of fun.
On Molten, not so. We were given three waves of trash, followed by Cyanigosa herself. We killed her, and she didn't even use any special abilities. It was a mere tank and spank. After that, there was no way to encounter any other boss.
We decided we were done for the night. This was truly disappointing.
Poor service
This morning, I went to the Support/Q&A forums at the Molten site and started a thread titled "What works?" I made a polite, well-written post addressing the problems I just described (though more concisely, of course), and asked what to expect from the server. What works? Are level 80 raids fully functional and scripted? I made sure the tone of my post was neutral, pointing out that I was not criticizing the server but rather asking well-grounded questions as a member of the community. Finally, I said thanks for reading and for the responses I was hoping to receive.
Five minutes later, my thread was deleted. Gone. Not moved to a more appropriate section, not locked, but quite brutally erased.
Now that pissed me off. Why would they do that? Did they fear someone might read my thread and be discouraged from playing on their server? It made me wonder how many threads I missed because they were deleted for addressing similar things.
The fact that a moderator read my post and decided to delete it instead of replying to it hurt me personally. Suddenly, this server is giving me a new, sour feeling - dishonesty.
I now cannot trust Molten. They have led me to expect great quality, but I have so far been deceived, and that my formal address was squashed rather than heard was reminiscent of tyrannic regimes (extreme comparison, I realize, but you get my point).
What can I do now? If level 80 content does not improve, I doubt I will want to stay at Molten much longer.
A few weeks later
As it turns out, Molten's core was a Mangos/custom hybrid. At first, I had believed they had a totally custom emulator, but as I now understand it, MoltenEmu is just a hybrid implemented to provide more stability. The content itself was Mangos-based.
However, and fortunately, the Molten developpers have created a new core, a Trinity/Molten hybrid. Trinity, a Mangos branch-off, is well known for its content, being far less bugged than Mangos itself.
Today, there are still some bugs to be worked out, but things are looking a lot nicer. From what I can tell, all dungeons are now working properly. /cheer
Here is why.
I am now level 77 and I have, at this point, entered four different dungeons on Frostwolf. Leveling is fast, so I haven't taken the time to savor more dungeons yet, which is something I intended to do with an alt. Keep in mind that at Spermik, I had obtained the Classic Dungeonmaster and the Outland Dungeonmaster achievements, and was close to soloing Outland Dungeon Hero. All of these dungeons were open and properly scripted. I say this to point out that I know these dungeons fairly well and what to expect. I'm not someone who just ran into instances that were totally foreign to me and is about to rant because I sucked at them.
Zul'Farrak was the first dungeon I entered on Frostwolf. I completed it twice and there were no issues, so I won't linger there.
The following three dungeons, however, were nothing short of disastrous.
The Nexus
I like The Nexus. It was the first ever Northrend dungeon I entered on my first character and I had a good time. It had its own, unique flavor and I liked that the bosses kept me on my toes. Molten's Nexus bosses, however, only kept me frustrated.
The first thing I noticed was that Keristrasza wasn't there. Okay then, that's weird. Maybe he's bugged and they're working on him, I thought. Let's go tackle this dungeon.
 |
| Not there? Fine! I'll just dance on your platform! |
By the time we were past the first spell reflect, I suddenly noticed that my girlfriend, our Restoration Druid, was getting hit - but I didn't see anything around her. But it got worse. Soon, her Tree of Life looked like it had begun a crazy, twitching dance, being hit by what could only have been dozens of invisible mobs, her health rapidly depleting. In fact, we wiped.
We were all a little surprised and decided to try again. We hoped this was just an exceptional, one-time thing. But it happened again and we wiped for the second time. So, we decided to skip that boss and we went all the way to Grand Magus Telestra.
We wiped at 50% when she split herself. Aside from my girlfriend and I, the group was a PuG composed of three Paladins that had never done Nexus before, so this was expected. We made our way back, and we were distraught when we saw Telestra standing in the middle of her room, accompanied by her three copies.
We gave up and disbanded. Nothing more to do there, the instance was obviously plagued with bugs, and persevering wouldn't lead to much.
Magisters' Terrace
Yesterday, two guildies were going to do Magisters' Terrace normal-mode as DPS and asked me to be the final damage-dealer. I said sure. I like dungeons. Our group was composed as such: a level 76 Paladin tank, a 75 Discipline Priest, a 72 Blood/Unholy Death Knight, a 70 Retribution Paladin, and myself, a 76 Boomkin. Not a bad group for a simple MT normal.
Unfortunately, we encountered issues right from the start. Gripy, the DK and one of the guildies, had his ghoul out and it somehow went through the platform we were on, aggroing Priestess Delrissa and her guardians below. We managed to kill them all as they came up to us, except for one which stayed down there and kept us flagged in combat.
Gripy ended up dying and our Priest left the instance to get rid of the attack bug and resurrect him, because I didn't want to waste my Rebirth in case it would be needed later. When he tried to reenter, he was teleported to Dalaran. And so were the rest of us when we tried ourselves. In fact, the only way not to be sent to Dalaran was by having Gripy release.
We reformed the group outside the dungeon and tried again. We got to Selin Fireheart's room and we wiped. At first we weren't sure why, because we were all killed very quickly, and we ended up assuming that we had somehow accidentally pulled the boss. As it turns out when we wiped again later, even after having taken the time to be careful with our pull, it was the trash that had been one-shotting us.
So we left, and tried another dungeon.
The Violet Hold
I'd never been in The Violet Hold before, because it was still being scripted at Spermik. But I did my research and I got the gist of it. We start a script, and random bosses and mobs get thrown at us, until we finish with Cyanigosa. Pretty straightforward, and actually sounded kind of fun.
On Molten, not so. We were given three waves of trash, followed by Cyanigosa herself. We killed her, and she didn't even use any special abilities. It was a mere tank and spank. After that, there was no way to encounter any other boss.
We decided we were done for the night. This was truly disappointing.
 |
| Bring it on! Or not.. |
This morning, I went to the Support/Q&A forums at the Molten site and started a thread titled "What works?" I made a polite, well-written post addressing the problems I just described (though more concisely, of course), and asked what to expect from the server. What works? Are level 80 raids fully functional and scripted? I made sure the tone of my post was neutral, pointing out that I was not criticizing the server but rather asking well-grounded questions as a member of the community. Finally, I said thanks for reading and for the responses I was hoping to receive.
Five minutes later, my thread was deleted. Gone. Not moved to a more appropriate section, not locked, but quite brutally erased.
Now that pissed me off. Why would they do that? Did they fear someone might read my thread and be discouraged from playing on their server? It made me wonder how many threads I missed because they were deleted for addressing similar things.
The fact that a moderator read my post and decided to delete it instead of replying to it hurt me personally. Suddenly, this server is giving me a new, sour feeling - dishonesty.
I now cannot trust Molten. They have led me to expect great quality, but I have so far been deceived, and that my formal address was squashed rather than heard was reminiscent of tyrannic regimes (extreme comparison, I realize, but you get my point).
What can I do now? If level 80 content does not improve, I doubt I will want to stay at Molten much longer.
A few weeks later
As it turns out, Molten's core was a Mangos/custom hybrid. At first, I had believed they had a totally custom emulator, but as I now understand it, MoltenEmu is just a hybrid implemented to provide more stability. The content itself was Mangos-based.
However, and fortunately, the Molten developpers have created a new core, a Trinity/Molten hybrid. Trinity, a Mangos branch-off, is well known for its content, being far less bugged than Mangos itself.
Today, there are still some bugs to be worked out, but things are looking a lot nicer. From what I can tell, all dungeons are now working properly. /cheer
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