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Cool WoW ink!
While floating through the blogosphere looking for WoW tidbits the other day, I stumbled across a blurb featuring the picture on the above right. It didn't say too much about it, beyond that the girl who had the tattoo played a Tauren Warrior, and that she and her other half had matching tribal Horde symbols done. Now, I should preface this with the fact that I'm no stranger to body art either, having 7 tattoos myself. (all of which are easily hidden -- hooray corporate America) It simply got me wondering just how much WoW ink was out there and what kind of designs people were getting.Armed with Google, search terms, and rampant curiosity, I set off in the search of World of Warcraft ink and the people behind it.
Alts and alts and alts, oh my!
I probably play World of Warcraft way too much. Admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery, right? My addiction stems from not being happy with one character, or two, or three... I have 7 characters leveling in the Outlands right now, two of which are raiding Karazhan. Why can't I stick with just one and work on it until it's the best of the best? Because I love my alts! I created my first alt when my primary character, a Hunter, hit level 52. I'm not entirely sure why I did so, but it probably had something to do with having out-leveled my friends by about 20 levels and wanting to help them without hindering our playing experience. My first alt was a Warlock, who I took to 60 first, becoming my first instance grinding and raiding main character. The hunter stood on standby for a while, until my guild had Molten Core on farm-mode, upon which I took him to 60 and brought him in for our alt runs. He was one of the first to complete the Lok'delar/Rhok'delar/Lamina quest in our guild, which he still has (at least, until I dust him off and bring him out of retirement). After a few months with them, I met other people who played on a different server, and they needed main tanks for their progression. So I was off and running with a Warrior, who was level 60 in a matter of a few weeks. I helped that guild progress through Blackwing Lair when I took my first burnout hiatus. It took a few months of enjoying other things, more real-life than virtual, when I was feeling the pangs of withdrawal and logged back in.
To shield or not to shield? Rage is the question.
The forums are abuzz with the debate on when to use the ability "Power Word: Shield" on the tank in your group. The original poster on the forum asked why pre-shielding the tank was looked down upon, and the response was abundant! Warriors and feral Druid tanks need to generate rage to use their abilities to generate the rage required to hold a mob's agro so that it doesn't run rampant in the group, slaughtering the squishies. They generate rage by being hit by a mob and also by hitting the mob as well. In order to be a raid/heroic tank, you have to have your mitigation and avoidance up to a point that you're almost always dodging, parrying, or blocking, in order to not die from a single hit, but in turn that will decrease the amount of rage you can generate. "Power Word: Shield" only decreases the rage generated, while not protecting the tank from that much damage. On boss mobs, it gets even more tricky. In order to successfully hold (most) bosses, you have to front-load your agro and maintain that agro lead throughout the fight. This means that they need an abundance of rage up-front in order to establish that agro, and they also need time to build up that buffer to keep them ahead. Most tanks only need a few seconds to accomplish that, but the shield just prolongs that time. This also hinders the raid on fights where time is a factor. For example, the old Kazzak enraged after 3 minutes of fighting (he probably still does), and every second of dps counted.
Build Shop: Warrior 17/41/3
Since Build Shop debuted, I've probably gotten more Fury Warrior builds than any other specific tree. So let's look at one. Thirx, of Eldre'Thalas, wearies of his current "hohum MS/ot build," and tossed me this gem, along with a MS/Flurry build that I won't be posting, since I only have space for one build, and I like Fury better. This build is for PvE damage, according to the author's description. Let's see what we can find.Due to Blizzard's decision to put the remnants of Tactical Mastery in the Protection tree, this particular distribution of talents -- 17 in Arms, 41 in Fury, and 3 in Prot -- is pretty much a given for any deep-Fury build. A point or two may move from Arms to Fury, but in general, Rampage is too good to pass up, TM is still a necessity (even though it's partially trainable), and that just leaves 17 for Arms.
