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Blood Pact: Combat log kung fu for warlocks
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill is finishing out the World of Logs posts while she hunts for BC-era battle pets. Have you ever tried to read the combat log? Maybe you're on the PTR testing a spell change or you want to know how often a new trinket procs, so you open the combat log chat window and start reading. You get twenty-something lines down before you realize something horrifying -- that's only one second of combat. Your jaw slowly falls to the floor and you reach up to pull your hair out as you contemplate reading a combat log for an entire raid fight -- that can sometimes last more than six hundred seconds and includes far more actors than just you and the training dummy. Luckily for us, when events are printed in a specified format without too much variety, computers can read and process --or parse -- these lines magnitudes faster than we humans can. World of Logs has graphs and charts to help us understand our performance, but it also includes what is basically Google for your combat log. Just like there are tips to speed up and pinpoint your browser searches, there are tricks you can use to query events better in the World of Logs expression editor.
WoW Archivist: The long fight for debuff rights
WoW Archivist explores the secrets of World of Warcraft's past. What did the game look like years ago? Who is etched into WoW's history? What secrets does the game still hold? Debuffs help us beat bosses, but not all debuffs are created equal. Over WoW's eight years, debuffs have dealt extra damage, prevented damage, healed us, given us mana, slowed boss attacks, sped up our own, and helped us to hit harder. Some are more powerful than others, but today those concerns are meaningless. Applying every possible debuff and keeping it active is a critical component to success. Believe it or not, however, there was a time when your raid leader would yell at you for doing exactly that. Your weaker debuffs weren't just considered useless -- using them was a dire liability. Eight is not enough Vanilla WoW had an interesting, longstanding, and highly criticized technical limitation. A raid of any size could only apply a maximum of eight debuffs to a boss. As you can imagine, forty-player raids had many, many debuffs at their disposal, but only eight could ever be active at one time. To make things worse, the game didn't differentiate between debuffs. The latest one that was applied would knock off the oldest one, regardless of type or power. It's not difficult to figure out how this could become a huge problem.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: In the case of Dominators
Holy wow, it's been a really long time since the last archetype column. We kind of had an entire month (and then some) taken up with various anniversary shennanigans, and while I wouldn't exactly call that unfortunate, it did sort of take a bit of momentum out of the whole project. But we're back to discussing the archetypes of City of Heroes, and in a way today's discussion seems appropriate for being locked in place and unable to act for quite some time. Yes, today we're taking a look at how the other half lives when it comes to control-based sets with a look at the Dominator. Like every villainous archetype, the Dominator combines elements that were previously separate, but on the surface it looks an awful lot like a Controller. Whether you're new to City of Heroes or just to the archetype, it's a good time to understand the difference and show off the positive elements of the class, because while those differences from Controllers might be subtle, they're important.
The Daily Grind: Do you like debuffers?
Controllers and dominators in City of Heroes, mesmers and necromancers in Guild Wars, affliction warlocks in World of Warcraft -- the debuffing class has long been a staple of MMOs. While the class frequently is closest to being a damage dealer, its primary function is to cripple enemies. Played properly, the resultant effects can turn a normal challenge into a cakewalk, or knock a seemingly invincible enemy back down to normal levels. Of course, as time has gone by the archetype has become a bit less common, with the holy trinity of tanks, healers, and DPS becoming more focused and less open to more esoteric inclusions. But it hasn't gone away -- science ships in Star Trek Online make heavy use of debuffs to cripple and wear down opponents. Do you like having debuffs and debuff classes as a central element of party gameplay? Or would you rather designers continue to emphasize the holy trinity and have classes focused on doing damage while debuffing targets? 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!
Final Fantasy XIV expands details on the battle system
While Final Fantasy XIV doesn't go out of its way to be massively accessible, Square-Enix is clearly making a conscious effort to avoid confusion wherever possible. The official player site has been steadily receiving updates about how game systems work and what's going on behind the scenes, with the newest update discussing Battle Regimens and incapacitating body parts in combat. The systems had never been discussed in-depth before, but they now offer players a chance to understand exactly what each system entails. Battle Regimens are distantly similar in theory to the skillchains that ruled Final Fantasy XI's combat, but they have many differences in practice. Rather than being a chained deployment of specific skills, chains of general ability types will both buff the party and debuff the enemy party. Body parts, meanwhile, are targeted and damaged by certain weaponskills, with a helpful chart explaining what skills target what and which types of monsters can be affected. While it doesn't reveal the full details of Final Fantasy XIV's combat, it should provide players with an excellent place to start understanding the system.
The Road to Mordor: Pippin's top five plugins
This past week in LotRO's been a bit like riding river rapids: There's been a lot of rapid ups-and-downs, violent lurches to avoid dangerous objects, and a whole lot of noise that's drowning out the calmer waters ahead. For every piece of good news and positive word-of-mouth, there's been a lot of unfortunate bumps, such as server queues, dynamic layers, mouthy trolls and Codemaster's launch delay. However, I believe it's all going to settle down in a couple more weeks, and LotRO will emerge the better for it. So if this is your first week in Lord of the Rings Online, welcome! Find a great kinship, take time to smell the flowers, and hunt some orc for me. Today I'd like to take a look at one of the unsung heroes of the recent content patch -- the ability to create and use plugins (also called mods and addons) to enhance your user interface. While the system is still in beta and has a rough-around-the-edges feel to it, it's already shown great potential, particularly though the creativity that mod designers are pouring into it. While there are only a small number of plugins available as of right now and Turbine has yet to expand the scope of these Lua scripts beyond constrained limits, it's not too early to beef up your UI with these spiffy additions. Read on, free peoples of Middle-internet!
Addon Spotlight: Satrina Buff Frames
Addon Spotlight focuses on the backbone of the WoW gameplay experience -- the user interface. Everything from bags to bars, buttons to DPS meters and beyond -- your addons folder will never be the same! This week, Satrina Buff Frames takes your buff and debuff frames to a whole new level. A lot has changed since the early days of buff and debuff presentation. Back in the early days, we were limited by very basic buff and debuff trackers. These days, however, one addon truly stands tall and proud, a giant among men. I speak of the impeccable Satrina Buff Frames, a wonderfully customizable and skinnable buff and debuff frame that can give any user interface awesome amounts of flexibility.
Breakfast Topic: Using "IRL," IRL
I used to work at a sandwich shop. Yes, I've heard the "make me a sandwich" jokes already. I worked the lunch shift and I had this regular customer who came in a few times a week to get a hummus pita. If you don't know what hummus is, it is a delicious and flavorful spread made of mashed chickpeas and spices. It's often served with pita bread as an appetizer, or as a side or dip for various Middle Eastern or Greek dishes. Anyway, after a few weeks of making the same pita for this woman, she told me "you know, you make the best hummus pita here." I smiled at the compliment and responded, "Well, I just make yours the way I would make my own. I really like hummus IRL." As the last letter of the acronym escaped my mouth, it twisted into an awkward tone as I realized the error in my sentence. Immediately flustered, I stuttered, "Err-- I mean... I like hummus... Uh..." She laughed at me with a smile and replied, "Don't worry, I know what you meant." But my nerdiness was already exposed; I was prone. I sensed an incoming AoO. It never came. At the time I was probably overreacting, granted. The usage of net speak is pretty acceptable and easily understood to the average person these days. "BRB" doesn't bewilder most people, for example. On the other hand, I find myself telling my friends once a month, "I don't feel like going out: girl debuff," always getting mixed responses. Recently, a friend of mine going off to college soon came to me for some advice on dorm living. I told him, "if you want more privacy, just bunk the beds." Before I could continue, he followed up with "oh yeah, that'd block LoS." I stared at him, dumbfounded. Had someone just out-nerded me? So what WoW terminology do you use in your everyday life? How do your friends who don't play WoW react?
AddOn Spotlight: SexyCooldown
AddOn Spotlight focuses on the backbone of the WoW gameplay experience -- the user interface. Everything from bags to bars, buttons to DPS meters and beyond -- your AddOns folder will never be the same! This week, we get real sexy. Timers for spells is an imperative addon for many classes that rely on steady rotations of DoT management and keeping debuffs up on enemies. DPS can be greatly altered by the careful balance of spell effects lasting for certain periods of time on enemies. There are a lot of good timers out there for spells and abilities, but today I want to introduce you to my favorite. If this addon is old news to you, and you already know how powerful it can be, help out the less fortunate! If you're new to his wonderful piece of code, stay a while and listen, as I sing a love song to SexyCooldown.
Swine Flu strikes Azeroth!
