WotLK 10/25-Man Raids

Raiding is undergoing some pretty interesting changes in WotLK. The main points that I've seen are:

• Each raid instance will have a 10-man version and a 25-man version.
• 25-man raids will drop loot one tier higher than 10-mans.
• No attunements or keys for any raids.

I must confess that when I first saw this, my immediate thought was, "Wow, that's going to create a lot of work for me." I maintain the Guild Progress thread on the Skywall forums, which lists the raiding guilds, their website, and what bosses they've killed, ordered roughly by how far each guild has gotten in endgame.

With two separate progressions, how would this thread be ordered? Should I have two lists, one for each raid size? Should guilds be classed as 25-man guilds or 10-man guilds, or listed in both lists? I expect the 25-man guilds to do the 10-man instances, and is it really worth cluttering up the list with the same Nexus-25 and Nexus-10 bosses?

Of course, these concerns are pretty trivial. In pretty much all other respects, these changes to raiding are an unambiguous win. Content creation is expensive, and I think that this will allow a lot more people to see the raid dungeons.

I think that 25-mans are pretty clearly pitched as the hardcore option, and probably will be tuned very tightly. The 10-mans will still be complex, but will definitely be tuned lower than the equivalent 25-man. Arthas-10 will be easier than Arthas-25. The loot structure is set up for that. Remember that for raiding, the quality of loot should depend on the difficulty of the encounter. Better loot equals higher difficulty.

Various other people are debating if 10-man encounters can be as epic as 25-man encounters. I'm not really sure I know that answer. Epic has a lot to do with lore and the archetypes of the adversaries, not just the complexity or difficulty of the fight. But really, the difference in "epicness" doesn't matter:

Is it better for Arthas to be an epic 25-man fight you never see, or for Arthas to be a less epic 10-man that you get to participate in?

I think Blizzard's plan strikes the best balance. As long as Arthas-10 is harder then the 10-man bosses that come before him, that there is an actual difficulty progression in 10-man raiding, I think everything will be fine.

The interesting questions will be how guilds react to the changed situation. Will the 25-man guilds do the 10-man raids? Will they recruit from the 10-man guilds? What will happen when someone burns out of 25-man raiding? Will they quit the game, or will they see 10-man raiding as a good alternative (huge wins for Blizzard if people take this path)? Will "softcore" guilds--who work on 25-mans at a slower pace--continue to exist, or will the only 25-man guilds be ones that raid 5 or more days in the week?

Exciting times ahead.

Lil Timmy and the White Kitten

The very first non-combat pet I bought was a White Kitten, which is sold by Lil Timmy, who occasionally wanders in Stormwind. Coriel was only level 12 or 13 at the time. This was over two years ago, way back when I was still new, before I knew about such options as Instant Quest Text.

I remember running across Lil Timmy, and clicking on him, and reading his story about how his family's cat had kittens and they couldn't afford to keep them. So he had to sell them, or they would have to be drowned. But the kitten cost about 60 silver, which at level 12 was pretty much all the money I had.

I've never been a big non-combat pet collector, as they tend to take up too much inventory space for my tastes. I think I spent several minutes deciding whether or not I should spend all my money on something that had no obvious value. But what sort of paladin can pass up a kitten in distress? So I spent the silver, got the kitten, and it's been in my inventory ever since. That kitten has been all over Azeroth, and has gone to the Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, Outlands, and many other places where kittens were not meant to go.

Yesterday, I ran across Lil Timmy again. This time when I clicked on him, there was no story, as I was taken straight to the Vendor screen. It seemed unusual at the time, but I chalked it up to not correctly remembering an event that happened two years ago.

However, later I realized what had happened. Several patches ago, there was a change to NPCs. If an NPC only had one option, for example a windrider asking if you wanted to fly somewhere, the game would automatically open that option, rather than making you click through a screen of flavour text. Lil Timmy was one such vendor. The only option you could pick after the flavor text was the option to buy the White Kitten, which opened up the Vendor screen. So like all the other NPCs, the flavour text got skipped.

I really liked the change when it was first implemented, and I still do. 99% of the time, it's an extra annoyance to click through an NPC's initial screen, especially when it is an NPC that you interact with again and again, and when you haven't found out about Instant Quest Text yet. The windriders were the worst for this.

But almost all changes are trade-offs, which can have unexpected ramifications, and Lil Timmy falls in that 1%. Without his story text, he's just a random boy selling a somewhat rare pet. And the game is slightly diminished for that.

WotLK Raid Makeup

Raids in Wrath of the Lich King need to be balanced around 20% healers. There are many reasons for this:

1. The introduction of Deathknights as a DPS/Tanking class means that there is extra competition for the non-healing slots.

2. Blizzard has done a really good job of making non-healing specs raid-viable, and that means even more competition for the non-healing slots. Let's say you want to bring an Enhancement and an Elemental Shaman. You need at least 2 Resto Shamans to fill out the healing quota, so you're looking at 4 shamans in total. That means you are taking one slot away from a pure DPS class, and that's unfair to them.

3. The rest of the game is balanced around 20% healers, so bring raiding in line makes balancing the population easier.

4. Healers have always been the hardest role to recruit for. Requiring less healers and more DPS will make more players happy.

Take a look at this proposed WotLK raid makeup:

Group 1 - Prot Warrior, Prot Paladin, Feral Druid, Deathknight, Deathknight
Group 2 - Rogue, Rogue, DPS Warrior, Enhance Shaman, Ret Paladin
Group 3 - Balance Druid, Mage, Mage, Elemental Shaman, Shadow Priest
Group 4 - Warlock, Warlock, Warlock/Mage, Survival Hunter, Hunter
Group 5 - Disc Priest, Holy Priest, Holy Paladin, Resto Shaman, Resto Druid

To me, that looks like a gorgeous raid makeup. Every class has 2 or 3 slots. No class takes more than its share, and no class is completely left out. There's lots of different specs, and lots of synergy and options available.

However, this setup is completely useless under today's raiding conditions. There simply aren't enough healers. But if raids are balanced around 20% healing, raid compositions like this can be viable, and I think that would make raiding healthier and more enjoyable.

Divine Intervention Idea

Divine Intervention is a very weird spell. The spell itself is a terrible, terrible mechanic. You can only cast it on another person, who must be a resser AND in a position where she won't draw aggro when the fight ends. Compare that to the Warlock soulstone, or Shaman self-res. And yet the flavour of Divine Intervention--the paladin sacrificing herself to save her companion--is so strong, that the spell somehow works.

In reality, the major use for Divine Intervention is to help the paladin avoid a repair bill. It would be nice to have DI do something useful, while still retaining its flavour.

Tharok and I were talking about it, and came up with the following:

Divine Intervention
Instant Cast, Reagent: Symbol of Divinity, 100 yards range, 60 min cooldown
The paladin sacrifices herself to return all other dead group members to life with X health and Y mana. This spell can be cast in combat.

So it's a combat res, but the paladin has to die. It's possible to get up to a 4 for 1 trade, but you can only resurrect people in your group. You'd probably need to combine this with preventing groups from being changed in combat, and maybe give druids a real resurrection spell as well.

Edit: Actually, Divine Intervention is a really interesting spell from a design point of view. The key element of the spell is that the paladin has to die, to sacrifice herself. However, the paladin is often the healer or the tank, and usually when the tank or healer dies, the group wipes soon after. So you need an effect which makes a large impact, and can lead to the group defeating the fight, but which overcomes the extremely large drawback of losing the tank/healer.

A 2-cycle Example

Perhaps an example will help illustrate the difference between 2-cycle DPS and normal DPS.

You are a caster with 1000 mana. The next fight is 90 seconds long. You have the following two spells:

Burn Spell - 1.5s cast, 500 damage, 100 mana cost
Efficient Spell - 1.5s cast, 100 damage, 10 mana cost

What combination of spells produces the maximum damage?

