Leotheras, Randomness, and Resists

Leotheras the Blind in Serpentshrine Cavern is almost a perfect fight. Leo alternates between human and demon form, staying in each form for about a minute. As a human, he dual-wields and occasionally whirlwinds around the room, spinning towards random people. Leotheras wipes threat after the whirlwind and when he changes form.

In demon form, Leotheras casts an AoE Chaos Blast targeted on the person tanking him. Most guilds use a warlock in Fire Resist gear to tank him in this stage. Leotheras also summons Inner Demons for up to five members in the raid. You are the only person who can kill your Inner Demon, and if you fail to kill your Inner Demon in 30 seconds, you are Mind-Controlled for the rest of the fight.

This fight is--with one huge exception--a great deal of fun. Threat is wiped often, so DPS has a very stop and start aspect to it. It reminds me of the children's game Red Light, Green Light. As well, killing your Inner Demon is a thrill, especially for a healer. It's great fun to wear a bit of DPS gear, and be able to drop everything, and go medieval on some demon.

The big exception is Chaos Blast.

First, a bit of background on resists. There are two types of resists in WoW: partial resists; and binary resists. If a spell is pure damage, it is subject to partial resists. Basically, with partial resists your resistance works like armor, and prevents some of the damage on every cast. If you have 75% resistance (365 Resist) 75% of the damage from each cast is prevented.

However, if a spell has a non-damage component (like a Frostbolt's slowing effect), it is subject to binary resists. Here, resistance works more like Dodge, and you have a chance of either avoiding the attack completely, or taking full damage. If you have 75% resistance (365 Resist) you take no damage 75% of the time, and full damage 25% of the time.

Chaos Blast has a non-damage component, and thus is subject to binary resists. Specifically, each time you are hit with a Chaos Blast, you get a debuff which increases the amount of Fire damage you take.

So what happens is that the warlock takes no damage when she resists a Chaos Blast, but takes full damage when she fails to resist. Therefore damage is very spiky, and the spikes get larger and larger as debuffs accumulate. The big problem is that late in demon phase, if the warlock tank misses two resists in a row, she can take over 15K damage in slightly over 2s.

This is extremely hard to heal, especially as the warlock is taking zero damage 75% of the time. Cast-cancelling heals helps, but it's very common for the warlock to die. Guilds usually soulstone the warlock, and have druids ready to battle res.

By my calculations, during a demon phase there's about a 15% chance the warlock will take a double blast when she has 6 debuffs already on her. That's pretty much a guaranteed dead warlock for guilds at that level of content. That means across the entire fight, there's a 56% chance the warlock will be killed at least once during a demon phase.

This is terrible design for a raid fight. And quite frankly, it ruins what is pretty close to a perfect--and above all, fun--fight. This fight would be so much better if Chaos Blasts used partial resists instead of binary resists. I'm not really sure how the debuff would be applied, but I'm sure that a solution could be found.

In general, binary resists are a bad idea for damage-dealing spells. They make fights way too swingy. It would be much better if the damage component was separate from the debuff component. The damage component should always be handled by partial resists, and extra debuff components can be handled with binary resists (because a partial debuff often doesn't make sense, you either get the debuff or you don't).

Crossroads, Part II

I left my guild last night.

Don't really want to say much about it, except that the Guild Relations forum is right: If you are asking if you should leave your guild, the answer is always Yes. I ignored that advice, given to so many other posters, thinking that my situation was different. That was a mistake.

I'm not really sure what to do now. I could apply to another raiding guild. I could respec to Retribution and farm for my epic flying mount. I could wait for 2.4 and just do all the solo content. I could level an alt.

Ah well, maybe I'll use the free time to get caught up with posting.

Lich King Faction Speculation

Blizzard recently put up a page on the zone Dragonblight coming in Wrath of the Lich King. One sentence intrigued me, and so I'm going to indulge in some total speculation.

The one-time Scarlet Crusade, now the Scarlet Onslaught, has arrived as well in the hopes of claiming victory in their ongoing campaign against the Lich King and his minions.

What's interesting here is that Blizzard has renamed the Scarlet Crusade. Now why would they do that?

The immediate answer that jumps to mind is that Blizzard wants to separate out the reputation associated with each faction. This is similar to what was done with the Cenarion Circle and Cenarion Expedition. If the Scarlet Onslaught was the same faction as the Crusade, and you could get honored or exalted reputation with the Onslaught, that might screw up content in the old world.