I'm sure you all will be quite happy to hear that the Swine Flu has struck Azeroth. Yes, you read that right.Out in the Borean Tundra, Unliving Swines near Warsong Hold will cast the debuff Swine Flu on you when you're fighting them. The pigs are dirty little creatures, and luckily anyone can cure the disease that has such an ability.The Swine Flu disease itself is benign, however every time you attack something it has a chance at triggering an Outbreak. An Outbreak of Swine Flu will cause a fever that inflicts 120 nature damage every 2 seconds for 8 seconds total, and reduces movement speed to 70% of normal. Like Swine Flu, Outbreak is a disease that can be cured.We should note that this isn't some joke recently put into the game. It's existed since Wrath of the Lich King released, so all the conspiracy theorists that are suggesting Blizzard manufactured the real swine flu in order to make more people stay home and play their game are clearly wrong. Clearly.Oh noes! There's a knock at the door... I think Ghostcrawler and Belfaire are here with an offer I can't refuse.
The Queue: Casual raiding and you
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.Hooray weekend! Boo Sunday! Let's jump right into things with Galipan's question...Is casual raiding a possibility? Ive heard from many people that it isn't, however, I'm trying to get a guild started that does give it a shot.
Ebon Plague to get some multiple user loving, says Ghostcrawler
So there's a slight problem affecting Unholy Death Knights in groups and raids these days: When there's multiple Unholy Death Knights, only one can put Ebon Plague on a mob. This wouldn't seem to be an issue at first glance. After all, Multiple Curses of the Elements from multiple Warlocks don't stack, right? Here's the deal though. The Ebon Plague counts as a third disease for the purpose of Death Knight abilities that count diseases to deal damage, such as Scourge Strike and Blood Strike. When only one Death Knight can have Ebon Plague up, the other Unholy Knights are left out in the cold and have a part of their damage stripped away.
Debuff limit removed
Previously you could only have 40 debuffs up on a single mob. That might seem like a lot, but when you got in a raid with 25 other people all putting up their own set of debuffs and dots, etc... things tended to get a little full.Daelo, the Lead Encounter Designer, announced today that the debuff limit has been removed*. This is a subtle yet important change for many raiding guilds.He notes that the default UI won't normally be able to show all the debuffs, but that's just a bug in the UI. The debuffs are still there and working. We don't have any verifiable information yet as to if custom mods can display an infinite number of debuffs.
Ask WoW Insider: The ninja debuff
This week on Ask WoW Insider, a reader has a suggestion, not a question, to put forth to you readers. It's about a problem lots of folks are having lately, with the servers as full as they are:One thing that has been annoying most people is the ninjas who spend their time waiting for players to take down a pat so they have unobstructed access to the quest items or loot/ore. It happened to me even with the Oil-stained Wolf quest last night in the expansion. People waiting to steal poo! Sick! Why should the players who take down the pat be disadvantaged and lose out on the ore?The rest of the question and your chance to answer after the jump.
Skill Mastery: Mark of Blood
While Blood is not quite as as powerful as it once was, it remains, at the least, a solid DPS tree and one quite a few Death Knights will probably choose to level with. The wide array of self healing abilities means that a Blood Death Knight has a very hard time dying, and nothing interrupts a good grinding session quite like a death. In Skill Mastery today, we'll look at one of the Blood Death Knight's signature talent abilities, the 21-point talent Mark of Blood. Mark of Blood is placed on an enemy, and every time that enemy deals damage, their target is healed for 4% of their max health. It costs 1 Blood Rune. It lasts for 30 seconds, and has a cool down of 3 minutes. It's a straightforward skill to use. Throw it on your target and keep fighting. Using it effectively, however, may take a little bit of thought. Here's some tips to figuring out the best way and time to make your mark:
Tinnitus: Leatherworking drums cause a debuff
Part of the allure of drums in raids has been the ability to overlap the effects of different types of drums by having several leatherworkers drumming at a time. One member might boost attack power and spell damage for party members in range, while another might restore health and mana. With the new Tinnitus debuff, any targets affected by drums are immune to the effects of all other drums for two minutes. While this sounds like a nerf, it might actually have a balancing effect. In fact, other professions are seeing similar changes. Potions will create Potion Sickness, which will prevent the consumer from using more than one in any given encounter. Players will have to rest out of combat in order to refresh the privilege. So far, this also is affecting mana gems and similar items, although it is unclear if that particular effect is a bug or not. What does this mean?
Hybrid Theory: Is it too much?
