theorycrafting
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Quantifying Wrath's success
The Egotistical Priest has a good series of posts up attempting to somehow quantify whether Wrath has been an overall success or not. Of course, it's definitely a financial success, but has the game's second expansion delivered what both players and Blizzard expected it to? Vonya sets out to find out in what has turned into a three part post: you can find parts one and two on the site now, and part three is set to come out tomorrow.So far, the answer is yes: while the area of Tradeskills is noted as less than a success (it seems to me, too, that tradeskills had more variety and options in Burning Crusade than their current state in Wrath, though that might be because we're only partway through the expansion cycle), everything else is noted as a win for Blizzard: they've really beefed up questing, balance has been intriguing since Wrath (and even if one class has rubbed you wrong, consider how many players came running back with the expansion patch to re-try their class), and of course, Achievements have (predictably) brought the game to new levels of addiction and given players of all kinds new things to do.Vonya still plans to tackle instancing and raiding as the other two criteria for Wrath's success (and there are probably a few other ways you could test it -- lore? setting?), but by the reasoning so far, Wrath is a win no matter how you slice it. Blizzard has outdone themselves with the second expansion -- the only question is where they'll go from here.
WoW Rookie: Level 80 - now what?
New around here? WoW Rookie points WoW's newest players to the resources they need to get acclimated. Send us a note to suggest a WoW Rookie topic.Ding ... you're 80! So what are you going to be when you grow up? Don't get us wrong: levelling your first character to 80 (especially if this is your first massively multiplayer online game) is a not-insignificant accomplishment – but you're not quite ready for prime time yet. Hitting level 80 in WoW is less like being a graduating senior than it is being a new sophomore. You've finished WoW 101; now it's time to make sure you've covered all your core classes and start taking a stab at some electives and specialized coursework.If you've just hit level 80, consider this basic checklist a graduation gift of sorts from WoW Rookie. It'll help pointed you in the right direction for whatever type of game play you're interested in pursuing. Your game's just beginning. Dig in!
Lichborne: A Death Knight statistics primer
Welcome to Lichborne, the weekly Death Knight column by professor Daniel Whitcomb, who totally has a PhD in Death-Knightology from Ebon Hold University. It's the truth, I swear. I've seen a lot of people asking these questions as we've been getting into the expansion: Now that I am trying to gear by Death Knights, what stats should I get? What's good for a Death Knight? Which armor should I take. We've started getting in that somewhat in the last few columns, with advice on reputation gear and starting zone gear, but I figured today we should delve a little bit more into the why of Death Knight stats. Today's column will double as a little bit of primer on how Death Knights get their power, and what stats you should be looking for on armor in general to make your Death Knight the best it can be. It's not completely in depth, but it should get you well on the road to understanding just how Death Knights get all that awesome power and sexiness. We'll have 3 sections today. The Good are stats that are excellent choices for DPS, Tanks, or both. The So-So are stats which still do us some good, but are pretty situational or conditional in their usefulness. The Outcasts are those stats that you should avoid -- Well, I'd say avoid like the plague, but we're Death Knights. We like the plague around here. So I'll just say you should avoid them.
Encrypted Text: The fuzzy math of theorycrafting
Every Wednesday, Chase Christian of Encrypted Text invites you to enter the world of shadows, as we explore the secrets and mechanics of the Rogue class. This week, we'll be talking about the methods used to break down gear and talents into their fundamental parts, and compare them intelligently.While it's not recognized as an official term by the Oxford Dictionary, "theorycrafting" is definitely the biggest buzzword in the Rogue community. Originally coined by Starcraft players looking to use their mathematics knowledge to perfect their strategies and unit build orders, it refers to the idea of using math to guide your choices, instead of simply playing from your gut.From the lowest level of forum troll to the most serious raiders, many Rogues love to punch numbers into spreadsheets and talk about the PPM (proc-per-minute) chance of Mongoose. Theorycrafting is a largely arcane art, and unfortunately an inability to play ball with these math magicians can be grounds for ostracism from the discussion at hand. Asking for talent or skill help on the Public Rogue Forums will likely result in recommendations like "Check the spreadsheet or delete your character."Obviously you've become attached to your assassin of the shadows, so after the cut we'll talk about how to become a theorycrafter even if you weren't first in your algebra class.
World of Warcraft as a teaching tool
Most of us were kids at one point. A portion of us probably played computer or video games even as kids. Thus, I'm sure that at least a good handful of us, when told by our parents to turn off the computer and go do homework, eat dinner, or get some fresh air, tried to counter with something like this: "But Mom, games are educational! They give you hand-eye coordination and map reading skills!" Now, all these years later, it seems we may finally be getting some backup from teachers and educators. Livescience.com recently highlighted some educators who are using World of Warcraft or lauding it for its educational values.
