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Why should warlocks have all the class quest fun?
The warlock green fire quest is up on the PTR, and warlocks are slowly starting to complete the quest and revel in their new-found verdant projectiles. By all accounts, the quest was an epic experience. It required warlocks to dust off long-forgotten spells, enslave demons, and more, to take every ability out of their spell book and bind it for use. It sounds fantastic! And, while I have a warlock languishing at level 85, I'm jealous. Why should warlocks have all the class quest fun? I definitely don't think, though, that these warlock quests should be opened up to other players, just in the interest of completeness. The great thing about these quests is that they're tailored around warlocks and their class abilities, other classes would simply dilute that experience. No, I think this should herald the start of things to come. The start of epic questlines appearing for every class, old and new. But, importantly, they have to offer something similar to the warlock quests. I would want them to be similarly difficult, similarly demanding of competence, and similarly require players to reach back to the darkest recesses of their spellbook. However, a quest of that magnitude cannot offer something required for raiding, for PvP, for character advancement. It has to offer something like green fire, desirable but not necessary. And that's where the difficulty comes in. What could these hypothetical class quests offer?
The Queue: Butterfly Wings
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Due to Alex Ziebart's having duplicates of the film I thought I'd destroyed, I (Matthew Rossi) will be fielding your questions today. Human beings, or butterfly wings? I have yet to find the trigger for happiness. In the meantime, I'll answer questions! Shrikesnest asks: So I guess the DMF is up on the PTR today. Anybody wanna save me an enormous download and just tell me whether Tier 3 look-alikes are available through them? I wanna know if I need to run Naxx-25 on my priest or not... As of right now, the only replicas available at the Darkmoon Faire on the PTR are the Dungeon Set 1 and 2 replicas. I spent over an hour combing the place just in case, and nope, if you want the original Naxx models you're going to need to either have them already or wait and see if Blizzard puts them on the DMF vendors at some point.
The Daily Grind: What's the most useless MMO skill?
For me, it began with World of Warcraft's Sentry Totem. This spell was almost stunning in how useless it was in action, and before long, it became fashionable to make jokes about the "awesome, devastating" power that this totem could unleash -- if only someone figured out its purpose. Useless skills, spells and abilities pepper our MMOs like those crusty black French fries that lurk at the bottom of the container. They are either too impractical, too unwieldy or too stupid to use under even the most situational of circumstances. You don't have a clue why someone greenlit them. They clutter up our hotbars as they mock our intelligence: "Of course I have a use -- you're just too stupid to figure out what it is!" So what's the most useless skill you've ever seen in an MMO? Or if you can't limit yourself to just one, I give you permission today to make a whole list in the comments section. Which skills are a joke and nothing but? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of our readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's The Daily Grind!
Keeping perspective
It's sometimes astonishing to me how passionate World of Warcraft players can be about the game. This includes myself: I have hot-button topics that absolutely flood me with adrenaline and cause me to rant (just ask my coworkers here at WoW.com all about that some time), and later I'll sit back and be amazed. I'm still amazed I managed to put out a thousand-word column about Sentry Totem. (You have no idea how sad it was for me to not be working on shaman content the day they announced they were going to take Sentry Totem out. Lost a chance for a thousand-word eulogy.) But as passionate and involved as we can get, and as excited about upcoming patches and new expansions and even sparkly ponies, sometimes we lose perspective. The infamous "slap in the face" forum ranting is based on a real mentality that X (fill in whatever you want) is the absolute ruination of the game. Downsizing raids to 25-man max is ruining the game. Arenas are ruining the game. The badge system is ruining the game, hybrids are ruining the game, pures are ruining the game, 10/25 variable raids are ruining the game, micro transactions, dual specs, what have you. The game has been constantly in a state of ruination since early 2005 when some realms were undergoing severe latency on peak nights and it was, you guessed it, ruining the game. Frankly, sometimes rather than posting that comment, forum post, or what have you, we as involved, passionate people need to take a couple of deep breaths and chill out.
Totem Talk: The Future of Totems?
