Storm Peaks = Awesome

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

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?

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...

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

Affliction & Demonology Videos

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

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!

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!

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

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

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)

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

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

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...

...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!

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?

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

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

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!

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?

...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: