Rantings of the Afflicted

Expanding Horizons

2010-11-14T00:51:00.006-05:00

In an effort to keep posting on here (as opposed to closing the blog down due my general lack of interest in WoW) I've decided to expand my subject matter somewhat. So that being said you'll probably start seeing posts on here about PC games as a whole and maybe even some music every now and again too. I figure those are the things I'm most passionate about and as such I'll have a decent amount to say about both. I'll make sure to toss a tag in the title if it's not clear what the post is about so if you happened to be repulsed by my taste in music, or only want to read about WoW it will be easy to skip for you. Never fear, however, as I will always hold true to the "no Livejournal bullshit." doctine. You'll get my opinions, reviews, criticisms and rants, but never will you hear about me or my life. I'm boring, but the things I like are awesome so I'll just stick to that ;)

A Change Of Pace?

2010-10-10T21:51:00.002-04:00

So, I think I'll be playing a Disc Priest in Cataclysm. Whoa! I know, big change for Mr Warlock Blog guy. "Why?" you ask? Several reasons, really.

1) Cataclysm is more of the same. Sure, incredibly polished more of the same, but more of the same nevertheless. Blizzard hit their formula and are pretty well sticking with it. More power to 'em, but I've been playing Warlock since 2005. It's 2010. 5 years is a lot of time to play one game and an even longer time to main the same character. A change of pace is very much needed less I lose interest in the whole game.

2) The Soul Shard system. What a letdown. Maybe it will be further developed, but if the entirety of beta is any hint as to the future attention devoted to this class mechanic then I'm quite disappointed. Right now it feels like a minor perk, not a fully fledged feature. There aren't nearly enough Soul burn effects, and even if there were I'm not sold on the methods of replenishing shards.

3) It's good to be the healer. Not so much the getting focused down in PvP (that happens often enough on the Warlock too) but the ability to fill a needed role is great. I can't count how often I've wanted to run BGs with Draele and some others DPSers, but we could never find a healer to come along. Add on top of that the ability to *sometimes* get other players to listen and cooperate and it's looking pretty positive overall.

4) Affliction is becoming more and more like any other caster. Soul Swap & self healing to are the areas of note. Soul Swap essentially removes the huge play-style distinction between Affliction and most other casters. Ramp-up time. Long ramp-up time is a weakness, a weakness offset by other strengths, such as high self healing. Self healing has been neutered both in numbers and stated as an intentional design goal by Ghostcrawler.

Essentially the play-style is moving more towards the generic "attack target. do damage fast. kill target" The reason I was drawn to the Warlock class in the first place was that low damage/high longevity style available to the old SM/DS Voidwalker sacrifice spec. That's ancient history now and any vestiges of the SM/DS and SL/SL styles that were still around with WotLK are diminished even further with Cata. The Warlock class has simply moved in a direction that no longer interests me. Nothing really unique is being added to the class and the aspects of it I previously enjoyed have been eroding away since BC. It's not being butthurt over a nerf, they come and go, but when the core design philosophy behind your class/spec alters course with what you love then it's time to move on.

Add on top of that Discipline gaining Evangelism, Archangel, and Atonement (on top of PI, Penance, and Borrowed Time) it's really looking to be way more up my alley. A nice mix of healing and damage =D

Warlock Preview Review

2010-04-08T13:55:00.001-04:00

Fel Flame (level 81): Quick-hitting spell dealing Shadowfire damage. This is similar to the mage ability Frostfire Bolt, in that the lower of the two resistances (in this case shadow and fire) on your target will be used for calculating its damage. Additionally, Fel Flame refreshes the duration of Immolate and Unstable Affliction. Our goal for Fel Flame is to provide a spell that's good for mobility and for use by Destruction and Demonology specs. Also, did we mention it uses green fire? Yep. Instant cast.

Definitely my favorite of the new skills. Warlocks have always lacked a simple untalented instant damage spell. I'll appreciate it to finish off mobs while soloing/leveing. Refreshing UA/Immo is a definite plus as well. I actually hope this skill gets a short cooldown, 10s or so, otherwise the damage will be so poor nobody would spam it anyway. Might as well give it a short cooldown and make the damage decent.

Dark Intent (level 83): Increases the target's chance for a critical effect with periodic damage or healing spells by 3%. When the target lands a crit, you get a buff to your damage for 10 seconds. This effect stacks up to three times.

Can you say uninspired? It's a direct ripoff of Focus Magic. To be honest I hope this ability doesn’t make the cut. I’d rather see a self-oriented defensive cooldown. Too many of our defenses are based around doing something to our enemies, enemies who often enough aren’t capable of being affected by said defenses (See CloS, AMS, Zerker Rage, etc.), but NOT something like Iceblock. Maybe “Demonic Inversion” 3m cooldown. For 8 seconds all damage dealt to you instead heals you for that amount. I like the idea of something like this because it doesn’t render us invulnerable, it doesn’t CC our opponents, they’re still able to CC us and apply any debuffs they like to us, or even switch targets, but it simply keeps us from dying, and if they don’t pay attention and stop attacking it puts us in an advantageous situation health-wise, potentially topping us off.

Demon Soul (level 85): Fuses the warlock's soul with his or her demon. This provides warlocks with a self-burst cooldown to use. The specific effects granted by Demon Soul depend on the demon chosen. Demon Soul lasts for a certain number of charges or until it expires (around 20 seconds), depending on the demon used. 2-minute cooldown.

Not enough information to truly tell at this point. I’ll hold my judgment for later, but it definitely has potential.

• Summon Demon + Soul Burn = summon the demon instantly.
• The ability Fel Domination will be removed (because Soul Burn accomplishes the same effect).

No, no, no. These two make me a very sad panda. It will simply result in even more pets getting gibbed, and the Warlock being unable to use Shards for anything but getting the pet back out. Other classes know this and will pursue this strategy even more fervently. IMO either keep Fel Domination in game, or drastically reduce the base summoning time on demons. I’m talking 5 seconds, with Master Summoner bringing it down to 3 seconds. If this were done Fel Domination could be removed, and the Warlock class could actually be balanced around switching pets to suit the situation. Soul Burning a pet could be more of a clutch move "I need to seduce something NOW" etc.

• All warlock damage-over-time (DoT) spells will benefit from crit and haste innately. Haste will no longer act to reduce the DoT's duration, but rather to add additional ticks. When reapplying a DoT, you can no longer "clip" the final tick. Instead, this will just add duration to the spell, similar to how Everlasting Affliction currently works.

Nice. Good to see innate DoT scaling. I’m not a huge fan of the concept of no-clip DoTs as it does lower the skill cap, but I can look the other way on this one.

• Curse of Agony and Curse of Doom will be converted into Bane of Agony and Bane of Doom. Bane spells are considered magic instead of curses. This means you will be able to cast one Bane (e.g. Bane of Agony) and one Curse (e.g. Curse of Elements) on a single target.

Great change, though the “Bane” spell classification sounds silly. Just call them “Agony” and “Doom” and simply apply the same mutual exclusivity that UA/Immolate have.

Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Affliction
Spell Damage
Spell Crit
Shadow DoTs

Demonology
Spell Damage
Spell Haste
Demon Damage

Destruction
Spell Damage
Spell Critical Damage
Fire Direct Damage

Shadow DoTs: The damage caused by Shadow damage-over-time spells is increased.

Demon Damage: The damage caused by pets and Metamorphosis is increased.

Fire Direct Damage: The damage caused by Fire direct damage spells is increased.

Roughly what I expected to see. It would be nice to have more interesting mastery bonuses, but they’re appropriate enough so I won’t complain. I would say I’d like to see Affliction & Demonology’s Crit and Haste bonuses swapped. I’ve seen Demo Locks ask for the Crit, and I can say as Affliction I’d prefer the Haste.

Not a bad set of changes. I’m disappointed somewhat, mostly regarding the Dark Intent & Fel Domination issues I previously spoke of, but overall a good preview.

Some Cataclysm Spell/Talent Ideas

2010-01-12T21:07:00.007-05:00

You guys know me. I love to make up spells and talents. Here's the latest round of changes I'd implement for Cataclysm. All of these given to Warlocks together would probably be OP, but 1-2 of them would be very fun and appropriate.

Transference
Instant cast. 3 minute cooldown. Affliction tree/Shadow spell school. Learned @ level 82.
Transfers all negative status effects with their remaining durations from you to your target.

Warlocks are pretty heavily based around debuffs. What better than being able to clear debuffs off yourself and throw them back at your target? In a way it's like a reverse Spell Steal. Mages take buffs from their enemies and put it on themselves, Warlocks send debuffs from themselves and put them on their enemies. This one could be a lot of fun and add a new dynamic to Warlock PvP. 3 minutes might be too short of a cooldown. Or "all debuffs" might be too strong. It could work with a much shorter cooldown but with only 1 random debuff. 45s cooldown to x-fer 1 debuff could work as well.

This ability opens up all types of uses. Getting pounded on by a Warrior? Got Rend, Deep Wounds, Hamstring and MS on ya? Wait until right after the Warrior recasts MS then use transference. You can now be healed up without MS on you and the Warrior is covered in his own debuffs as a nice bonus. Or you're fighting another Affliction Lock. Imagine the metagame around this ability. Whoever uses Transference first actually loses out. You both have UA/CoA/Corruption on each other. You use Transference and the other Warlock recasts his DoTs on you and then uses his. You now have 3 sets of Warlock DoTs on you. Nasty!

Curse Mastery (Master Demonologist of the Affliction tree)
5-points talent in Shadow Mastery's current location since we know SM is a goner.
Through study of the dark arts you have enhanced your curses. Empowers your curses with the following effects:

Curse of Agony: Gives your Curse of Agony a 20/40/60/80/100% chance to apply Curse of Elements to your target as well.

Curse of Doom: Reduces the duration and cooldown of your curse of Doom by 4/8/12/16/20 seconds.

Curse of Elements: Additionally increases the amount of health you steal from the target by 3/6/9/12/15%

Curse of Exhaustion: Increases the slowing effect of your Curse of Exhaustion by an additional 2/4/6/8/10%.

Curse of Tongues: Increases the mana cost of spells by 3/6/9/12/15%.

Curse of Weakness: Increases the energy, focus, rage, and runic power cost of abilities by 3/6/9/12/15%.

Posted an idea similar to this before. I still like it so I tweaked it a bit and reposted.

Hellfire (Revamped)
5 minute cooldown. Is now a buff, no longer channeled.
Surrounds the caster with Hellfire for 8 seconds. While Hellfire is active 50% of the damage that would be dealt to you by sources within 10 yards is instead dealt back to them.

Simple concept here, really. Makes Hellfire not suck. Anti-melee defensive cooldown. Two birds, one stone.

I'm Alive

2010-01-08T02:06:00.002-05:00

Nothing to post about for the past few months really. Once Cataclysm info starts rolling out (a few more weeks is my guess?) I'll definitely start posting more regularly. In the meantime it looks like spammers have taken up residence in the comment section of the most recent post before this one. They're like squirrels, they are.

Seriously Getting Fed Up With Interrupt Effects.

2009-10-27T04:27:00.002-04:00

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=20677670814&sid=1

Affliction, Balance, & Shadow. What do they have in common? One spell school worth a damn. They all three need interrupt reduction talents.

Healers have them. Because heals are all in one spell school. Healers gets locked out and they can't do their job. Martyrdom, Focused Mind, Aura Mastery/Improved Concentration Aura. Admittedly, Restoration Druids don't, though they can get by reasonably well with instants, thus not often exposing themselves to lockouts. Why don't similar talents for Affliction, Balance, and Shadow exist? All of the spells of any consequence for these specs are similarly all in the same spell schools. Shadow, Nature, and Shadow, respectively. Starfire? Searing Pain? The only one of the three with any practical use at all is PW:S, but even that doesn't justify being interrupted anywhere from 3 to 8 seconds (an effective silence).

Don't get me wrong, it's not a whole lot of better for Elemental either, but at least the Flame Shock + Lava Burst combo is still available and Astral Shift can help wait it out if it's a Silence + Interrupt like Counterspell or Wind Shear. Mages have multiple useful spell schools. Arcane Locked? Frost Nova or Iceblock. Fire Locked? Poly, Blink, Nova, or Iceblock. Frost locked? Sheep or Blink. Etc. Destro/Demo aren't quite so reliant on any one spell school. Fire get locked while nuking? Fear, Howl of Terror, pet summons, Shadowfury, demonic teleport. Shadow get locked? Keep on nuking and remaining a threat.

Juking? Yes, it CAN, work. But it doesn't always, and often enough you simply don't have time to juke less you or your arena partners take a dirt nap. These specs massively require some protection in this area, less interrupts continue to function as silences.

Belated Blizzcon Thoughts

2009-10-05T17:01:00.002-04:00

I haven't posted in quite a while. Between looking for a job and playing the auction house game I haven't had much time/interest in updating anything on here. But I felt like dropping a line here on Blizzcon after having a few weeks to think on it. I'll present it as a brief pro/con of Cataclysm.

Pro
-Interesting story idea. I love the idea of going back to old school Azeroth/Kalimdor.
-Path of the Titans sounds like a lot of fun. It's like picking an auxiliary talent tree from a shared pool. I'm very curious to see the bonuses/abilities that are gained from the specific paths.
-The Mastery system seems like a slick way to re-package the talent trees and add more fun talents. If most of the damage/healing/mitigation throughput talents are consolidated into passive bonuses for simply putting points into each tree it will open up room for more fun/playstyle altering talents, which would seem to create more "true" choice for players when picking out talents. That being said I think the best feature of this system is the fact that the developers can easily tweak the mastery bonuses to fine tune balance much more easily than they could otherwise.
-Stat consolidation. I really like it. Int has never been a very desirable stat for most casters, attack power is redundant with Agi/Str, etc. Streamlined is good.

Con
-Due to so much focus being spent on the 1-60 leveling up experience I'm worried that there won't be as much 80-85 content as there might be otherwise.
-No new tiers to the talent trees is somewhat disappointing. These have got to be one of my favorite aspects of new expansion is playing with the new talent derived abilities, adapting my playstyle to accomodate changes, etc.

I'll post more as I think of them.

People Are Morons

2009-08-15T06:35:00.003-04:00

So I've been reading all the speculation on the forums lately about the Cataclysm info MMO-Champion leaked. While I neither believe nor disbelieve anything that's been said I can't help but take note of just how many morons keep dropping the same line in response to "None of the information below has been officially announced by Blizzard, this is only a compilation of information gathered from reliable sources." on the main MMO-Champ page.

"If Blizzard didn't release the info it's obviously just made up. The only reliable source is Blizzard. Durrrr. "

Okay, I'm not saying we should absolutely trust everything Boubouille posts (though he has an outstanding record of accuracy with similar such information leaks) but leaks from individuals within a company aren't an absolute impossibility. They're called leaks for a reason. If Blizzard announced something it wouldn't BE a leak. Leaks can be reliable if the source in question has routinely been reliable in funneling information to Boubouille, or any agent of the press for that matter. It's absolutely moronic to assume that just because information is gained through backchannels that's it's automatically untrue. I'm thinking a few options could be true, in decreasing likelyhood.

1) It's a leak. Simple as that. Boubouille says it's legit then it's legit.
2) Blizzard intentionally "leaked" it to build up hype. More pageviews for Boubouille, more subscriptions to the Blizzcon PPV.
3) It's counter-information leaked to cover up any rumors of the actual expansion.
4) It's a bad source.

Anyway, I'm just so tired of everyone thinking everything is so black and white. Just because it doesn't come with blue text doesn't make it untrue...

Ranking The Classes

2009-08-11T04:51:00.003-04:00

Completely random post here, but I've always liked making lists =P

Favorite to least favorite classes to play overall (class mechanics, lore, style, etc.)

1) Warlock (Duh)
2) Death Knight
3) Warrior
4) Priest
5) Druid*
6) Paladin
7) Hunter*
8) Mage
9) Rogue
10) Shaman*

*I'm leveling my Druid over my Priest, but only for Resto. Overall Priest is much cooler and I think would probably suit me better as a main. Discipline is OP and awesome at the same time. But Resto druid just have so many fun tools to use in BGs. HoTs (cmon I love DoTs, ya know I gotta love HoTs too), tree form is just cool, Stealth, and the overall different flavor of nature instead of holy. I still waffle between these two, but my brother is leveling his Priest on my account as we speak so I'll have a max level Priest at my disposal in time...

* Hunter used to be my main for ~half of vanilla. I don't know why it's so low. Maybe because everything I like about pet classes I get with the Warlock. That's not to say Hunters are bad, but IMO Warhammer handled "Hunters" better overall with more interesting mechanics by splitting the archetype into 2 classes: White Lion (Glaive wielding melee DPS class built extremely heavily on master/pet synergy, flanking, etc) & Shadow Warrior (pure marksman with no pet, different stances for kiting, sniping, etc.) After playing Warhammer the Hunter of all classes in WoW feels like so much of a mishmash.

* I haven't played a Shaman at all since BC so maybe the 3.2 tweaks (ESPECIALLY the totem changes) + generic overall tweaks might bump it up to ~Mage levels of fun. Overall though Shaman mechanics just aren't interesting. Funny how opinions can change because when I first got WoW out of the box I made an Orc Shaman...boy am I glad my RL friends convinced me to go Alliance when the character was only level 6.

WoW's Biggest Flaw?

2009-07-31T09:47:00.002-04:00

Browsing the forums I came upon a thread asking what the single biggest flaw is in WoW. I pondered on it. I started to say something about PvP class balance, but Blizzard does much better than other games. Then I started to say that raids have gotten too gimmicky, but that's TOO subjective. I thought about a bunch of minor inconsistencies I just didn't like, but they're... minor. But then I thought back to the primary thing I liked about Warhammer Online... the world PvP and that got me thinking on a longer train of thought...

My biggest gripe is probably the fact thatBlizzard has over-compartmentalized the game. Especially in Wrath.

You want to raid? Go into THIS portal.
PvP? Go into THIS portal.
Want world PvP? Wait until THIS time and go to THIS place for THIS many minutes. Otherwise we'll discourage you with a zerg of guards.

There needs to be random mob attacks on player cities where everyone bands together to kill a baddie like with Overlord Kruul. There needs to be more crossover between PvE and PvP like the old AV. There needs to be more perpetually contested world PvP content (This is the ONLY area I feel Mythic has trumped Blizzard. Warhammer Online kicked ass in this regard) Holding certain objectives should give players bonuses like in Hellfire Peninsula. World bosses need to make a comeback. More rare spawns. More difficult outdoor group content like the Silithus elemental lords. Instancing is a great technology, but when used too liberally you lose a certain sense of cohesion.

Blizz can do it right if they'd get out of this super-compartmentalized mindset. The world as a whole needs more cohesion. They have good lore and great world, a smooth combat system, interesting classes, most everything works rather well. It just needs that extra little kick to take it away from the gold/gear grind and towards a more vibrant, world that feels like it might really exist in some alternate universe.

Again, more cohesion, less compartmentalization. I'm not saying BGs or raids need to go. They work fine. Just don't make everything important be packed into those little bite size boxes you call instances.

Generic DPS Caster PvP Tweaks

2009-07-30T20:27:00.005-04:00

It's no secret that DPS casters as a whole are hurting in PvP as a whole. The forums have been abuzz the past few weeks on this issue and I'll take a moment to lay down two changes I think would help fix the problem. I have more ideas, but I feel these two are shoe-ins and should be implemented, and if further changes are necessary, then do so.