If you couldn't get reputation with the Onslaught, there's really no reason to make them a different faction. As pure enemies, using the Scarlet Crusade would be better, as there is history between the players and the Crusade.

So I believe this points to the Scarlet Onslaught being a faction that you can gain reputation with. Which makes further sense as it is a faction opposed to the Lich King. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, after all.

But a lot of us are not going to be happy working with the Scarlet Onslaught. They've been the bad guys for so long that getting to revered or exalted just feels wrong, especially for us paladins.

So how to reconcile these two positions? Let's take a huge leap of logic, and state that the Onslaught makes the most sense as a faction you choose to join, like the Aldor or Scryer factions in Burning Crusade. And if the Onslaught are one choice, there must be a faction which is another choice.

There is one organization which would be the perfect foil to the Scarlet Onslaught: The Order of the Silver Hand, reforged by Tirion Fordring.

Two similar orders, both aimed at destroying the Lich King, but opposed to each other. It fits the Aldor/Scryer mold, as well as the content around the previous Naxxramas, where the Scarlet Crusade, Argent Dawn, and Brotherhood of Light worked together.

There are other possibilities, of course: a splinter faction from the Argent Dawn or Brotherhood of Light. But I like the Order of Silver Hand best.

So my predictions are:

1. The Scarlet Onslaught will be a faction that you can choose to join in Wrath of the Lich King.
2. The opposing faction will be the Order of the Silver Hand.
3. 90% of all paladins will join the Silver Hand.

Counting on Probability

Ninjasuperspy, in a comment to the post about Spell Crit and Mp5, posted:

I've always viewed Crit vs. MP5 as the difference between Avoidence versus Mitigation for tanking. Sure, crit will refund mana in big chunks just like parry or dodge will avoid 100% of an attack. However you cannot count on it. MP5 like Stamina or Armor is always on, dependable regen.

This is not quite right. The Avoidance versus Mitigation debate has had the side-effect of promoting some incorrect beliefs about probability. The reality is that:

You cannot count on probability in the short term.
You can count on probability in the long term.

The reason you can count on the long term is something called the Law of Large Numbers. It's the same principle that casinos and insurance rely on. The key here is determining what is long term, and what is short term.

Tanking heavy-hitting bosses is inherently short-term. For some bosses, as few as three or four hits in a row will kill the tank. When the number of events is that low, you cannot count on probability to keep you alive, and probabilistic or Avoidance stats like dodge rating are less useful than stamina or armor.

However, if it takes a larger number of hits to kill you, probability becomes more and more reliable. For example, I tank the murloc adds on Tidewalker. Each add doesn't hit very hard, but there are many of them. It would probably take 10-15 full hits to kill me. In this situation, Avoidance stats are actually very useful.

For mana regeneration on healing crits, you are considering a large number of spells over a 10 minute fight or so. That's upwards of 100 spells cast, which is definitely a long term issue. So you can count on Illumination to return a reasonable amount of mana.

On the other hand, because it only takes one or two spells to heal the tank up to full again, you cannot count on spell crit to increase the power of your heals. Yes, over the course of the entire fight your average heal will be higher, but relying on the next heal to crit is a bad idea.

See the difference? Mana regen over an entire fight is a long term issue, but returning a tank to full health after a big hit is a short term issue. Spell crit helps with the first part, but should not be counted on for the second part.

More on Warlocks and Weaknesses

Some of the comments to the previous post on Why People Hate Warlocks are getting way too specific.

People don't usually have emotional reactions to classes based on highly specific setups in PvE or PvP. They react to classes on a more general level. Take a step back, and look at the warlock from a higher vantage point.

Imagine a new Warcraft player making her first character. She asks you to tell you what the strengths and weaknesses of each class are. Are you going to tell her that warlocks can be melee-assist-trained down in Season 3 Arena? I rather doubt that.

If a new player asked me about paladins, I would say that a paladin's strengths were that they were hard to kill, could heal, and had great buffs. Their weaknesses are lower damage and almost zero ranged options.

What can you honestly say for warlocks? The only downside I can come up with that warlocks are fairly complex to play.* And while that's a downside for a new player, it is not a weakness for the class as a whole.

Again, I'm not saying that warlocks are too strong. Just that they lack obvious weaknesses, and that provokes an emotional response from the other classes who do have weaknesses.

*As an aside, that's one of the reasons I don't really like warlocks for high end PvE. All that marvelous complexity gets shafted in favour of spamming Shadow Bolts.

