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Perpetuum devs working on new mech, combat log, and more
It's been pretty quiet on the Perpetuum news front since the game went live towards the end of November. The indie sci-fi title is moving right along, and the developers at Avatar Creations are hard at work collecting player feedback and iterating on possible future additions. Quite a few new features are coming down the pipe for the mech-based sandbox, including robots that damage their surroundings when they die, a new freight-transport mech, and an oft-requested combat history log. Mancs, an Avatar dev and the personality behind the official Perpetuum blog, writes about these and other upcoming tweaks in the column's holiday entry (dated December 26th).
Spiritual Guidance: Cataclysm heroics vs. Wrath heroics
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Fox Van Allen, your shadow specced host for the Wednesday version of SG, once again finds himself suffering from an IRL version of Devouring Plague. This means three things: 1.) This version of SG was written under the influence of cough syrup; 2.) this version of SG is likely to be a disjointed mess; and 3.) Fox fell asleep on the keyboard three or four times in the middle of writing it. This past weekend, I've been playing around a little bit with my druid. It's the first I've really played it since patch 4.0.1 went live, and it's really amazing how much has changed. I'm casting Wrath to buff Starfire, and then I'm casting Starfire to buff Wrath. There are a couple new "faux power auras" to learn, too. I kind of like the new mechanic, but the feel of it is just so different than what I was used to back in the days of yore. (For those keeping track, "yore" means, like, September.) Shadow priests are somewhat fortunate in that our spec worked well enough in the world of patch 3.3.5 that it didn't need some kind of Lunar Eclipse/Solar Eclipse gimmick. Cataclysm plays a lot like patch 4.0.1, which plays a lot like patch 3.3.5. That doesn't mean there aren't notable differences in the way the game plays, though, especially when it comes to something so seemingly familiar as your daily heroic.
Arcane Brilliance: Mage AoE in Cataclysm, part 1
It's time again for Arcane Brilliance, the weekly mage column known for its special five-alarm chili recipe. It's a delicate blend of three different conjured beans, spiced up with Fireballs, Scorches, and slow-cooked over a smoldering Flamestrike, loaded with lamb, bacon, and the occasional roasted monkey, glazed with a dusting of Frostfire, then lit aflame with a Pyroblast. And the secret ingredient? Warlock tears. If there's one thing mages have been known for during the course of this fine game we all play, it's mass murder. We have at our disposal a wide array of spells that wreak havoc over a large area, perhaps more so than any other class. When it comes to killing things in large numbers, mages are remarkably adept. It's a role we embrace wholeheartedly. AoE has evolved quite since the inception of the game. In vanilla WoW, AoE was a great way to get yourself killed in an instance, a method of attack that was mostly limited to solo farming and certain trash pulls. These days, with the ability tanks have to hold multiple mobs with relative ease, AoE has morphed into the go-to way to deal with multiple-mob pulls of all shapes and sizes. Crowd control has gone the way of Wand Specialization; it simply isn't required in most situations in Wrath. Cataclysm is bringing with it some fairly sweeping changes to the way we utilize our AoE repertoire. The developers have stated their intention to return us to a time when we actually had to worry about things like crowd control and pull-sizes, and though we're not reverting completely, pulls on the beta certainly feel more like vanilla or Burning Crusade pulls than anything we saw in Wrath. Join me after the break and we'll go over how our AoE spells will work in this coming era.
The Light and How to Swing It: Less AoE
With the Light as his strength, Gregg Reece of The Light and How to Swing It faces down the demons of the Burning Legion, the undead of the Scourge, and soon an entire flight of black dragons. Paladins have changed a lot over the course of the game. Originally, we were intended to just be healers with some additional specs for leveling. Then we were suddenly able to tank and everything was about reflective damage with a dozen or more things hitting you at once with a DPS spec that was usually relegated to the PvP scene instead of in raids. Finally, we've reached a point where all three specs are pretty viable in both PvE and PvP content. That isn't to say that they're the most phenomenal things to ever appear for those particular parts of the game but that we can still be competitive no matter which spec we choose. The problem with our class is a lack of tools. While our melee components were slowly built out of what was intended to be a healing support class, we've still got a lot of vestiges of the old days tacked to us. Sure, we had a fairly large overhaul in how a lot of our mechanics worked at the start of Wrath of the Lich King, but that isn't to say we're perfect yet. In fact, we need a few more tools in order to make it in Cataclysm.