SimTank
As a project while learning Java programming, Morn of Executus-EU decided to create a tanking simulator and run some experiments. The simulator, which can be downloaded here, lets the tanking classes input their "to be missed", block, dodge, parry, block value and armor, and run it against the boss's attack damage range and speed. You can also use it to compare how much damage/crushing blows/burst damage paladins, druids and warriors would have while tanking the same fight. As a cool side bonus, the site also shows a "combat log" of the fight against the boss, complete with your hits, misses and damage. A better theorycrafter than I could have some fun with this, but Morn found that assuming comparable gear, a druid takes 15 percent more damage than a warrior and 10 percent more than a paladin. He notes that it could be a good way for tanks to figure out what stats they need to improve to become better at damage absorption. Who do you think makes the best tank? What information can you gain from this simulator?
How to die (without style)
Over on his blog, Gitr discusses the many ways in which one can die when playing a warrior after playing a priest for 64 levels. And oh -- I feel his pain. There's a reason I always play healing classes that stretches beyond helping others. There's no better way to save yourself than with a quick power word: shield or a timely psychic scream. While I've never seriously played a warrior, Gitr lists a few ways to die that I'm completely familiar with: Wait until you get to 1000HP and try to heal yourself. Spam the Bubble key over and over again to deflect damage. Aggro too much and try to Psychic Scream. Whenever I'm playing my rogue, I just keep hitting the flash heal button and it never works out quite the way I expected. (Why not, I may never know.) However, I'm very glad to read that I'm not the only one who has this sort of problem when switching classes.
Hacker gets revenge on Puzzle Quest's bullying AI
We're not certain what sort of demonic sacrifices Infinite Interactive made to grant Puzzle Quest its hellborn AI, but we imagine that the cursed contract that authenticated the ceremony was written with the blood of many innocents. The match-three puzzler does everything short of outright cheating, stealing your advantages and setting up multiple combos, each computer-cleared gem bearing the mark of Mephistopheles.DS gamer Zaraf plotted a strategy that would tear down the AI's defenses and avenge dozens of unfair losses. Unwilling to spend months leveling up and making preparations, staying his vendetta, he hex-edited the game to to max out his character's stats. Zaraf then armed his warrior with a class spell called Deathbringer, enabling him to fill the screen with an amount of damaging skulls equal to half of his red mana. Head past the post break for the results caught on video.
Warriors kill 99% of PUGs
Hey it's been at least a few days without a patented "Mike Schramm Troll Post," so let's go at it. Xylox over on the forums says that if a PUG wipes, 99% of the time it's because of the warrior. He says it's the hardest class to play within "a group environment," and that if you're a warrior who thinks you don't have to be prot and you don't need a shield to tank, you're the reason your PUGs keep wiping.Now, I don't know if I'd go all that far-- my warrior has tanked plenty without being specced protection, so that's definitely possible. But he does have a point-- a shield is just plain necessary for tanking. If a tank doesn't know how to keep aggro, isn't ready to take damage or pull mobs off the healers, or thinks taunt is a damage spell, the group is in trouble.Of course, most players aren't so nice to Xylox-- they say that though warriors do need to know what they're doing, so does everyone else. If a warrior can't keep aggro because the DPS is clueless, or doesn't get heals because the priest is in shadow when heals are necessary, it's not his fault. And still other players say that the reason lots of warriors don't know what to do right away is because tanking is one of the only skills in the game that you can't learn solo-- you've got to have a helpful group to teach you how to do it the first few times.No one actually calls Xylox out for posting like he's the warrior master on his level 10 Shaman (that's what I'd do), but the thread really does provide some interesting thoughts from both sides. Bottom line: the best way to keep from wiping is to make sure everyone in the group knows what they're doing. All should be responsible for aggro control, all should know where to target DPS and when, and everyone should play their part well. It's true that an unskilled tank can be the first to mess up a group (because if she can't hold aggro, it's over right then and there), but everyone's got to do it right to get it done.
Breakfast Topic: What do I level next?
