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The 15 nastiest trash clears of WoW
I was reading through some links while writing a follow-up to Robert's Not-So-Original WoW Miscellany when I happened across some discussions concerning the game's most agonizing trash. This is a popular subject for players, not least because complaining is a lot of fun, but I don't think anyone's going to argue that there haven't been some legitimately unpleasant trash clears in WoW. Fortunately, most of the really bad trash clears are a distant memory, but there was at least one recent one that almost everyone who raided Dragon Soul could agree on. I'm going to include both dungeons and raids here, mostly because Shattered Halls was among the first things to go on this list. After including that, I knew there were other, equally nightmarish 5-mans that had to be included in the interest of fairness.
City of Heroes' newest Incarnate Trial learns from past mistakes
Incarnate Trials have proven to be some of the most challenging -- and interesting -- endgame content in City of Heroes to date, and players who have enjoyed them are undoubtedly anxious for the latest one, Dilemma Diabolique, which is coming with Issue 22. Senior Designer Chris Behrens wrote an informative dev diary in which he outlines five lessons the studio's learned from past Incarnate Trials and how these lessons will affect Dilemma Diabolique. These lessons include adding rest periods between fights, giving players clear information, keeping trash mobs from exhibiting super-powered (more so than usual) abilities, delivering attractive rewards, and tuning special mechanics so they don't overwhelm players. Dilemma Diabolique looks to be a quicker trial than its brethren, although Behrens sees this as a virtue: "We feel that the faster pace of the trial for maxed Incarnates is reward in itself, since it makes accumulating Empyrean Merits for our most dedicated Incarnates a faster endeavor."
Taking out the trash
I always thought I would love a no-trash dungeon. I came up in raiding in the days of MC and BWL, raids that were absolutely chock full of trash. AQ40? Oh, so much trash. Trash to the point of absurdity. Going into the original Naxxramas meant dealing with a huge space absolutely stuffed full of rotting, slimy, or arachnid horrors. You spent far more time coordinating pulls on those annoying warlocks in Blackwing Lair and their dynamite-throwing goblin friends than you actually did on bosses. In The Burning Crusade, the 5-mans had trash galore. Five, even six packs in Shadow Labyrinth, constant streams of adds in Shattered Halls, complicated trash pulls in Karazhan and Serpentshrine. I still remember with dread being the tank standing there using spell reflection to get the attention of Hyjal caster waves. Dealing with trash has always been a part of the game, as it has been part of the genre. In fact, one of the reasons that Naxxramas 10/25 felt so empty to me was that it simply held less trash than it did as a 40-man raid at level 60, so huge stretches of the place were deserted, as if Kel'Thuzad had gone on a staff-cutting binge and pink-slipped half of the Scourge before you even got there. After we'd gotten Ulduar more or less on farm and moved on to Trial of the Crusader, I was pretty ready for a break from trash. I was very excited about a trashless dungeon where you just fought bosses. Wouldn't that be epic? Wouldn't it be awesome for every fight in a raid to be an epic struggle against a named, powerful adversary? Turned out, not so much.
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.
Breakfast Topic: I miss trash
Before you have me committed, I'll say right now that I was expecting to be thrilled with the lack of trash in the new Coliseum raids. Who wouldn't be? No more endless waves of, say, Death Knights or Spectres or that horrible two-pull on the way to killing Auriaya or what have you. And you know what? I don't miss that stuff. I don't miss any of the trash we've yet seen in Wrath of the Lich King.In fact, what the trashless boss gauntlet that is Trial of the Crusader/Grand Crusader has done for me is to show me that I've been missing trash, real trash, since after we moved out of Mount Hyjal, and even then it was in slow decline. No, I hate to admit it, but in a blazing moment of honest to Murgatroyd old fogeyism, I came to realize that what I miss was the brutal, punishing trash pulls in Blackwing Lair. Blackwing Spellbinders were harder to deal with than some of the bosses that followed them! You could wipe multiple times before you even had the room cleared enough to pull a drake!Yeah, it sounds ridiculous that I'm nostalgic for that. And to be honest, it's a nostalgia tinged with a certain amount of relief that I don't have to go clear it again any time soon (and if I did, well, I'm level 80 now). But what I miss, and what I feel like we've been moving away from since Hyjal (which may have taken trash pulls to a height so ridiculous that the pendulum had to swing back this way) is trash with personality. Trash that sets the story, that makes you really feel like you're actually raiding an ancient lair of evil. That being said, I'm glad TotC is trashless. Just please, let Icecrown bring back trash that counts.How about you? Never want to see it again? Looking forward to its return? Where do you stand on trash?
One Shots: Somewhere, a skinner is twitching
You can imagine - once people heard that Onyxia was being retooled so that players could take her out and land themselves a shiny new pet - the frenzy was on. This image of insane amounts of Dragonkin carnage in World of Warcraft comes to us from Mr. P. who didn't send any other note along other than to explain it was from the PTRs outside of Ony's lair. That said, knowing World of Warcraft fiends like we do, we know someone out there with skinning is looking at this picture right now and twitching, just because there are so many skins to be had - and nobody is cleaning them up!One Shots is in need of your screenshots, so while you're out getting your game time in, why not send us some of your images! It's easy to do. Just email them to oneshots AT massively DOT com along with your name, the name of the game, and a quick description. We'll post them out here and give you the credit - bonus points if you can make someone twitch! %Gallery-9798%
Take out the trash (timers)!
Over at Blessing of Kings, Coriel recently made the case for removing the respawn timer on trash mobs in raid instances:"When you go into a 5-man instance, you expect to clear it, even if it is your first time going to that instance. You may wipe once or twice, but the general expectation is that you will finish that instance. In this case, an instance time limit is a good idea. If you hit the trash respawn, it's a sign that something is wrong, and perhaps it might be a better idea to try again later, maybe with a different group or after gearing up a bit more.... In contrast, in a raid boss fight, you expect to wipe a lot. That the fight is intricate enough that learning and mastering it will take multiple hours. It took us two or three evenings to refine our strategy and master The Lurker Below, and he's generally considered an easy boss in SSC."He makes a few more good points in the article, including the fact that for casual guilds, losing time to trash mob respawns could be better spent learning a new boss. Obviously this affects more casual raiders than hardcore ones, but I think Coriel summarizes his points well and is worth a read.