Spell school lockout effects reduced to 2 seconds. Tooltips of Mind Freeze, Kick, Pummel, etc changed to state that lockout duration is doubled against healing spells to make it no effective change against heals, but a buff to DPS. *Healing spells being pure heals that aren't tied to another utility/damage spell. IE Drain Life, glyphed Evocation, Pennance if used offensively, etc. aren't considered healing spells in this sense.
Facing checks at the end of spellcast are removed if the target is within 10 yards. Run-through interrupts are silly. Even the most skilled caster on a great connection can get screwed by this mechanic simply due to the ever-so-slight difference between where the melee class is on your screen and where the server thinks it is.

Objective Based Honor & Rated Battlegrounds

2009-07-26T05:54:00.001-04:00

As seen here

Basic Honor Changes
These are intended to foster more objective oriented games. Numbers are of course tweakable to match our current honor income per game, but proportions seem quite fair.

Kills

Objectives

Ranked Battlegrounds & "Glory Points"
The basic idea, coming from the idea that Blizz is adding ranked BGs, is that Glory points are earned based on your personal contribution to a BG. Arena points would then be consolidated into the same system of glory points and they would have a combined maximum pool that can be earned per week.
Glory points per BG are determined by your relative honor gains, with a multiplier in there if your team wins. Each BG has a total amount of glory points that are distributed amongst all the players based on their relative performances, with an exponential distribution divided between 4 quartiles. Bottom quartile gets x. 2nd quartile get 2x. 3rd quartile gets 4x. Top quartile gets 8x. Take this "70's Show" themed 4v4 "battleground" the Alliance just won as an example. Honor/glory amounts are completely arbitrary and irrelevant other than to display the proportions. Actual amounts tweaked as necessary

Total Honor

Adjusted Honor For Glory Calculation (*1.2 for the winning team)

Glory Points Received (based on 100 points total given out for this battleground. 100 is arbitrary and used only as an example)

A different distribution could of course be used, but doubling everything was easy enough and it supports the gearing philosophy outlined below well enough. Do take note that the most strongly performing players get x8 more glory pts per battleground than "the baddies"

Glory Point Rewards
The idea here is to combine aspects of "the honor grind" and "purely skilled based rewards" into one fluid system where anyone can buy a piece of gear, but the costs would be so incredibly high and disparity in potential points earned so huge that terrible players might spend a whole season of fervent BG grinding just to receive very few current season items. Great players would be able to accrue points so quickly that they could have a full set well before a season is over. A few notes...

Absolute

Let's take a quick look at Furious Gladiator's Claymore(2350 weapon): costs 8500 glory. The most expensive/rating intensive item.

Examples of gear accrual via player ability/playstyle:

What about arenas you ask? Won't people ignore them? Absolutely not =D

Further Suggestions

Overall I feel this system would be an excellent addition to World of Warcraft as it combines the best of both the worlds of the arena and the BG system. Suggestions are welcome!

Simple World PvP Zone Idea

2009-07-20T08:45:00.006-04:00

So I was thinking that Venture Bay really seems like a waste of potential world PvP action. Just to brainstorm here I was thinking of something similar to Southshore/Tarren Mill with the constant back and forth being rather fun- especially if it were a perpetual event that you can always go and do, unlike Wintergrasp, but consuming far less server resources. So what if Venture Bay were revamped to have a sort of tug-of-war capture-able point system similar to the symmetrical TF2 control point maps?

One tower north of the respective horde/alliance bases already present (1), one AB style capture-able point near the start of each dock (2) and the main point where the Venture Bay Vendor is (3) In order to capture any point you must control a connecting point. So, if the horde want to take 2a they must hold 3, if they want to tank 3 they must already control 2h. If they want to take 2h they have to control 1h. 1h, if not controlled, can be taken at any time by the horde. Etc. Likewise for the alliance but vice-versa.

-The 1s would have a flight point on top of a tower, but would take much longer to capture/recapture. If captured by the opposing faction you lose that flight point.

-The 2s wouldn't give you anything special unless you control both 2s, at which point a graveyard between the two opens up for your faction.

-3 is the primary focus. Whoever holds the 3 gains a server wide buff for their faction, increasing honor gains by 10% and increasing daily quest gold rewards by some amount as well. Also, when 3 is captured a few moderate strength elite NPCs to guard the area. Nothing wimpy- strong enough to be feared, but not so strong as to need tanks/healers to take them down.

Tenacity could be added in, and flying mounts disabled over this region. IMO it could be really fun. Just an idea!

Random (Semi)Creative Moment

2009-07-17T08:22:00.009-04:00

So you guys remember the Voidwalkers around the big white stone in Nagrand? Remember that ability they use called "Pain Spike"? I always thought it was a pretty interesting ability and figured it could do rather well (with some tweaks) as a new Warlock ability next expansion.

Void Strike. Instant cast. 30s cooldown. Deals X shadow damage and instantly heals the Warlock for Y% of the damage done. The target regains health lost from this ability after 10 seconds.

* X = a relatively large number for an instant nuke.
* Y= 50% ish of X?

The interesting aspect of this ability is it has a little something every spec can appreciate and improve upon for solo/PvP play, though it admittedly is lacking for raiding except for Demonology. The second trained ability would definitely need to be raid oriented. I digress...

-Affliction would have a new talent to increase the healing done by Void Strike by a pretty significant amount. +100/200% healing from the ability. (Fits the self healing theme of Affliction)

-Demonology would have a talent to outright eliminate the drawback of the ability. -50/100% damage healed back. (Removes the temporary damage aspect and simply turns it into a hard hitting instant nuke. IE turns a situational ability into a more useful one, much like how Decimation makes Soul Fire pretty sexy.)

-Destruction would have a talent to reduce the cooldown by several seconds. 5/10 second shorter cooldown. (Gives Destro more opportunities to finish targets off with burst chains)

Overall I think it would be a very interesting spell, especially since it could have such unique attributes depending on what talent tree you're specced into. It's a shame something like this wasn't done for Shadowflame...

Thoughts?

Back, But In A Different Way

2009-07-16T04:47:00.003-04:00

As you probably noticed there was a severe lack of updating on here for a while during May/June. That was due to finals, looking for a job(still no luck on that...), plus a general disinterest in WoW raiding, being stuck to an obligation for 3 hours, wiping repeatedly to Yogg, especially with an incredibly dull phase 1... ugh. I just couldn't take much more of it. Not reguarly at least...

But then a few weeks back I started playing the game more again. Alts/dailies/etc at first but then upon reading some of the 3.2 patch notes (notably the Resilience tweaks and pet scaling) I fired up a Haunt/Soul Link spec (which I had not yet tried as I havent spent more than a few hours PvPing since the Wrath beta) and gave it a try in the battlegrounds. I was pleasantly surprised by the overall style and tempo of it. It seemed to strike the right balance between the two PvP specs I ran in Burning Crusade: UA/Shadowburn and SL/SL. It's not quite so hard hitting as the former, and not as tanky as the latter, but has a nice balance between the two and definitely more buttons than SL/SL *snooze*. It's a lot of fun!

So after running BGs and Wintergrasp pretty hardcore for a week or so to gear up and generally get back in the groove of things I started looking around for 3v3 arena comps that looked fun and doable for Affliction. Unholy Deathknight definitely seemed like a strong pair for Affliction due to Ebon Plaguebringer, and good control/peels, but wasn't quite sure what healer to add to the mix. The choice, for me, was between Holy Paladin and Resto Druid. They both naturally have their strengths with the Paly having much better "oh shit" buttons and the Druid sporting strong HoTs and CC. After asking around for opinions between the two it seemed like a wash so I figured either one could work well so I asked one of the best healadins I know, Bruenorr to fill out the healer slot, and oddly enough he was itchin' for some PvP too after being out of the loop since BC as well. Holy DoTs Batman became our creation (Aff/Holy/Unholy). We're doing reasonably well considering we're running mostly raid gear, but I'm not expecting much to happen this season. I look at it as more of a catch up round to work on our gear and teamwork, with the real fun starting next season.

So yeah, that's a lowdown on WoW for me lately. You'll probably see much more content on here about my PvP exploits and PvP balance commentary, and less so on PvE related issues. Certainly not a terrible change of pace ;)

Speculating On Upcoming Soul Shard Change

2009-07-03T12:57:00.001-04:00

Figured I'd brainstorm/speculate on the changes in development...

New ability "Soul Infusion" consumes 1 Soul Shard to provide a 10 second buff, Soul Infusion. 1 minute cooldown. Many commonly used abilities will be given a secondary effect if you're under the effects of Soul Infusion.

Naturally, these can all be rather powerful effects. The idea wouldn't be for this to make Warlocks more powerful, there would definitely have to be some toning down done for when Soul Infusion isn't active, but overall it would create a much more interesting gameplay experience.

Revamping The Warlock Curse System

2009-06-30T17:22:00.004-04:00

(Be forewarned: This is by no means an incredibly unique idea, but rather an application of a concept from another game that would work quite well)

So there has been a decent amount of discussion lately on the forums on the uniqueness/usefulness of the Warlock curse system as a whole. The whole system could definitely be made more interesting. While this idea is definitely "out there" it would be quite interesting to see the curse system totally revamped next expansion and made similar to Vanguard's bard song system.

What it essentially consists of is a small little interface that allowed you to combine various aspects of a song (melody, chorus, verse, bridge, lyric, etc) all with their own effects, to create a very customizable buff. IE you might have a "kiting song" that increases movement speed, reduces the effect of slowing debuffs on you, and increases your damage. You could have any number of bardsongs all with specific uses. For example: http://www.vgbards.com/joomla/index.php?Itemid=32&option=com_wrapper

While that system was a little more in-depth than WoW might require, it's a really good idea. It could expand on the number of debuffing type abilities available to the Warlock and add a lot more choice into Warlocking. You might, for example, have "curse components" consisting of 3 different aspects of the class.

-Afflicting components (debuffing effects): Elements, Exhaustion, Tongues, Weakness.
-Demonic components (affects the characteristics of the curse itself): Quickening*, Spreading*, Eternal*, Potency*.
-Destructive components (damaging effects): Agony, Doom, Punishing*

*Quickening = 20% shorter duration curse.
*Spreading = (hits all enemy targets within 20 yards of your target but has a shared X minute cooldown amongst all curses with the spreading component)
*Eternal = 20% longer duration curse.
*Potency = 10% stronger effect.
*Punishing = Thorns type effect.

So, say you want a pure damaging curse? Create a "Curse of Quickened Elemental Agony". Or Curse of Potent Elemental Doom.

What if you want an anti-melee curse? Curse of Eternal Punishing Weakness. Or Curse of Potent Exhausting Agony.

Anti-caster? Curse of Potent Agonizing Tongues (kinky!)

How about a "fuck up a large groups of enemies in a BG" curse? Curse of Spreading Exhausting Agony. Etc.

Each Warlock could have, say, 5 curse slots which to customize. To make changes to your curses you might have to visit the Warlock trainer. Amplify Curse could be changed to give +1 curse slot. Other talents could add a new component to a curse, new expansions could add a new component, difficult solo quests could reward a choice of a few components, etc. This whole idea could go a long way towards making curses much more fun, customizable, and potent. Would it be a mess to balance and implement? Probably. But it would create a dynamic in the Warlock class that we currently don't have and I, for one, would love to see something like this implemented.

AMG I Got A Ghostcrawler Reply!

2009-05-05T04:31:00.003-04:00

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=16903571079&sid=1

But seriously, good to get that clarification. Really, it was what I expecting, but I have a habit of seeking clarification where I'm 90% sure, but just want to be certain.

Either way, I'll take a brief moment to rehash the more minor tweaks I'd like to see.

-Dark Pact: Tweak it to make it more useful. Honestly, with the high amount of self healing Affliction has this might be better served as some form of a dps timer rather than another "more mana" solution that honestly only sees much use in PvP. I'd make it an off the GCD 10 second self buff on a 1 minute cooldown that increases the damage of Affliction spells cast by X% and makes lifetap cost no health. I'll admit I also just want another button to press. I miss Immolate/Siphon Life. Making DP worth casting again is +1 fun factor for me. Doesn't so much matter why I cast it more so long as I have another button.

-Demonic Circle Summon: Make dropping the circle instant. Obviously requiring you be on the ground as to prevent abuse. This would simply make the ability feel more fluid.

-Drain Soul: 1 second tick intervals rather than 3 second intervals. If you play a lock it's pretty obvious why more continuous ticks are preferable to more discrete ticks.

-Fix the "Reach" talents to make them more accessible since all Warlock specs use all spell schools. Either make both effect all spells (and not stack) or remove them and consolidate them into a tier 1 Demo talent that effects all spells.

-Deathcoil: It's trying to be too many things on too long of a cooldown. Remove the damage and healing. Give it a 45s cooldown. Now it's a GTFO move on a reasonable cooldown.

-Shadowflame: Still pretty crappy without the glyph. Have it heal the Warlock for whatever damage it does.

-Infernal. Nerf his DPS but don't make him replace the normal pets. Too often this guy just doesn't get used because of the trade-off. I'd much rather have a less clunky version that you simply use when you need some more DPS.

-Eradication: Pure flavor request here, but I'd love to see this mirror the old Improved Shadow Bolt effect instead of the current Haste proc. On Shadowbolt/Haunt crits it gives the Eradication buff which increases shadow damage done by X% for Y seconds.

The Perfect MMO?

2009-03-21T02:14:00.005-04:00

So...having my new machine built I've spent a good deal of time the past 2 weeks trying out a lot of the games I've previously played and in doing so revisited other MMOs/RPGs. While none of them are perfect there are definitely strong points to each and every one. I am by no means a MMO expert, having only played a handful, but nevertheless here is my cherrypicked list of features I'd love to see in the "perfect" MMO.

The following would be organized into a hardcore small group PvE game. Hardcore != large groups, small groups != casual, and no PvP means more interesting and powerful abilities due to no PvP balance concerns.

WoW: In one word? Quality. What stands out above all else with WoW is its overall level of polish. Forget class/raid design. Forget art. Forget the world itself. WoW is an incredibly smooth, relatively bug free, "polished" feeling game on all levels. This no doubt stems from the dedication to perfection that Blizzard holds as across all their games, and not to mention their rather large bankroll. This seems like a given, but I feel Blizzard does such a great job here that it deserves recognition. Regardless of how many merits other games might have that make them look good on paper, or in nostalgia, WoW keeps drawing players back from other MMOs simply due to the overall quality and a huge player base (no doubt due to said quality) so finding people to group with is rarely a problem compared to other games. Also, somewhat related to quality, the smoothness of overall combat, movement, and ability use is top notch.

Items/Stats: Another aspect of WoW, while unrelated specifically to quality, is the item/stat system. While I can't say I'd want to see something *exactly* like WoW I like how there is a large variety of stats that perform distinct functions (Spellpower, Strength, hit rating, defense, etc). I would definitely streamline/clarify mechanics a bit, especially the hit stat (83% for casters to hit bosses? A different amount for melee? Strange increments? Make it 100% chance for everyone to hit mobs 3 levels or lower, 95% chance to hit mobs -2 through +2, and 90% to hit mobs 2 levels or greater), and add a built in Ratingsbuster type mod built into the game, etc. Encourage min/maxxing but make things less obscure so it's easier for the new player to pick up and for the veteran player to remember. The set bonus system is also rather nice as well, giving extra incentive to use certain pieces even if they aren't the best otherwise.

Quests: Pretty top notch here as well. I won't comment a whole lot as I've never been much of a quest kind of guy (it's all about the thrill of combat and character progression for me) however WoW does have much better quest writers than I've seen elsewhere. Sure, there might be a few too many fed-ex quests, but overall they're well written and diverse enough to keep even someone like me who isn't super interested in the story engaged enough in questing side of things.

Vanguard: In one word? Depth. Vanguard was a monumental concept that ultimately fell flat on its face as implementation (IE funding and time) screwed the pooch. Despite its shortcomings it most certainly sports a few aspects that go way deeper than other MMOs (that I have played) have attempted.

Crafting/Diplomacy: I won't go into an incredible amount of detail here as they are both fairly difficult to describe, but Vanguard has very deep "civilian" type activities. Crafting is a mini-game onto itself where you go through the process that would actually be involved in making said item. You must weigh making a higher quality product against breaking an item into uselessness if you try to go into too much detail. You have to deal with unexpected circumstance such as a flaw in the wood you're working to burning your hand on the forge. Diplomacy, similarly is a sort of tug of war type of card game. You work with four types of expression, Demand, Inspiration, Flattery and Insight to go through the process of parlay, as well as collecting cards to add to your arsenal of opening arguments, rebuttals, etc to convince your parlay opponent that you're in the right and they're in the wrong. It is used from something as simple as convincing an NPC to open a door for you (creating a shortcut through a dungeon to avoid trash) to something as far-reaching as unraveling a conspiracy to assassinate a sultan. In fact, crafting and diplomacy are so much their own aspects of your character they have their own gear sets as well.

The World: Quite simply the world of Vanguard is amazing. Both in size and scope it feels like how one would think a real fantasy world to feel. The cities are realistic in population, size, and layout. The zones aren't all muddled together in something of an unrealistic manner as WoW. There is a definite progression from area to area as to make it seem like a more natural flow of terrain. The three continents are essentially modeled after fantasy/medieval versions of Europe, North Africa/Arabia, and the far east, which creates rather distinct cultural themes and landscapes. Areas can seem a little desolate of life, or completely teeming with it, but it is as one might expect. Another aspect of the world if just how damn far you can see. In Qalia (the Arabian themed continent) if you're on high ground you can literally see for miles. Little things like this that make everything feel so much grander I greatly appreciate and would have to include.

Elder Scrolls: Oblivion: In one word? Openendedness. While it's not an MMO it is pretty similar as single player games go. Quite simply I adore the "class" system in the game, IE there aren't classes in the purest sense. When you create your character you choose a set of skills to outfit your template with. I, for example, very much enjoy playing what I call a "Scout" which is something of a mix between a Hunter and a Rogue minus the stabbing and pet pandering. I chose Acrobatics, Alchemy, Athletics, Illusion Magic, Light Armor, Marksmanship, and Sneaking to reach this end. I essentially design a "Scout" class to play exactly as I want. An archer with great mobility as to reach high vantage points or run away as needed plus limited magical support to enhance my stealth, paralyze melee mobs who corner me, and create potions to boost my stats. Oblivion certainly isn't perfect with glaring balance and depth issues, but the general skill (rather than class based) system is refreshing in a world of classes that never play quite like how you'd like them to.

Guild Wars: In one word? Style. Also, another "not quite an MMO." Guild Wars is a pretty two faced game if you ask me. It has some absolutely incredible aspects about it, as well as some downright terrible flaws that far outshine the good. Oddly enough I would probably borrow the most from this game than any other, despite the fact that I generally can't stomach it for more than a couple hours a month.

Art: While it certainly does sport some dated looking low-res textures, the overall look is, IMO, the perfect compromise between the cartoony look of WoW vs. the excessive vying for realism you see in games like Vanguard and the cutting edge world of FPS games. It has a very glossy/dreamy, heavy post-processed look to it that works quite well while running great framerates even on terrible computers several years ago. Particle effects and animations are top notch as well. The UI is also very slick and minimalistic, which I very much prefer. Overall an amazing look that I would love to see updated using higher quality art assets and newer tech.