Rather than actually using an algorithm, we'll just list out all the possibilities:



The most damage comes when you cast 4 Burn spells and 56 Efficient spells. Now let's make a slight change, and add 20 mana to your mana pool, for a total of 1020 mana.



This time, maximum damage comes from casting 5 Burn spells and only 52 Efficient spells. You even spend 4.5s doing nothing! The extra mana, a Longevity stat, allows you to do more damage by spending more time in burn mode. Note that this system is also very sensitive to fight length. If the fight was longer or shorter, that would have produced a different result. You could also increase damage by adding DPS stats, making each individual spell hit a bit harder.

Now, contrast this system to the process used by my Destruction (Shadow) Warlock. I don't have two spells, I only have Shadow Bolt. Adding 20 mana doesn't really do a whole lot. I spend all of my time and effort making my Shadow Bolt hit harder (spell damage, crit rating) and more often (hit rating, haste). Longevity stats are far less useful than DPS stats.

Of course, optimizing those DPS stats is pretty complex. But it's a completely different process than balancing Longevity and DPS stats.

Tension in Gearing: Arcane Mages

In the comments to the previous post, Kadaan makes a very strong case that Arcane Mages have to balance between Damage and Longevity stats, and have very similar tension in gearing as healers and tanks.

So why are Arcane Mages special? Arcane mages possess a spammable, high dps, high mana-cost, unsustainable nuke in Arcane Blast. Because Arcane Blast cannot be spammed for the entire fight, an Arcane mage has to use what Elitist Jerks calls a "2-cycle theorem of spell selection," where they alternate "between a mana intensive burn mode and a mana efficient mode." The burn mode consists of spamming Arcane Blasts and the efficient mode is usually something like Frostbolts or Scorch.

Getting the correct ratio of burn mode time to efficient mode time to maximize damage done is non-trivial, even before you take upgrading gear into account. It's a Linear Programming problem, and can be solved using the simplex algorithm for a given initial gear set and fight length. Under this setup, Longevity stats are valuable because they allow you to increase the amount of time in burn mode, which increases total damage done, even if those stats do not increase the DPS of either mode directly!

In a lot of ways, it's very similar to paladin healing mechanics, in that we have a burn mode, Holy Light, and an efficient mode, Flash of Light. The major difference is that the spell paladins use is dictated more by incoming damage in the short-term future, rather than attempting to maximize total raw healing done.

However, Arcane Mages are very different from most other DPS classes in the game. Most of the DPS classes use the simple DPS algorithm that I've outlined before. They have a single, sustainable nuke (Sinster Strike, Shadow Bolt, Fireball, etc.) that they rely on, while juggling cooldowns for certain higher-dps abilities and lower-dps enablers. I'm not sure I know of any other class that uses a 2-cycle spell rotation. Perhaps Balance druids with Starfire and Wrath.

(Note for the random DPS who seem to think I am putting them down: the simple algorithm is only "simple" in comparison to the 2-cycle algorithm. Please do not interpret this as me insulting you.)

Now, should more DPS classes have a setup such that they have to use a 2-cycle rotation, and thus increase tension when gearing? Maybe. However, one issue is that a burn mode can be quite devastating in PvP, where burst damage is more important than total damage done. Arcane Blast keeps this in check by making the mage take time to ramp up to the high-dps setting.

Tension in Gearing

When it comes to choosing gear, tanks and healers seem to differ from DPS in a significant way. Tanks and healers are trying to reach a balance between two points, while DPS is only intent on maximizing one point.

Tanks need to choose between Survivability and Threat. There's no need to put out 50% more threat than the nearest DPS, and there's no need to have so much health that you never drop below 75% health. Similarly, healers need to choose between Healing Throughput and Mana Longevity. You need to put out enough healing to keep people alive, but you also need enough mana to last the entire fight.