Throughout vanilla WoW I'd managed to create a small selection of alts that I managed to level all the way to 60. Since the expansion, I've been focusing on gearing out my main character, the irrepressibly cute gnome warlock pictured here. But what's next? I have a druid, warrior, and a hunter that I've leveled up to 60, and a Draenei mage that I've leveled up to 20 just to see the new starting area. I'm tempted to level the mage up as a tailor so I can crank out more shadoweave cloth for the warlock's nefarious purposes, but leveling my druid alchemist up could also be a nice moneymaker. I enjoy playing all the classes I have, or I wouldn't have leveled them up as high as I have, so that's not an issue.Any thoughts on what I should level next? Are there any leveling catches that I haven't heard, things that make a hunter, druid, or warrior easier to level than the others?
Pushing the limits of a class trinity
Relmstein is at it again, this time with a look at class trinity in MMORPGs. This is old, old RPG strategy stuff-- basically almost every RPG out there is based around three different class roles: that of tank, DPS or healing. Tanks (like Warriors and Fighters) take damage, DPS classes (like Mage and Rogue) dish the damage out, and healing classes (obviously) keep the party alive long enough to win the battle. For a while now, game developers have tried to vary up this class trinity, so that you don't just have the same options in every game. In WoW, hybrid classes like Paladin and Shaman can play more than one role, and classes like Hunters and Warlocks have extra abilities (crowd control and buffing/debuffing) that help them be something more than what the class trinity lays out for them. Or there are classes like Druids, who can play all three roles at various times.But the problem here is that while there are some extra abilities floating around, there aren't any new class types to speak of. The reason for this in WoW is because the developers want to give every class the option to go all the way to 70 solo, which means classes that could be total crowd control classes, like Hunters, are forced back into one of the class trinity roles (in this case, DPS). So far, we haven't seen a really pure crowd control class-- at least not like we've seen pure tanking, pure healing, or pure DPS classes.So let's put our minds to it. What kinds of classes could we make that would do something fundamentally different from tanking, healing, or damage?
Phat Loot Phriday: Retainer's Blade
Last week on PLP, we took a look at a great Aldor item, and this week it's Scyer time. By now, you've probably learned (if you've visited Shattrath City) that players get to choose one of two factions to follow, and each has its own items, recipes and rewards to try for. From the Scryer side comes this very fast, very excellent offhand dagger.Name: Retainer's BladeType: Epic One-Hand DaggerDamage / Speed: 94-142, 1.50 (78.7 DPS)Abilities: +21 Agility, +21 Stamina This is a terrific dagger for anyone who needs a fast offhand for procs-- dual wielding Shaman will benefit from it, but Rogues will probably get the most out of it, with the extra Agi and Stamina, not to mention the 1.50 speed that applies poisons almost faster than you can keep them on. And it can't hurt for Fury warriors either, especially if you've already grinded the rep necessary. How to Get It: Just like Aldor last week, you've got to do Scryer quests and bring them the turnins they ask for all the way to Exalted. You can find what you need to do by poking around the Scryer area in Shattrath, but mostly it'll involve getting Firewing and Sunfury Signets (and, eventually, Arcane Tomes) from killing various Blood Elves around Terrokar Forest. Once you've made your way to Exalted, head towards the Scryer Quartermaster in Shattrath, but here's the kicker: bring some cash with you. A lot of it, actually. This baby will set you back 198 gold and change.Getting Rid of It: When you find an upgrade (which might be tough if you're not looking in the right places-- this baby is one of the highest DPS offhand daggers in the game), a vendor will take it off your hands for 39g 74s 25c.
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Where have the tanks gone?