How not to aggro your tank with AoE
Reader UnstØppable writes in with a question I thought would benefit others: "Does the Bladestorm aggro problem ever get better? What I mean is, I've seen it countless times, the arms warrior enters the dungeon, the tank lets out a sigh (sometimes it's me), we pull the first group and everything goes fine, until he hits that Bladestorm button. That's when somehow he manages to pull aggro from every mob and their mom and makes both the healer's and the tank's lives hell or usually ends up dying within seconds." Part of the problem here is that certain classes/specs have no aggro dump or reduction ability and as a result their big DPS moves generate a lot of threat. Arms warriors, most DPS death knights (at least the blood and unholy specs I've used) and retribution paladins have limited aggro reduction at best (pallies at least have Hand of Salvation but that's a band aid at best) and while tanking threat (especially AoE tanking threat) requires ramp up time, it's very easy to hit the Divine Storm, Death and Decay, Pestilence, Whirlwind or Bladestorm buttons. (Enhancement shamans with Spirit Weapons seem to be okay, I rarely pull aggro even when I go nuts with Fire Nova.)
Lichborne: A death knight primer for tanking 5-man dungeons
Welcome to Lichborne, the weekly death knight column. This week, your host is in a bit of a tanking mood. Those Emblems of Frost don't earn themselves! So when the Dungeon Finder came out, it was pretty cool even for DPS. A 10 minute wait for a DPS slot for a 5-man dungeon is pretty insanely awesome. If nothing else, it was certainly faster than the old way of sitting in Dalaran for 2 hours picking your nose and watching the LFG channel. Now that the dungeon finder has been around for a while though, things are getting a bit stickier for DPS. My server averages around 15-20 minutes for a level 80, and I've heard some battlegroups are up to 30-45 minutes, even at prime time. To make matters worse, tanks and healers can continue to boast instant or near-instant queues almost everywhere, leaving the poor DPS green with envy. Now technically, this is how it's almost always worked. Tanks and Healers get groups pretty quick, DPS has to wait around. And all told, the dungeon finder system is still pretty cool, and you still get a group faster than the old way. That said, now that we've had a taste of true power, I'm sure we're all loathe to lose it. Luckily, death knights have an out: We can go tank. Whether you're a DPS DK considering going tank for shorter queue times, or a 5-man DK tank newbie looking to up their game, this column's for you.
The Queue: There's more than one way to skin a worgen
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's (almost) daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky be your host today.So my thought process Monday morning goes like this. Kubien asks a question about skining worgens. My cat is next to me vying for my attention, and after headbutting me for a few minutes decides to pounce on my arm. Luckily I'm a fatty so all is good and he just bounces off harmlessly to the floor, but it makes me think for a minute about punishing him. Then I remember the old saying, "There's more than one way to skin a cat."And from cat, to lolcat, to lolwowcats.I'm sorry Warcraft community, I really am. But what's done is done. Let's just move on and go have some tea and crumpets.Kubien asked..."While killing Worgen in Silverpine Forest the other day, it occurred to me I can skin them. When Alliance play Worgen, can I skin them? Please!"
Patch 3.3 PTR: Area-of-effect damage cap change
The area-of-effect damage cap is something that doesn't get talked about a whole lot. The first time I noticed it having a real effect on gameplay was in Mount Hyjal ("Hey, warlock! Wake up and throw us another Seed of Corruption!"). So what is it and what is patch 3.3 doing with it?When you hit a single mob or player with a spell, or some kind of crude inertia-based impact utensil, the game will work out how much damage that target takes. This is based on the various offensive properties of you and the spell or utensil, as well as the defensive properties of your target. The same is true for area-of-effect (or AoE) abilities, though these tend to do less damage to a single target. Add in some more targets and, while it's still fun to do lots of damage to one of them (with the casting and the poking with sticks), you may have a chance to do damage to all of them at once. Let's say that you can do 2500 damage to a single target with one spell or stab, but can only do 1000 damage to a single target with your AoE ability. If you have five targets that you can hit with your AoE, then that will do a total of 5000 damage. Already we're having more fun than just beating on the one target.