Ask Coriel: Spell Crit versus MP5

George writes:

I am a holy Paladin whose guild is progressing through SSC and The Eye. I have always strongly valued MP5 but I am starting to see that my recent and upcoming gear upgrades (T5) are itemized to include a lot more +spell crit rating and less MP5 than the gear that got me to this point. Would you care to share your thoughts and experiences on how valuable +spell crit rating is at my stage of the game and beyond?

Spell crit and mp5 basically do the same thing: make your spells cheaper. A paladin is usually always casting, so is always getting the benefit of spell crit. Mp5 has the added benefit of working all the time, and spell crit makes your spells slightly more powerful (on average).

Now which is better is a complex question. It depends a lot on the mix of spells you cast. The more expensive the spell, the more mana spell crit will return. I'm finding that as I move up in content, I'm casting more and more Holy Light(Rank 7). It us less efficient, but I need the extra healing. So the extra spell crit on the gear helps support that playstyle.

However, mp5 still helps, especially on fights where you aren't constantly casting. So in the end, you have to maintain a balance of +healing, mp5, and spell crit. My general philosophy is upgrade whenever possible, just go with what stats you get, and if you think you are getting too low in one stat, use gems to boost that stat up a bit. I use green +heal/+int (mana + spell crit) or purple +heal/+mp5 gems usually.

Also, when you start looking at spell haste gear, spell crit will work better with spell haste than mp5 will. This is because spell crit's effect depends on the number of spells you cast, while mp5 depends on straight time. With spell haste you cast more spells in a given time, so the amount of mana returned by spell crit increases, but the amount of mana returned by mp5 stays constant. So if you're planning on picking up any spell haste Badge, ZA, or crafted gear, I would start leaning towards spell crit more heavily.

Why People Hate Warlocks

V’Ming Chew at WoWInsider has a post up asking Why People Hate Warlocks. In the post, he identifies four possible reasons:

1. PvP Dominance?
2. Easy Mode?
3. Warlocks don't provide goodies?
4. Warlocks are evil?

While these reasons may contribute to the negative emotional responses to warlocks, I think they miss the mark. In my opinion the real reason warlocks are disliked is that:

Warlocks have no obvious weaknesses.

Class-based design requires classes to have specific weaknesses as well as strengths. That’s what allows classes to work together, to complement each other. In PvP, it’s what allows you to come up with a strategy to defeat the other class. Classes which have no weaknesses are just as broken as classes that have no strengths.

Let’s compare warlocks to the other DPS classes. Mages have several obvious weaknesses. They’re fragile. They rely heavily on mana and are very vulnerable when they run out. They have good crowd control, but Polymorph breaks on damage and even heals the target. Rogues are somewhat fragile and require melee range. Hunters require being at range. Getting into melee with a hunter is a good strategy.

So what are the warlock’s obvious weaknesses? They’re not fragile, you can’t run them out of mana, they’re good at range, they can Fear--or even Drain Tank--when people get too close. They can kill you slowly with DoTs, or they can blast you down with Shadowbolts.

I think that warlocks were originally designed to be a “control” class. Their weakness was they dealt damage slowly, but could control the fight until their opponent died. However, Shadowbolt allows a warlock to blast like a mage, while still retaining their original control. I think it’s telling that the major high end spec is 0/21/40 which spams Shadowbolts.

I think that Shadowbolt needs to be reigned in. I think that Blizzard should knock the coefficient down a few percent. Shadowbolt scales too well, and doesn’t really fit the whole “control” aspect of the warlock, negating their required weakness.

Ask Coriel: Retribution and Spell Damage

Rudolphe of Echo Isles writes in:

Something that concerns me is the removal of spell damage on the PTR from paladin gear to give room for stats more geared towards melee damage, however this seems to be a Nerf to Judgement of Command at the same time. Do you think they are going to adjust the ability to scale with attack power or give us alliance paladins seal of blood to make up for the loss in spell damage? I personally have about 44 spell damage on my gear because it doesn't seem worth it to work towards spell damage when attack power, hit and crit will increase my dps more since most ret abilities are based off of that.

The removal of spell damage is a nerf to Judgement of Command, but is a buff to the Ret paladin overall. Basically, if you look at where your total damage comes from, it looks roughly like:

50% - White auto-attack damage - scales with AP
20% - Crusader Strike - scales with AP
20% - Seal of Command - scales with AP and Spell Damage
10% - Judgement of Command - scales with Spell Damage

There's a saying in computer science, "Optimize the common case." For the ret paladin, 90% of her damage scales with AP, but only 30% scales with Spell Damage. So warrior-like gear that concentrates on AP is much better than Spell Damage gear.