Cheeky's Hunter spreadsheet revived
A while back, we noted the retirement of Cheeky from the world of Hunter theorycrafting, leaving her unparalleled Hunter Spreadsheet an orphan and Hunter min-maxers everywhere with the prospect of being deprived of an amazing tool going in to a new expansion. Luckily, it looks like the torch will be taken up as Wertez of the Hunting Lodge has decided to take over the project with Cheeky's blessing. You'll be able to find the Spreadsheet at the Hunting Lodge itself now, under the Hunter Research and Info category on the site's sidebar. With Hunter mechanics changing in some pretty basic ways going into Wrath of the Lich King, we'll need a strong and steady hand to guide the spreadsheet into the level 80 end game. Here's wishing good luck to Wertez!
Neth lays down answers on Wrath release, leaks
Nethaera was in an answering mood this weekend -- she opened up a few cans on all kinds of player questions, and clarified a few answers we weren't so thrilled with before. The biggest question, of course, was the release date for Wrath, and rather than just giving the usual "soon" answer, Neth actually made sure to say that Blizzard has definitely not finished the game yet.She also gave a much better answer about why Blizzard is opposed to the leaking of talent data from the game. Before, all we heard was that leaking the data was "extremely offensive and inappropriate" (that comment's been deleted from the forums, actually). And this time around, Neth is much more reasonable -- the reason they don't want data leaked is because they want players to theorycraft from gameplay, not from talent data. Of course, that still doesn't mean hearing about the data earlier is a bad thing, for the players or devs, but she has a point -- reading talent data isn't the same as playing the class.Other than that, the questions aren't too great. People ask if Blizzard is going to do anything original, and of course they are -- Blizzard's great ideas don't come out any sooner than "when they're ready," but when they do, they're almost always groundbreaking and fun. It's completely understandable that Wrath is taking their focus, and while yes, the waiting is always the hardest part, Blizzard has never shown us that the wait for their games is anything less than worth it.
15 Minutes of Fame: Mage(ic) with numbers
15 Minutes of Fame is our look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes – from the renowned to the relatively anonymous, the remarkable to the player next door. Tip us off to players you'd like to hear more about at 15minutesoffame (AT) wowinsider (DOT) com. Mages come in two general flavors: the kind who love to blow things up willy-nilly, and the kind who love to blow things up based on a precise mathematical model delineating optimal throughput and efficiency. Lhivera of US Aggramar-A is the second kind. His love of theorycrafting landed him in hot water with Blizzard recently, after he posted speculative analyses of Mage performance based on leaked Wrath of the Lich King alpha information. Blizzard didn't like the discussion appearing on their forums, and Lhivera ended up perma-banned from posting there again.But Lhivera is alive and well and still crunching numbers, both in game and over at the Elitist Jerks forums, where he's made a new home among fellow theorycrafters. 15 Minutes of Fame spent a few days in e-mails with Lhivera to bring you a closer look at the numbers behind magecrafting. This week, we talk with Lhivera about Blizzard's ban-hammer and the appeal of theorycrafting; be sure to tune in for Part II of our interview, next week.
Addon Spotlight: DrDamage
You all know a World of Warcraft number cruncher. You may, in fact, be that person, the one who can spout of stats about your class or game mechanics. Although, in the beginning, I rolled my eyes at people who pondered the math of the game, today finds me holding a deep respect for you number junkies. You've all helped many of us become uncrushable, uncrittable and even understand how +spell damage and +healing work. If you don't have someone around to crunch numbers, try recruiting DrDamage. Some World of Warcraft stats-fiends may not like this addon, as there are people who disagree with the numbers it produces. I would have to say that its done well for me thus far. (I rarely have the inclination to work the numbers myself.)Enough rambling, let's talk about what DrDamage does. This addon does all of your in-game theorycrafting for you. It will work the actual values for your damage, +spell damage and +healing based on your gear and talents. It will display the average damage or healing done by a spell on the actionbar. Come on back and we'll look at little more closely at what DrDamage does.