Screenshot #1 (landscape)
Screenshot #2 (closeup)
Screenshot #3 (combat)
Screenshot #4 (UI)

Aggro/Dungeon Mechanics: Guild Wars PvE is very much more like Diablo than WoW. There is no aggro. Mobs will attack at random or whoever seems to be the greatest threat. But there is no "aggro" system in the sense WoWers are accustomed to. While you might have a tank type character you try to wedge between the healer and the mobs it's much more of a fend for yourself type experience, similar to the "arena" fight in Magister's Terrace. Buffs/Debuffs are also incredibly powerful. WoW raid bosses are generally about doing XYZ when the boss does ABC. I'd much prefer a situation similar to 5-mans where intelligent skill usage can influence what happens in a big way, rather than doing *exactly* what the developers want you to do to ultimately defeat an arbitrary gimmick rather than doing what feels like actually fighting and defeating a boss with magic and weaponry.

Missions: This is absolutely one of the high points of Guild Wars. A mission is something of an outdoor instance, although it's much more fast paced, heavily script driven, large battle oriented than your standard instance. Think of the style/pacing of CoT: Strathholme in an area like Alterac Valley where you're with a large amount of NPC troops going from boss to boss with mini objectives/cut scenes along the way. It's an amazing type of group experience compared to your average dungeon crawl. While I certainly don't want to see dungeons replaced bu missions they would make an excellent supplement to them.

Most Importantly: Do NOT release an unfinished product. Far too often in the MMO world games are shoved out the door that need a minimum of 6 month more work. WoW needed it, Vanguard needed it, Warhammer needed it, need I go on? As MMOs are concerned the release dates should not be dictated by the marketing/finance people. Hell, I'm finance people but being a gamer I absolutely understand that to get anyone to stick around beyond a small core niche market is to create an initial product that works. Warcraft was quite fortunate in its pre-existing brand image, excellent timing, and targeting of the casual market in that it got away with the initial issues. If other games can't manage to create an initial product that can grab players (and ultimately hold onto them) then MMO market will continue to be effectively monopolized by Blizzard, resulting in stunted creativity and funding for new games. Bigwigs: Give your people time to work their magic if you want a sustainable cash flow.

Most, obviously, will disagree with all of my specifics, but there you go. Maybe we'll see something along these lines with Blizzard's new MMO, Elder Scrolls Online, or Guild Wars 2. Who knows =D

It's Been A While!

2009-03-12T04:57:00.004-04:00

Figured I'd drop a line here seeing as how it's been nearly 2 months. This will be a 2i-part post.

1) (Skip if tech talk makes your eyes bleed) It's great to be back on my desktop as I can only deal with my 6 year old laptop for so long. A little over two weeks ago my PC suddenly started having issues. It would start up then shut down after a couple minutes and after that wouldn't even post BIOS unless I'd wait 30 minutes or so for everything to cool off. Repeat. After looking inside while it was running I noticed the power supply fan wasn't on. Figured that must be the problem.

Nearly a week later I get my new PSU, install it and the same shit keeps happening. I look further and the mobo's northbridge fan isn't running either. So time to order a new mobo, but if I'm going to spend money I'm going to upgrade from my POS socket 939, 2.2hgz cingle core cpu+ w/ DDR400 setup. So I take my time reading reviews, etc and decide to lay out $155 for an AM2 board, dualcore 2.7ghz, and 4g of DDR800. I had a sweet setup on my newegg wishlist for a AM2+ board, relatively nice AM2+ chip, and DDR1066 ram, but when I went to order the mobo was out of stock (must have been a good deal!) So I went with what I've got now.

So a couple days ago I get everything running again, and DAMN, my 8800gt card really was getting bottlenecked out the ass. My framerates have at least tripled pretty much everywhere. I've been on a gaming binge. WoW, Oblivion, Vanguard, you name it I've been playing it with jacked up settings, or in the case of Vanguard, an actual playable FPS.

2) PTR. I'll keep this brief. I don't so much mind the Siphon Life change. No huge deal. The Immolate change, however, I don't much like at all as it livened up the rotation, but at the same time didn't require too much difficulty as it meshes perfectly with the UA timer. I'm afraid I'll be bored out of my skull with Affliction raiding come 3.1. Really, would it kill Blizzard to implement a non-shitty debuff frame in their base UI? Something as simple as a separate row for your debuffs only and sort it by time remaining. I don't like to point fingers but gutting Affliction of it's DoT-centric playstyle to fix, what I see as a UI issue, is incredibly lazy on Blizzard's part.

As for the other changes...I very much dislike the gutting of ISB. Makes the 2pc t7 set bonus significantly less attractive, something many of us Affys have gone out of our way to get, avoiding best in slot pieces to achieve. Dark Pact is still crap. Drain Soul still ticks every 3 seconds rather than every one. I will admit, I do very much like the change to Suppression, although the same needs to be done for Grim/Destructive Reach. Pandemic change is pretty nice as well as it will allow for scaling off crit debuffs on the mob.

Overall I'd call this a pretty bad patch. Regardless of DPS going up/down it's just a kick in the teeth flavor-wise for Affliction. I very much hope they at least fix Dark Pact, Drain Soul & the reach talents. I'd call it a wash then. Though testing isn't over. We'll see...

Quality of Life Tweaks

2009-01-16T18:12:00.000-05:00

As posted here

All of the below are intended to make gameplay more fluid, aspects of the class make more sense, be more convenient, fix minor problems etc. These are not "buff my DPS or arena rating" requests so much as "clean things up a bit" so everything will be smoother in general.

-Dark Pact: Simply put, this ability doesn't offer anything that Lifetap doesn't do better. Sure, it doesn't take health, but that's not exactly a huge concern in most situations. I would love to see this reverted to how it was briefly functioning in beta, returning 200% of the mana it takes from our demon. This would make it superior to Lifetap as it should be. If that isn't a desirable solution simply taking it off the GCD would be nice as well and also would place it above Lifetap.

-Demonic Circle Summon: Change this to be instant cast. It's generally not that big of a deal functionally to stop and cast the circle, but I must say it's a pain when you're running anyway, stop to cast a .5 second spell, and start running again. It doesn't sound like that big of a deal, but it would make this spell so much less aggravating to use.

-Drain Soul: Change this to tick every second. Both from a soloing perspective as well as using it sub-25% in raids it's very frustrating at times to have this spell tick every 3. Keeping our DoT rotations going while waiting for a 3 second channeled spell to tick, especially when we may not even see the tick actually pop up is very difficult. Sure, Shadowbolt is 2.5 seconds, but it's much easier to manage that as cast-time spells are much more discrete, allows you to queue up spells after it, etc. Drain Soul is fairly unique in this regard and changing the tick timing to every second would help make it play much more fluidly.

-Infernal: While it may be slightly worth it to use this guy near the end of a boss encounter I can't help but simply be annoyed by how it functions. It would be so much better to simply nerf the damage on the Infernal and make him spawn as a guardian type mob, not a pet. IE he would attack what you attack and other than that you would have no more control over him. I would definitely consider this ability to be worth using, regardless of how little damage it deals as long as it doesn't tread into the territory of replacing my normal pet.

-Shadow Embrace: With all the talk of simplifying the Affliction rotation the duration of this effect comes up quite often. I'm starting to believe that for at least a large portion of those complaining about the rotation that this is one of the core issues. This would do well to be increased to a 15-20 second duration.

-Consolidating Range/Threat/Pushback/Hit talents: This is somewhat of a deeper change than the others, requiring some talents be altered, and a couple deleted, but it's something about that class that simply seems incredibly wrong. Warlocks, unlike most other classes have to use spells from every spell line to be successful in raiding. IE what use is getting Destruction Reach if you can't also get Grim Reach? Likewise for the other respective talents. It's either impossible for Demonology or requires extremely cookie-cutterish talent builds to reach all of these talents. As such I'd like to suggestion a consolidation of a few talents. This might cause them to go "over budget" but I feel for the overall good of the class it would be worth breaking a few internal rules for.

-Suppression:

-Demonic Reach:

-Intensity:

-Grim Reach/Destructive Reach/Cataclysm/Fel Concentration:

3.1 Warlock Patch Notes

2009-01-04T03:06:00.005-05:00

(Fake, of course, but with the purpose of giving several small PvP buffs when put together that should increase overall survivability and some PvE problems/inconsistencies tweaked)

-Backdraft: Reworked. Now gives a 33/66/100% chance for Conflagrate to refresh Immolate rather than consume it.
-Death Coil: Cooldown reduced to 1 minute.
-Demon Armor: Bonus armor removed. Now additionally reduces all damage taken by 10%.
-Demonic Circle Summon: Now instant cast.
-Demonic Circle Teleport: Now removes root and slow effects.
-Demonic Empathy: Effect increased to 2% per point (up from 1%)
-Destructive Reach and Aftermath talents have now switched places.
-Fel Domination: Cooldown reduced to 5 minutes.
-Grim Reach and Soul Siphon talents have now switched places.
-Shadowflame: DoT portion of this spell removed. Now applies "Tainted Soul" effect, reducing damage dealt by 30% for 5 seconds.
-Siphon Life: Now applied whenever Corruption is applied, similar to Shadow Embrace.
-Shadow Embrace: Bug relating to multiple Warlocks using this ability has been fixed.
-Summoned Demons now receive a larger portion of their master's spellpower as attack power/spell power as well as receive 50% of their master's Resilience.

Sitting PvP Out For Wrath

2008-12-29T16:17:00.003-05:00

Sorry, you won't be seeing any complaining about PvP from me for quite a while on here... If you haven't already noticed, burst damage is completely dominating the PvP right now, and Blizzard seem pretty okay with that judging by the majority of the blue posts I've seen on the subject. Sure, they might tone it down. Sure, more Resilience might lower DPS overall. I just don't feel like screwing with any of it when the most likely outcome is a slightly less bursty environment than the current situation where Affliction still won't be viable because the pewpew is too strong.

I'll stick to raiding this time around. At least it's at least somewhat supportive of sustained DPS (though I've even got my gripes there...) Maybe next expansion Blizzard will cater to those with an attention span greater than an 8 year old's.

Re: "Rolling" Corruption/SW:P Ticks

2008-11-28T05:45:00.001-05:00

As seen in this thread.

I thought I'd bring this subject up under favorable terms for discussion rather than wait for the potential nerf cries later.

Essentially, we've got two talents: Everlasting Afflictions (http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=47205) and Pain & Suffering (http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=47582) that auto-refresh our primary "big DoT" - Corruption and Shadow Word: Pain, respectively. The kicker here isn't the saved global cooldowns, which while nice pales in comparison to being able to keep a very large tick "rolling" similar to the Lifeblooms and Ignites of yore. IE right now I pop Hex Shrunken Head, cast Corruption, and for as long as I can cast Drain Life or Haunt every 18 seconds to keep it refreshed I keep that big tick.

Right now it's only worth around 100 DPS or so- not so large a sum. I'm not too worried about it because it doesn't have nearly the potential that rolling ignites did (rolling ignites kept getting bigger and bigger each proc for near infinite potential only limited by aggro) but Corr/SWP don't ramp up at all- they merely sustains a tick at the highest Spellpower value you could muster when you cast it. Nor does it have the impact of rolling Lifeblooms as it isn't an integral part of keeping a tank alive, just a slight DPS boost. That being said there is potential for this to get much larger in a "if the stars aligned" situation where you have a few procs active at the same time as well as activate a trinket. This would be fairly rare to get everything to fall together perfectly.

My point here is I think this is a very interesting mechanic to watch procs for, save trinkets/potions/etc for to try and get a large tick sustained through fights where keeping the debuff going is feasible. It really adds another level of fun/metagaming which makes thing much more engaging. Also, if this were "fixed" the only way I could see it working would be to have it take the spellpower at time of reapplication into account, which while feasible on paper would practically neuter DPS because not only would the Corr/SWP ticks not be able to "roll" any longer, but they would immediately lose any "natural" spellpower boost obtained from a trinket that would otherwise be maintained over 18 second duration of the DoT as soon as Haunt/Mindflay deals damage. IE a Corruption cast midway through a trinket doesn't even get a full 18 seconds worth of bonus spellpower as it would have before EA/P&S were implemented.

So in conclusion I'd like to say this is a very interesting and enjoyable mechanic and I'm asking now while Warlock/Spriest DPS is low relative to other classes to please take these talents into account as-is when balancing/buffing us in the future. "Fixing" this (assuming it's not intended to begin with) would hurt just as much as it would help in addition to ruining any fun factor and reward for exceptional DPS management. Balance us around having said perpetual Corruption/SWP ticks (on fights that support it) while also keeping in mind that this won't actually be sustainable on many/most fights simply due to general required encounter interactions/stuns/silences/debuff wipes/etc that won't even allow to keep said DoTs rolling.

Looking forward to further discussion on this matter!

450 Tailoring!

2008-11-19T12:21:00.001-05:00

So...17k gold later I'm 450 Tailoring! Server first feat of strength no less! While that's a hefty price tag I also got a nifty Flying Carpet mount as well as a pair of Ebonweave Gloves. Will post screenshot later.

Tailoring...Ugh

2008-11-17T13:34:00.003-05:00

So I'm trying for the server first 450 Tailor feat of Strength...and oh boy am I spending the gold. So far I'm at 430 and have gone from 26,000 gold down to 19,400. This is so expensive I'm weeping. But what's the point in having a stack of gold if you aren't going to put it to use? Right?

Right now I'm skilling up on Frostsavage Boots and Frostsavage Gloves which are fairly expensive to make but I'm hoping I can resell them to earn back at least a portion of what I've spent... I'm dreading 440, however, at which point these go green. There really isn't anything even remotely reasonable to skill up on from 440 to 450- all of it requires mass eternals + Frozen Orbs, or lots of Ebonweave/Spellweave/Moonshroud. At this point skilling up on the previous green items looks like the best option...

I'm tempted to halt all production and wait for prices to come down, but that will take weeks and I've already dropped so much gold into this it would be quite painful to stop now and not get the server first...but oh so painful to go on as well!

Making Affliction Less Stressful...

2008-11-08T00:02:00.000-05:00

...but without dumbing it down!

There has been much discussion of Affliction being too difficult for many players, and I can certainly see how that would be so especially in complex boss encounters. That being said there are many players who are drawn to this spec for that very reason, complexity. I don't want to rain on anyone's parade but most classes/specs in a raid setting are quite simplistic and uninspiring. Affliction offers something requiring a little more attention and requires you be a little more engaged than your average raider. I, for one, don't know what I'd do if Affliction were dumbed down as there's really nothing else both as interesting and engaging as Affliction. Lets just say it will be a sad day for many if Affliction is dumbed down to the level of other classes/specs.

I'm all for making Affliction flow better, however, as long as it doesn't come at the cost of dumbing it down. It can remain just as complex but play more intuitively and less stressfully.

A few things that I'd support changing to reach this goal:

-Increase the duration of Shadow Embrace from 12s to 15s. Give us a little more time to refresh the debuff before it falls off. Some fight have a lot of movement or require changing targets so that reapplication may not always occur every 12 seconds.
-Make UA instant. This would allow for quicker reapplication should you be doing something else when it falls off as well as letting you reapply it while moving.
-Add Shadowbolt back into Everlasting Afflictions. More frequent reapplications lead to less chance of it falling off at an odd moment in a fight and the worrying that occurs of trying to keep it up.
-Change the base UI to better display debuff timers as to accomodate people without mods such as DoTimer. Have it display your debuffs all together on the first line, sorted by time remaining so the very first debuffs are the ones with the shortest duration left.

All of these things would allow Affliction to play more intuitively, and be less stressful making one worry about one or more of the more passive debuffs from falling off while still maintaining the management of the more active debuffs (UA, Immolate, Siphon, CoA, Haunt) while not dumbing it down by making all of the DoT share the same duration (as GC volunteered), removing DoTs from our rotation, etc.

There can be a solid middle ground between stressfully convoluted and pleasantly complex.

Leave Affliction Be

2008-11-05T18:23:00.002-05:00

In case you haven't been following the forums lately there is a big push by many, many players to make Affliction more...well...easy. Ghostcrawler has even expressed thoughts of maybe making the spec easier by making more of the DoTs have the same duration, IE watering it down. If you haven't guessed by now I'm 100% against this and the following is my response...

I've tiptoed in several other threads regarding this but I figured it deserves it's own. That being said I'll get right to it.

There are plenty of other, easier options for you to respec/reroll to if the difficulty of Affliction is such an issue. I understand that those of us that like Affliction how it is, or would even like to see it become more involved, are by far in the minority. Most players like to keep things simple, pewpew the boss, get loot, have a cheer, good day! There's nothing wrong with that per se, but in your attempts at convincing Blizzard to make Affliction more manageable by dumbing it down for the average joe you're completely ruining the game for a very dedicated minority who revel in the complexity of the spec. What's left for those of us who like ultra involved gameplay? Nothing.

Boss encounters? The glorified synchronized herding of cats. I'm big into raiding due to the challenge of maximizing DPS. Optimal DPS rotations, especially on multiple targets is an incredibly fun game within itself. But most of demands of the encounters themselves are either RNG in nature, or simply waiting for one of the 3 morons in your raid (Seems like there's always 3...) to not screw up this time.

Arena? If the match isn't decided the moment the doors opens due to class imbalances or countercomps then it's decided, again by RNG factors. Even if it were more skill based one can only stomach so much "you cannot do that while stunned/silenced/assist trained" before getting fed up with it and logging out.

The only real issue at hand is simply that of the game lacking a proper base UI to support multiple DoTs with varying durations. It's quite enjoyable if you have DoTimer, and if you still don't enjoy it or can't handle it then maybe Affliction isn't for you? Affliction is a bastion of sorts for ultra attentive/involved players. There's really nowhere else to go for us but to another game, and even those that claim to cater to "hardcore" gamers cater only to hardcore in the "if you have no life..." meaning: camping world boss spawns, massive level grinds, etc. Not the hardcore in the skill intensive "you have to actually be good" meaning. There's really not a whole lot left outside of Affliction as most other specs in the game are nearly every bit as mindless as 0/21/40 was, are only moderately more engaging than such, or are only challenging in a solo environment. Affliction is all that's left. Please, please don't push this. Don't ruin it because you can't handle it. I'm sorry to say that, it is somewhat rude, but it's the truth. There's other specs, other classes where you can have your fill of easy rotations. Every class should truly have such a complex and attention demanding spec where good players can thrive and have a good time doing it.

Please, leave Affliction be.

Greatly Concerned With Mage Armor

2008-10-09T03:40:00.000-04:00

Reposting from here http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=10971908989&sid=2000

First of all I completely agree that Mages needed a leg up against Warlocks. Master Demonologist: Felhunter, and just the Felhunter in general has given you guys quite the rough time against us. You needed some love and you got it.

That being said I can't help but just stare at the screen with a blank look on my face as one class-wide, undispellable ability essentially invalidates most of my entire talent tree, Affliction, by simply causing our DoTs to not be worth casting at all. UA isn't even worth casting- it ticks only twice (down from 5). Corruption ticks 3 times. Haunt lasts a mere 6 seconds...maybe boosting the damage of 2 ticks. Drain Life ticks only twice (down from 5) Immolate ticks only twice. Fear lasts half duration (I don't have a problem here, really, that's more than fair) Siphon Life is really the only one worth using. Shadowpriests, likewise see the same effect. The only thing is this doesn't have nearly the impact on other classes/specs.

I guess what I'm trying to say is it essentially removes the whole "DoTer/debuffer" playstyle when we're in the arena or battleground against a Mage. Please don't misconstrue my complaint as losing to a Mage- I get steamrolled over by Rogues, Warriors, Ret Paladins, Deathknights all the time- but that doesn't bother me even a fraction as much as fighting a Mage and not even being able to use the abilities that define my character, essentially turning into a Destrolock with zero points in Destruction who has zero interest in playing a nuker. I've stuck with Affliction through thick and thin, even raiding BT/Sunwell with it when Destruction is clearly god mode and Affliction even wimpier than Mages =P

Anyway, just putting in my $0.02 in hopes that this ability will be reworked to still bring Mages out of their funk, but without acting as a complete playstyle killer to Affliction and Shadow.

Latest Lock Beta Thoughts

2008-09-29T14:22:00.002-04:00

I can't say a whole bunch has changed lately. Seems kinda like all three of the cloth classes are getting a lack of blue attention...maybe they're saving us for last? /shrug Here's my most pressing 5 issues:

Dark Pact
This ability simply doesn't offer enough to warrant being a 31-point talent. We briefly had the opportunity to test it at 200% and while that may or may not have been too strong I can safely say that 100% is most certainly not enough. Maybe 150% is a more appropriate amount, but I can tell you from experience that in PvE, and *especially* in PvP that we either use Dark Pact and get some mana or our pet gets to use its abilities- not both.

150%. Do it.

Everlasting Afflictions
Good talent but one minor gripe...Corruption often falls off due to not being able to even get a Shadowbolt in simply due to rotational variances that makes a bunch of DoTs needing refreshed in sequence- it can get pretty bad even just when I'm wailing on a dummy, I won't even get into how terrible it can be in an actual encounter with movement requirements... Could we see an ever so slight buff to this talent by letting Haunt refresh Corruption as well?

Haunt
Overall pretty good, but could we get a slight increase in the spread between the cooldown and the duration of the effect? A lot of the time, again due to rotational variances, we can't even begin casting Haunt until after it has already expired. Give us a few more seconds in the spread by either lowering the cooldown or increasing the duration of the debuff- preferably increase the debuff duration from 12 to 15 seconds. Or Maybe give us a Glyph for Haunt to increase the duration by 3 seconds?

Demonic Circle
Good idea but it doesn't work quite so well in practice. It suffers from the "I'm not psychic" problem where we don't necessarily even know where we're going to be fighting. Often enough when doing Strand of the Ancients I'll get jumped not but a few yards away from the circle because I had no idea the enemy was even coming.

IMO...

-Increase the range from 40 to 50 yards so we can stray a little father and recast the circle less.
-Don't let our enemies see the circle.

Fairly minor tweaks but they would help quite a bit.

Shadowflame
Incredibly weak. I just don't know what to say here. We've been harping on it for quite some time. What's up with this ability? Weak damage. No interesting secondary effect. Nothing. Needs a stun/knockback/knockdown/disarm/something!

Alternately bring back Atrocity in place of Shadowflame but make work on curses instead. "Your next curse also effects enemies within 20 yards of your target" 3 minute cooldown.

Prot Warrior = OMG

2008-09-24T01:31:00.002-04:00

So I randomly decided earlier today to try and spec my (level 65 in greens) Warrior to Prot just to test it out with the beta changes. All I can say is- amazing! It's not the fastest killing thing in the world, but it's so very interactive and I really enjoy it quite a bit. I feel like I'm back in Vanguard playing my Monk with all of the reactive abilities and cooldowns and whatnot. The new Shockwave talent combined with Concussive Blow and the improved Revenge talent give you a lot of stuns. Sword & Board procs are a lot of fun as well, adding further to the reactive element.

In a way it's a lot like Affliction in PvE- kills slowly but has some survivability as well. It's refreshing after getting mowed over on the premade server on a Warlock. (Warlocks are all kinds of squishy on the beta)

Anyway, I would go so far as to state that I enjoy Prot more than I do my Deathknight. Deathknights kill in PvE way too quickly (although Leiah has been saying they're pretty low DPS in the arena) Even specced Unholy the burst is pretty high, though no more than any other standard DPS class, which I really don't enjoy. I suppose I enjoy the thrill of combat more than I do the thrill of the kill- which is why I never really cared all that much for Rogues/Mages/Destruction etc.

If you have a Warrior make sure to copy em over to the PTR server and give prot a spin!

Affliction Damage Dissected

2008-09-22T01:15:00.004-04:00

I was curious to see how much less important Shadowbolt would become with UA having to be recast every 15 seconds, CoA working into our rotation, and Haunt having to be cast every 10-12 seconds. That being said I did two different tests on a dummy in Stormwind. Each were around 6-7 minutes in duration, the results of both came out very close to one another so I'll simply post one.

To be fair I'm just pounding on a dummy, I'm not in endgame gear, and I don't have any mana support (thus causing me to have to Lifetap a lot more which cuts into Shadowbolting thus lowering its % of overall DPS) so my Shadowbolt numbers should be lower because of those factors.

On the other hand Pandemic doesn't work on dummies, and there was zero movement required so I think everything comes out pretty neutral.

Anyway, here ya go. I think 20% looks pretty reasonable, we might see it being 25% of our total DPS in better gear, but comparing that to 40-50% like we see now it really diminishes the value of Destructive Reach, Ruin, etc. I'd love to be able to test it in a raid but I've been pretty busy lately with school so haven't had much time.

Anyway, after looking at the data and running a real sustained test I've come to a few conclusions.

1) Ruin and Destructive Reach are very overrated by the general beta Warlock community. Yes, my tests were done without Ruin, but even I had Ruin and had, say, 20% crit it would only boost the overall damage of Shadowbolt from 20% to 24%, although even then the extra crit would proc ISB and buff the DoTs more as well... Not so huge a deal for 5 talent points. Compare that to some of your alternatives in Affliction that might give you more bang for your buck.

2) Haunt needs to refresh Corruption in the Everlasting Afflictions tooltip. A few times Corruption fell off due to a string of needing to recast all the DoTs in one timeframe as well as haunt, and dark pact/lifetap. Haunt being added would smooth things out a good bit.

3) Dark Pact really needs to go back to 200%, 150% at an absolute minimum...blech.

4) The Affliction rotation is most certainly is fine. I've seen people gripe on the forums about it being too complex, but even just fighting a dummy I've found Affliction to be even more fun than before.

Things are looking better, but...

2008-09-20T16:44:00.004-04:00

A bunch of nice changes have come around lately. Pandemic, Malediction buffed, Death's Embrace buffed, Fel Concentration condensed, etc. There are, however, a handful of changes I'd still like to see that would really streamline everything.

1) Contagion condensed to 3 ranks or removed as a requirement for UA. I don't like to use the word "bloat" but that's a major bloat-point in the tree. It's fine for PvP but for raiding that's a nasty 5 points to have to drop, especially after you've already likely unloaded 14 talent points in the previous two tiers alone.

2) Haunt: The damage/healing portion of the ability are really quite lackluster right now. I'd like to see the ability become more focused- Specifically? Remove the healing portion and make it instant-cast (IE a weak nuke + DoT boost)

3) Dark Pact: 200% may have been over the top a few weeks ago, but with the way Lifetap works now in conjunction with Spirit it's far superior to DP. That being said it's a little too weak now and especially in PvP I feel it's not really usable what with you using up all your pets mana so it can't even use its abilities. I'd love the chance to test Dark Pact at 150%- a nice middle ground between the current lackluster 100% and the maybe over-the-top 200%.

4) Improved Fear: Maybe this talent isn't intended for deep Affliction, because I can achieve the same effect with CoEx, but I don't like the current implementation of it. (Causes your Fear spell to inflict a Nightmare on the target when the fear effect ends. The Nightmare effect reduces the target's movement speed by 15/30% for 5 sec.) It would be nice to see the Warlock and Priest versions swapped, with the Warlock version reducing damage by 30% and the Priest one reducing movement speed. I don't know how favorably the Priest would see this, however. but I think they might like it since they lack slow effects.

5) Reach Talents: I'm agreeing with Bibdy in his post, particuarly in regard to the reach talents. In short, Grim Reach and Destructive Reach should be swapped with Soul Siphon and Aftermath respectively. Getting the reach talents on the second tier would smooth things out nicely, because as Bibdy put it: "All of these talents only affect the spells in their assigned Tree (with the exception of Elemental Precision!), but Warlocks do not use just ONE tree for PvE DPS. No matter which Tree we pick, we rely on both of the others for DPS. " And he's quite right. Frost Mages use Frost spells. Fire Mages uses Fire spells. Arcane uses other somewhat (not sure about them in Wrath) but ALL Warlock specs use Destruction spells, and to a lesser extent, Affliction spells. The reach talents really need to be within reach (pun intended) without having to lay 17 points in another talent tree.

6) Shadowflame: With the latest damage reduction on it I don't see why anyone would even put it on their action bars. It was mediocre before- only really useful for soloing and acting as a Conflag-primer. But now it's even worse! After thinking about it I believe Shadowflame should be re-tooled to be our PvP defense since it surely won't get any use raiding due to the short range, but that short range can be used to address our excessive melee weaknesses.

Shadowflame (Rank 2)
25% of base mana
Instant cast
30 second cooldown
Targets in a cone in front of the caster are bathed in dark flame, causing their weapons to become extremely hot to the touch, disarming them for 5 sec, and taking an additional 212 Fire damage over 8 sec.

(IE cooldown doubled, DD removed, disarm effect added)

7) Paired with the Shadowflame change I would alter Demonic Circle to act as more of a DPS timer skill. Specifically, remove the whole teleport aspect of the spell and make it something similar to the concept of the M'uru trinkets.

Demonic Circle (Rank 1)
15% of base mana
0.5 sec cast
3 minute cooldown
You summon a Demonic Circle at your feet. While standing in this circle you gain 400 additional spellpower. Lasts 30 seconds.

Shadowflame Feedback

2008-09-13T20:43:00.004-04:00

To be blunt: Shadowflame really doesn't add a whole lot to the class. I don't think I'm the only one who feels this way. Sure, it's a nice spell for soloing but it doesn't have any real use in serious PvP or raiding. It's good for a quick Immolate primer for Conflag, but even that's only for deeper Destruction. It just seems to lack an overall usability.

What about attaching a stun/daze/knockback effect and increasing the cooldown as necessary? I don't think this spell can be retooled to be useful in raiding, but it would be nice if it were at least more useful for more than one spec in PvP. Even if it had a 1minute cooldown with a knockback that would be better than 15 seconds when you may not even be able to use it every 15 seconds due to LoS, range, etc. It needs some added utility or otherwise it will just take up one of two new ability slots...

A Couple of Arena Gripes (IE Nerf The Fucked Up Metagame)

2008-09-13T02:04:00.004-04:00

Can we please look into removing some of the aspects of the arena that create a sort of twisted metagame that we experience particuarly in 2v2? I'm not talking about specific class balance here. Everyone knows the general gripes about every class but I'm talkin' bout some of the general tactics which I feel are at least somewhat against the spirit of the game.

For example:

-Healers running away non stop with nothing more in mind than getting OOC to drink. As a pet class I have a much easier job of being able to keep them in combat than most (I feel bad for non pet teams in 2s) - But even then it doesn't feel like we're even fighting one another. It's a screwed up minigame as far as I'm concerned. If healers need buffs to mana regeneration then by all means give them their buffs. It seems like solely due to being able to use water in the arena it twists the entire strategy around this one facet. Not something I feel is in the spirit on the game. You may of course disagree...

-Similarly, the "kill the pet" strategy and the "run the pet across the arena and intentionally cause it to despawn" strategies. It's fairly screwy that teams can get rid of pets so easily and yet remove such a large portion of your ability to play your character. Once the pet is dead if you can't resummon the match is pretty well over. The coin has two sides, however- If pets are deemed so powerful that they need to be focused then by all means nerf the pets. I'm lobbying neither for buffs or nerfs, but rather a removal of the twisted metagame they create.

I have other gripes of course, but I'll stick to those two. It's not a matter of winning or losing in either case- it's how certain strategies that are available ruin the sense of fun and cohesion that the arena system would otherwise possess- things that can leave me seething at the end of a match- even matches we're victorious in.

Funny Observation

2008-09-10T13:51:00.002-04:00

You may not totally get this if you don't frequent the Warlock forum, but it seems like everyone who "should have" gotten a beta key due to high amounts of great feedback on the live forums- has gotten one. Bibdy, Skellum, Devorick, Socio, Themorrigan, Kyth (the list goes on) have all gotten in. Either they all lucked out or managed to get in contact with someone who had a key, etc. I'm sure some slipped through the cracks. Maso is one in particular that isn't in yet- but by and large somehow things have worked out like they should have and I'm glad to see the system work.

Or maybe they all got in touch with Leiah when he had extra keys like I did >_>

Scaling Is In!

2008-09-06T03:56:00.002-04:00

Pandemic: Each time you deal damage with Corruption or Unstable Affliction, you have a chance equal to your spell critical strike chance to deal 33/66/100% additional damage.

Not quite what I was expecting but it gets the job done!

Also, I put up a post earlier about some of the changes as well as some of the existing issues that have yet to been addressed. The list is shrinking, however, which is great.

Storm Peaks = Awesome

2008-08-28T12:21:00.002-04:00

I only got a brief chance to look around the zone several days back when they first opened it up. The next day when I logged back in the zone was closed again (due to some leveling exploit I believe) Now it's open again and I'm totally in love with this zone. It's like Winterspring and Dun Morogh on crack. The mountain peaks are high, the mobs are awesome, and the quests are great as well. It has a very Nordic theme. In fact (spoiler alert!) a good bit of it revolves around the relationship between two giants:Thorim (Thor) and Loken (Loki) who are brothers and are locked in a war with one another. You even go undercover at one point and do quests for otherwise hostile Brunnhildar clan- a bunch of frost skinned all female Vrykul and help them deal with their enemies, the Sons of Hodir (male vs female thing) and the Valyries (former allies who have sold out to the Lich King) I won't spoil any more for you but this zone is just GREAT.

Democratic National Convention

2008-08-26T23:40:00.002-04:00

Not a politics blog but I thought I'd chime in on this since it's fresh in the news and all.

I just got done watching several clips from the Democratic National Convention and it struck me as so odd just how touchy feely the whole thing was. The audience was enthralled as if taking part in a hardcore baptist revival- hooting and hollering and screaming and even some tears here and there. And listening to the speakers just sickened me. They play fully on the emotions of the viewer- Not on arguments or hard facts, but rather acting as a stimulus to induce an emotional reaction among those who are too blind to see it for what it is. Even Obama himself, a guy that seems pretty sharp IMO, has in the past said things that just make me scratch my head in wonder. Paraphrasing here, but when asked a question about taxes and how a certain policy of his regarding the taxing of upper income brackets actually hurt those in lower brackets he replied with "Well, it's just not fair." He didn't dispute the studies, or qualify how the poor would actually be better off with said policy, or say anything that even resembled a logical response to a perfectly legitimate question. No, just vague reply resembling an emotional comment I would expect to hear from a small child, not a man running for president. I was surprised I didn't see someone handing out Kleenexes and antidepressants at the DNC...because that's who it seemed they were pandering to.

Now, don't get me wrong. The Republicans certainly are no saints. They have their own list of issues to deal with... That being said I'll take a heartless, out of touch old businessman who won't change a thing running my country before I'll take a crybaby, head in the clouds upstart who would rather play to your emotions and make you feel good regardless of the factual reality of the situation.

Disclaimer: Draele is affiliated neither with the Democratic nor the Republicans party and is in fact a Libertarian, which has stances on issues shared and opposed by both parties.

What's With WoW Insider?

2008-08-17T15:43:00.003-04:00

I'm not sure how many of you read WoW Insider but lately I've been getting kinda irked by some of the articles I've read on there. Don't get me wrong, I'm not really trying to bash them or anything, hell, I have them linked on the sidebar, but the problem is so many of the articles are full of fallacies, generalities and overall give me a sense that they haven't done their homework on whatever they're writing about. IE maybe an article written by some guy in beta that makes you think "Is this guy *really* in beta?"

I seem to get a sort of vibe that many of them are journalists with a passing interest in WoW rather than WoW players who like to write about WoW. And you know what? There's nothing wrong with that, but as a very detail oriented guy it tends to grate on my nerves a little from time to time. I like to think everything I post on here is totally accurate and any opinion I venture has sound reasoning, but I do have it a lot easier since my subject matter is so very narrowly focused on one class. They have to write about several subjects so perfect accuracy perhaps isn't a luxury they can afford.

Just my thoughts for the day.

A Couple Of Graphs For A Forum Post...

2008-08-06T08:17:00.004-04:00

Ignore this. Just uploading these to make a point on the beta forums.

Affliction & Demonology Videos

2008-08-04T20:04:00.002-04:00

Affliction The Haunt graphic kinda sucks right now...hopefully they'll do something else to it.

Demonology Demon form is fun. Health funnel is crazy OP right now @ 700+ ticks per second.

Unholy/Frost Deathknight Video

2008-08-04T19:13:00.011-04:00

I tried to show off a few things about the class, or my spec at least. Your standard ability rotation, kiting, unloading a full runic power bar into them before they even touch you, and using Death Chill's 100% crit frost crit chance a couple times in there. Ultimately the focus of it is more on spell damage, especially in building runic power up through basic abilities, having Chill of the Grave and Dirge increase the amount of runic power you get, and Runic Power Mastery making all RP abilities cheaper. Overall it's really fun.

My Spec

A few things...

1) Server was a bit laggy so things are a bit off at points.

2) Quality of the video is pretty bad, make sure to use fullscreen so you can see the tooltips.

3) Sometimes the runic power might seem off, but there's currently a bug that doesn't show runic power decay out of combat.

Video

More To Come!

2008-08-04T00:23:00.004-04:00

I realize I've been a little scarce here lately. Between finals, catching up on sleep after finals and beta I've been pretty busy the past week. Some time in the next couple of days I'll put up some video of my Deathknight as well as a Demonology video. I made an Affliction video but scrapped it since it's pretty much the same as TBC just with bigger numbers. I'll make another Affliction grinding video once I get Shadowflame next level- which should be a little more interesting.

Also, it might be a little later in the week but I'll throw up some info about Venture Bay/Blue Sky Logging Camp, a couple of really fun PvP areas in western Grizzly Hills. Expect to see some pretty maps!

Beta!

2008-07-24T11:11:00.002-04:00

So I was given a beta key last night (yay!) Big thanks to the guy who got it for me!

I only got a chance to play around for a couple of hours but things are looking great so far, both for Warlocks and Deathknights.

I did throw up some initial feedback on the beta forum, however. Check it out here.

Let me know if you guys have any questions in particular about Warlocks or Deathknights and I'll try to answer them if I can!

Beta Thoughts

2008-07-19T01:29:00.006-04:00

All Warlock specs look pretty strong in their own right. I have gripes about individual talents or mechanics, but on the whole I think they've taken everything in an appropriate direction.

1) Soulshatter needs to be unresistable. With Cataclysm now adding spellhit in addition to Suppression Blizzard is steering us towards running 13% hit instead of 16%. The problem lies in that Soulshatter is neither Affliction nor Destruction- requiring we run 16% hit anyway... For an aggro wiping ability with a significant cooldown of 5 minutes I don't think Soulshatter being unresistable is at all unreasonable.

2) Felguard/Ruin looks to be THE premier raiding spec. They really went all out to make Demo viable. Fel Synergy will be great for keeping the FG alive without having to waste time with Health Funnel. Demonic Empowerment looks quite nice as well- though the duration for the effect remains to be seen. My guess is ~10 seconds. Need I even mention how nice Demonic Pact looks to be. Definitely going to want one Demo lock per raid.