Now should JoC be changed? From a logical point of view it probably should change to scale with AP. But you don't make changes to an ability in a vacuum. Ret Paladins are in a pretty decent position overall--even with JoC not scaling--so I think Blizzard will leave it alone for now.

Ask Coriel: 2.4 Spirit/Mana Regen Mechanics Changes

Syrien of Arathor writes:

I was wondering if you have any thoughts about the changes to spirit/mana regen in 2.4. and how/if this will impect holy paladins?

For those who don't know, in 2.4 the amount of mana regenerated by Spirit will scale with your Intellect. It's a general buff to mana regen for Spirit-using classes.

I don't think that the spirit change will directly affect paladins, as we don't stack Spirit. I have heard rumors of a paladin wearing Druid healing gear and using [Darkmoon Card: Blue Dragon] to take advantage of the increased regen. Personally, I think such an idea is unlikely to really be effective, but you never know.

(Honestly, I expect Blizzard to nerf [Darkmoon Card: Blue Dragon] at some point, as it is a trinket which scales with levels. It will be just as good at level 80 as it is at 70, and as it was at 60.)

Indirectly, it will make priests and druids stronger healers, and they won't need to pop mana potions as much. However, most raids prefer to take 3 paladins for the blessings. What I think we'll see is more guilds dropping from 3 Paladin healers to 1 Ret Paladin, 1-2 Holy Paladins, and 0-1 Prot Paladins. Retribution is in a really good place at the moment, and an AoE tank is pretty useful. But the raid doesn't really benefit from having a second Ret pally (or a second Prot paladin), so there will still be a need for Holy Paladins.

I don't think the number of paladins taken to raids will change, but I do think that this change will give us more freedom to take on different roles other than just healers. And quite frankly, that's a good thing in my opinion. 90% of us healing was unhealthy.

Ask Coriel: Enchanting Scrolls

Jordrah of Ravencrest writes:

I was wondering what your opinion on the Enchantment "scrolls" that Blizzard has put up on the Arena Tournament PTR. If these were implemented on the Live servers (as of now they are only available on the Arena Tournament PTR).

How do you think they would affect the AH economy as well as raiding and PvP? Would enchanters be pleased or angry about such a change? Should there only be certain enchantments available as scrolls: only low level enchantments as a way to get rid of low level mats there might be laying around; should high level enchants such as Mongoose and Executioner only be available through an actual enchanter and still require the interaction? Also, what about these scrolls be use ala Mithril Spurs and Counter-Weight style where you are free to craft them and sell them but it is a requirement to find a crafter to apply them to your gear?

Jeez that was a lot, but I still have more! Ha ha.

Another thing that the enchanting scrolls and the recent change to Primal Nethers and Vortexes made me think about was: what if enchanters were to get their own BoP reagent needed for certain high level enchants (Mongoose and Executioner-like enchants from WotLK). Let's call it a Primal Shard or Nether Crystal (I know kind of lame). I was thinking that instead of being a drop like Primal Nethers and Vortexes are, they would be available through disenchanting. Something like a 10% chance upon disenchanting Rare items and a 50% chance upon disenchanting Epic items. I figured a change such as this would allow enchanters to have something that lets them charge for enchants beyond just a tip (which can be woefully low from some people) yet a relatively high chance to get them from disenchanting would keep them at a level where they would be somewhat valuable yet not overpriced. Another way for them to be gained could also be another enchanting recipe that would turn several Void Crystals or Large Prismatic Shards into a Nether Crystal.

---

Before I answer the question, let me tell a story about selling enchants.

Back in pre-TBC days, Fiery was a very popular weapon enchant, and it required 4 Small Radiant Shards. One day, I was in Ironforge and an enchanter (we'll call him Tim), started hawking Fiery in Trade Chat.

Tim: Levelling up Enchanting. Will pay you 1 gold to enchant Fiery if you provide mats.

Amused, I checked the Auction House. Sure enough, all the Small Radiant Shards were up for double the normal buyout, all being sold by Tim.

I sent Tim a tell congratulating him on his scheme, and he confirmed that he had several sales that day, making a healthy profit.

---

Anyways, one of the big problems with Enchanting is that you can't enchant gear for your alts. Scrolls solve that problem nicely, and is one reason I don't expect scrolls to require an enchanter to use. So I don't think the mithril spurs model is a good idea.