Welcome to Hybrid Theory, where we discuss all things hybrid in the World of Warcraft. Hybrid Theory is brought to you each week by columnist/blogger Alex Ziebart.Here on Hybrid Theory, we've done a lot of glorifying the group utility that Hybrids provide. It's one of their strongest points, and the factor that could make or break their raid spot in a setting of pure recruitment. Recently, I discussed the direction this concept of utility is going with a few raidmates of mine, and some interesting points were made.The synergy between classes in The Burning Crusade is powerful, but moving in a direction in which the classes and specs become too reliant on one another, or you have to decide which hybrid is more important to you than another hybrid in the same role. Some class/spec combinations simply can't perform in a raid setting without a specific hybrid class alongside them. Some hybrid classes can't perform without other hybrids in their group. This poses a problem for the pure classes, and even though we don't know the exact details of the Death Knight, adding another class may only make things harder.
Introducing the Orc Defiler
Many Lord of the Rings Online players are looking forward to getting their hands on the new PvMP class, and with the Book 13 patch looming, the details of the Orc Defiler have been spilled in a developer diary. Opening with a little tale designed to set the Defiler mood, and a bit of a serve from the Creep hero Akulhún ("Mordírith's grown tired of you whining wretches and sent us Defilers!"), the diary goes on to explain the abilities that the fungus-and-slime-loving Orc will employ.Defilers will start out with two heal-over-time spells, one ("Fertile Slime") being an instant cast that gives a light heal every 10 seconds with a 1 minute duration, and a stronger one ("Fungal Bloom") with a 2-second cast time, 5 second tick and 30 second duration. Spending some destiny points can earn them a targeted revival spell to resurrect allies, and at ranks 3 and 5 some stronger heals become available.
Warsong Gulch changes may not have helped much
Aloud on the podcast last week, I wondered if the patch 2.4 changes to WSG had made a difference (I haven't been able to make it in there yet -- too busy writing about Hello Kitty Online, of course), and now maxomi is wondering the same thing: since the changes dropped, has WSG actually been fixed?Unfortunately, from what we're told, the answer is no. The changes, designed to cut off turtling and players who ran around with the flag without capturing it, first made the enemy flag carriers trackable after 45 seconds, and then gave a damage debuff to the flag carrier after ten minutes (which doubled at fifteen). But all the reports from players say that makes no difference -- people still turtle away, even with the tracking and debuff, and eventually both drop the flag and the whole thing resets.So what's the solution? If you crib some notes from other capture the flag games, a match timer sounds like the best option, and indeed, that's what most people are suggesting. Blizzard would have to determine how long to tune it, but the idea would be that after a given amount of time, if there was no winner, the match would end in a draw, with both sides losing in terms of a reward. It doesn't seem like Blizzard can force players to fight, so the best option overall might be to just call it in a time limit, and keep the matches from going on for long amounts of time.
More AFK concerns in Alterac Valley
Here's more about the upcoming AFK debuff in Alterac Valley. Last week, we talked about what the voting requirements might be to give out the debuff, and there were some really great comments on that post, specifically about an idea to give the debuff out right when players start the battleground. I think that's a great idea, and it would give everyone in the BG an impetus to get right into battle and do what the BGs are meant for: PvP fighting.But here's another concern, voiced by Fantastiko of Alleria: Currently, as we know it, the debuff won't actually disconnect AFKers from the battleground. If players vote to give them the debuff, and if they don't enter battle within the set time period, all it would do is keep them from gaining honor while AFK. Which means that even if the debuff works as planned, and the 10 people in the Peace Cave get the debuff and gain no honor, your team is still down 10 people. Not good.So as planned, what exactly will this debuff stop? AFK players can still go AFK, and just hope that no one thinks to report them (when this first starts up, tons of reporting will probably go down, but eventually, people will likely be able to get away with more and more). It seems like the best solution would be to give everyone this debuff when they enter the BG, and have it cancel on combat. And if combat isn't entered, or they are reported, AFKers should be disconnected from the BG completely-- even better, with the "deserter" debuff-- allowing other players to take their place.Of course, this reporting system is still in the planning stages, so it could be that Blizzard has already reached these conclusions and it is going to be implemented this way. And I'm sure there'll be plenty of testing as well-- we likely won't see the system until 2.3 or even beyond anyway. But the problem with this is that AFKers are crafty-- if there's any way at all that they can gain honor while they go AFK, they'll do it.