Unlike many guilds, my guild has never had a problem with finding healers in TBC. We have a ton of 70 shamans, most of whom are resto specced and on nearly all the time. We have a couple of priests with good healing gear. We even have some up-and-coming paladins who are in the mid-60s. Instead, our problems are tank-related. Like most guilds, we have a good number of warriors, about evenly divided between tanks and DPS warriors. But our tanks seem to have fallen into the habit of mysteriously disappearing for days at a time, which has slowed their leveling speed. Two of our tanks are still 67, which kind of puts a damper on Karazhan plans. Two of our prot warriors are 70, but one let his game card expire and can't afford a new one and the other is only on occasionally. So as of now, our theoretical main tank is a feral druid. Admittedly, he is a very GOOD feral druid, and he is excellent in five-mans and heroics, but he's not quite confident that he can handle the big raid bosses. Other guilds I've spoken to have reported similar issues. One has a shortage of prot warriors and is having difficulty in Karazhan with druid tanks, and as for five-mans, "we've got 20 people wanting to instance and 2 tanks online." Another has trouble "finding tanks that wake up in time for raids." The third guild has enough tanks right now, but the leader noted that they leveled slowly. As I see it, the problem has three parts. First, prot warriors level slowly, so the first warriors to 70 are likely to be those who spec arms or fury and have the gear for it. Second, warriors are sort of gimp right now, and many warriors have switched to other classes, either because they didn't like being nerfed or because they had trouble getting into a guild as a warrior. And finally, most raiding guilds only needed two or three regular protection warriors for their raids. When forty people doing one instance with three tanks turns into forty people doing eight instances, needing eight tanks, there's likely to be a perceived tank shortage -- even if you have the same number of tanks you did before. Have you noticed a tank shortage on your guild or server? What do you think players can do to make life easier for tanks?
2.0.7 and beyond for Warriors
The resilience changes in the 2.0.7 patch notes may have some consequences for Warriors. To sum up, 2.0.7 is making it so that crits that are converted into regular hits by resilience will still trigger abilities that would be triggered by crits. This includes, notably, Enrage, which I'm already coming to rely on for my Warrior alt. The change makes it so that you don't have to worry about resilience nerfing your Enrage (and other such skills), basically. Quoth Tseric: In case you hadn't, there is a general change in 2.0.7 which has more relevance to Warriors than other classes. Any effect which benefits the victim of a critical strike will now trigger even if resilience converted the attack from a critical strike to a normal strike; this applies to melee, ranged, and spell. The affected talents, abilities, and items are: "Eye for an Eye", "Blessed Resilience", "Enrage", "Martyrdom", "Blood Craze", "Eye of the Storm", and "Bonespike Shoulder". This applies to those Warriors who may stack resilience, but fear that it reduces effectiveness of certain abilities gained through being crit. Resilience won't interfere with you popping enrage! Of other note, the devs have been looking at threat generation closely and we continue to get harder numbers and data regularly. It is possible changes to threat generation are down the road. When I hear more, so will you. Look, he even made his own "pop Enrage" joke. See? He's one of the good guys (I'm a big believer in "don't shoot the CM"). One more comment from him: Threat generation is being watched as it compares between warriors and druids. I've said this has been of priority and interest to the devs before and it still is. Group and Raid environments play out differently and this can affect the look of things as far as competition goes. When changes to warriors come down the pipe, there's a good chance the devs will be tweaking threat generation before anything else. This is good news, of course. I haven't been on the tanking end of the current Warrior vs. Druid vs. Paladin controversy, but I have healed for all three as tank in 5-mans, and I have to say, if I was forced to rank them, Warriors would come out low, especially for multi-mob tanking. This is clearly not right.Thoughts, on resilience changes and Warrior threat?
WoW Moviewatch: Armor set double feature
Neither of these two are the greatest or best videos in the world. However, they do give us a look at the appearance of some upcoming gear that as far as I know hasn't been seen yet.First off, here's a showcase of what the poster is calling 'Dungeon Set 3', whose power at 70 is supposed to be analogous to what Tier 0.5 (a.k.a. Dungeon Set 2) is like at 60. The probable conclusion is that it is composed of mostly or entirely blues, not epics. The video has every set except Hunter (sorry!). Skip to 1:40 for the actual armor sets, unless you want to see some footage of flying mounts and some bits stolen from the Burning Crusade cinematic. Check here for stills, including the Hunter set (but not the Shammy one -- go figure).
Adventures in Beta: Who will be queen of the DPS team?