The lost art of crowd control
The emblems changes are driving traffic back to the Heroics, and I love it -- 5-mans are my favorite thing to do in the game, and there's nothing more fun to me than sitting down with a group and trouncing a Heroic, reeling in all of the gold and loot we can carry. But there's something missing, still, even in these glory days of achievements and Stone Keeper's Shards and Emblems of Conquest. Yes, it's crowd control. Groups are still gung-ho on AoEing everything in their way, and Blizzard hasn't shown any indication, even in the design of the new instances, that crowd control is anything they want to keep around. I can't remember the last time I trapped something in a group on my Hunter, and I'm sure that the last time I did, some Death Knight broke it right open, Death Grip-ped it back into the group, and then AoE'd it down to nothing.Bornakk actually replies in the thread that we're just being nostalgic for nostalgia's sake, and that even when CC was required, people whined that they needed to have certain classes in their groups. But what class doesn't have CC these days? Even Shamans got their CC, just as it wasn't actually needed any more. Crowd control added some semi-serious strategy even to trash fights in instances, and while we originally heard that it would come back at some point, Blizzard certainly seems to be done with it.But we can be patient. The new instances in 3.2 are light to completely empty on trash, so maybe they're waiting for Icecrown to really put our CC skills and coordination to the test. I play a Hunter at endgame currently, so I might be biased, but I do love 5-mans, and I do miss the extra coordination and teamwork that a big CC-required pull provided. Hopefully they can find a way to mix that back in without requiring certain specs or classes to be along for the ride.
The many sides of crowd control
We found an interesting post about the many intricacies of crowd control over on the Epic Slant blog. Crowd control (CC) is a tricky feature to design and balance in MMOs because too little takes a lot of strategy out of the experience and too much is simply overpowered.Ferrel wonders what ever happened to the pure CC classes like Everquest's enchanter? He brings up that CC in current MMOs is usually distributed evenly over a number of careers. Is this because modern MMOs cater to the solo experience rather than forcing group dependency and necessity?When Mythic was designing Warhammer Online, Mark Jacobs stated that he hated the CC that was present in Dark Age of Camelot and that he would do it all over again if he could. Fans were on board with this concept because RvR wins usually came down to who could insta-CC the other group first in DAOC. Illustrating the difficulty that comes with balancing CC in a PvP game, one of the biggest complaints about WAR is that there is still too much of it (see point 10), even with immunity timers to mitigate the effects.
GC: If you're OOM, tell your guildies to get out of the fire
Ghostcrawler did battle with the forumites this weekend, and the topic of discussion was the recent mana changes. Players are saying that the changes (including the BoW and Mana Spring change last week) are basically forcing them to bring more healers along to larger raids, and GC in return expounds on the raid balance that Blizzard is aiming for lately. Interestingly, it's not the 5 healers / 5 tanks / 15 DPS that you might think it would be -- Ghostcrawler says that if they aimed for that makeup, bringing more healers would often make the fights inconsequential.He goes on to say that the way the fights are designed, you aren't supposed to run out of mana, as long as you're dodging the AoE and are geared up correctly. Making mistakes in gameplay digs into your mana reserves, and so when Blizzard nerfs mana regen, they aren't just trying to make things harder, they're trying to take away that extra breathing room that you get around errors. They don't want healers just healing through damage -- they want people trying to avoid it in the first place.And, if guildies won't get out of the fire, and your healers keep running out of mana because of it, it's time to weed out the ranks a bit. Finally, GC adds what we've heard before: those looking for a tough battle in Ulduar likely won't find it right away -- the instance is designed to be only a little harder than Naxx. But the hard modes are where the difficulty will really ramp up. If short, says GC, if you don't have enough mana on the easy modes, it's not Blizzard's design: it's the way you and your guildies are geared and playing.