DPS, on the other hand, really optimizes for only one thing, DPS. When looking at gear, pretty much the only thing that matters is which gear results in higher damage.

Part of the reason for the difference is that, past a certain point, Threat, Survivability, Healing Throughput and Mana Longevity stops being useful. But higher DPS is *always* useful. There's no tension, no balance you need to maintain as DPS.

The ramifications for this show up in a lot of different places. Tank and Healer builds often make trade-offs. DPS builds, on the other hand, are pretty much the maximum damage builds possible. Tanks and Healers are more likely to use different colour gems because each color enhances a different aspect. On the other hand, DPS absolutely hate blue gems, because blue gems rarely contribute to increasing damage.

I'm not really sure which is a better system. DPS is simpler and straightforward, and makes gear evaluation a lot easier. As well, you can minimize the amount of gear you carry. Tank and healer gear can get more complex, and you can try for a balance that is very specific to the needs of a specific fight.

The DPS class that comes the closest to needing a balance are mages, and there is a lot of complaints among mages for needing that balance. Mages complain that Spirit is useless, about needing to use Mage Armor over Molten Armor, etc. Mage builds rarely emphasize the trade-off, and usually sacrifice longevity for DPS.

The Dark Secret of Paladin Levelling

The dark secret of paladin levelling is that the whole Seal/Judgement system--though it looks shiny and complex on the outside--is pretty much irrelevant. 95% of the time, you're better off casting or judging Righteousness (or Command if Retribution), rather than trying to debuff the mob with a special Judgement.

To see this, take a look at Judgement of the Crusader. It increases your damage from subsequent Holy sources, which is usually Seal/Judgement of Righteousness. But instead of judging Crusader, you could have started by judging Righteousness. Your subsequent hits are smaller, but you do a chunk of damage up front. Each method takes pretty much the same time to kill a normal mob.

But judging Righteousness also has the advantage of using less mana, as you can judge the seal you already have running instead of casting a new Seal. For example, if you are fighting two mobs, you can go:

1. Cast Seal of Righteousness.
2. Judge Righteousness on mob 1.
3. Cast Seal of Righteousness.
4. Kill mob 1.
5. Judge Righteousness on mob 2.
6. Cast Seal of Righteousness.
7. Kill mob 2.

That's 3 Seals and 2 Judgements. Now if you debuffed each mob with Crusader first, you end up with:

1. Cast Seal of the Crusader.
2. Judge Crusader on mob 1.
3. Cast Seal of Righteousness.
4. Kill mob 1.
5. Cast Seal of the Crusader.
6. Judge Crusader on mob 2.
7. Cast Seal of Righteousness.
8. Kill mob 2.

That's 4 Seals and 2 Judgements. If you want to debuff mobs, you essentially cast an extra Seal for each mob. And given that it's pretty much the same damage either way, you save mana by using Righteousness all the time. That increases your uptime, allows you to run Blessing of Might instead of Wisdom, which lets you kill even faster, and generally makes you more durable.

That's not to say that the Judgement debuffs are useless, just that their use is very specialized. Judgement of the Crusader is good for fighting much higher level mobs or elites, which take a long time to kill. Light and Wisdom are great in groups. Justice is invaluable to keep your target from running off and aggroing other mobs.

But 95% of the time, you're better off ignoring the whole Seal/Judgement system and sticking with Righteousness when levelling.

The Failure of Team-based Ratings

Patch 2.4.2 and Season 4 have some big changes coming for PvP. The most important change, in my opinion, is the following:

- If a character’s personal rating is more than 150 points below the team rating, they will earn points based on their personal rating instead of the team rating.
- If the average personal rating of the players queuing for a game is more than 150 points below the team’s rating, the team will be queued against an opponent matching or similar to the average personal rating.

This is Blizzard throwing in the towel on team-based ratings. Which, quite frankly, is needed.