All apologies for yesterday being, well, totemless. Personal and family obligations and a lack of warning simply swamped me, and as a result Totem Talk is on Friday and Care and Feeding will be Saturday this week only.Before we get to brass tacks, as it were, I should point out that it was announced that shamans are getting a talent respec for free in 3.0.8, most likely due to the changes we discussed last week.Yesterday, we covered this very interesting forum thread which basically asks the shaman community to discuss totems in the most open-ended way I've ever seen a blue solicit feedback. Asking people to just discuss any aspect of totems they don't like, or how they would change totems if it was up to them? I can't remember ever seeing this level of feedback asked for from the community.Now, since I'm a sheep, I figured I'd follow along with this general tendency. I mean, we've discussed totems here before, especially the greatest totem of all time. But rather than merely talk about what we don't like or would change about totems (we'll do that too, of course) I figured we could also cover what's good about totems, especially in these days of raid wide buffs that don't stack.
Totem Talk: Sentry Totem
Totem Talk is the column for shamans. Last week, Matthew Rossi warned you that he'd write an entire column about Sentry Totem, but you didn't listen, did you? You didn't pay any attention to his warning and now here we are, stuck with an entire column about Sentry Totem. You brought this on yourselves.Yes, this column is going to be about Sentry Totem.No, seriously. It really is.Okay, look, if I give you a few minutes to stop laughing, can we get serious about this? Okay? I'll just be over here, waiting. You collect yourselves and when you're done we'll get started.Okay. The serious discussion of Sentry Totem.I won't go so far as to say Sentry Totem is entirely without merit. It is, however. the least used totem on my bar. The only time I've ever used it is in WSG matches when I want to have the ability to check on the flag room without having to actually be in it. And the five minute duration and low health makes it fairly useless even for that. Even if someone grabs the flag while I'm watching, all I can do is tell people what is about to be announced to the entire battleground anyway. If I get seriously lucky and no one kills the totem, and no one kills me while I'm standing entirely motionless somewhere checking on the totem, unable to control my character at all, then I might be able to tell the group which tunnel they ran out of.
Totem Talk: Three Classes In One?
Totem Talk is the column for shamans, and Matthew Rossi has been obsessively trying to get his draenei shaman into outland this week. He's maddeningly close. He might have made it today if the Bark for the Barleybrew quest hadn't bugged out on him, but at least he got his Wolpertinger. No, this column won't be about Brewfest, but I had to show off my cute new pet or my wife would have been displeased with me.Like all true hybrids, Shamans are remarkably versatile. They can heal, they can melee, they can nuke. And like all true hybrids, they can only do one of these things, and then only if they properly gear and spec for it. While it is possible and worthwhile to really push the borders of the inherent multi-tasking of the class, most folks pick a role and stick with it, either because (as is my case) they don't have the gear to do anything more than their generally designated role or because they don't really want to. My resto shaman cannot DPS. Not even because of spec, but because he simply has not the gear for a DPS role and as a result there's no point in him attempting it. If I had good enough enhancement gear, I would probably try and DPS a lot more, but with the limitations of what he's carrying around in his bags it's simply not possible.Your spec is like an aptitude: it defines what your character will have the most options in. As a resto shaman, I have plenty of added punch to my healing, talents like Healing Way, Improved Chain Heal, Earth Shield and Nature's Blessing. But I'm lacking the offensive punch of the talents from Elemental for my spells, which means even if I had the gear, my shocks and lightning bolts are not going to match up to a shaman who has spent the points. I won't have Lightning Overload or Elemental Precision. And if I try and mix it up in melee, I lack the ability to Dual Wield, the enhanced weapon buffs of Elemental Weapons or the bite of Weapon Mastery. I still have the basics that Elemental and Enhancement shamans use in combat, of course, and they still have the basics of shaman healing, but there is always a noticeable drop in performance when doing something outside of your spec. Of course, some of you are probably saying "tell us something we don't know" while still others are ready to point out that even if an enhancement shaman can't heal as well as a resto shaman, he can still heal. And that's actually a good point. An enhancement shaman or an elemental shaman can, in fact, still heal. This leads to an often overlooked aspect of the class - basically, you bring a shaman along on a run because a shaman, in addition to whatever DPS or healing he or she can provide in a main role, can also provide what I like to call 'panic button' capacity.