The interaction on the economy will be interesting. I don't think enchanters need a BoP mat, because the supply of materials is controlled *entirely* by enchanters. It's like jewelcrafting, but even more extreme. It really depends on how many enchanters continue to sell materials versus the number of enchanters who switch to selling enchants.

Part of the problem is that is very hard to justify a crafting fee when the buyer provides the materials. So the harder it is for the buyer to get materials, the higher the premium the finished product can command. Theoretically, enchanting would be very lucrative if the enchanter provided materials, because the number of capable enchanters available at any one time is low, but in practice everyone buys the materials first, then finds an enchanter and tips them a gold or two.

So my predictions are, if enchanting moves to the scrolls:

1. Supply of enchanting mats dries up. Enchanters will keep their mats and produce enchants for sale, much the same way that jewelcrafters keep raw gems and sell finished gems.
2. Price of enchants increases.
3. However, it will be much easier to find and purchase the enchant you want using the AH.

More convenience for everyone, but higher prices for everyone as well.

Weapon Types

Andres writes:

The last thing is a strange idea I've been having for a while. The most problematic gear from Arena/PvP is the weapons, since most of them have their stats better allocated than their PvE counterparts. What's worst is the lack of variety in PvE weapons, forcing some to spec out of their beloved specs because there isn't one at their current raiding level.

Although Blizzard stole some of the thunder (via weapons available now via BoJ), I was thinking of some kind of quest like T0.5 (bear with me, I ding 60 a week after BC). The players would gather items from the raid instance to be handed to the associated faction. After a number of items are handed, the player would receive a weapon that doesn't drop from the instance (for example, off-hand swords for TK).

It is an interesting idea, but I think it’s a bit of a Band-Aid fix that doesn’t address the real underlying problem. The bigger problem is that rogues, warriors, feral druids and healing paladins are too specialized when it comes to weapon types.

This doesn’t really matter in PvP, because you get to choose your weapon type, but in PvE you have to rely on drops from bosses. (You could completely change how PvE loot is distributed, but that is beyond the scope of this post.)

Rogues have it worse off. There are four main weapons for rogues: Daggers, Swords, Fists, and Maces. Each of these types works best when you are using two weapons of the same type, and each hand usually has specific desired characteristics. But this makes it harder to gear up, as a Sword rogue has to wait for a sword to drop.

I think that it would be beneficial if rogue weapon specializations were combined. Combine the Dagger and Fist Specialization talents and allow Ambush/Mutilate/Backstab to be used with both Daggers and Fist weapons. Then combine Sword and Mace Specializations together (probably would have to only use the Sword spec ability). This would give each type of rogue more options when it comes to gearing up. A Dagger rogue could replace a Dagger with a Fist weapon and still play effectively.

You could do something similar with Warrior weapon specializations. Make the type of weapon matter a bit less in order to make it easier to gear up.

Feral druids really need a way to utilize normal weapons a bit more. Right now they rely on special druid staves. But the downside is that they can’t use normal weapons, and other classes can’t use their staves. Of course, feral druids have a problem in that they don’t share off-hand or 2H Weapon types with the other melee DPS (aside from 2H Maces).

The problem with healing paladins is that 1H Maces is the only weapon type that paladins used to have in common with the other healers. The other three healing classes share Staves and Daggers, which is why you occasionally see a healing Staff or a healing Dagger. However, with the recent change to allow all Shamans to use 2H Maces and Axes, I have high hopes that we will see some healing 2H Maces. 2H Maces would be a weapon type that could be used by three out of four healing classes (paladin, druid, and shaman).

In any case, my point is that making weapon types matter a lot hurts PvE, because of the way loot is distributed (random, specific drops). You either need to reduce the impact of weapon type, or move to a more “tokenized” model.

Ask Coriel: Tanking as Holy

Ron writes:

Just starting to run Kara as a Holy Pally. I noticed your Armory snapshot today has you in tanking gear so I thought i would ask how u find the challenge of holding aggro and pulling mobs with so few points in Prot please?

I am keen to gather an off tank set but wondered what runs u have comfortably tanked as Holy spec with your tanking gear? Heroics, non-Heroics, etc.

I don't really tank much. I mainly tank adds that need to AoE'd down. That's pretty much murlocs on Tidewalker these days. I pull mainly with healing threat on a Life-tapping warlock. For out-of-combat pulls, I have Holy Shock.

