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Growing confidence
Of course, there's such a thing as overconfidence, and I'm sure that we've all met those players who go well beyond overconfidence and into full-bore cocky arrogance, but it's still the case that as we play the game we have those little epiphanies where a new understanding of how to use all of those expensive to train abilities blossoms. It's a fantastic feeling, that sense of pulling out a victory when failure would have been your reward before, of figuring out that proper combination of intervene - intimidating shout - thunderclap to save your healer or managing to walk out of a six mob train in one piece for the first time. It signifies the beginnings of true mastery of a class, when you suss out for yourself how to best make use of all the options available to you.One of the reasons I'm so addicted to playing Warriors (and I'm not alone, it seems, as this post from Mike brought to my attention) is that I got to have that feeling multiple times, once with each spec/character I leveled to 70. It moved me from a diffident tank to one who would willingly try and tank any mob in the game, knowing that my skills were up to the task. Similarly, I've had that sensation of 'Ah, that is how a shaman kills three mobs aggroing at once' as well as 'Do not die on me... I love you, Nature's Swiftness' by leveling my two shamans, and even my tiny ret/prot pally has given me that sense of wonder and accomplishment recently by being the hero on a Archaedas kill. Now is when we turn to you, gentle (and not so gentle) readers: have you had a breakthrough while playing that revealed a whole new facet of your character? Done what you would have believed impossible, saved the day, or just learned something new about your class? Felt like you took a step towards mastering the playstyle or even just figured out that an ability actually did something cool? The comments await you.
Sticks and stones...
Yesterday a player on the WoW forums pointed out that the Warrior skill Demoralizing Shout would be interesting to see in action. According to Undamian's interpretation, essentially, the skill involves insulting your opponents to throw them off balance in combat. Taunt, Challenging Shout, Piercing Howl and Intimidating Shout could also be viewed in a like manner. Unlike similar skills in other classes, warriors aren't considered magic users, so they must have an extensive vocabulary and a lot of creativity in order to affect their foes with mere words and body language.The original poster's idea, of course, led to a slew of suggestions as to what it is that warrior's actually say when they use these abilities. Community Manager Nethaera even proffered a suggestion, and as the thread progressed, other skills, such as Commanding and Battle Shout were included. Some players even posted catch phrases that they have bound to their abilities in game via macros. What do you imagine your character would say when using these skills? Please keep it clean.
Breakfast Topic: Abilities you'd like to see in the Warcraft movie
I was recently playing my hunter in a situation where I could not use my pet because I had to use a special item to mind-control a demon in the Netherstorm, and apparently having a pet and mind-controlling at the same time isn't allowed in the game mechanics. As a beast-mastery hunter, I'm pretty weak without my pet, so I had to use Feign Death a lot to get into position next to the demon. Suddenly I imagined my character as a star in the Warcraft movie, feigning death left and right, and laughing at the demons who fell for it every time.In a movie, certainly, it couldn't be so simple. The plausibility of the plot would require the monsters to figure out something was fishy when the hunter got up from apparent death the first time. Still, I thought if the ability was used once or twice in particularly appropriate moments, it could be really funny and also make the fans go wild, because they would recognize the game mechanics making a cameo in the film. Imagine: the hunter character in the movie is separated from his pet, surrounded by monsters, shot by an arrow and appears to die, only to be fine later on when his friends come to pick up his dead body. Then maybe towards the end, the bad guy feigns death too, and tricks the heroes with their own trick.What other in-game abilities would it make you jump with glee to see get a cameo in the movie? What place do you think it would take in the story? The first abilities that come to my mind are Polymorph, Vanish, and a paladin's bubble shield -- anything with a strong visual impact that could play a significant part on the story.
An in-depth look at Issue 11 power sets in CoX
Floyd "Castle" Grubb sat down recently and recorded a video explanation of the upcoming power sets available in Issue 11: A Stitch in Time for City of Heroes/City of Villains. Since the video is only available as a download, we'll give you the complete rundown here on Massively of what we can expect from the two new power sets being added into the game. The first thing Castle mentioned was the fact that these power sets were added to the game because they were what the players asked for most. When asked, the players most requested Willpower for a defensive power set, and dual blades for an offensive set.