Crowd Control to return in future instances
This opinion probably isn't shared by everyone, but I have to say: I miss crowd control in PvE. Nowadays, thanks to Death Knights or Blizzard or whoever you want to blame, instance runs are more or less zerg affairs -- everyone runs in on a cue, targets whatever the most dangerous mob is, and then lets the rest die off from the incidental damage thanks to their glyph-ed up, AoE abilities. But I long for a more civilized time when CC was used as a more elegant weapon, when a successful group was based on teamwork rather than gear, and when you needed a sheep, or a trap, or a banish, or all three, to make it through the instance.Fortunately, crowd control isn't dead forever -- GC confirms that while Blizzard doesn't want every pull to take "months of planning" (and obviously they want you to bring the player, not the class, so requiring a Warlock or a Mage along isn't always the best policy), "there will be more CC in the future." Of course, whether that means raids only or future expansions, we have no idea. He does say that "Noxromulous" was made to be accessible, so you might think raids, but one instance players always mention in terms of 5-man difficulty is Magister's Terrace, and let's not forget that that one also came in a content patch.Despite the bad rep that CC has gotten in PvP, it plays a significant role in the strategy of PvE, and lots of that interesting gameplay has really been lost lately. Hopefully in the future, we'll see Blizzard able to bring back sheep and traps in a way that will test groups without leaving anyone out.
How have the role forums shaped up?
When Blizzard first introduced the idea of the role forums, players were generally unenthusiastic because the original plan was to dissolve the cherished class forums as well. People warmed up to the idea once Blizzard decided to keep the class forums intact while still warning that they would probably devote a lot more developer attention to the role forums. With the addition of a new class, that made sense; being able to give more attention to just 3 forums is a lot more efficient than trying to spread individual replies around 10.I genuinely like the Tanking forums. Many of the people posting are sincerely helpful, and take the time to answer questions posed by people new to the job and nervous about their performance. There have also been a number of interesting threads sparked by changes to general tanking practices, what tanks hate most, the ongoing debate concerning Blessing of Sanctuary and Druid AoE threat, Warrior viability on a 3D Sartharion, and concerns over Death Knight tanking weapons. The forum is usually a pleasure to read even if a few threads are kind of off-base, and I think the back-and-forth between four different tanking classes serves to take the edge off concerns that players might otherwise have been convinced were unique to their class (which, let's be honest, is probably one of the effects Blizzard wanted).I don't spend as much time on the Damage Dealing and Healing forums because my main spends most of her time tanking, and things are a little more volatile over there (mostly because of current PvP concerns). Were the role forums ultimately a good idea? Are they -- shall we say -- working as intended?
Shifting Perspectives: So. Um, do bears suck?
Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting Druids and those who group with them. This week we shelve the column we originally intended to run due to a rather pressing matter.OK, folks. I have a confession to make. This week's Shifting Perspectives was originally meant to be a full guide to gearing your Restoration Druid at 80, and I'm still going to post that, either this week or next. A lot of people have (correctly, I think) observed that this column has historically paid more attention to Feral than to Restoration or Balance, and it's my aim to balance (har!) that out a bit. Part of it is just that the people who play Druids on staff here at WoW Insider are usually feral, and part of it is that -- at least as of the last numbers we had on it -- most people playing Druids are also feral. I confess I would love to see the demographics on Druids post-Wrath, because I get the sense that Balance in particular has become markedly more popular.But the Resto post is going to have to wait a few days, not least because my eyes are swimming from so much Wowhead. We found out today that Swipe's threat is getting a significant buff, but over the course of reading the pertinent forum thread and some back-channel discussion here, I ran across a few things concerning bear tanking that really made me sit up after the hell of tanking last night's heroic Old Kingdom and go, "Wait. It's not just me?"Personally whenever I encounter serious problems in a dungeon I tend to chalk it up to the fact that I suck. I find this to be an efficient and typically accurate means of pinpointing the source of an issue. However, my fellow Druids, our problems may actually be more wide-ranging than that.
Druid's Swipe now generates 50% increased threat
Ghostcrawler mentioned last night that the Druid ability Swipe was on their radar for a fix. Blizzard, and many Druids, felt that when you combined Swipe with the global cooldown it wasn't generating enough threat. There have also been extenuating issues concerning Swipe's effectiveness in picking up mobs in a uniform manner, often requiring the druid to have near perfect positioning.That's now been "fixed" today via a hotfix.Swipe's threat has been increased by 50%.Previously the limitation on the number of targets swipe could hit was removed, along with other classes AoE tanking abilities like Thunder Clap.The immediate effect of this won't be known beyond "it'll let Druids AoE tank better." There might be some backlash from the other classes that Swipe will now cause too much threat compared to their abilities (thus tipping the scale in favor of a Druid tank). There also might be some concern that people will just spam Swipe.Only time and everyone's reaction will tell.