As long as you have Improved Righteous Fury, holding aggro is not usually an issue. A full Prot paladin would find it easier, but Holy has cheaper Consecrations, Holy Shock, and extra spell damage.

The big difference comes in mitigation. A Prot paladin would take much less damage than I do. In fact, I *cannot* tank 73+ mobs or raid bosses as I would take crushing blows for 150% damage. You need Holy Shield to be able to tank raid bosses.

As for 5-mans, I can tank regular 5-mans fairly easily (my gear is pretty good). I can probably tank heroics as well, but I haven't really tried.

One thing that I have been trying lately is gearing for Avoidance. For example, I'm trying +8 Dodge, +8 Defense, +4 Defense/+6 Stamina gems, instead of the more standard +12 Stamina everywhere style of Effective Health tanking. EH tanking is really good for slow, hard-hitting bosses, as Avoidance tanking relies on randomness, and it only takes a small streak of full hits to kill you on a slow-hitting boss.

However, for AoE tanking, you tend to deal with lots of small attacks, and the Law of Large Numbers starts to kick in. This means that the odds of taking a killing streak are very low. Plus, paladins are pushed towards Avoidance because we have to gear that way to reach uncrushable status. I'm just keeping on going in that direction.

So far it seems to be working out. I think I do take less damage overall than in my previous setup. I'm not sure if it would be viable when tanking bosses, but as I am Holy, the point is moot.

Ask Coriel: PvP Gear from PvE

Andres writes in:

I wanted to know your opinion on PvP gear available from PvE Raids. I know we don't see exactly eye to eye on the PvP gear, but the latest changes are a turn on from the interesting to the bizarre.

1) The blue gear available via rep is a great step forward to balance the 0-200 resilience race, helping both recent 70s and raiders switching to focus PvP.

2) The T4/T5/T6 tokens will now allow to pick up PvP gear. This change does seems strange. I'm still trying to decide if it's a good change or not. I'm leaning on the not-good side as only particular pieces are better than their raiding counterparts and it gives raiders the edge on the other side of the fence, which is the argument against PvP gear availability. ;-)

I think Blizzard is trying to make it easier for people to participate in both PvP and PvE. Currently, gearing up for either takes a lot of time, and if you really want to do both, you have to spend twice the time.

Since the introduction of S1 gear from battlegrounds, you can use PvP gear in PvE. It's not the best stuff, but sheer ilevel allows it to be decent. S1 isn’t as good as T4, but it’s better than a lot of blue gear.

These moves just allow people to go the other way. If you spend time running 5-mans, you can get some initial resilience gear. It’s not as good as running battlegrounds for S1, but it’s better than nothing.

Similarly, for the high-end people (Raiding or Arenas), S3 isn’t as good as T6 for raiding and extra T5/T6 tokens turn into S2, not S3. You get gear so you can participate, but are a step behind the people who choose PvE or PvP as their main activity. As well, extra tokens can get turned into gear, instead of being wasted.

It should also help out hybrid classes, as it will make it easier to pick up some PvP off-spec gear. The only specs which will need a little extra help are Protection warriors and Protection paladins, as there really isn’t any PvP gear or playstyle that is suitable for them.

All in all, it’s a pretty good move by Blizzard to get more people involved in both facets of the game.

Bind-on-Equip Nethers and Vortexes

Possibly the most interesting change to come out of Patch 2.4 is the news that Primal Nethers and Nether Vortexes will change from Bind-on-Pickup to Bind-on-Equip.

A while back, I noted that Nethers were Bind-on-Pickup in order to create scarcity, in an attempt to allow crafters to actually make a profit from crafting weapons or armor. A person wanting a specific item needed to find crafter with the recipe and an available vortex. As far as I could tell, it seemed to work. A Primal Nether went for about 100g, and a Vortex went for 500-700g on Skywall.

However, once Patch 2.4 hits, the crafter and vortex become separate items, making it easier to find them and driving down the price. The price of crafting an item will once again be driven back down to “mats + tip”.

I wonder what motivated Blizzard to change the system. Did the original system not work out? Did too many people skip getting crafted items because of the hassle? Did more casual crafters find it too hard to get Nethers for their own personal armor? Is the availability of Badge Gear having a negative effect on crafted gear? Is Blizzard clearing the decks for the next expansion?

