crowd-control-ability
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Crowd control basics by class
So, crowd control. Contrary to the name, it isn't really a good way of controlling crowds; rather, it's a great way to control the size of the crowd of mobs mercilessly attacking your tank. Crowd control in this post means abilities that can be applied prior to a pull. We'll get to abilites like Psychic Scream, warriors' Intimidating Shout and Shadowfury a bit later, but they're not our primary concern right now. There are some situations, particularly in the Rise of the Zandalari dungeons where pre-pull CC isn't possible (such as the adds on the way to Nalorakk in Zul'Aman) where you'll need to CC on the fly, but this is rarely the case. Not all classes have crowd control abilities of the type we're talking about here. Warriors and death knights have a few stuns, fears and Hungering Cold, all of which can be put to excellent use but aren't really crowd control in this sense as they can't be cast prior to the pull. So which classes have these pre-pull crowd control abilities, and what are they?
Arcane Brilliance: A friendly introduction to mage crowd control
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, a public service announcement: An open letter to the guy who keeps breaking my sheep: Please stop. Sincerely, Christian P.S. -- Listen. I know it's Christmas and I should probably be doing a puff piece on things I want for my mage for Christmas or something like that. But I Simply can't stay quiet. We wiped 20 times in that heroic Grim Batol run last night, and though I know not everybody who plays this game reads this column, I have to do what I can. Evil triumphs when good men do nothing, or something like that. I know The Burning Crusade happened like two years ago. I'm well aware that there's a distinct possibility you started playing the game during Wrath. Perhaps you either don't remember or don't have any idea what a "Polymorph" is or why it's not in your best interests to immediately begin whacking whatever I just cast it on as hard as you possibly can. I'm willing to allow for ignorance. Mages, I can even understand it when you don't sheep things. Polymorph doesn't do any damage; in fact it heals its target! Why would you want to use a spell that doesn't blow things up when there are so many other delightful spells in your spellbook that do? It seems counter to everything we got into magecraft for. Wrath was a long expansion. For the better part of two years, we spent the majority of our time chain pulling and AoE-farming our way through every instance in sight, concentrating on one thing and one thing only: DPS. Recount gave us a number at the end of every boss fight, and if that number was higher than the warlock's number, we had done a good job. Sure, the fights sometimes had mechanics we needed to pay attention to, but they mostly involved moving from one place to stand and shoot to another place to stand and shoot. We forgot a very important part of our jobs as mages. We forgot how to sheep.
The Light and How to Swing It: Bringing utility in Cataclysm
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. Please send screenshots as well as any comments to my email at gregg@wow.com. Sorry, the above graphic really has nothing to do with today's column, but I wanted to feature more of the new built-in "power auras" that Blizzard added to the game. As for today's message, I know the following is going to raise some red flags for those long-time paladins out there, but don't freak out. I'm going to ask that you start stepping up and bringing a bit more utility. Relax, I didn't mean it in a vanilla or BC sort of way when you were sometimes just brought for certain buffs and nothing to do with your damage, tanking or healing. I mean it in a real sense that we do have some utility available to us in addition to everything else that we do, much the same way that hunters' traps bring utility to their class. The coming expansion is going to be harder than we're used to. We've been just nuking things for so long that a lot of our utility abilities have slowly worked their way off of our toolbars, or we're getting new abilities in the expansion to fill roles we haven't had before. Let's take a look at what we're going to be expected to start doing once the Cataclysm gets into full swing.
Forum post of the day: Freakin' frogs
Ftoomsh of Aman'Thul is hopping mad that Shamans will be getting Hex in Wrath of the Lich King. Green with envy, she feels that Mages are already being rendered obsolete in PvE. Polymorph as a unique ability should not be added to a pool of skill for more classes to draw from. The original poster jumped to the conclusion that giving this ability to Shamans make Mages completely useless. Baah, I say. Hex is similar to Polymorph, but is definitely not the same spell. You might even say it doesn't go the whole nine yards. Several of the responding post reminded Ftoomsh that the Hex ability in its current form only lasts ten seconds. On top of that it set to a one-minute cool down while Polymorph has no cooldown but diminishing returns. The frogged character will be in control of their movement, but ill not be able to cast with the debuff. I'd like to add that Hex does appear to lack the healing mechanic of polymorph.