Forum post of the day: A Rogue without a cause
Maximogu of Firetree posed the question "Why bring a Rogue to an 80 heroic?" in the general forums. He claimed that at this point there CC is unnecessary for most tanks that rely on AOE. Most of the trash pulls are handled by AOE classes now, making the Rogue's single target focus obsolete. He argued that Rogues are best suited with Druid tanks that do not handle multiple mobs as well as other tanking classes do.Here are some of the reasons given for bringing a rogue along:Anushka of Kel'Thuzad: There's a lot of nasty things that can be interrupted in most heroics. Though I wouldn't take more than one rogue.Khadros of Frostwolf: To listen to the sound of theirs daggers going schlick schlick schlick.Morgrimm of Korgath: Because one of my friends is a rogue.Owari of Frostwolf: To DPS, of course.Mypetgoat of Bladefist: It's one expendible DPS that won't roll on my gear.Madia of Maelstrom: They need loot and stuff too.
Name one thing you'd change about your class
Ghostcrawler is known to recite this line here and there. He mentions often that the purpose of saying such a thing isn't to get them (Blizzard) to change just one thing in a class the next patch, but to get people to zone in on a real problem.A real problem is something like "Fury Warriors do not have enough survivability and therefore are less effective in terms of spike PvP and PvE damage."A non real problem is something like "Blizzard hates Shamans and doesn't pay enough attention to them."So as an exercise this evening let's see what the WoW Insider readers think. Name one thing you would like changed about your class.As a full time PvE Protection Warrior, I think that we have a problem with obtaining the hit cap and would like to see more +hit gear drop in heroics and 10-man raid instances. I think an inclusion of items that have both +hit and +parry would help solve this wonderfully. I've also been known to dabble in Holy Paladins once in a while.
A Death Knight's first dungeon: Dos and don'ts, part one
Since day one of Wrath of the Lich King, people have been rolling Death Knights. While many seem to be getting along just great, many others are in need of guidance. This will be a two-part article, and will focus on the things that you will need to know when working with others in a dungeon setting. Today, I will be discussing the basic things that any meleer should know when entering a dungeon. Many Death Knights have never had a melee character, and may not know how to avoid aggro while dealing high damage and staying out of the tank's way.In part two, I will discuss your AoE abilities and their place in a dungeon setting, as well as covering the buttons you should never, ever push while in an instance. I will also run down some very basic rule of thumbs for your gear and talents, as well as including a discussion about some of the group-oriented talents that you could acquire.
The Queue: Death Knight jamboree
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Yesterday the topic of profession daily quests came up, and there was a little confusion around it. The way the question was phrased combined with how my response was phrased made it sound like most professions have daily quests in Wrath of the Lich King with a couple of exceptions. That is, unfortunately, not true. Of the primary professions, I believe only Jewelcrafting has daily quests. Of the secondary professions, only Cooking has daily quests. Skinners can sometimes skin an Arctic Fur off of beasties in Northrend, and those are used as tokens to purchase recipes. Enchanters do something similar with Dream Shards. They have no normal daily quests, though.Now with that cleared up, the Q&A! We'll start with Stormscape's question...Does Crusader Aura or On A Pale Horse affect vehicle speed?
Changes to AoE in patch 3.0.4
Ghostcrawler let us all know today of a few changes for classes that are being left out of the "AoE fun." He's only talking in relatively broad terms right now, and will give specifics later when things are more locked down.Some of the changes include: Shaman: Removing threat from the Fire Nova Totem and Magma Totem, and increasing the damage done by the Magma Totem. Rogue: Fan of Knives cooldown removed. Daggers more useful for Fan of Knives. Druid: Swipe will now be a baseline ability. He mentions that these changes will be seen in the next minor content patch. Ghostcrawler also hints that they will be available in the next PTR push (which we're expecting relatively soon)