3) Destruction got kicked in the junk with the Demonic Sacrifice nerf...but in the long run I think the old DS being gone is good for the development for the class. It remains to be seen how well Destro will stack up in the raid game but I'm betting that it will be the #1 DPS spec so long as the imp can stay alive. That being said Phase Shift needs to be changed from a total damage immunity to a 100% AoE avoidance. This will allow him to DPS in raids and act as a mana battery for Affliction, but keep him from being able to attack with impunity in PvP as he will be vulnerable to single target attacks.

4) Affliction looks pretty strong overall. I would have done a few things differently but on the whole I'm satisfied with the changes.

a) Fel Concentration is still a very bloated talent that either needs to be brought down to 2-3 ranks, or affect all Affliction spells.

b) The new Amplify Curse is in a word...interesting, although I can't really hop on board with the implementation simply because CoA/Doom really don't get a whole lot of use in the arena/raid game what with us using CoT/CoX in PvP and CoE/CoR in raids. I'd scrap this implementation and bump the cooldown back up to 3 minutes and have it allow your next CoA not count towards the one curse-per-target limit. (sure it's an old rehashed idea of mine but a sound one if I do say so myself)

c) I'm still not the biggest fan of Death's Embrace as thematics go...but I can live with this one I suppose =P

d) Haunt. I love the new implementation. It's viable for both PvE and PvP and fits with Affliction quite well. However, to address the issue of DoTs not scaling with stats other than spellpower I would tweak it. Currently it increases DoT damage by 15%. I would instead make it increase DoT damage by 10% *plus* 50% of your crit chance. This would effectively allow crit to effect DoT damage. So at 10% spellcrit you would break even at 15%, at 20% spellcrit you would hit 20%. It would be an easy way to work crit into some usefulness. Still, Haunt seems to be very strongly implemented. Thumbs up.

5) Pet Scaling. Maybe we'll see more of it. Rumors are floating around that Hunter pets are getting seriously looked at as far as scaling off stats is concerned Maybe our pets will inherit our spellhit, penetration and more of our stam/int/spirit. If we're really lucky, Resilience, but I'm not holding my breath on that one.

6) Finally, the Fel Armor/Demon Armor changes. I'm all for them, actually. I like the fact that they're creating a distinct PvE/PvP armor type. Fel Armor in particular, giving a base amount of spellpower, 30% of spirit to spellpower, and 30% spirit regen while casting makes a great deal of sense. Homogenizing gear will be a great thing- if any only if Blizzard does a good job at making everyone want the stats that are on said gear. This will do that for Spirit. They just need to work on Crit...

Undispellable Fel Armor

2008-07-15T17:18:00.002-04:00

So I get home, patch up and immediately go into an AV. Fel Armor didn't get dispelled every time I encountered a Hunter. It was a wonderful feeling and I'm sure Mages feel the same way. I'll admit it will royally suck when Mages have an undispellable Mage Armor that reduces the duration of all magical effects by 50%...but it is what it is and I think it's a change for the better.

On that note I truly believe the undispellable nature of self buffs needs to be extended to other classes. Any long term (which I would consider 5 minutes or longer) self-only buff should be undispellable. Why? Well, as I see it if a buff is of a long enough duration and is only able to be cast on oneself then it is an aspect of that class that should be considered permanent. These types of abilities are intended to cover up glaring class weaknesses or buff up a class strength in order to effectively compete. To simply be able to remove one of these abilities is just silly.

Water Shield
Lightning Shield
Inner Fire
Omen of Clarity
Etc.

Wouldn't that negate the ability to dispel for other classes? I don't think so, really. Dispelling will still continue to be a valid tactic for short-term and non-class specific buffs. PWS, PWF, Paladin Blessings (on that note Paladins would do well to get a self only version of BoW since they really *do* need it) Earth Shield, MotW, BoP, Innervate, Eradication, etc.

Again, I simply feel that the long-term self buffs are far too vital to a class' performance be so easily removed. I would not, however, be opposed to Mass Dispel effecting them as it does require significantly more effort than spamming Purge, Devour Magic, Arcane Shot, etc.

The Fall Of Affliction? (Alternate Title: Die Shadowbolt, Please, Please, Die)

2008-07-09T19:35:00.006-04:00

Okay folks, it looks like Blizzard cleared several websites to release alpha based talent/ability information so I'd like to take the time to post what I've wanted to for several weeks now. If you haven't had seen already go check out WoWhead and get a look at the new talents- but make sure to come back!

For a few weeks now I've been discussing with various people (covertly of course!) the inadequacies of the Wrath of the Lich King (alpha) Affliction talents. I've talked with several big names in the Warlock community, guildies, and even random locks on my server. Most have agreed with my points- if not fully then at least partially. Some might say I'm a tough sort to satisfy but it seems in this case these thoughts reflect those of at least a handful of players.

The current dilemma is that Affliction Warlocks are dumped as guilds go into Sunwell due to very poor damage output as DoTs gain no DPS from Haste or Crit- both stats that are very prevalent on endgame gear and necessary to multiple off spellpower and one another to create increasing levels of DPS like you see from most classes/specs. Even considering the added raid utility Affliction brings with Malediction and Shadow Embrace Affliction is deemed not worth the raid slot. Let's see how Blizzard has fared in the alpha and if they've fixed the problem...

Eradication: Admittedly not a bad idea in concept. DoTs proccing a Haste buff is pretty cool. But what is that Haste going to be used on in raiding? Shadowbolt. Last time I checked Shadowbolt wasn't the focus of Affliction- DoTs, Debuffs and Drains were. Shadowbolt is filler. Poorly scaling filler at that. This talent alone wouldn't be too bad if it were accompanied by several other strong and purposeful talents- but that's unfortunately not the case.

Death's Embrace: This talent needs the axe. Yet more Shadowbolt. +15% crit chance on targets below 20% health. It may look potent, but keep in mind this only affects Shadowbolt/Shadowburn- not UA, not Siphon Life, not Corruption. Plus add into the fact that other classes/specs have similar "sub 20%" effects and so that 20% starts to go by really quickly since raid DPS rises so much when the 20% mark is breached.

Everlasting Afflictions: Okay, this is what I'm talking about! Boosted DoT coefficients is just the type of thing Affliction needs. It fits the theme and it fits the function. A perfect addition! Too bad all this does is counteract Improved Shadowbolt no longer effecting DoTs...That's right! ISB only effects nukes now. Let's not forget the secondary portion of the talent: Corruption refreshing itself when Shadowbolt hits. Aside from the fact that this could be a very dangerous effect on encounters with aggro drops(Corruption tick = aggro) it's another blow to the gut by further divorcing us from our DoT rotations.

Cripple: I've read that this talent is being removed in favor of something else yet to be announced. This is certainly very Affliction worthy theme-wise, however it would appear to offer very little in the raid game. Hopefully when Blizzard thinks up it's replacement they will consider something more like Unstable Affliction- useful in both the PvE and PvP game.

My thoughts in a nutshell? Blizzard is attempting to shove Shadowbolt down our throats- maybe they're encouraging a 50/0/21 raid build but I can't help but sneer at the thought. It just doesn't fit with the style of Affliction. I realize this is veering further from math and towards opinion but c'mon Blizzard! If we wanted 70-80% of our DPS to consist of Shadowbolt wouldn't it make sense to spec Destruction, not Affliction? You're taking the lazy way out- rather than fixing DoT scaling you're diluting the differences between the two talent trees. More Shadowbolt spam. Less casting DoTs. Less overall DoT DPS. It all feels oh so poorly inspired. I could sit here for hours and spout off ideas that would work better but the fact remains: Blizzard is ruining the identity of the Affliction tree and we can do nothing but sit here and hope that someone at Blizzard reads this and takes note.

Tweakified WotLK Talent Affliction Tree

2008-07-06T05:00:00.003-04:00

Just did Affliction, Kyth. I don't wanna suggest anything that wouldn't vibe well with Destro again =P

http://www.war-tools.com/t55507.html

Another 51pt Affliction Idea

2008-06-25T00:38:00.005-04:00

Curse Mastery- Grants each of your curses a secondary effect as follows:

Agony: Gives a chance when dealing damage to afflict the target with chest pains, stunning them for 3 seconds.
Doom: Reduces the time for the damage to be dealt by 10 seconds.
Elements: Additionally increases damage done by DoT effects by 10% (Magical DoTs, Bleeds, Diseases, the works)
Exhaustion: Immobilizes the target for 2 seconds whenever Curse of Exhaustion ends.
Recklessness: Causes the target to damage themselves for 5% of the damage they deal for a maximum of 20% of your total health per attack/spell.
Tongues: Increases mana cost of spells by 10%
Weakness: Increases Rage/Energy/Runic power ability costs by 10%

Sounds fitting, no?

Cripple Goes The Way Of Atrocity...

2008-06-21T03:40:00.002-04:00

...or so I've read. It's good to see that ideas that don't work really do go down the crapper. On the flip side apparently they are focusing more on the Paladin/Hunter talents right now so we won't see a replacement for Cripple for a while- Which is fine, give them time to sit on it and think up something really good. Can't wait to see what they come up with next!

Vanguard...Again!

2008-06-13T23:23:00.003-04:00

I guess I've hit another WoW lull and it appears I'm not the only one. A few people in my guild have recently called it quits, at least temporarily, either due to boredom or spending the summer with the kids, etc. I haven't totally quit but I have dialed back the number of days I raid each week. Why? Well, two reasons.

Firstly- I'm just plain getting bored. When we killed Illidan I wasn't jumping up and down with joy like when we got Ragnaros, Vashj, Kael, etc. I hate to say it but I really didn't *care*. I'll partly blame that on general burnout. I've had 95% raid attendance for well over a year which is a recipe for burnout. I'll admit that some nights I didn't want to put down what I was doing to raid. It got to the point of becoming more of a chore than a hobby. Even having taken most of this week off and just raiding on Thursday I enjoyed myself much more than the previous week. Playing too much just numbs you...

Secondly- Future prospects. I'm losing interest because, well not to sound depressing, but the future looks grim. Sunwell brings new content, but even boss fights grow old after the first few kills. Affliction continues to fall further and further behind and the trend will only grow worse in Sunwell. I'm going to have to sit myself out on Brutallus because I won't be able to meet the required DPS. Also, Affliction isn't looking so hot in WotLK alpha. Most of the new talents are either entirely too PvP focused, or the mere concept of the talent is just 100% fucking stupid. There's no sign of any change regarding DoTs and Haste/Crit...maybe coming later, maybe not. Oh, and Deathknight totally isn't panning out to be anything like I had planned- I might make one as an alt, but the overall ability mix isn't what I was looking for.

All that down in the dumps stuff being said...I started playing Vanguard again and am having a blast! I tried a bunch of the classes up to level 10 and have settled in on just playing my Psionicist (which I had previously leveled up to 22) and my Monk, which I've been enjoying greatly. I'm going to get the Monk up to 22 and then level them up side by side, playing whichever the group needs. They are a stark contrast of one another:

The Psionicist is an extremely proactive "take-control of the situation" type class with the most CC/kiting options in the game(think of a pull in an instance where you can fear + banish + voidwalker offtank + Curse of Ex kiting + Mind control + mind controlled mob offtanking all in one character that still remains quite balanced) It's a micromanager's paradise playing a Psi, both solo and in groups. I've already talked about them on the blog before so I'll spend more time discussing my newly discovered Monk.

The Monk, in contrast, is a super-reactive damage machine. They're like a DPS Warrior/Rogue mix with some mystical flare added on top. They DPS well, are a suitable offtank, and have a bunch of fun abilities like Feign Death and Slow Fall. Monk attack chains *really* liven up the gameplay. When you crit you can choose between 3 different finishers, all useful depending on the situation. When you dodge an attack a counterattack opens up- which you can trigger by using "Swaying Step" making you dodge the next attack aimed at you. If you parry an attack you can use "Quivering Palm" to lower the target's damage by 50% for 8 seconds. Not to mention the stance system...which totally blows WoW's out of the water:

Warriors change stances, sure, but as a Vanguard Monk you change stances A LOT. Enter Crane Stance for increased Dodge/Parry chance to open up the Counterattack abilities. Crane stance also gives a reduction to attack endurance cost(sorta like Rage) so you can use more of the normal specials to build up "Jin" (sorta like combo points...sorta...) . Did a counterattack just open up? Switch to Tiger stance for increase crit chance, use the ability and go back to Crane Stance to build more Jin. When you're ready to use your built up Jin on your stronger attacks you Feign Death to wipe your aggro, switch back to Tiger Stance for increased crit chance as you dump all your Jin into a few huge "Ashen Hand" attacks which likely crit to proc a finisher attack which you then use, then back to Crane Stance again. When you leave combat you can switch to Harmonious stance to build up Jin while you're out of combat traveling, or studying a much stronger foe to build up your much needed Jin for the fight. Monk is a great class that really keeps you on your toes.

A mix of good and bad. As WoW wanes Vanguard comes into the picture. It makes me wish, again, for the millionth time that someone would develop a game with the depth, complexity and PvE focus of Vanguard with the overall polish and customizability of WoW. Sure, they're intended for two completely different audiences- WoW is the casual focused, mainstream, simple game developed by Blizzard, who have a legacy of the aforementioned "polish". Vanguard is more of a niche game with great focus on depth, immersion, and obviously for slightly more hardcore gamers with its more complex gameplay systems.

Why, oh why can't I have both merged into one? Vanguard had a chance but it's just too bad their funding fell through and they had to be bought up by SOE, who certainly do not have the best track record.

Cripple Eh?

2008-06-05T02:23:00.003-04:00

Okay, so Atrocity is gone. Good riddance. The synergy with Haunt would have been kinda cool, but what's the trouble in manually casting Corruption? Less automation is the last thing we need.

What did they put in its place? Cripple. I gotta admit I like the idea of Cripple a hell of a lot better than Atrocity. Even though Cripple in its current form is pretty overpowered I do like it in concept.

That being said I've gotta be the wet blanket you all know me to be... It really doesn't offer a whole lot in the PvE realms of things. Maybe for kiting adds. Vashj, for example would be a good use- but really it's just a beefed up version of CoEx, and in most cases CoEx is enough.

I'd like to see cripple get a cooldown attached. 30 seconds (ballpark.) In addition to the slowing effect I'd like to see it boost your damage over time effects by a percentage as well. Not too much, but enough so it would be worth more DPS than 1.5 seconds of a Shadowbolt. 10 seconds of say.... +25%? Something like that? /shrug

I just hate seeing talents with limited PvP use or limited raid use. Why can't they design everything with both in mind? The last thing we need is another Shadowfury or Dragon's Breath.

Tweaks To Atrocity

2008-05-23T02:08:00.006-04:00

I'm not posting unreleased content here, but if you've seen the alpha Warlock talents you'll know what I'm talking about.

Okay, the problem as I see it with Atrocity, the 51-point Affliction talent is it's just too situational, in a situation where we have another spell which already does a bang-up job. I will admit, the synergy between Atrocity and Haunt is not only effective, but just sounds awesome...even still, Atrocity is too situational and needs to be reworked.

I would like to propose the following:

Atrocity
30 second cooldown
Your next Corruption spell... {insert alpha Atrocity effect here}
*or*
Your next Curse of Agony does not count towards your one curse per target limit.

Voila! The talent becomes something of an amplify curse for Corruption and Curse of Agony, with Agony giving a nice single target DPS boost, and Corruption giving a nice {non single target} DPS boost. I feel that allowing Curse of Agony to be up alongside Curse of Shadows is important as we have so many talents that boost the damage output of CoA, yet our raids expect us to be the Curse of Shadows bitch. With this you end up with a versatile talent useful in both PvE and PvP, and in single target and {non single target} situations.

Thoughts? About the only thing I could see anyone taking issue with is the cooldown, but the 30 second cooldown allows the synergy with Haunt to work out just right.

Permabanned :O

2008-05-22T00:13:00.007-04:00

So yeah. I'm normally not one to get banned, or even get a warning. I tend to play by the rules pretty well. So there's a 10 page thread on the Warlock forum on the WotLK alpha talents...it was up for a whole day...nothing deleted! I figured Blizzard knew the leaks were pretty widespread so decided to lay off. Boy was I mistaken! I made a thread critiquing the Affliction talents(of the 5 new talents only one was worth a damn...I had to!) Low and behold a couple of hours ago I log into the forum and am...permabanned! The odd thing is I haven't even had an infractions before and I didn't even post *what* the talents did. Others who were discussing in the same manner only got 1 week bans. I'm going to try to appeal this. I understand it's their rules, and respect that, but I'd like them to look over my post again to see that I didn't actually post unreleased content, but was just discussing it.

Until then I'll be posting on the character "Painez"

EDIT:

Hello,

After reviewing your account's forum record we have determined
that the appropriate actions were taken, and this account will not
have forum privileges restored under any circumstances. We
regret to implement such severe action, but at times it is
necessary to maintain a positive forum environment.

"A positive forum environment" WTF? They could at least shoot me
some line on Blizzard's intellectual property, etc. Not some canned
response totally unrelated to the actual case. Oh well...

Damn...I'm Fugly!

2008-05-18T03:45:00.005-04:00

Okay so the picture you normally see of Draele on the here is pretty badass, right? I mean, I got some nice lookin' gear, everything kinda matches. It's got a good vibe- ya know?. Lately though? I'm outright fugly. Throw on the T6 gloves, T6 shoulders and a new weapon + offhand combo. Nasty. Just scary. Totally unappealing. Blizzard really needs to let us dye our armor. I'm not normally one to care a whole lot about what my gear actually looks like, but I am pretty particular of the colors they come in. I don't like bright colors...at all. Give me your blues, greens, dark purples, browns or any grayscale color and I'm a happy camper. But for the love of god keep red, yellow, orange, & pink the hell away from me...

And without further ado I present to you the new and unimproved "Fugly Draele":

To Dwarf Or Draenei?

2008-05-13T02:43:00.004-04:00

...Not the kind of thing I normally post on here but yesterday I saved my two potential Deathknight names. One Dwarf and one Draenei. (Certainly not your standard fare Human, Undead or pink-pigtailed female gnome that everyone else wants to make) This is going to be a tough choice for me. Dwarves just wreak of badassery and are my favorite fantasy race. 'Nuff said. Draenei seem like they might make a terrible DK, what being the Naaru brown-nosers they are- but if you give them just the right features they can look pretty dark too- and let's not mention two very nice racials with Gift of the Naaru and Heroic Presence. They clearly have the advantage as racials go compared to Stoneform and Treasure Tracking. The tail is what's got me, though. Damn distracting wiggly thing...

Here's Krigus:

And Daerdric:

Some Thoughts On The Recent Lich King Information

2008-05-10T03:14:00.005-04:00

Well, that certainly was a sudden flood of information, wasn't it? I caught wind of the news coming on WoWinsider just before heading to bed last night. Let's just say I ended up going to bed at 6AM instead of 3AM...

I'll touch on my personal highlights of all the new media and info...

1) The whole 10/25man version of every dungeon news. I'm all for it. I never understood how people could be so against something that's just letting other players enjoy the game. So long as the 25-mans have better loot I can't voice a single concern. Hell, since Blizzard won't have to create different dungeons for different crowds it really let's them make the most of their development team talent, which hopefully means new content will roll out quicker! To anyone still against it: It sure beats Blizzard trying to find some middle ground between casuals and raiders that won't suit either group and make everyone pissed. I think with this change the only people who will truly be upset will be raiders who take themselves and their egos *too* seriously.