Spell Haste will affect global cooldown, to minimum of one second
The CMs are doing a real drive-by on the forums this afternoon. The latest tidbit dropped by Drysc (in an only barely related thread) is that spell haste will reduce the global cooldown on spells, to a minimum of one second. It will not apply to melee or ranged attacks. Previously (and currently, as of this writing), Spell Haste was capped out by the Global Cooldown-- it doesn't matter how fast your spellcasting went, because you were stuck with the 1.5 second Global Cooldown every time you cast. But as of 2.4, that cap will go bye-bye for casters, leaving them to rack up as much Spell Haste as they can, aiming towards a 1 second global cooldown.Now, Drysc does say that it would take a lot of Spell Haste to reach that one second-- more, he supposes, than is possible in the game at this point. One player speculates that it would take 785 Spell Haste rating to go from 1.5 to 1 second (+50% spell casting speed basically), and while I'm not sure about the math on that, there's no question that you'll need a lot of Spell Haste with the current gear to cast that fast. In the expansion, however...Non-casters are unhappy, to say the least-- especially hunters, who are distraught that while mages will be able to shoot off fireballs faster, they won't be able to shoot off Arcane Shots any quicker. Melee don't have much of a leg to stand on (their attacks aren't limited by mana as caster attacks are), but hunters may have a point-- they get charged mana and can't go faster. They shouldn't get too ruffled yet, though-- odds are we haven't heard the last of the big changes in patch 2.4.
Theorycrafting: putting Rage to the test
There are times, and it happens with almost every game released, when the description of a certain game mechanic or ability is ambiguous enough that players are left unsure of exactly what it does in certain specific game situations. When the devs aren't handy to provide direct clarification, there is a certain subsect of the gaming population that likes to engage in theorycrafting, grabbing large chunks of data to see how closely abilities work in practice to the numbers set forth on their tooltips or in the patch notes. Among the only solid theorycrafting I've seen so far for Tabula Rasa is from the folks over on the Tabula Spot forums, where among the many things they're working, is on figuring out which Logos abilities stack with Rage.So far, the results don't look terribly promising. Neither Lightning Discharge nor Shrapnel show a statistically significant difference in damage when Rage is activated (and here we seem to be talking about the nerfed Rage on the PTR). This seems to conflict with the Rage tooltip, which says in part, "Utilize the power of Logos to increase the damage done by your attacks." Interestingly, while Rage doesn't appear to work with Logos abilities, it does work with hand-to-hand. Methinks they should consider amending the tooltip to reflect the way it actually works.
BigRedKitty: Smacking the Hit Cap
Each week, Daniel Howell contributes BigRedKitty, a column with strategies, tips and tricks for and about the hunter class sprinkled with a healthy dose of completely improper, sometimes libelous, personal commentary. "Dear BRK, I heard somewhere that Hit will eventually reach a point where it "maxes out" and adding more won't do any good. I figured if anybody knew where that point was, it would be you. I'm up to 167. Eric." Great jumpin' night elves, Eric, you're stacking Hit like it was being replaced by Original Coke. Like hiding your Halloween candy because your older sister is trying to trade you all her mini-Snickers for your Pixy Stix. Like hoarding DKP because your raid group has Druids and Shaman oozing from every orifice. Like trying to sell Netherwing eggs. You're stacking Hit for no reason. Is that a problem? You bet it is. It's like running your 1987 Ford F-150 on super-unleaded. Like attaching an eleven-inch amber CRT to your $500 Nvidia video card. Like using 5-DPS bullets with your Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle. Like borrowing your dad's Porsche to take your first cousin on a bowling-date. It's overkill for no purpose. There's a lot of hullabaloo out there about what and why and why-not about Hit, and every class has a different set of rules when it comes determining the difference between smacking a mob in the face or whiffing into the air. So what are the mechanics of Hit, the least-understood Hunter statistic? Let's take a peek under the Hunter-bonnet and see how we tick.
Two Bosses Enter: Instructor Razuvious vs. Ragnaros
Two bosses enter... but only one of them will get to leave in our series of fantasy deathmatches. Here at WoW Insider we're pitting some of the game's most fascinating bosses against each other until we come up with a final victor in the end. And the best part? Every week, you get to decide who wins.This week we're going to consider a fight between Instructor Razuvious in Naxxramas and Ragnaros in Molten Core. Who will win and who will lose? Read up on the abilities of each and then let us know what you think!
Mage Spell Calculator shows numbers behind the casting
From a forum post by Jonaleth, we find this nifty little tool that will tell you everything you ever needed to know (ever) and even some things you didn't about how your mage spells push out damage.It takes a while to load, and the site seems pretty rickety (I really hope posting it here doesn't bring it down), but once it loads up, you can realize just how powerful a tool it is. Put your mage talents in, use the checkboxes at the top to fill out info about your gear and situation, and then the tool will show you average hit calculations,damage per mana spent total, and even all of the damage coefficients (up to 2.0.1, so Arctic Winds hasn't changed here yet) on each one of your spells.Pretty incredible tool for mages, especially for those who want to squeeze every possible bit out of their class and spec. Jonaleth uses the guide as proof that frost mages don't get to churn out nearly as much damage as fire mages do. Well, umm, yeah. What else is new?But Jonaleth is right-- this kind of tool does provide a really clear look at what we already know to be true. Now you can see in raw numbers just how crazy powerful Pyroblast is.
