How I Spent My Weekend

 

Mimiron: A Case Study in “Design by Committee”

Designer 1:  OK, so let’s talk about the design of the encounter for the last keeper, Mimiron.  So far we’ve done the following themes:  Hodir/Ice, Thorim/Lightning, Freya/Angry Plants.  What should we do for this one?

Designer 2:  Fire.  Duh.

Designer 3:  Hey did you hear they fired Terrence Howard from Iron Man 2?

Designer 4:  Meh.  He sucked.  But hmm, Iron Man.  Let’s do a robot encounter.

Designer 1:  We already have a robot encounter.

Designer 4:  Let’s do another robot encounter.  Everyone loves robots, man.  Like Mimiron is Tony Stark and he can put on a suit and be indestructible and fly around the room and shoot lasers out of his hands and one-shot people.  

Designer 2:  That’s awesome.

Designer 3:  That’s lame.  Batman pwned Iron Man.

Designer 4:  Iron Man pwned your mom.

Designer 2:  Voltron pwned Iron Man then pwned your mom.

Designer 1:  Oh Voltron!  Now that’s a great idea.

Designer 4:  Totally, like all the bosses in Ulduar combine to make one boss who is indestructible and flies around the room and shoots lasers out of his hands and one-shots people.

Designer 3:   How about instead of all the bosses combining we just take, like, all the abilities from all the bosses and put them into one boss.

Designer 4:  …Who is indestructible and flies around the room and shoots lasers out of his hands and one-shots people.

Designer 3:  So we give him an ability that can one-shot tanks, for sure.

Designer 2:  Plus lightning nova!

Designer 3:  Oh you know what would be funny?  If while the melee are running out of lightning nova, we put bombs all over the ground in front of them.

Designer 4:  OMG, that’s hilarious.

Designer 1:  Can we design this so we need someone other than the tank to tank the fight?

Designer 2:  Can we make the priests have to mind control something too?

Designer 3:  Nah, too many QQers about needing priests for Naxx and now everyone brings priests.  If we have to have another non-tank tank, let’s choose a class that’s likely to be in the raid.

Designer 1:  Fuck that.  Let’s have it be something obscure, like only a PVP-specced warlock or Marksman hunter or something.

Designer 2:  Plus lasers!  We gotta have lasers!

Designer 3:  Lulz.  I can smell the fear already.

Designer 2:  I love the smell of fear.

Designer 3:  I love the smell of napalm in the morn… OMG, we have to have napalm in this fight.

Designer 2:  Plus rockets!  We gotta have rockets!

Designer 3:  Yes!  Rockets that do like 40K damage or something insane.

Designer 2:  No!  They should do [Dr. Evil voice] ONE MILLION DAMAGE!

Designer 4:  This is a lot of single target damage.  Should we throw in some AOE too?

Designer 3:  Yes, and adds.  Gotta spawn adds.

Designer 4:  Wow this fight is gonna be pretty healing intensive. All the healers are gonna need to spam raid heals like crazy.  We should make the next fight a bit easy on them, don’t you think?

Designer 1:  Oh hell no.  Screw healers.  My ex-wife plays a healer.  Next fight should just insta-gib all the healers or have no mana regeneration or something like that.

An (Advanced) Guide to Bad Healing

Yesterday Dueg gave you the Guide to Bad Healing.  To refresh:

• Show up in good gear, so those who inspect you are fooled.
• Heal priority:  DPS > tanks.
• Create a no-heal list and follow it religiously.
• Use one spell early and often… hell, use it exclusively .
• When the going gets tough, the tough pull out the cord on their router.
• Misdirect isn’t just a hunter skill:  blame everyone else when something goes wrong .

These are all incredibly valuable tactics that bad healers should embrace. But if you’ve mastered these skills, consider adding these to your repertoire:

• Stand in the fire.  Just heal through it!
• Someone else will cure and dispell.  Bad healers know this is the reason why you bring ret paladins and mages to raids.
• Don’t join vent.  Instructions from the Raid Leader might drown out Ryan Seacrest’s voice.
• Don’t join the healer channel.  [1] General is the only channel you really need to watch.
• Ignore healing assignments.  Healing assignments are for followers, and you sir, are a leader.  The healing meters say so.
• “I got no healz” — Did you die?  Healers’ fault!  (Other healers, naturally)
• Use your “oh shit” spells at random times — Guardian Spirit, Nature’s Swiftness, Battle Rez, and the like.  Sure, you didn’t actually save anyone, but when the Raid Leader says, “Use your [insert powerful spell name here],” you can say “On cooldown,” and people will think you’re already one or two steps ahead.
• Die first.  In the words of the great Billy Joel, “Only the good die young.”

When not raiding Ulduar, Khaeli spends her weekends rioting, smashing windows, and agitating for the end of global capitalism and the reign of the oppressive King Wrynn

 

58 Badges Later... The Bandit Priest

Losing My Divine Fury

It’s been about a month since Patch 3.1, and I’ve noticed lots of bloggers writing talent and spell reviews lately.  Indeed, the changes have been out long enough for better evaluation than some of the kneejerk “oh those bastards nerfed me” reactions that patches typically elicit.