2) Deathknight information. A few things were clarified about the class mechanics. Notably the "Runic Power" mechanic which acts as another resource type that builds up as you use runes, effectively allowing stronger moves to be charged up over time. This really adds another level of depth to the class that I wasn't expecting. Another interesting tidbit of info was the whole "Presence" mechanic, which functions similarly to Warriors stances. Frost Presence increases your mitigation and threat, Blood increases your damage output, and Unholy increases your movements speed/"other PvP stuff".

I really like this concept as it adds a lot of choices to how you play your class. What spec? Which runes do I put on my blade? What presence will I be using? Add Runic power on top of that and you've got what *appears* to be a pretty intricate and customizable class. I just hope the Unholy talent tree isn't necessarily just PvP focused like the Unholy Presence would infer... I hate how they did that to Warriors with Arms=PvP, Fury=RaidDPS, Prot=Tanking. Each talent tree should be raid and PvP viable, not be pigeonholed...

Krigus, the Dwarven Unholy Deathknight raider may never exist if this is true. =(

3) Visuals. I'm in love with "The Nexus" dungeon. Check out this video of the Borean Tundra that shows The Nexus. Holy crap that's pure awesome. I've wanted an icy style dungeon ever since that blue dragon cave in Winterspring! Really looking forward to this one!

All in all it was nice to get some clarifications and get some new info, but my appetite simply will not be sated until I can get a look at the Deathknight talents/abilities, and the new Affliction talents/abilities. I'm dying to see these, discuss them, theorycraft them, and maybe even get in the beta and get a chance to try them out an offer feedback on 'em.

My UI

2008-04-23T16:14:00.011-04:00

Had a few requests to see it so here it is. This is one I took to show off how high my shadow gets when the Hyjal ring, Hex Shrunken Head and 2pc t4 procs. Everything I have keybound isn't on screen- all the buttons you see are clicked.

Per request here's the mods I run...I left off some... The ones I have listed here are either cosmetic or functionally useful.

Apeture: The big big black bar at the bottom of the screen.
DoTimer Suite: The DoT timers on the right side of the screen and cooldown in the bottom right of the screen.
Bongos2: My button bars and keybindings.
Clearfont2: My different than normal fonts for most things. Baar Sophia is the font for everything but target's damage you see.
Closetgnome: The gear sets.
eCastingbar: My cast bar, target's cast bar, and fatigue bars.
eeShards: Shard display plugin for FuBar. Also, automatically deletes excess shards above any number you set.
FuBar: The bar at the bottom. Clockfu, Bagfu, Durabilityfu, Moneyfu, Questsfu(which is the quests in the top left too)
Good Damage Font 2.0: The damage font. It's Adventure.
Itemprice Tooltip: Not seen on screen, but this adds the vendor price to the tooltip of every item.
Onebag/Onebank/Onering: Just combines all my bags into one big bag and changes the background.
Pitbull: My unitframes.
Prat: My chat mod.
Ratingbuster: Shows percentage equivalents to spell hit rating, etc.
Scrolling Combat Text: I think most people have this =P
SharedMedia: Shares fonts, textures, etc across several addons and saves memory by doing so.
Squeenix: My square, borderless minimap.
Visor2: My "move stuff" addon. Nifty for shifting things around that aren't covered in other mods. Like the tracking menu, buffs frame, etc I've moved around.
Xloot: Very nice loot mod. Just makes the looting window look really slick, adds a quick link all items to guild/raid/etc and expands the size of the looting window based on how many items are on a body.

Swap Demonic Sacrifice & Dark Pact?

2008-04-17T19:51:00.005-04:00

Apparently one of the ideas I put forward in the post I linked to in the previous entry is quite popular. That being the idea of swapping Demonic Sacrifice & Dark Pact combined with a change to Mana Feed.

Demonology's idea would be that Mana Feed would be changed to act as a source of mana renewal for the demons. The demons, gaining back their mana would both act as damage/utility *and* as a mana battery for the Warlock. This synergy between the Warlock and their demon is simply paramount to the Demonology tree so why not extend it? Demonology should thrive on having it's demon out and having synergy with it, not sacrificing it!

Affliction would get an altered Demonic sacrifice, because, well Affliction already has improved Lifetap, and having the best health leech abilities is better suited to sacrificing health for mana. This Demonic Sacrifice would only be a 10% damage increase(down from 15%) but also bestow a 10% increase to health/mana received, further reinforcing Affliction being the health/mana sponge.

Destruction, finally, would gain both a buff to Conflagrate and Shadowfury, with Conflag being changed to both a burst and sustained damage ability which would renew, rather than consume, Immolate giving Destro a new ability to use in raids, help their sustained damage in PvP and make Fire Destro just that much more appealing. Shadowfury wouldn't actually get a buff in damage, but rather would debuff the mob/player to take more damage, in PvP helping to focus train target(s) with both a stun and damage debuff, and in PvE would give Destruction some utility.

http://www.war-tools.com/t50549.html

In conclusion, Demonology would become more synergistic with Dark Pact/Mana Feed and not have a nearly wasted 21 pt talent in DS, Affliction would have it's damage and mana/health stealing capabilities increased by DS and Destruction would move away from being forced to pick up DS just to spam Shadowbolt ad nauseum, and would begin to use DoTs(Immolate+Conflag) and debuff the mob more(Shadowfury) making it much more of a Warlock and much less of a "Shadowmage."

Thoughts?

DS Forum Post

2008-04-14T01:38:00.001-04:00

I think I got a pretty strong (and dramatic!) discussion going on involving Demonic Sacrifice here. Heading to bed now, it should be interesting to read tomorrow afternoon!

Talent Tune-up: Suppression

2008-04-14T00:03:00.003-04:00

So I figure I'd write something about talents that just don't seem "right". Not in interest of trying to get buffed(Hell not many people read this Blog anyway for me to have much effect), but rather from a design/mechanical perspective things that just don't make a whole lot of sense... The backseat game developer is sneaking through!

Today I'll talk about Suppression. Yes our friendly tier 1 talent. I guess my gripe here is that it doesn't seem all that focused. For raiding even deep Affliction Locks need to cap their Spellhit for Shadowbolt, Immolate & Soulshatter. Its usefulness there fails. For leveling you generally won't be fighting mobs over +2 levels(8%) so Suppression exceeds this cap. The only real purpose it serves is to pad your hit cap while gearing up for that 16% hit for bosses, though this is a very brief period.

Ultimately I'd change this talent in one of two ways: A direct change to Suppression itself or making all that hit useful in some other way. Both tie into existing phenomenon which I will go into detail about...

Changing Suppression: Change Suppression from 2/4/6/8/10 Affliction Spellhit, to 1/2/3/4/5 Shadow Spellhit. This would cover everything but Immolate(no biggie) effectively lowering the real hit cap to 11%. Not nearly as nice as Shadowpriests and their 6%, but a much nicer change from Suppression's current incarnation. Secondly, it would be a very nice tier 1 talent for both Demonology and Destruction to pick up.

"What about DS/Destro? They won't ever have room in their build to get Suppression." To that I say: Demonic Sacrifice is flawed, especially given the placement in the tree. Blizzard will be extremely hard pressed to create a 51 point Destro talent that rivals DS for two reasons. A) DS is a very strong talent. +15% damage or 3%mp4 are both very appealing buffs. B) What use do Destruction Warlocks even have for their pets in raids anyway? There is no real opportunity cost with DS because giving up your pet means is but an afterthought for Destruction, making the talent all the more desirable. IMO Demonic Sacrifice should be nerfed and made into a trainable ability as it will only cause problems whenever Destruction spec choices/balance are involved.

Making All That Spellhit Useful: What if Affliction had its own "spam" attack that took advantage of Suppression? I'll admit I've never been the biggest fan of the concept that even as Affliction the spell I cast the most is Shadowbolt, a Destruction spell. But even still, what if Drain Soul actually was *actually* good for doing damage? With the 15 second duration and 50% "Drain coefficient" it's far from useful as DPS. Simply remove the 50% coefficient cut, and then make a talent in Affliction increasing the tick speed, and reducing the overall channeling time from 15 seconds down to 10, thus artificially raising the coefficient much like Bane does and making it tick every 2 seconds instead of 3. It would be competitive damage then, and Suppression would actually see use past a couple points.

Either one would work. I'll admit I'm partial to #2, but #1 is far more simple and elegant. Either way, this is a flawed talent and I'd love to see it somehow changed.

Respec Time

2008-04-13T23:40:00.003-04:00

So I did a slight respec the other day. From 43/7/11 to 45/5/11. Dropped 1 point in Improved Lifetap(with the new spirit changes a raid buffed Imp can nearly sustain me) and 2 points in Demonic Embrace(I'm a little burnt on arenas ATM, so why not?) and used those 3 points to fill out Shadow Embrace from my former 2/5. Hopefully the raid will appreciate it and it'll even help a little when doing dailies! GG 3% less damage.

Don't Bother With Forums On The Weekends

2008-04-12T06:05:00.002-04:00

I'm probably preaching to the choir here, but do yourself a favor and completely ignore the Blizzard forums between Friday night and Sunday. The level of stupid(not ignorance, ignorance is quite forgivable) on the forums on the weekends is simply atrocious. Between thread necros, trolls, and morons you've got better chances of having an intelligent WoW conversation with your grandmother. Right.

Finished Atlas Shrugged

2008-04-08T02:51:00.003-04:00

So I finished Atlas Shrugged. Actually, I finished it a couple weeks ago but forgot to write anything about it. I'd highly recommend it to anyone who identifies themselves as (fiscally) conservative. It's definitely the longest single book I've ever read, and I'll admit it had some rather dull parts to it including a 50 page speech I read only 30 pages of, but I feel I gained a lot out of reading it and if you can dedicate the time to reading it you will too.

Gives Us Infos...

2008-04-08T02:40:00.003-04:00

A bunch of us were talking on vent about WotLK earlier. We're just dying for infos, especially those of us considering going Deathknight(Not so much personally, but I'd still like to know about them) It looks like Friends & Family beta is starting soon so maybe we'll get some info in a couple months but cmon... Speculation is only fun when we're at least getting a steady stream of tidbits! One of the CMs said some info might come out in the next Blizzcast but we don't know when that will be.

I feel like such a consumer fool. Goes to show there's still much room to be filled in the entertainment industry. When you have people like me rabidly foaming at the mouth awaiting the next game, book, or movie you know you've got more profits to rake in. And I'll gladly give you your profits, but god damnit it push your content faster!

A Not So Longwinded Post...

2008-04-04T02:27:00.003-04:00

So this post is actually pretty short and to the point. It's not regarding sweeping changes or anything like that, just a few little tweaks to remove some unnecessary annoyances...

Check it out!

Timbal's Finally Dropped!

2008-03-31T13:58:00.021-04:00

So after much frustration and seeing far too many Vials of the Sunwell destroy my hopes and dreams- Timbal's Focusing Crystal finally dropped for me last night. I haven't gotten a chance to test it in a raid setting yet, but I'm looking forward to it Tuesday.

...So my assortment of trinkets is now:

Hex Shrunken Head The best by far. I'll always have it equipped.

Darkmoon Card: Crusade Definitely a little bit better than Timbal's but only on fights where continual casting with no interruptions is guaranteed. I'll keep using this guy on Shade of Akama, Teron Gorefiend, and other similar fights.

Timbal's Focusing Crystal Just a notch under Crusade but without the effective "must not stop casting" restriction. A great passive general use boss fight trinket and one less thing to worry about on some of the more intricate boss fights. (Worrying about the Crusade buff dropping off is a minigame in itself!)

Icon of the Silver Crescent Not for boss fights, but better than Timbal's and Crusade for soloing, trash, 5-mans, etc. If you're going to have significant breaks in the action the cooldown on this trinket effectively shrinks. Plus this is just great fun on large trash pulls. Activate Hex, DoT everything, activate Icon, DoT some more. That's a lot of added damage when you have 40 seconds of ~+200 damage applied to all your DoTs on several targets.

Fetish of the Sand Reaver Gotta love how this trinket still kicks ass at level 70. It's my best buddy for AoE pulls, especially in Hyjal!

A nice little collection if I do say so myself. Now I can drop my prejudices and start running Magister's Terrace with Shadowpriests to help them get theirs. Yes, I was an evil bastard and wouldn't run Terrace with a Shadowpriest...but hey I'm more than willing to help them now that I have mine. =D

Yet Another Longwinded Post...

2008-03-12T01:38:00.005-04:00

So yeah. I've made yet another TLDR worthy thread on the Warlock forums. All in interest of Affliction and a little procrastinating studying for a test (well...mostly procrastination.../cry I really do my best writing while I'm putting off something else...)

Here it is. Just go read it on the forums. I don't like posting short novels on here, it really clutters the place up!

An Interesting Theory...

2008-03-01T16:27:00.004-05:00

So today I stumbled upon this thread, and I tend to see similar discussions of that sort every so often. Essentially, WoW addiction becoming a problem with one ignoring real life responsibilities, time with a significant other, etc. I see these threads, I see players in guild sometimes get "wife aggro" etc, and combined with my own experiences and I can't help but feel that the problem, or at least the majority of it is *not* the neglect of any sort of responsibility, or spending less time with your significant other, but rather *why* you aren't, and in many cases, even when you do "take care of your shit" it's a problem.

Imagine some random guy who is labeled by his significant other as a "WoW addict" were to drop WoW and go join a local bowling league, or and spend the same *exact* amount of time away from their responsibilities. I guarantee 90% of the time hey'd get less flak about it. The issue isn't necessarily that responsibilities are being shirked, or that they're not spending time with their significant others, but rather that they're spending time with a "silly game"

It seems like the label of "addiction" is being thrown around a little too liberally by people who just lack a fundamental respect for certain hobbies, IE gaming, simply because they either don't understand it or reject it as it's not socially sanctioned as a "proper" hobby.

Personally? I'm single. Rather happily. But even I get crap from friends for "wasting my time" with WoW when all they're doing is playing some X-box game or going to get drunk and play poker. Now don't get me wrong- addiction is a very real problem- but it just seems like like much of the anger/frustration surrounding PC gaming "addiction" labeling stems not from neglecting ones life, but rather the ignorance of the accuser. PC gaming does tend to be a little more complex and difficult to "get" at a glance like many console games, or even a sport or other hobby, so it's quite easy to develop angst towards these games that one might not understand.

Is ignorance the driving force that makes people in your life take issue with your gaming hobbies? I think so.

(As an aside I fully admit being addicted to the computer. Not to any specific game, chat program, forum, email, or anything really, but I am addicted to the sum of the parts of the experience of being on the computer. Being able to communicate, play games, do school work, listen to music, shop, learn, etc. I am very much addicted to that but I think most of us are and just aren't willing to admit it...Plus what with the advent of AIM/myspace/etc being on the computer so much is quickly becoming, or already is, an acceptable addiction of sorts)

Rogues, Spies, & Assassins

2008-02-29T15:53:00.008-05:00

So I type this after playing a few games of TF2 today...I dare say that I truly hate Rogues, Spies, and Assassins- that whole archetype across all gaming genres. Not because they're too strong, or too weak, or their playstyle is/isn't fun, or anything like that. Why? Because they always go after people behind the lines of combat. "What's wrong with that? That's what they're for." you say? Well, that's perfectly fine and all except when you consider that it completely nullifies the entire purpose of playing conservatively. Consider the reason I'm not on the front lines in the middle of the frag fest. It's because I don't want to die. I'm totally fine with getting less kills if it also means getting killed less myself. The monkey wrench in this whole risk/reward scenario is that these classes by default are going for the folks way behind the lines and making them pay either way.

I felt compelled to make a chart since I've been staring at portfolio mix scatter plots with risk/return all week. (Damnit, why can't I diversify my risk away with negatively correlated highly risky stocks in WoW & TF2) Anyway...

*inserts Ben Stein voice* As you can see, chart number one represents the standard risk/reward(kills vs deaths) function. Chart number two, however, interjects said "sneaky" classes into the equation, thus drastically reducing the lifespan of said conservative player.

All joking aside, it's just really fucking annoying. I'm not going to point at any game and say it's a problem, so much as a major annoyance as I do tend to play pretty conservatively. Most of the time I don't die too much for playing cautiously(Affliction Lock & Demoman FTW) but occasionally there will be a good Rogue or Spy that will literally make me want to just leave the server or quit the BG. Props to them, I respect their skill for sure and they earn their kills, but at the same time it ruins the whole concept of playing conservatively for the purpose of avoiding deaths.

/shrug If they piss me off enough I just go Pyro and make their playstyle pointless as they have mine.

Lifetap Changed on PTR

2008-02-23T18:02:00.005-05:00

So apparently on the PTR there has been a change to Lifetap, and not for the better. Instead of converting a base amount of HP into a base amount of mana and it scaling with spelldmg, it will now simply convert 16% of your health into 16% of your mana.

What does this mean? It means Int is going to be a much more attractive stat, and gaining more Stamina is actually going to increase the amount of health you sacrifice with Lifetap without actually increasing the mana you get back. This I find to be quite counterintuitive. Shouldn't getting better gear be a good thing?

Either way, this nerf was aimed at the arenas for sure where SL/SL Warlocks stack large amounts of Stam and very little int, so they'll be converting a *lot* of health into minimal mana = major nerf. The impact won't be quite so severe in raiding as HP/mana ratios are much closer to 1:1, but it will still be a nerf. Even less of a nerf for Affliction as Dark Pact is unaffected by this change.

What I *am* concerned with, however, is that this change combined with the Emberstorm buff is that Destruction Warlocks will be moving over to Incinerate as it will be casting faster and already was a better damage-per-mana spell(thus decreasing their mana consumption). That will mean Improved Shadowbolt won't be up any more and Affliction & Shadowpriests will suffer(Not that I'm surprised...)

On the optimistic side we may see some buffs come from this. Perhaps some PvP survivability changes against melee? Maybe increased DoT coefficients? I know for certain now that the devs knows the PvP issues Affliction/Destruction have and the raiding issues of Affliction. Who knows what's to come but I'm putting my money on some positive changes before we see 2.4 go live.

Brief Descriptions of Sunwell Isle "World Event"

2008-02-18T00:26:00.006-05:00

1-Flightmaster: You initially land here after flying from Ironforge (flight path automatically unlocked) This is also where you take off when doing bombing run daily quests.

2-Shattered Sun Boat: This boat has the NPCs that you trade in tokens for tier loot and they also convert Sunwell drops into other drops. This is a new mechanic. You can pick up, say, a pair of cloth healing gloves and turn it in with 1 Sunmote(Heart of Darkness style drop) and can get a pair of cloth DPS gloves. Every item has its own matching piece.

3-Shattered Sun Staging Area: This is where all the initial daily quests are. Most are involved with achieving some goal linked to taking Sun's Reach Sanctum(4)

4-Sun's Reach Sanctum: Initially held by Kael's blood elves. After so many people do daily quests linked to taking this area are completed(it will likely take 2-3 days to take, maybe more) we officially take control of it. Shattered Sun NPCs move in, new quests associated with taking Sun's Reach Armory(5) open up inlcuding one in Outland associated with creating a portal from Shatt to Sunwell Isle. Some quests at Shattered Sun Staging Area disappear, while some remain.

5-Sun's Reach Armory: Just like Sun's Reach Sanctum once this area is taken Shattered Sun NPCs move in, new quests open up linked to taking Sun's Reach Harbor(6). Vendors for t4 tokens -> season 1, and t5 tokens for season2 gear are inside the armory initially. Just outside an armory is a Blacksmith who has a daily quest to gather ore from Naga at Greengill Coast to complete her anvil. Once enough of these are completed the new badge vendors open up(~28% currently on the PTR with a LOT of people doing it. I will probably take a week to do this on live.)