Players in the BC beta have hit 70 and are beginning to raid, which means the return of Azeroth's favorite sport: complaining how underpowered your class is in groups! Warriors and rogues started fast out of the gate with some pretty heavy complaints. Warriors state that their rage generation has been nerfed enough that they won't be good DPSers anymore, and since druids and paladins can tank now, why would anyone bring a warrior? Rogues have noticed that they don't do damage as well as equally-geared mages and warlocks at 70, and since a lot of bosses have cleave and AOE attacks, why would anyone bring a rogue? Well, there are enough spare rogues and warriors running around to fill a large pit in Outland, and someone has to take the gear. Mages and warlocks have utility outside damage in raids, but rogues and warriors don't (unless you count suppression rooms, which you shouldn't.) The casters have fired back, claiming that mages were always intended to be top DPS due to ... the character class descriptions in the guidebook, apparently. They also note that casters have limited mana pools, unlike rogues' constantly regening energy and the warrior's rage bar, and that caster DPS is more dependent on group composition than melee DPS (i.e. shadow priest group damage buffs.) People from both sides and from healing classes have argued that because there aren't many great melee weapons and armor yet available at 70, melee classes appear underpowered -- but things will even out as better gear becomes available. Do you think the melee classes have a point? Should melee DPS be higher on average than caster DPS because of the extra healing required by melee? Are rogues and warriors really in trouble? Or are they just whining because they have to work harder to compete on the DPS meters? (Image from The Last Watch, Turalyon-EU server. DPS meters on Patchwerk in Naxxramas.)
A very merry Virtual Console Christmas [update 2]
Hold on to your mistletoe, folks, Nintendo is dropping all kinds of radiological bombs come Christmas morning. Let's skip the preamble and just head right on in: Super Mario Bros. (NES) - Finally, is all we have to say. The defining "retro" title in video gaming history is finally up for grabs, and you might not have a soul if you don't pick it up. Street Fighter II: The World Warrior (SNES) - One of the most influential titles in the 16-bit era, Street Fighter II is revered by millions of angry, violent gamers worldwide. And Chun-Li is still hot. Super Castlevania IV (SNES) - The beginning of the modern Castlevania games, this title features more hot whip action than your mistress on Friday night. And unholy werewolves, too. Toe Jam and Earl (Sega Genesis) - We've been raving about this funkotronic title for weeks, and it's finally here come Christmas morn. Get your groove on and ignore your holiday dinner ... that's what we're doing, anyway. R-Type (TG-16) - An apparently famous shooter that we ourselves have not played. We hear it's quite the hit, though. Any takers? This is gonna be one hell of a Monday. Who said presents needed to be encased in paper and under a tree?[Thanks, Benny!][Update 1: Also, on January 1st, Nintendo will be releasing both Baseball (NES) and Urban Champion (NES). Not that it'll matter. We'll be too busy playing these games to bother.][Update 2: And no, none of these games are free. Cheapskates.]
Warrior mace spec hotfixed: fewer procs, more filling
A quick heads-up to anyone planning Warrior specs or gear: apparently the boys in Blue decided that the Warrior mace spec was proccing too often, and a hotfix is being issued "sometime soon". From Tseric:"The proc [after hotfix] should roughly be 11% with a 3.80 speed weapon, 8% with a 2.80 speed, and 4% with a 1.70 speed. The rage awarded should now be 6 points on proc."Apparently the proc rate pre-hotfix was along the lines of three times as high, though it only gave 2 points of rage per proc, a third as much as it does now. So the net effect of the fix would seem to be fewer stuns, but the same amount of rage, over time (in bigger chunks). If I'm calculating correctly, the new proc rate should be about 1.62 procs per minute. For comparison, a Crusader enchant is said to proc once per minute (on average).Any thoughts?
WoW MovieWatch: QQ more, Warrior
I figure if you're going to QQ (read: cry) about how gimped your class is for the Burning Crusade, you might as well do it creatively. But a Paladin? That's like trading a broken down pickup truck in for.. a Volvo. Cmon Warriors, it can't be as bad as all that. Or can it?