The point of a rating system, as I have pointed out before, is to measure the skill* of a player. But in a world where you can easily join, leave, form and dissolve teams, the rating system quickly bears no resemblance to reality. Team-based ratings are simply too vulnerable to exploitation. Point-selling by high-end teams is endemic.

In the ideal scenario, a player's rating should quickly settle around its true value, and after that, change fairly slowly. You should not be able to reset it. Wild swings after the system becomes settled is a sign of a flawed system.

Team-based ratings were a bad idea to start with. Hopefully in WotLK, Blizzard will implement a proper personal rating and reward system for PvP.

Once ratings settle, there are a lot of interesting things Blizzard could do. For example, you could have a Tournament each Saturday. Teams would be divided by rating bands, and you could give the winner in each band enough Arena Points for a bonus item. Under the current system, if you did this, you'd probably end up with some full Gladiator team that just started a new team in your bracket, and they would romp all over everyone.

I would take a look at games like Magic Online, which--even though they have a rating system--don't rely solely on ratings to hand out rewards.

*Where "skill" means the ability to defeat the other team, and may include gear.

Ask Coriel: Healing Trinkets

Jammy asks:

So my guild is just starting out in SSC/TK and I was wondering what the best possible trinkets for a healadin would be. As of right now, I currently use the Lower City prayerbook, and the Ribbon of Sacrifice from Kara, occasionally swapping out a couple of JC trinkets, like the Talasite Owl or the Living Ruby Serpent. Any other suggestions I might shoot for?

I use the [Lower City Prayerbook] and [Ribbon of Sacrifice] myself. They're pretty decent trinkets for that level.

The only trinkets I'd really suggest as possible upgrades (from lower
content) are:
- [Battlemaster's Perseverance] (Badges, Honor)
- [Pendant of the Violet Eye] from Shade of Aran
- [Tome of Diabolic Remedy] from Hex Lord Malacrass
- [Figurine: Seaspray Albatross] from Shattered Sun Offensive
- [Vial of the Sunwell] from Heroic Magister's Terrace

There are 3 or 4 decent trinkets coming up in T5 content. Don't forget about spell crit trinkets. There's a really nice spell crit trinket off Karathress ([Sextant of Unstable Currents]).

Honestly, I wouldn't worry too much about trinkets. You have a solid pair. If you can get one of the ones on the list above easily, go for it, but don't sweat it. Also, I find that making a macro to automatically use your trinkets (especially LCP) when you cast a spell will help ensure you get maximum use out of them.

Something like:

/use Ribbon of Sacrifice
/use Lower City Prayerbook
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
/cast Flash of Light

Any trinkets that I may have missed?

Ask Coriel: Pursuit of Justice for a Tank?

Jarilo asks:

I was just wondering what you thought about pursuit of justice as a talent for protection paladins running instances and raids. Is it a useful talent? Does it have a noticeable impact on the amount of spell damage the paladin takes? Does it even work for PvE, or is it only worth it for PvP? My husband has a prot pally and we were noticing a bit of difficulty in Magisters Terrace from the large amount of damage done by spellcasters. We're finding conflicting reports from google searches, and wondered if you knew one way or the other?

As far as I know, Pursuit of Justice will work in PvE. Your husband's paladin will take 3% less spell damage overall, which can help in magic-heavy fights. And the speed increase is really nice.

The real problem is where do you take the extra points from? The best idea is probably stealing some points from Anticipation. You'll take a little more physical damage, in order to take a little less spell damage. I'd suggest a build like this: 0/46/15.

Also, if you raid, be careful to stay both uncrittable and uncrushable if you do this. If your defense is too low, and you can't afford to lose points in Anticipation, I'd probably take the points from Precision instead.

Wipe Recovery

Moving off the topic of my performance, spending a week with that guild definitely exposed me to some new (to me) ideas and concepts.

One interesting thing is that Reclaimed never used wipe recovery tools. After a wipe, the entire raid always released and ran back. This is in stark contrast to all the other guilds I have ever been. We almost always soulstoned a priest or paladin, and then relied on the healers to resurrect the raid, unless you couldn't recover from the fight.