I’m considering a respec on Khaeli tonight:  dropping the 5 points I have in Divine Fury and taking 5 in Spell Warding.  I rarely cast Greater Heal.  And it seems like there’s enough raid damage flying about in Ulduar that the latter might be useful.

We shall see…

Très Chic

Thanks to the good folks at talentchic, I now have a good idea of how to spec and glyph my shaman for both Elemental and Restoration.  And phew! — I was putting the points in the right places already.  (Minus the Improved Ghost Wolf option, which I’ll dump when I’m done leveling.)  Yay me.

Of course, the excitment of the Outlands wore off almost instantly when I realized yesterday that the speed at which I tore through those zones on my DK would not be matched by a mana-using toon in bloobie gear.

In which our heroine contemplates eating worms

As the acronym implies, MMOs are decidedly social endeavors.  While WoW does provide a lot of content for players who prefer to avoid the “massively multiplayer” and play alone, at some point most of us must interact with others:  to complete a quest, to join a guild, to make a trade, to run an instance, to raid.   As such, the impression one makes on and the relationships one builds with other players can have a lasting impact on what one is able to do in-game.

Several events in-game lately have given me great pause about this social aspect, and I find myself rather surprised about the ways in which I am perceived. I’ve been gaming a long long time, and although I’m still the same player, I have a very different “reputation” in the different MMOs and when playing my different characters. It’s both puzzling and frustrating.

Everyone loves Juuniper.  Everyone loves Fflewr.  Everyone loves Khree.  Logging into any of these characters results in instant-invites to groups, to raids.  “You busy?”   “You busy?”   “You busy?”

Khaeli, not so much.

Khaeli, not at all.

Is it a game thing? A server thing?

A class thing? A spec thing?

Is it a “blog” thing?

Is it a “me” thing?

Another Toon Hits 58

I like playing my shaman, although admittedly, I don’t often get to.  She’s lingered in her 50s for a long, long while — in part because I have been busy raiding, farming for consumables, and playing toons that, well, aren’t stuck in their 50s.  The journey from 50-58 is dreadful, I think.  The instances are long, and it’s hard to find a group.  The quests are monotonous.  The rewards are mediocre at best.

But she’s 58 now.  So through the Dark Portal she goes.  Outlands v3.0.

Now, of course, I have to figure out what the hell I’m doing on an elemental shaman.  My gear is bad, really bad, embarassingly bad.  I am not sure I’m specced correctly. When K- powerlevels me, the mobs are dead before I can get a shock off, let alone place totems, so I have no idea  if I’m able to DPS worth a damn.  (I installed a DPS meter — step 1 in figurin’ shit out)

I’d like to dual-spec this toon, but the 1000 gold seems a bit of a steep investment for a character that has been untouched for months.

In which our heroine once again makes too many pop culture references and gains a new priest ability: “Taunt Paladin”

Paladins are like rhubarb. People try to convince you they’re good and even necessary, but you’ve gotta bake them with strawberries and sprinkle them with tons of sugar to make them palatable. And even then, they’re still just bitter, nasty vegetables.

Tart indeed

To admit you dislike paladins is a dangerous, dangerous thing. They are vindictive creatures. They threaten to take away your Hand of Protection. They buff you with Might instead of Wisdom. They roll on your tier gear tokens. And then they roll on cloth. They absolutely kick your ass on the healing meters, then start threads on the WoW forums about how Disc Priests need to be nerfed. They stun-lock your ass in battlegrounds and two-shot you, but bubble and run away when you fight back.

One would think that, by definition, the priest class would hold the monopoly on self-righteous indignation. But no. Oh no. Paladins see themselves as both The Persecuted and The Redeemers. They claim to walk in the Light and blah blah blah “I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger” but puhlease bitch. As I’m pretty sure Lloyd Benson once said, “I’ve raided with Samuel L. Jackson.  I know Samuel L. Jackson.  Samual L. Jackson is a friend of mine.  I’ve seen all of Quentin Tarantino’s movies.  And, Paladin, you’re no Jules Winnfield.”

Sir Robin the Not-Quite-So-Brave-as-Sir-Lancelot, Paladin

“OMG What Killed Me?!” or This Post is Just An Excuse to Use a GI Joe Graphic

I had one of those nights last night where I died a lot.  Died in the slag pot.  Stood in a hurricane and died and was b-rezzed and died again.  WTFpwned by flower adds on Freya.  

Dying always pisses me off, as I pride myself on a Disc Priest’s longevity and survivability.  I pride myself on not standing in the fire.  But even if I want to say “OMG, it wasn’t my fault,” I can’t simply pretend like deaths are okay, or blame the OT, or point the finger at other healers, or get upset that someone with a debuff didn’t GTFO, or whine about the injustices of RNG.  Well, I can… but it’s probably not the best method to improve one’s gameplay.

Using Combat Logs to Assess What Happened

While tools like WWS, WoW Meter Online, and Recount are seen primarily as ways to assess damage output, these actually give a lot more information about other aspects of a raid, in this case, damage input.  These reports allow you to drill down into the specifics of an encounter to see what/when/why/how you ended up a corpse.

• Damage In / Damage Taken

• Replay Death

• Death Count

• Who Died Early 

Studying these reports will help you ascertain what killed you and hopefully will help you avoid future deaths.  Pro Tip:  Icicles fucking hurt.  

And now you know

And knowing is half the battle