DS Daily: Changes for FFIV
Final Fantasy IV is making a change that makes everything new old again -- as in many later games, in the DS remake, characters will be able to learn abilities that were once unique to other characters in previous versions of the game. Siliconera has the details from a recent article in Jump magazine:" ... one of the newer features to grace the Final Fantasy IV DS remake is the ability of your (main) party members to inherit the abilities of former party members. As I mentioned above, it is possible for Cecil to inherit Edward's Sing ability as well as Palom and Porom's Twin Magic ability ... This makes things a bit interesting as it allows you the ability to customize your characters will [sic] skills that highly benefited you from previous party members, though I don't know how much you benefited from Edward's singing."Hmm. It's an interesting change, and we're sure opinions will be all over the place. Where do you stand? We're frankly undecided as yet, but it's not like you have to use anything ... so, does it really matter?
Breakfast Topic: How new would a new class have to be?
I can't stop thinking about new classes these days for some reason. Perhaps it's Blizzcon and the hope that Blizzard will announce a new expansion with new classes in it. In any case, I'm thrilled by the challenge of how to design a new class (or even new class abilities).And I'm not the only one. Lots of intelligent writers out there have been thinking about this for a long time. One of them, Tobold, recently changed his mind, and I was struck by something in this change. At first he said that Blizzard should not add new classes because there couldn't possibly be anything fundamentally new in this new class, but later he said that maybe it isn't such a bad idea to have new classes that are pretty similar to what we have already. "People who liked one character class and are starting an alt because they don't enjoy the end-game often are looking for something not so different from what they already played.... Adding more content to a game is never wrong."So I got to wondering, how new would a new class have to be in order for players to accept it? Is it true that people would just cry "Bah! Another kind of rogue!" or "Humbug! another kind of warlock?" Or would these sorts of initial criticisms just die down gradually as people got used to the new rogue and warlock and whatever else that did basically the same thing in just a different way. After all, if you can reduce all class abilities down to a simple few (damage, crowd control, and healing) then maybe you can expand all these abilities out in a myriad of interesting hybridizations too. Perhaps, with this perspective, the potential for class differentiation is limitless.What's your opinion?
Petopia hosts a Pet Skill Calculator
Mania's Arcania (the official Petopia blog) points out their new Pet Skill Calculator, hosted by Petopia and put together by Draketh of EU Moonglade. Basically, it's more or less an easy way to simply show off your pet's build-- you start with 350 skill points (what you'd have with a level 70 pet and maximum loyalty), and then you can just throw those points into all the different abilities available to your pet's family.So for showing off your pet's build, it works just fine-- there's even a real simple "Link to Build" button that's perfect for inserting into a forum post or signature. But personally, I'd like to see a little more output-- at the very least, the calculator could show off your pet's resistances (yes, I know they're on the tooltips of the skills, but it wouldn't be hard to show an at-a-glance visual output of your choices). And I haven't had a 70 hunter (I leave the heavy hunter lifting to BRK), but aren't pet stats standardized by pet family at 70? Draketh would probably have to add in some Hunter talent toggles, but wouldn't it be possible to actually show, via Hunter and pet talents, your Pet's standard DPS and armor. Maybe that's a little tough to calculate, but I'd like to see it if possible.Still, if you've been looking for a way to show off your pet's build (or get advice on it from other Hunters), this calculator is a great tool.
Druid epic flight form is live with patch 2.1
Patch 2.1 brought many treats to the adventurers of Azeroth, but one of the sweetest is the Epic Druid Flight Form quest. Unlike its predecessor, Flight Form, this ability isn't handed out to every high level shape shifter with the appropriate riding skill. The quest to fly at epic speed is long and complex. Revered reputation grinding, Heroic instance running, escort quests, exploding foliage and much more await the intrepid druid. Oh, and they have to pay the 5000g riding skill upgrade before they can even start the quest. When they finish, druids not only get the Swift Flight Form ability, but also a relic that works for any druid spec: Idol of the Raven Goddess - Increases the healing granted by the Tree of Life form aura by 20, adds 9 critical strike rating to the Leader of the Pack aura, and adds 9 spell critical strike rating to the Moonkin form aura.An excellent walkthrough, Wiki style, can be found here at the Servants of Seagis guild site.EDIT: Another reward received in the quest chain: Charm of Swift Flight, Trinket, Equip: Increases speed in Flight Form and Swift Flight Form by 10%. Thanks to Felixia from the Uldum Server for the heads up!
Breakfast topic: Most hated mob abilities
I have previous expressed my burning hatred for whirlwinding mobs, and very few people are fans of getting feared into a nearby group of enemies.. But while leveling my pally, I've rediscovered my least favorite mob action of all time -- enemies that heal themselves when they're at about 20 percent health. These mobs also seem to conspire and wait until my Hammer of Justice in on cooldown, so all I can do is flail impotently with my big axe as they heal to 80 percent and laugh at me. I can also do a quick mana tap and arcane torrent, but by the time I think of that they're usually healed already. As I write this, I'm fighting caster murlocs who are underwater, heal themselves, and run away when they're low on HP, which has got to be some kind of record for most annoying mob abilities combined in one. What is your most hated mob ability -- healing, fear, daze, or something even more sinister?