Running back appears slower at first glance, but is it really? It takes 70 seconds to fully resurrect a raid under perfect conditions. And usually conditions are not perfect. Resurrections will overlap or you'll have to hunt down someone's body. Running probably doesn't take that much longer.

Additionly, people often decide to go AFK after a wipe (post-res if you're lucky, pre-res if you're not). Everyone running keeps everyone at their computer, actually doing something. You don't have to waste time waiting for everyone to get back after from being AFK.

Finally, always running means you are expected to use your Soulstones and Ankhs in battle, which can make a real difference. Getting a mage to return from the dead can be a life-saver, and turn a potential wipe into a victory.

It's probably a small thing, but it's just something that none of my previous guilds did, and maybe a tactic that a lot of smaller/lower level guilds have not considered.

WWS Reports

Several commenters asked for WWS reports, so here they are. I was only present for the Black Temple and Mount Hyjal parts.

1. Tuesday - BT
2. Wednesday - BT
3. Thursday - BT/MH
4. Monday - MH

Please don't comment on Reclaimed in general. I would have anonymized the reports, but that option appears to have been disabled.

Some general notes. On Tuesday and Wednesday, my HL5/FoL7 macro was messed up, resulting in me casting many more HL5 than I intended. Ratio should have been about 1:7, but was 1:3 instead. I switched to just doing FoL7 (and HL11) after that.

I wiped the raid once on Gorefiend. I died in the wrong spot, and didn't realize you could shoot other people's constructs--I thought it was like Leotheras for some reason--so I'm pretty sure I was not shooting my own constructs. I also wiped the raid once on Archimonde (Doomfire).

Other than that, the obvious healing error I noticed was on Bloodboil. I really should have been faster on the draw to heal the Fel-Raged person. I also needed to do a better job keeping the paladin tanking the Hyjal waves up.

I do think my healing mix should have more HL11 and less FoL7, but the tension between cast time, mana, and other healing was hard to judge. I think I should have defaulted more to HL11 when in doubt.

As for gear, I'll try and log out in healing gear (though I am Retribution at the moment). When Holy I have about +1925 healing, and the gear is mostly at the T5 level. I heal using Grid and mouseover macros.

Thanks for all the help and comments so far.

How to Improve My Game?

So Reclaimed denied my application on Wednesday. They cited poor healing and poor situational awareness as the reasons. And quite honestly, looking at the WWS reports for those raid nights, I agree with them. I had very low total healing, and did a poor job overall.

I'm not sure what it was, maybe it was a bad week, maybe it was because it was the first time I had seen Mount Hyjal and Black Temple, maybe it was adjusting to the speed of their playstyle or maybe it was because my skills are simply not good enough. It's probably a combination of all those factors.

One thing is pretty clear: I need to improve my game. However, I'm not sure how to go about doing that.

Gear and theory-wise, I believe that I am solid. It's more the intangible parts that I need to work on. And kind of honestly, I'm drawing a blank as to how to improve them. Should I do more heroics? Try PvP in earnest?

Any suggestions you guys have would be appreciated.

Other People

After reading some recent posts from Galoheart and Big Bear Butt Blogger, I have solidified my view that the central paradox of MMOs is:

The best thing about MMOs is that you can play with other people.

The worst thing about MMOs is that you have to play with other people.

In many ways, WoW was the first MMO to really grasp this distinction. And a huge amount of the angst and conflict at the level cap comes when the game transitions from focusing on the first style to focusing on the second style. We play this game to play with other people, yet playing with other people often causes a lot of problems.

It's amazing fun to play with other people. It's what sets this genre apart from all the other games out there. I still believe that single best thrill in WoW is downing a hard new boss with a raid of friends. A hard-fought, evenly matched Arena battle might compare. They're both the same idea: defeat a hard challenge because you worked together as a team.