6-Sun's Reach Harbor: Currently no info on this as we're still trying to take it. Unknown what taking control of this unlocks and whether it's the last area to control or not...

7-Magister's Terrace: The new 5-man.

8-Sunwell Plateau Entrance: The new 25-man.

Overall it's a really fun thing Blizzard has set up here. It's a lot like the AQ gate opening but not requiring lame material collections, but instead rather fun daily quests including bombing runs on demons, Kael's boats, kill quests, etc.

Very fun!

Flash Games

2008-02-16T21:59:00.003-05:00

Sure, not WoW related, but here's a few very very fun flash games you guys might enjoy. Antbusters is quite silly if you have the volume on :D

Antbuster
Grid16
Vector Tower Defense

Items of Interest

2008-02-12T00:39:00.006-05:00

Interesting list of items here...

Gloves of Tyri's Power
Sunfire Robe
Leggings of Calamity
Wand of the Demonsoul
Bracers of the Malefic
Belt of the Malefic
Boots of Incantations
Sunwell Badge Loot - Caster Ring
Loop of Forged Power
Timbal's Focusing Crystal (15 second internal cooldown puts the proc at 20-25 DPS)

Did They Fix It?

2008-02-06T13:47:00.000-05:00

So yeah. I was kind of off on the Haste changes. The global cooldown addition is actually pretty nice. It still leaves Affliction behind in scaling but at least Haste can function as a nice secondary stat to gear for. +DMG will continue to be king, but Haste will represent a viable secondary stat to see on gear and hopefully muscle crit around a little bit.

So ultimately this change will get Affliction *close enough* but only with perfect itemization. I'm still rooting for 1 tier set for each talent tree in WotLK so each spec can get what they need. Appropriate set bonuses for the tree. etc.

IE-

-Afflicted Gloves of the Malefic: Pale Green/Blue "Deathmist Raiment" colored, with Affliction stats(high dmg, some haste, some hit)

-Demonic Gloves of the Malefic: Purple/Dark Green "Nemesis Raiment" colored with Demonology stats(moderate dmg, pet AP, some hit)

-Destructive Gloves of the Malefic: Red/Black "Corruptor's Raiment" colored with Destruction stats(little bit of everything, really)

We'll see! I the meantime I created a thread here to further discuss allowing Haste to effect tick speed.

Rolling The Dice...

2008-01-31T14:46:00.000-05:00

So last night I picked up Waistwrap of Infinity. "Why? It isn't very good." you ask? Well it isn't very good right now but A) It was going to rot anyway and B) I hear from Leiah(who at this very moment is facing down an Elemental Shaman firing squad...) that there will be some sort of change to Haste regarding instant cast spells.

Ultimately I'm taking a chance here, rolling the dice on a piece of loot that hinges on information I don't really even have knowledge of. I do, however, have a few ideas how such a change might go down:

1) Haste will lower the duration of the global cooldown for instants and perhaps allow cast time spells drop below the GCD. If Blizzard thinks they'd be giving us anything with this then they're sorely mistaken. Maybe Mages might appreciate it for Scorch, it might help Resto Druids a little, but if this is their idea of making Haste more appealing I'd change my opinion of Blizzard from "slow to react" to "out of touch with their game." I'm banking on this not being the answer, however as I do have more confidence in Blizzard than that.

2) Haste will increase the damage/healing of instant cast spells. IE 1% Haste would increase the damage or healing of Curse of Agony, Rejuvenation, Ice Lance, etc by 1%. This seems much more reasonable and is what I'm thinking Blizzard will do, however will simply result in my making a big fuss on the PTR forums to try to get #3...

3) Haste will increase the damage/healing of instant cast spells as well as the damage-over-time portions of cast-time spells. Haste as it would be in #2 would not effectively increase the DPS of Unstable Affliction, Immolate, and maybe Corruption(depending on how they code it...) Spells that are not chained back to back simply don't reap any real benefit from Haste. If you're going to re-apply a cast-time DoT you will simply cast it so it is applied right after it expires (regardless of cast time) for no Haste driven DPS gain. The goal, IMO is to have 1% haste increase the damage of all spells by 1%(minus an obvious increase in mana consumption) This includes increasing the cast speed of Nukes, the damage of all instant spells, *and* the damage of cast-time DoTs.

If #3 does indeed happen it will totally change how Shadowpriests, Affliction Locks, and Resto Druids gear for raids. It will make currently trashy epics like the aforementioned Waistwrap of Infinity, Nimble Thought craftable bracers/shoulders as well a some of the Resto Druid gear with all but wasted haste already on it. According to Leulier's Spreadsheet (with some tweaks) 1 Haste Rating would = 1 spell damage at ~1200 spell damage, though with haste costing more itemization points it would result in a much better itemization environment for raid DoTers and HoTers. We'd have options!

Here's hoping!

EDIT: 2 Threads discussing the incoming changes on Haste. AKA me bitching that it's not effecting DoTs in any significant manner and does nothing to aid Shadowpriest and Affliction Lock endgame raid itemization dilemma.

#1

#2

Where Is WoW's "Meta" Class? (And a bunch of other random shit)

2008-01-30T02:20:00.000-05:00

So, I created a thread here questioning if a Mesmer /Psionicist (check links if you're unfamiliar) "meta" style class could fit into the WoW world as maybe a hero class? After playing Guild Wars some lately I've come to realize that these classes which are so unfortunately absent from WoW are a large reason why I'm so often drawn to other, ultimately inferior games.

They are truly interesting to play and really have a high learning curve and "scale with skill" quite well. Would a class like this fit in all that well in WoW's ultimately dumbed down MMO model? I'm not sure. I feel bad saying that because it is such a great game, by far the best on the market, but I can't help but feel that the developers cater to the least common denominator(AKA below average "casual" morons who don't even understand the game) too much. No doubt a large reason why it's so popular, but hey, I like complicated things!

It really is a shame that a hardcore yet high quality MMO hasn't surfaced yet. I don't mean hardcore in the grindfest/raid 7 days a week/suck the life out of you type of game, but just a game with very complex gameplay systems, LOTS of classes, choices, customizations, etc. Sure, it would be a tough thing to balance for sure, but my geeky interest in the genre always seems to focus more on the underlying system of the game than even playing the game itself. Does it surprise you that I always spent more time creating Dungeon and Dragons characters than actually playing the game? There's just something about the mechanical side of RPG games that's always caught my interest. It truly is a shame that the jobs of men like Tom Chilton and Brad Mcquaid aren't the types of positions you "apply" for...Who knows, maybe I'll end up working for some game company in their financial department and eventually work my way into a "game systems developer" title :P Maybe, the gaming and MMO markets are both quickly growing!

(One hell of a rant, eh? I think I managed to string together 3-4 separate ideas into something I had initially intended to be about WoW getting a new type of class)

Yeah, I Went There...

2008-01-13T02:56:00.000-05:00

So I'm not one to trash talk the other team in the arena, but I went there tonight. They got cussed out, their tactics scrutinized and generally got bombarded with phrases I generally don't utter. What was it that set me off so? Warrior(Gnome, Mace spec no less), Resto Druid, Holy Paladin.

We faced them three times- Lost two and won one. Every single game the Warrior would beeline it right onto my Felhunter essentially instagibbing it(Leiah, if you're reading this I don't even think 50% Resilience on the pet would do the trick here...), the *resto* Druid stayed in Bear form all fight not really even doing anything, occasionally shifting out and throwing a HoT on the other two, and the Paladin must have had a concrete fetish because his dick was shoved in the pillars god knows how long.

As always I wasn't peeved about losing. We lost nearly as many as we won today and I didn't utter a peep on any of the other losses. Honestly more often than not I uttered silent congratulations to the other team for a job well done for their well timed CC, good focus, good cooldown management, etc...but not in this case. Cheese tactics are cheese tactics and if you use them you lose my respect(Not that you care). I don't know how to put it any more bluntly.

Kargath Sure Is In A Giving Mood!

2008-01-05T23:02:00.000-05:00

(Before you ask- The loot add on is X-loot, a *very* spiffy loot mod)

Gear Wishlist

2008-01-03T06:20:00.000-05:00

A horde buddy of mine was curious(Heya Stagnant!) so I figured I'd kill two birds with one stone and put it up here for your viewing pleasure.

Back
Nethervoid Cloak
Chest
Robes of Rhonin
Feet
Frozen Shadoweave Boots
Finger1

Band of Eternity (Revered)

Finger2
Ring of Ancient Knowledge
Hands
Gloves of the Malefic
Head
Hood of Hexing
Offhand
Orb of the Soul Eater
Legs
Leggings of Devastation
Mainhand
Vengeful Gladiator's Spellblade
Neck
Ritssyn's Lost Pendant
Shoulder
Mantle of the Malefic
Trinket1
Hex Shrunken Head
Trinket2
Icon of the Silver Crescent
Waist
Anetheron's Noose
Wrist
Focused Mana Bindings
Wand
Wand of Prismatic Focus

End results with enchants, blue gems and no buffs are:

489 Stam
297 Int
201 hit
1340 Shadow
2pc tier 6 bonus
2 activated +DMG trinkets

Not bad!

2.4 Info This Week?

2008-01-03T04:14:00.000-05:00

Supposidely new info about 2.4 will be out this week. I hear some of the changes are supposed to be "interesting" so here's hoping to some fun tweaks!

Random Thoughts

2007-12-31T08:42:00.001-05:00

1- Iron Maiden is freakin' awesome. To think I *disliked* them up until a few weeks ago.

2- Got me some Sangria for tonight :D It's not some fancy expensive wine, but I like it, very warm going down.

3- WTB patch 2.4/WotLK info. FUUUCK I wish Blizzard wasn't so damn "ivory tower" all the time with their communications. That's it, I'm gonna invent some world changing thing, make a shitload of money and buy up Vivendi just so I can change policy at Blizzard and get, oh, about +2000% more dev posts on the forums.

4- Back to raiding this week. I enjoyed the time off the past week as a nice WoW break (though I'm a little burnt on TF2 now...) Will be nice to get back on the horse in TK...though I hope nobody is rusty what with it being two weeks since we last fought Kael.

5- It's nearly 9:00 AM and still not sleepy.

Atlas Shrugged

2007-12-31T07:48:00.000-05:00

So yesterday I started reading "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand at request of my grandmother. I'm only ~40 pages in but it's great so far. It depicts a world that is degrading into uselessness through excessive "left-leaning" thoughts, not just from politicians, but businessmen and the common folk. Drive is frowned upon, new ideas discouraged and the successful scorned. It portrays a few brilliant minds of business who are constantly being put down for their successes and...well that's all that's really going on so far but who knows what might happen?

(Okay, so I peeked a little at Wikipedia)

The main conflict of the book occurs as the "individuals of the mind" go on strike, refusing to contribute their inventions, art, business leadership, scientific research, or new ideas of any kind to the rest of the world. Society, they believe, hampers them by interfering with their work and underpays them by confiscating the profits and dignity they have rightfully earned. The peaceful cohesiveness of the world requires those individuals whose productive work comes from mental effort. But feeling they have no alternative, they eventually start disappearing from the communities of "looters" and "moochers" who bleed them dry. The strikers believe that they are crucial to a society that exploits them, and the near-total collapse of civilization triggered by their strike shows them to be correct.

Apparently it's one of the top self-pride/motivation, free thought, free market, etc novels. A HUGE book, probably the largest I've read- I won't be putting this one down for some time.

(Oh, and FWIW one of the main characters in this book is a woman by the name of Dagny- When I first read her name I immediately thought "female dwarf". That name does sound awfully Dwarven, doesn't it?)

Kael Down!

2007-12-23T03:14:00.001-05:00

A slightly belated post, but Sunday we got our first Kael kill! To be completely honest I wasn't (nor do I think many others were) expecting to get him that night... apparantly phase 5 was more of a cakewalk than we expected. Anyway, it was quite a rush to see him drop. Give us a couple more weeks, get some people their Kael and Vashj vials and we'll be in Hyjal/BT mostly full time! It will be nice to get into some new content and finally for (Arv and I) get some genuine upgrades. Nethervoid Cloak especially- yum.

As an aside, I hope I can go a stretch without having to play Mr. Caster Tank. Leotheras, Vashj, Kael, I'm either kiting or tanking a good portion of them. Not that I mind doing it- I like knowing the job will get done (No sign of disrespect to my guildies. I just follow the motto- "If you want something done right, do it yourself") Here's to seeing some DPS-race gear check fights in the future?

PS- Rumoer has it boss #1 of Sunwell, the pitlord Brutalicus, is a Patchwerk style gear check encounter. Patchwerk was such a fun fight(even at level 70) it will be great to a fight like it at it's inteded level.

PPS- Jack and Dr. Pepper, not quite as good as Jack and Coke.

By Request...

2007-12-10T17:23:00.000-05:00

As required by Fusoya.

* List your primary talent tree(s), i.e. Holy/Disc.

43/7/11 Afflict/Demo/Destro

* List the content you're primarily pursuing or most enjoy, i.e. Raiding, PvP, Solo, etc...

I pretty much do everything, but I'd say raiding is most important to me.

* Provide a brief description of the areas you feel are most in need of improvement (you may list a maximum of three issues and each issue should be described in one or two sentences).

*** DoT scaling/itemization: These spells gain little/no benefit from crit/haste which appear on the vast majority of endgame items, making Affliction comparatively weaker and weaker. It would be great to see both of these stats impact DoT damage in some way, or perhaps see one raid set per talent tree so this isn't a problem. (This is my biggest issue with the game. It is a huge problem as a raiding Affliction Warlock)

-PvP escape mechanisms: Honestly, we're sitting ducks to melee in PvP. Fear is unreliable and often not possible to cast, and while melee is supposed to be our weak point I believe we're currently *too* weak vs melee and we could use some better defense against them.

-Lack of *active* debuffing: It would be great to see some more debuffing power, especially active debuffing that isn't a 5 minute curse you cast once per fight. For example having the Affliction 51 point talent be a debuff that reduces damage a target does by X% for Y seconds with 1 minute cooldown.

* List up to five specific spells/abilities/talents you feel most need change, redesign or improvement in the order you feel each is most in need of attention. (MOST to LESS)

-Bane: I feel this talent is *too* necessary as a raiding Warlock. It would be nice to see it moved to tier 1 Destruction so we don't have to spend as many points to reach it.

-Death Coil: This ability, once considered quite overpowered could use a reduction in cooldown in the current game environment. 45 seconds - 1minute seems reasonable.

-Contagion: For where this talent sits in the tree it's too weak. I'd like to see it's +5% damage effect Siphon Life and UA as well.

-Siphon Life/Soul Link: I feel this talent spec in particular is entirely too powerful compared to anything else in the arena and due to it's power is keeping the class as a whole from receiving changes that it needs.

-Seed of Corruption: I feel this ability is too strong. Warlocks should be viable for AoE but this ability takes us beyond viable into the "as good as Mages" category which I feel we shouldn't quite be at.

As a side note, I'm very happy with the posts of all the other Warlocks made. Many of the same issues are brought up, which gives our feedback a sense of cohesion so maybe the devs will take it seriously! It seems like DoT scaling/pet scaling came up in every other post. Tough stuff to ignore when everyone has something to say about it!

AR/Hemo Rogues

2007-12-02T05:08:00.001-05:00

/yawn

On Winning And Losing

2007-11-21T17:38:00.000-05:00

So I'm slightly steamed after a few games of TF2 today...and it's not because I lost, as I won more than lost today. And it's not because I scored poorly as I did pretty damn well...it's how the games went. Too much fucking offense! Scout rush after scout rush(for the uninformed, essentially taking all the objectives before the match has hardly begun resulting in a quick win) It doesn't matter if I'm on the offense or defense, I despise these rushes and the general attitude of "win at all costs"

I mean, do people really need to win to feel good about themselves? Are their egos so shallow or attention spans so short? I'd rather lose and have a good *fun* game than win with some cheap/lucky tactic. To me a game is all about how you play it, winning and losing simply being a side effect of playing the game. The interactions between players, the tricks, the fakeouts, the mind games, seeing new strategies, the minor little inconsequential bullshit, hell, losing to a *really* good player in a fight but giving it your all. Now, this may seem like a sore loser placing little meaning on winning, but I win more than I lose. I could win all the time and it wouldn't change a damn thing. Winning is better than losing, to be sure, but it's just not what's important!

To put things in WoW terms: It's all about timing that spell lock as that Holy Light has .2 seconds left until cast, managing your cooldowns to get the most out of them, CCing at the right time, losing to a new innovative tactic, getting your ass beat by a better team and learning something from it, eeking out that win against a higher ranked team, but just barely, etc.

Games are about interesting player interactions, tactics, timing, and all the nuances that make the game. To end the game just as it's beginning is like someone telling your the outcome of sports event before you've gotten a chance to watch it on TiVo. It removes the essence of the game, replacing it with a mere "Blue team wins" only to repeat itself again.

It's no surprise I like Affliction as it really drags fights out and gives me those much desired interactions with gameplay mechanics. Burst damage in WoW, especially pre BC came to the same end. AP POM Pyro Mages 1 shotting people, but for what gain? A little honor? As far as I'm concerned they weren't really even playing the game. To blow one person away, then run away until your cooldowns are up, only to do it again is pathetic.

You can play games to win. You'll get that ego boost when you do, and you'll get peeved when you don't. Or you can do more than simply play the game. Study the game, appreciate the game, learn it's nuances and learn to appreciate them. You can have a blast whether you win or lose.

Duel with pistols or duel with swords. Swords are far more interesting, no?

Fun with Orange Box

2007-11-05T20:34:00.000-05:00

So Friday afternoon I got Orange Box with much anticipation for Team Fortress 2, included inside. I'll give you guys the rundown on what I've played so far:

1) Half Life 2: I've never actually played HL:2 and only briefly even played the original Half Life. That being said what I've played so far seems really quite solid. The game has a nice story and while the graphics are slightly outdated the overall quality of the game is quite nice. Love the physics engine, character responses, etc.

2) Team Fortress 2: What can I say, it's a great shooter. The art style is quite unique, it had a nice class selection, and the maps are great. I do have a few gripes, however. By and large the pacing of the game is too fast, I'm not talking twitch factor, but just how easily objectives can be captured, and how much easier it is to kill than not be killed. It feels like a battleground where everyone is a AP/POM Mage. Too much offense. Also, the fact that there is no inclusion of a standard Submachine gun wielding circle strafing warrior really pains me. This was likely the intent of the dev team to really make each class have a super niched role, but I've played too many WWII shooters to go without this type of class. I really wish they'd made a class like the Heavy that moved a lot faster, but *actually* requires aim. Also, before buying the game the Demoman looked very interesting, but his effectiveness is too limited to certain locations of a map. Again, super niched, I know. Am I dogging it too much? Maybe. Like I said, I like the game, but I'm one to point out the faults(at least as I see them) in everything. Thumbs up to Valve on this one!

3) Portal: Here is the shining gem of Orange Box. Boy am I glad I paid the extra 20$ to get the collection instead of TF:2 by itself. It's a somewhat difficult game to describe, so I'll just say it's a spatially challenging game that gives you access to a portal gun to create rifts in space to connect two points in order to complete puzzles and finish each level. You really get to do some crazy shit. For example there are several levels that require you to use gravity to sling yourself to location you couldn't otherwise reach. Set Portal A on the ground and portal B high on a wall 30 feet up. You jump into A, fly through B, after you come out of B you fall towards the ground, while falling you create a new portal A, drop through it, rocketing yourself through portal B with the force of gravity flinging you onto a platform you couldn't otherwise reach. While rather short I must say this is one of the most innovative games I've played in years.