It’s an issue that really has no right answer. Enforced scarcity is an inconvenience to the rest of us. Handling Vortexes is huge pain in my guild. We have to distribute them properly at the moment they drop. With all previous raid materials, we just collected them and put them in a guild bank, and people could withdraw what they needed. But enforced scarcity is also the only way to raise prices for crafters, to allow them to get paid for creating items for other people.

Of all the changes in 2.4, this is the one that I would love to get some insight about from Blizzard, to find out exactly which of the many reasons for or against this change came into play.

Fast Loot System

Lately I've been thinking about a raid just using Blizzard's built-in loot system. Set a threshold of Epic and just go:

1. Want the item for your main set - roll Need.
2. Want the item for your off-set or sidegrade - roll Greed.
3. Don't want the item - Pass.
4. If everyone passes, an enchanter scoops it up and disenchants the epic.

I know this system would probably end in drama and tears, but it would be so fast and easy. You could spend more time actually doing stuff, and less time handing out loot. Yeah, someone might win two items over someone else, but it will average out over time.

The biggest issue would be people who raided for different amounts of time. A guild would have to deal with attendance issues apart from the loot system. But that might be a good idea anyways, rather than relying on your loot system to motivate people to show up.

Recap

Things are getting a little confused over the last few posts, so I thought I'd state my positions on raid content clearly:

1. Attunements are unnecessary, and should be removed for every instance except Karazhan.

2. Reward bosses should be buried deep in the heart of an instance, not placed near the beginning.

3. Guilds should do raid content in order, and not chase after "easy" bosses.

4. If you have a choice between putting in attempts on a new boss or farming for extra gear, you should put in more attempts on the new boss.

5. Trash should not respawn.

Hopefully that makes things clearer.

The Fallacy of Gear

Dorgol of Boulderfist posts a comment in the previous thread:

Removing attunements will HELP the guilds currently working on SSC / TK by allowing them access to T6 loot.

No, in my opinion, it won't. This is because gear is relatively unimportant in raiding in TBC. The natural progression of raiding prepares the guild gear-wise for the boss they are working on. By the time a raid reaches a given boss, the raid will have enough gear to tackle the boss. The only guilds who are undergeared for the content they are working on are Nihilium and the other Top 50 guilds. That's because they go through content at such a fast pace.

The rest of us are appropriately geared--or even overgeared--for the content we are working on. (Note that I'm talking on a raid level. It's possible to have a few new people who are individually undergeared.)

There are four elements to defeating boss fights. From most important to least important, they are:

1. Strategy
2. Execution
3. Skill
4. Gear

Gear, though necessary, is the least important of these. In my experience, every time my guild has had issues on a fight in TBC, it has been because of one of the top 3 reasons, never gear.

Unfortunately, most lower level raiders do not believe this, or at best pay lip service to it. Tobold called Gruul a gear check. Gruul is in no way, shape, or form, a gear check. The DPS requirements to kill Gruul are easily in reach of a blue-geared character who knows how to play her class.

I have been through the learning process for Gruul with two different guilds (Valarin was drafted to fill out a raid). With Coriel, our first problem was being killed by Shatters, which we fixed by using the safe spots (Strategy error). The second problem involved too low DPS, and that was fixed by focusing on hit rating and proper rotations (Skill error). With Valarin, the main issue was that healers were letting the tank die at about Growth 12 (Execution error). Note that none of these errors had anything to do with gear.

But gear is the only variable that Blizzard controls, without nerfing the fight directly. Blizzard cannot improve our strategy, execution, or skill. So they add in more gear, hoping to compensate for the lack of the other three elements.

You need to spend time on boss fights, improving your strategy, execution and skill. That will serve your guild far better than attempting to gear up for the fight. In many ways, I think that skipping Kael/Vashj for early T6 content is a distraction that will end up hurting T5 guilds, just as skipping Magtheridon for Void Reaver did.

Hard fights teach the strategy, execution, and skill required for even harder fights. Skipping a hard fight in favor of an easy fight does your guild no favors.

If you don't believe me, consider this quote from Ciderhelm's Time Management for Raiding Guilds (a superb article which completely changed a lot of my views on raiding):

What players do not understand is how real a factor time is on the guild welfare as well as their own. Spending time gearing up for new content is almost never as well spent as time actually working on that content. This is especially true in the Burning Crusade, where stat differences and gear progression between Karazhan and Black Temple is relatively small; keep in mind that Nihilum cleared through Black Temple just 3 months after raiding began. Gear is good, but it is not key. [Emphasis mine]

Attunements and Reward Bosses

Patch 2.4 is removing the attunements to Mount Hyjal and the Black Temple. If you look at the WoW Dungeons and Raid forums, you'll see a lot of angst over this decision. First off, I fully support removing the attunements. In general, I think raid attunements beyond the first level are pointless and end up hurting the slower, less hardcore guilds.