All aboard the nerf train in the BC beta
If you haven't been on the forums for a day or two, you may not have noticed: the devs finally pulled the nerf bat out for the expansion. Lots of classes are running around crying their heads off (droods I'm looking at you), there's lot of flaming going on, and the world is generally coming to an end. You haven't noticed? Strange.So here's the changes that freaked everyone out so bad. These appeared in the patch notes for the beta server, which we posted here without fanfare when they first showed up. Warriors got a big change to rage generation that, as far as I can tell (there's a lot of math involved) gave a nerf to anyone carrying around a two hander. Rage was normalized, especially on crits, so people are reporting from 3-4 to up to 10 less points of rage per crit damage. Of course, as gear gets better, so will rage generation, but the warriors aren't thrilled. Mage AOE took a hit, as well-- right now, AOE hits any number of mobs in a certain area (hence, "area of effect") for the same damage. After the patch, AOE will diminish (see point number 6) after a certain number of mobs-- beta testers are saying it's around ten or so. I didn't think this was a big factor (because when are you really fighting more than ten mobs, but I was proven wrong tonight in ZG, when we found countless numbers of panthers and spiders and the AOE was necessary to finish them. Hunter pets got "normalized" (more math-- anyone want to try explaining this simply), which means Cat pets will see a drop in damage and Bears will see a small gain. Also, Hunters aren't thrilled that The Beast Within (one of their BC skills) was nerfed to a 10% damage bonus from a 30% damage bonus. But they aren't crying nearly as much as the... Druids, who got hit big: there will now be a one second cooldown for all shapeshifting abilities. Also, feral druids were very excited to be able to use consumables (and weapon procs) in bear and cat forms, but the devs say that was apparently a bug, and it's not happening in the beta. That has got druids torn up more than anything else, so there is QQing aplenty over on the druid forums (though there may be hope yet). Now, I'll leave it to you guys to determine whether or not these changes are deserved or necessary. Right now I'm playing a Shaman and a Rogue, so I'm pretty much staying out of it, but feel free to unleash your rage (or, in Cat form, your energy) in the comments below).But I will say that I think it's inevitable the nerf bat had to be brought out eventually. Blizzard has been exceptionally generous, I think, with these expansion talents and spells (don't forget, mages still have Invisibility, and almost all classes are getting completely new spells and strategies to use), and so I'm not surprised at all that these changes came about-- and I won't be surprised if more show up as well (Shamans, I still expect a dual wield nerf for us).But at the same time, the Mage and Druid changes confuse me a little bit. AoE seems so fundamental to the Mage class, and you'll rarely hit 10 targets in a PVP setting, so why bother nerfing it in PVE? And even if the Druid consumable problem is legit (and I think it is-- Druids shouldn't be able to be replacement warriors in every situation), the devs just call it a "bug"? That's a pretty big bug to let float by for so long.Anyway, have at it. And if you've played on the BC server, are these changes as much of an issue as everyone thinks they are? Or is this stuff all just creating a river of tears for nothing?
iRobot poised to unveil Warrior and SUGV military bots
iRobot is kind of a strange company. It seems like half the engineering team is hard at work on helpful little slavebots -- Roomba, Scooba, and the new Dirt Dog -- that aid common folk with their domestic chores, while the other half has seen Terminator one too many times and is all about building autonomous military vehicles that can be weaponized and transformed into killbots. Case in point is the new 250-pound Warrior (pictured above), formerly known as the NEOmover, which will officially be unveiled next week at the U.S. Army Annual Meeting & Exposition (it's like CES, except everyone is packing heat and telling glorified war stories). Initially Warrior -- along with another new bot, the 30-pound Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle (or SUGV, pictured after the break) -- will be tasked with duties to similar to their predecessor, the PackBot: hauling around gear for troops, scouting out potentially dangerous locations, and sacrificing their young lives by literally jumping on the grenade (or land mine, or IED). However, Robot Stock News reports that iRobot Chairperson Helen Grenier has already discussed outfitting the mechanized fleet with guns and missiles, allowing them to mow down the enemy in between more humanitarian work like firefighting and battlefield extraction. Now we would never suggest that technology capable of keeping our soldiers out of harm's way should be discouraged, but we've seen Robocop one too many times and know what can happen when you strap heavy artillery onto an angry robot. Anyway, here's to hoping that by the time these bots get all decked out with machine guns and RPGs, the only enemy "troops" they'll ever face are the kind that South Korea is on the verge of deploying -- with robots fighting robots, everyone wins.[Via GoRobotics]