Definitely get Orange Box if you can to experience these titles. Feel free to add me, Draele, to friends on steam. Maybe we can play some TF:2 together!

Feedback Submitted!

2007-11-01T05:32:00.000-04:00

Sounds like Blizzard is gearing up for the WotLK class tweaks. Leiah, a Warlock player who fed us much info about TBC beta(and has contacts with one of the WoW devs!) has kept us in the know ever since has started collecting feedback from the Hunters! Between that and more recent blue posts on the class forums I think it's safe to say they are looking for feedback.

I spent some time typing up some Affliction specific feedback here which you may find of interest. Feedback on my feedback would be great!

________________________________

Blizzard seems to be looking for feedback lately so I figured I’d offer mine here. I submit this post saying upfront that I’m 100% biased towards Affliction, not in an “I want it to be overpowered” sense, but in that I absolutely love its unique playstyle and have strong opinions about it.Overall it’s a very solid tree, probably more so than most in the game and doesn’t need a whole lot of “buffs” in the true sense of the word so much as a few idiosyncrasies/gaps filled in.

Here they are, feedback 1-3 being more “fixes” and 4-5 being suggestions for WotLK that would increase the fun factor/feel of the tree.

1) DoT Scaling

2) Pets not gaining mana when you drink

3) Seed of Corruption- Too Strong!

4) Shadowbolt Dependency

5) 51pt Affliction Talent

Check the thread out for the details!

A Bit of a Lull

2007-09-24T17:49:00.001-04:00

I haven't been playing WoW much lately but I thought I'd drop a line anyhow.

So what *have* I been doing? Well aside from studying for my Operations Management, Statistical Optimization Models, and International Business courses (ugh) I've been playing a lovely game by the name of Vanguard.

Sure, it's no WoW, but with the lull in content lately coming out of WoW I figured I'd step it up and pay 30$ a month to run pixels around *two* servers! Kidding aside Vanguard does have some amazing traits. Loads more areas to explore, infinitely more quests, Diplomacy, believable towns/cities, more classes, huge view distances, interesting crafting. In short Vanguard is a lot deeper. It simply has more content and presents players with a much more realistic world. Though it certainly loses out to WoW on performance, character customization(VG has no talent trees, AA points, feats, etc to distinguish your character from others of the same class) and an overall sense of "polish" which WoW possesses an excess of which VG is very much lacking.

Two different styles, really. Both are fun!

DoT Itemization Woes

2007-09-08T03:09:00.000-04:00

If you've ever played a Shadowpriest or Affliction Warlock in any depth (Or spoken with me in game to know truly how much I complain about this issue...) you'd know just how restrictive itemization is for these two specs. With a near complete reliance on +dmg once the hit cap is reached it leaves (in the best case) little room for thoughtful comparison of items that other classes get to make with one stat vs. another, etc. and (in the worst case) simply no clear upgrade within reach. +DMG +DMG +DMG! Push it to the limit! With 60-70% of our DPS consisting of spells that don't crit and are unaffected by spellhaste it leaves many items severly lacking in the +dmg department.

Either way, I don't want to bore you all with excessive math, though even without it it's rather easy to notice the problem we face. Now, by no means am I asking for outright buffs, or even complaining about my damage (I tend to be top 3 damage 90% of the time in our raids) but rather a change opening up itemization choice, moving away from the dull, restrictive and...honestly, moronic route of itemization these specs take. I'm complaining for my own benefit, but even more so for Shadowpriests as they have it even worse.

My further in depth with mechanic changes suggestion post on the WoW Suggestion forum. Please comment in the thread if you agree (or disagree!)

Also, here is an interesting thread specifically on Shadowpriest itemization, though there is much crossover for Afflocks as well.

Thanks for reading!

The Crusade Against Drain Life

2007-09-03T21:09:00.000-04:00

...And The Nerf Brigade Just Keeps Coming!

In my previous post I detailed how Fear is about as unfair a mechanic as we see in the game. I feel I'm a pretty good judge for what's "OP" and what's not. Fear is one of them. Lately, however, as far as the WoW community is concerned (or at least a *very* vocal minority) Drain Life is the next skill on the list. Yes, there is a list. There's always a list. Since Warlocks became anything short of a free HK there has been a segment of the WoW population who has taken upon themselves to crusade against us. First it was Deathcoil. That lasted...nearly a year? Blizzard (rightfully) didn't relent so they quieted up for a bit. In patch 1.13 (TBC talents at level 60) there was a massive outcry about DoTs which did get hit with the nerfbat due to excessive scaling. Then it was Fear again, which got nerfed. Then for a brief period Fel Armor received some ill will, but come on...Fel Armor? Gimme a break. That died off without much of a fight. Then it was DoTs + Resilience, which did get a response, but nothing quite game breaking as many had hoped.

What's my point in listing all of those off? The nerf cries will always be there. We're an exceptional 1v1 class. People get their egos wounded over that. We're an annoying class. People don't like getting feared and don't like dying to DoTs after they kill us(FFS they won already! They proved the better, reaped the honor, etc. How can they have the audacity to complain about dying after the fact?) We're an easy target. I digress. They keep coming. They always will whether we're powerful or not. Let's face it, as the saying on the Warlock forum "They won't stop until we're left with Corruption and autowand" is quite true.

With a solid momentum from DoTs + Resilience the nerf criers have chosen a new target: Drain Life.

Is Drain Life a good skill? Sure. It's a staple in many a Warlock's arsenal. One, again, necessary to assist in keeping the Warlock alive for the DoT damage to deliver. The thing about all the complaints is they tend to focus on Drain Life and its use in 2v2/3v3 arena brackets in one specific build: 23/38/0. This build is make specifically to take a beating and slowly, ever so slowly, drain the life/mana from your foes. It does quite well, especially when teamed with Druids. The issue, however, isn't that Drain Life is particularly powerful. It's that Drain Life + Drain Mana + talents in this build provides + a specific partner = one powerful combo.

My point here, is that Drain Life isn't particularly overpowered in any sense. It's not some god skill in a deep Affliction spec. Felguard Locks don't have a claim to fame with Drain Life. The issue is this one particular talent spec in one particular area of the game. The question now to ask is...."Is this a bad thing?" It's a niche build. It excels using particular skill combos (of which Drain Life is one of) to exceed at one task. This build, however, is not some cure-all as far as specs go. It's mediocre in battlegrounds as the whole "drain everything they got" strategy doesn't extend beyond 3v3. Without UA or Felguard it's left rather flaccid, not to mention its complete ineptitude at dealing any form of burst damage. It's raid damage leaves much to be desired as well, and while it's not a terrible solo/5-man spec, it's not exactly stellar either.

No, Drain Life is balanced. It's quite powerful in one spec, a spec that has found it's place to be firmly in the 2v2 and 3v3 arena brackets. Something you can't say for other popular arena specs that do rather well in other areas of play. I, for one, haven't felt the slightest inclination to go back to 23/38/0. IMO it was quite boring and too limited. I find 43/7/11 to be a great one-size-fits-all spec that does moderately well in all areas of play. Which is the point of it all. You can have a niche spec or a generalist spec. I, for one, relish the idea of having these options. The game would become a terrible thing if everything were to become so dilituted as to remove these choice.

No, if you want to call nerf on anything I suggest raiding Mages set their sights on Seed of Corruption. The brokenness of this skill far exceeds anything the sniveling PvP forum whiners could ever grasp. Out damaging Mages in AoE is just heresy as far as I'm concerned...but that's another topic in itself ;)

Nerf Fear? Actually...Yes!

2007-08-23T04:26:00.000-04:00

In this entry I will discuss the many facets of Fear in regard to its relationship to Affliction in PvP, why it needs "nerfed", and with that being said why the role it currently fulfills is 100% necessary. Excessively ranty? Yes. Wanders off topic? You bet!

Fear...Fear...What's everyone have to say about Fear?

"I hate it!" You hate it. I hate it. Melee hates it. Casters hate it. Healers hate it. Even Warlocks hate it.

"It lasts forrrrrevveerrrrrr!"
"It breaks instantly."
"I got feared to death."
"There's too many ways to break it."
"It takes no skill."
"It's all we've got."

All of the above are correct. For as long as many of us can remember the WoW community has had a terrible relationship with Fear. It's so hated because it takes the control away. Nobody can argue with that. I don't disagree with the general assessment of it in the least. It's a primo #1 grade-A pain in the ass skill to put it bluntly. It's something of a necessity Affliction, however, and I'm going to tell you why. I'll be a little creative throwing around terminology here but bare with me.

In PvP you tend to have one of three types of classes/builds etc. some of which overlap to an extent:

"Burst damage": You kill your target very quickly. Your survival hinges on destroying your target before they can fulfill their role. MS Warrior, Rogue, PoM Pyro Mage, etc.
"Burst healer": Can heal yourself and teammates to full health relatively quickly. If bursted down you can use some form of CC(or have a teammate do so) to buy yourself time to remove your health deficit. Holy/Resto of the respective classes.
"Can't touch this": Painfully difficult to kill through large amount of mitigation, escape skills, etc. Frost Mages, Prot Warriors, Demo Warlocks, etc.

The problem here is Affliction fits into none of these categories. "Burst damage"? No. "Burst healing"? Nope. "Can't touch this"? Not quite. The problem with Affliction (not that it's necessarily a problem in and of itself) is the fact that it's moderate in everything. It doesn't have massive burst. It can't heal a lot at once. Its escape tools aren't the most effective. Self heals require damage, staying alive to do damage requires time. Fear gives Affliction this precious time it so desperately needs.

Let's face it, folks, as strong as Affliction can be it's always an uphill fight whether we win or lose. All the other damage classes want us dead now and we want them dead later. To win a fight of efficiency is rather difficult when those you fight seek to end said fight before the matter of efficiency begins to matter. Drain Life, in order to reach effectiveness requires a target to be DoTed up for the Soul Siphon talent to kick in (Increases the amount drained by your Drain Life and Drain Mana spells by an additional X% for each Affliction effect on the target, up to a maximum of Y% additional effect.) Now you have the infamous 'DoT+Fear'. Oh, here comes the Drain Life spam. It's starting to heal....

...and one of three events occur:

Fear breaks early. You die because the fight didn't reach anything approaching a reasonable duration for Affliction.
Fear lasts a reasonable duration. The fight goes on to be determined by such elements as gear/skill/teamwork. (Ideal)
Fear lasts 'forever'. You win through DoTlock. The other guy is screaming at the monitor and you feel like a cheap hooker for taking a win which truly displays no skill.

Fear tends to be 'hit or miss' in regard to its effectiveness. The randomness factor it holds for being an activated ability is entirely too high to the harm of all, be it lasting too short, or too long. If you've either played as or against a Warlock and hold a perspective even somewhat resembling objectivity you'll be inclined to agree, no? Either way that was probably an excessively long winded passage pretty much saying this:

We need Fear, or at least something like it simply due to how Affliction functions.

"But Draele," you say. "Not every tree should be PvP viable. Some talent trees are meant for one part of the game, not all." To that I say: Fair enough, even though Kalgan, AKA Tom Chilton, lead WoW developer in charge of game systems(class balance/PvP/etc.) seems to lean towards bringing the effectiveness of all specs up for PvP. Example here for Warriors(search for the word disparity) But you can't have your cake and eat it too. Why are Contagion and UA in the Affliction tree then? It's the PvE tree, right? RIGHT? Sure, make Affliction the "PvE" tree, but you'll have to replace these PvP talents with PvE focused variants. Or realize Affliction needs to be able to survive to apply itself in PvP. I am sorry that your ____ tree is no good for PvE or PvP. If it does it needs to be fixed. ultimately, don't dump your issues in my lap as an excuse for my issues. Too much of that nonsense goes on at the Blizzard forums anyhow. If something is broken it needs fixed, we don't need you justifying one problem with the existence of another. I digress...

Well, what do you propose to do? Well, I propose to do nothing, but I will offer some suggestions which I feel will rectify the problems fear creates while keeping it in the role which it was designed for.

1) Redesign Fear

It now breaks at a preset health percentage or stated duration (if used purely for CC) whichever occurs first. What would the preset damage percentage be? Enemy HP percentage of... (20% give or take?) seems fair, so you're feared at 100% when you hit 80% health it breaks. This would eliminate those outlier Fear durations like the 1 second insta-break, and the 100% to dead Fearlock.

2) Nerf Fear into the ground and alter existing abilities. (As for Priests getting the trickle-down Warlock nerf make Psychic Scream a lower duration horror effect so it can be exempt from any Fear nerfs)

(Fear breaks on any and all damage. Now a purely CC skill) Probably the least desirable choice as there has been much whining on the subject of Drain Life as of late, and Deathcoil as always, but I'll throw it out there anyway. Either: Buff Fel Concentration to give added silence resistance/lowered silence duration. This would allow Drain Life to stand on it's own two feet. Though I'd be reluctant to buff a skill which isn't in the realm of diminishing returns and has no cooldown. Or: Drastically reduce the cooldown of Deathcoil to make it more staple and less "Oh Shit!" Again, likely not the popular choice.

3) Nerf Fear into the ground and give Warlocks something else. (As for Priests getting the trickle-down Warlock nerf make Psychic Scream a lower duration horror effect so it can be exempt from any Fear nerfs)

(Fear breaks on any and all damage. Now a purely CC skill) Add completely new abilities to fill in the hole Fear left. Potentially with the new expansion? I have a couple of ideas which I'll share, both of which are much more 'debuff' and less 'CC'.

Corrupted Touch: Low cooldown 20-30 seconds. Reduces damage dealt by target foe by X% for Y seconds. This cooldown range is an interesting one since it requires proper timing, but isn't an "Oh shit!" button either, potentially usable multiple times per fight.
Void Field: Moderate cooldown 2-3 minutes. Reduces damage dealt by all foes in a 15 yard radius by X% for Y seconds. Group utility here. Fear nerf brings locks down a notch in 2v2 and Void field brings up group utility in 5v5.
Something else appropriate. Again, leaning towards the debuff side of things ends up making the game much more desirable for all. Character control for all means less griping and more fun. Fun is the goal, right?

Ultimately the goal (in my mind) is to remove the nuisance that is Fear and rework/replace it to achieve the same ends without extensive loss of character control, etc. The role Fear fullfills is quite necessary, but the annoyances and inequities it presents are simply not what I'd call good gameplay.

Thanks for reading and please leave comments and discussion as always!

New 3v3 Team

2007-08-20T04:42:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the low post count the past few days! Between a busy weekend and my AB weekend honorwhoring(got my PvP ring!) I haven't gotten the chance to post anything worthwhile.

Started a new 3v3 team tonight aptly named "Instants R Us". The old Rogue/Paly/Warlock combo wasn't bad by any means, but it lacked a sense of focus that I knew could be achieved with other combos. (Plus the old 3v3 hadn't played in a while) I ended up making the 3v3 with Arv, my 2v2 Shadowpriest partner, and Melias, a Resto Druid whom I'd 5-manned with before. This combo was by design and I'm still surprised just how well it performed. Melias handles the nasty melee classes that screw us shadowy types up good(especially Warriors) with Cyclone, while Arv and I chew up casters, healers, Hunters, etc. I'm looking forward to future games with this combo as we really seem to have all the bases covered and the mobility we possess is simply astounding(DoTs/HoTs/Roots/Fears/etc) especially compared to the somewhat non-mobile Paly/Rogue team. Effective or not it's really just a more enjoyable combo for me and requires less...bending? of my playstyle to mesh together. Kiting works. Delaying works. Indirect combat works! Ah, I'm in arena heaven...

(Also, I promise to get a real article up in the next day or two. Expect a few paragraphs with ranting, suggestions, etc all about the most hated ability in the game: Fear, and its many pros, cons, annoyances, etc.)

Talent Feedback Request on WoW Europe

2007-08-15T01:36:00.000-04:00

So I was browsing the WoW Europe forums and noticed that every class forum has threads from CMs requesting feedback on talents. What's good? What's bad? Etc. Now my question is: Where's our request for feedback? Is the U.S. community really that ill tempered? Are we more biased? Or was this just an initiative on part of the EU CMs? Either way it would be nice to have some official form to submit feedback. It would be even nicer if the U.S. CMs communicated nearly as well as the EU CMs. Sadly, I glean more information from the Europe boards than ours...Wouldn't one think otherwise since we're "closer to the source" ? Eh, call me an information whore but this bugs me! Either way, if you're at all curious here's the links to the EU class forums:

Druid
Hunter
Mage
Paladin
Priest
Rogue
Shaman
Warlock
Warrior

If you'd like to submit similar feedback comment on/bump my post here and maybe our blues will set one up!

A Little Bit Closer!

2007-08-15T01:02:00.000-04:00

So after getting some feedback I've made several tweaks/changes to the level 80 talent trees which I've posted before here. Transformation was popular for many, but it was just as unpopular for many others. Replaced it with Fel Absorption which in addition to being nice on it's own accord has great synergy with Demonic Revenge. Reverted Pestilence to Blasphemy. Pestilence just didn't seem worth it, and while Blasphemy may be a little over the top it's tough to find something neither over/underpowered for Affliction.

Talent Tree
Forum Discussion

Please do post in the thread or leave comments here on what you think!

Back on the Horse!

2007-08-14T01:43:00.000-04:00

So after several weeks hiatus from the arena(I had a not-so-friendly 3v3 encounter a few weeks back several games in a row with Rogue + Enhancement Shaman + Windfury + Bloodlust = Draelemush. Let's just say you couldn't force me to queue for an arena for a while there) Now I'm back, however, doing 2v2(in the meantime as least) with Arv. Affliction + Shadow is a fine combo, so fine a combo in fact we went 10-0 on day 1. Spectacular? No. Most of the teams were below 1500 and quite terrible, but after leaving the arena system on such a sour note it felt good to get in there and kick ass on the rebound. It should be an easy run to 1800.

More Dawts! :D

This Week in Raiding (AKA "Come Back Jandari!")

2007-08-13T17:35:00.000-04:00

So this was an interesting week...

Tuesday: We spent the entire raid on Hydross. He's not on full farm yet, but I think we're getting close. We downed him, but it will sure be nice when we can 1-shot his ass and move on to Lurker, Tidewalker, and maybe even Fathomlord all in one day!

Wednesday: Yeah...So our raid leader, Jandari, is on vacation and backup raid leader, Arv, isn't raiding tonight. So guess who gets the honor? Your's truly, of course! Now let's be honest here: I'd consider myself a damned good Warlock, but raid leader? Psh! I think Thunderhorn's finest, Fenrir(Anyone else remember that jackass?) would do a better job as raid leader than me. Thankfully, Kujo was there to set the pulls up leaving me to master loot. /salute Kujo. We got Lurker and Void Reaver no problem then called it an early night.

Thursday: "FLOOD OF THE DEEP, TAKE YOU!" If I've heard this once I've heard it too many times. Let's just say we heard this phrase many times over the course of the night and nobody was rewarded for putting up with it. On the bright side there are tales of guilds with Vashj on farm that still wipe to Tidewalker a few times before dropping him. I guess he's just one of those fights?

Sunday: A nice recovery to end our week in raiding. We got both Tidewalker and Fathomlord with some time to spare. It's always nice to end the raid week on a high note! Although World Breaker really needs to quit dropping!

WTF...

2007-08-12T12:07:00.001-04:00

I just realized this color scheme looks like camo. Something I may have to remedy...