Warlock Spells: Incinerate
Warlocks get a few new non-talent related spells in the expansion pack. One of the neatest ones is called Incinerate. Incinerate is acquired at level 64, and it's a fire-based spell in the destruction tree. As you can see from the tooltip, it has a pretty average mana cost (Rank 10 Shadowbolt, learned at level 60, uses 370, this uses 325) and does less damage. Oh, it does less damage unless you've got an Immolate debuff already up on the target, in which case this does damage on par with a shadowbolt, with a lower casting time. For more on this spell, and a picture of the coolest casting graphic in the game, read on.
Breakfast Topic: Most useless ability
I was chatting with a Shaman friend recently who informed me that although it used to be the case that Sentry Totem arrested your fall and allowed you to cast spells in mid-air, they fixed that a few patches ago, and now the spell is utterly useless. Off the top of my head, other spells that leap to join the ranks of the relatively worthless are Mind Soothe, Detect Demons, and Rupture, but I must admit that none of them seems as bad as Sentry Totem.I don't have a real problem with Blizz keeping spells like this in the game, even though nobody uses them, because after all, you can just not buy them (I haven't bought any ranks of Feedback), and if you do, they're mostly good for a laugh now and again anyway. But still, one wonders if they think Mind Soothe would be overpowered if it couldn't be resisted, or what.So: what's the most useless spell and/or ability you can think of? Feel free to play defense too -- are there many good uses for spells like Sentry Totem or Rupture that I'm just not clever enough to have thought of?
Customizing the classes with rare and epic ability drops
Mike over at the Eye on MOGs blog has an interesting idea about how to customize classes even further than talent trees: implement rare and epic ability drops. As you probably know if you've hit 60 and run the higher level instances, there are already ability drops in the game-- I've seen a few Manuals of Evicerate IX drop in UBRS, and my Shaman has already gotten a few Tablets from AQ20. But all of those abilities are just higher ranks of current abilities (and they'll be trainable when the expansion hits anyway). I think what Mike is talking about is abilities that can seperate players even within the same class-- as an example (don't argue about the gameplay aspects of these, I just came up with them on the spot), Warriors could obtain an item that gave them a learnable root ability. Or Druids could find an epic drop or quest reward somewhere that would grant them a strength or agility debuff of some type.To be fair, these things do already exist in the game-- Warriors can use Really Sticky Glue as a root, or Pallys can use the Boomerang trinket for a ranged attack. Likewise, as we enter into the expansion, there will be lots of different items that drop with strange procs, or items that (via jewels or enchants) will give classes special abilities in some way. Mike is, of course, talking about items that give us learned class abilities, free of some item, but the truth is that almost anything you want to do can be done with an item you find somewhere in the game, so there's not much call at the moment to implement more learned abilities.And finally, if Mike's goal is to customize the classes, I'm not sure rare or epic drops will do that much anyway. My Shaman has the Totem of Sustaining (a rare drop in Scholomance), which gives an extra boost to my Lesser Healing Wave, but every resto Shammy I've seen around has one, too. The classes aren't any more customized-- we just all decided that was the best Totem for us to have, and grinded away until we got it. Any rare or epic drop in the game, I'd hazard a guess, would end up playing the same role-- if you were expected to have that ability, you or your guild would just work away at it until you got it. But that isn't to say we shouldn't have items floating around that can better define the classes and their different specs. My guess is that in the expansion (and I'm sure feral druids will agree with me), that's exactly what we'll see.
Hands on with baby Blood Elves
I played through the first few levels as a Blood Elf Mage at E3 today. As a veteran of every other newbie land, I have to say that starting from scratch as a Blood Elf has a similar feel to the other races -- there's only so much you can do as a newbie, after all.However, the newbie quests have an interesting twist. Thanks to the Blood Elves' Mana Tap racial, levelling downtime is reduced, and quests teach you how to use the racial effectively. It's going to be a really vital get-out-of-jail card -- when you Mana Tap enemies, their mana is reduced and you receive a buff with no immediate effect. You can stack this effect up to three times, and then unleash the Arcane Torrent racial to restore your much-needed mana at a time when it really counts. The cooldown means you can't use this all the time, but I can see it becoming really vital for healers, for instance.