Yet other people are also the worst part of MMOs. Drama, people going afk, griefing, etc. So many problems in this game aren't really problems with the game itself, but with people. And sometimes it's just simple logistics. Person A only has 20 minutes to play, so that's just not enough time to do something as a group.

There are a ton of issues where the difference comes into play. Take raiders vs casuals. Raiding demands that you play with a large number of other people, and thus places strict demands on people in order to make the playstyle reliable. Casual places fewer demands, but you often end up playing by yourself.

PvE vs PvP. The real advantage PvP has over raiding is that it involves fewer "other people". Battlegrounds you can essentially solo. Arenas involve 1 to 4 other people.

The shortage of tanks and healers. DPS "can" play with other people. Tanks and healers "have to" play with other people.

Realistically, what can a game company do? The entire point of these games is to play with other people, yet the more you force people to play together the harder it becomes to consistently enjoy the experience. I know there are other MMOs who force you to group all the time, but I also believe that is a reason they haven't achieved the success of WoW.

In the end, all I have to offer are the (paraphrased) words of the great philosopher Homer J. Simpson, "other people: the cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems."

Updates

I'm currently applying to Reclaimed, which is one of the more advanced guilds on Skywall, working on Sunwell at the moment. I thought it would be interesting to try a more hardcore approach to raiding for a while. I respecced back to Holy and am healing for the most part.

I haven't actually seen Sunwell yet, but I did get taken on a Black Temple run, which was pretty interesting. It's illuminating to see how this guild does stuff.

The biggest thing is that they are fast. They just move from trash pack to pack swiftly. People go afk, come back, the raid keeps going. Heck, the main tank went afk and the raid kept going, just using the other tanks. Even boss attempts are fast. Wipe, everyone release, run back in, buff and pull again. It seems like this guild gets in three attempts in the same time it would take the other guilds I've been in to do one attempt.

The pace is the hardest thing for me to get used to. I honestly couldn't tell you very much about the bosses in the first part of Black Temple, as it's kind of a blur.

All in all, it's been a pretty interesting experience so far. We'll see how things turn out.

Are Consumables Bad Design?

I've been watching the discussion about Brutallis, the second boss in Sunwell, and the first real gear check in The Burning Crusade. One thing that has jumped out at me is the side discussion about Leatherworking drums. Drums are items which can only be used by leatherworkers, but provide a temporary buff to the group. Apparently they are quite powerful, and are pushing people to do things like stack the raid with leatherworkers or change professions.

Drums are just the latest consumable to have issues. Flasks and elixirs got sorted into the Battle/Guardian system to keep them under control. There are complaints that the caster classes have to chain mana potions every two minutes.

So it begs the question: Are consumables--items which give a temporary bonus and are then destroyed--inherently bad design?

In theory, potions and flasks are pretty cool. They're a strong part of fantasy literature, and the idea of brewing elixirs is pretty neat.

But in practice, consumables tend to be annoying. Because they are powerful, content tends to be balanced with the expectation that the players are using them. If content wasn't balanced around that, a buffed group would find it too easy. As well, farming materials or money for consumables is something you have to do for every raid. Basically, you're continously expending a lot of effort just to stay level.

Permanent items on the other hand, like armor, enchants, and gems have a large initial cost, but once you meet that cost you're set. You've actually achieved something, and your character will always be better from that point. To me, gathering the materials for a [Red Belt of Battle] seems much more worthwhile, and much more fun, than gathering the materials for flasks for the next week of raiding.

Of course, WoW can't remove consumables entirely, as the Alchemy profession is based on them. But it might be a good idea for a new game to simply not include consumables. Make buffs either permanent or easily renewable. In many ways, I think the endgame would be a better place if consumables didn't exist.