However, the raiders complaining about the attunement removal do have a point, and it's worth considering their perspective. In my view, the issue is not really the attunements themselves, but rather the nature of the bosses right after the attunement.

Remember that for raiders, quality of reward needs to match the challenge overcome. However, it is generally accepted that the first few bosses of T6 content are "easy" and really are not worthy of the quality of loot that they drop. But this is acceptable because Kael and Vashj are so difficult. Early T6 bosses do not just reward you for beating the T6 boss, they also reward you for killing Kael/Vashj.

Essentially, the first few T6 bosses are "reward bosses". There are other reward bosses in the game: Void Reaver in Tempest Keep, the Chess event in Karazhan, the drakes in Blackwing Lair.

But with the attunement removal, you don't need to kill Kael/Vashj, so the challenge ceases to match the reward, and thus there's a lot of complaining. People are allowed to skip the hard content and access the easy bosses with over-generous rewards.

This happens on a lesser level with Void Reaver in Tempest Keep. Originally, you had to beat Magtheridon to get access to Void Reaver, and thus Void Reaver was essentially an extra reward for beating Magtheridon. But now you can go straight to Void Reaver, making his reward (T5 shoulders) greater than his challenge.

Another way to think about it is to look at the Chess event in Karazhan. There is no question that the Chess rewards seriously outstrip the challenge of that event. However, those epics are not just a reward for Chess, they're also a reward for getting that deep into Karazhan. If the Chess event came at the beginning of the instance, or after Attumen the Huntsman, it would make no sense. The reward would be disproportionate to the challenge on every level.

If the first boss in T6 content was the equivalent difficulty step of Razorgore in Blackwing Lair, there would be no complaints about removing attunements. Challenge would match reward, and everything would be fine with the world.

In general, I think that "reward bosses" are a bad idea. They encourage guilds to take shortcuts, to waste time and skip over content that would teach them necessary skills. I honestly believe that having guilds skip Magtheridon to go for Void Reaver has hurt them in the long run. Magtheridon teaches coordination skills that are very valuable in later T5 content.

Reward bosses are an especially bad idea to have near the beginning of an instance. If you have to have a reward boss, it is best to follow the Karazhan model, and drop it deep in the heart of the instance.

The Road To Damascus

January 10, 2008:

Retribution is currently terrible in every aspect of the game, even with the best gear currently available.

- Azreal, 70 Paladin, Death & Taxes, Korgath (Yes, that Death & Taxes)

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11:04 AM, January 15, 2008:

Retribution Paladins do not have comparable DPS to Shadow Priests. I do not understand where this comes from, as I have never seen a WWS of a major fight with Paladins anywhere near respectable DPS margins.
...
Death and Taxes would use Retribution Paladins if they were good. There's no spite or hatred of the class preventing them from doing so. They simply don't work. If they did, they would be used; it's that simply. Top tier guilds have to take advantage of everything available to them. It would be hindering progression to do otherwise. Unfortunately, at this time, the spec is sub par.

- Azreal, 70 Paladin, Death & Taxes, Korgath

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10:26 PM, January 15, 2008:

I just went Ret in 3s, and I took top 10 undefeated.
...
You seem to be really gun-ho on Paladins as a hybrid, and, for the first time in a long while I actually feel like one, rather than a healer / cleanser.

I never really considered Ret as a viable spec until today. I always compared Ret Paladins to other melee classes, and in that regard they fall short. No interrupt, no snare, no healing debuff etc. etc. I'm sure you've heard it all before. After a few games however, I can see how Paladins can still play support as Ret, and the things that make Holy so strong are still there.

- Azreal, 70 Paladin, Death & Taxes, Korgath

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Febuary 5, 2008:

By the way, I started Raiding as Ret, it's completely viable.

- Azreal, 70 Paladin, Death & Taxes, Korgath

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All teasing aside, this is great to see. Perhaps it will convince more guilds to give a Retribution paladin a trial. For better or worse, the high end guilds do hold a lot of sway in the raiding community, and D&T are among the very top.

I feel like posting a thread to the paladin forums. I'm pretty sure I could get a 10-page flame-war going.

Leotheras