Blessing Assignment Patterns

In my Guide to Blessings, I originally advocated assigning Blessings as follows:

Pattern 1: Combined Might/Wisdom

Paladin 1 - Light on tanks, Wisdom on hunters, Salvation on everyone else
Paladin 2 - Wisdom on casters, Might on melee and hunters
Paladin 3 - Kings

This pattern has its advantages, mainly that all the complexity of blessing assignments is put on the shoulders of Paladin 1. This means that Paladins 2 and 3 have simpler assignments, which can be a great boon for an entry-level raid.

However, this pattern does have disadvantages. To maximize effectiveness, Paladin 1 needs Improved Wisdom, while Paladin 2 needs both Improved Wisdom and Improved Might. Paladin 3 needs Kings, of course. It is rare that you will get 3 paladins with exactly the right buffs, especially if you run a Retribution paladin.

So let's take a look at a second pattern:

Pattern 2: Split Might/Wisdom

Paladin 1: Light on tanks, Salvation on melee, Wisdom on casters and hunters
Paladin 2: Salvation on casters, Might on tanks, melee and hunters
Paladin 3: Kings

This pattern greatly reduces the requirements for maximum effectiveness. Paladin 1 needs Improved Wisdom, Paladin 2 needs Improved Might, and Paladin 3 needs Kings. This is much easier to get, and works well with a Retribution paladin.

The downside is that the complexity is split up between the first two paladins, and no single paladin is responsible for keeping Salvation up.

Ability Names

Something that Blizzard does extremely well, but goes uncommented on by most people, is the naming system for talents and abilities. The names for each class are extremely well-chosen, and do a superb job of reinforcing that class’s identity.

Take rogues, for example: ambush, mutilate, backstab, rupture, garrote, sinister strike, crippling poison, hemorrhage. Brutal, guttural words. Words which are perfect for the rogue.

Paladins have might, wisdom, justice, crusader, light’s grace, avenger's shield, vengeance. Blessing of Kings. Again, the words used are chosen for deliberate effect, reinforcing the class identity.

Warlocks have corruption, doom, agony, immolate, drain life. Words that evoke the dark nature of the warlock.

You can see similar effects for all the other classes. Attention to details like these is what makes Blizzard games so polished, and their Creative/Naming team has done an outstanding job with ability and talent names.

It's one of those things that I never really thought about, until I saw a different game which had just terrible names for abilities. That made me realize that coming up with good, solid names is not as easy as it seems, and actually goes a long way to making your game shine.

Deeper Talent Trees and Specialization

Vasc of Crushridge writes:

It recently dawned upon me that the reason for the extinction of the hybrid are the extensions of the talent trees. In vanilla wow we had 51 talent points to spend, our trees went up to a 31 point talent. This means that we could "Spec" to anything and still have 20 points to put in another tree. This was a ratio of 31:20 or about 1.5:1. In BC we have 61 talent points and trees that go to 41, this means our ratio is now 41:20 or 2:1. In Wrath this will be even worse with 51 talent points and a ratio of 2.5:1 for anyone who wanted a 51 point talent.

So in vanilla, specing as a hybrid was perfectly viable, however in BC in order to be effective we must become an arch type, in Wrath this will become even more pronounced with people putting an even greater percentage of their talent points into one tree. One fix for this would be to not extend the trees at all, this would increase the number of points we could have in our "off-tree" and allow people to play as hybrids once again.

I think that Vasc is basically correct in a lot of respects, though deeper talent trees are not the sole reason for the extinction of hybrids. Time costs, increasing number of stats, and gear specialization play large factors as well.

As well, 31/30 specs would be pretty powerful, so Blizzard had to make the new top talents even more powerful. I shudder to think how crazy the 51-point talents will have to be in order to prevent people from going 41/30.

I too would prefer that Blizzard keep talent trees at 41 points. Maybe change, clean up, and add new talents lower down. I think it would also allow for a greater variety of builds. Right now I find that there's basically 1 build for each tree, and there was a lot more build variety in WoW 1.0.

I doubt Blizzard will do this though. Too many people would be upset if there weren't any crazy 51-point talents.