Using Games To Teach About Social Problems

Raph Koster linked to an interesting article about Brenda Brathwaite's attempt to create games that illustrate issues such as slavery and the Holocaust.

It is an interesting read, but I find myself wondering just how successful these games really are. There are two issues I see: the rules often emphasize the wrong aspects, and thus can be subverted; and the fact that games are often isomorphic to other games.

For the first issue, about emphasizing the wrong aspect, consider the description of the initial slavery games:

Brathwaite assembled a collection of tiny wooden figures, then had her daughter group them into "families." After her daughter was finished, she picked them up by the handful and placed them on a makeshift boat. Her daughter was confused: Why would she take the parents but leave the baby? Why wouldn't brothers stay with their sisters? "No one wants to go," Brathwaite explained. That's when it started to click.

Then Brathwaite devised a primitive resource management mechanic. It took 10 turns for the boat to cross the Atlantic. The boat had 30 units of food. Each turn, the player had to roll a d6, and reduce their food stores by that number. By the trip's halfway point, it was clear to her daughter that her "cargo" wouldn't make it. It wasn't a "fun" game by any means, but it served a different purpose: It helped her daughter intuitively understand the emotional experience of the slave trade, a lesson that numbers on a chalkboard couldn't provide.

In the first example, what if the player made a conscious attempt to keep families together? Doing that defeats the moral lesson that you are trying to teach. Or in the second, suppose the player figured out the right balance between slaves and food stores such that she could keep the "cargo" alive till the end of the journey? Is that winning? Or would it teach that slavery is okay if you take proper care of the slaves?

If you change the rules of the game such that it is impossible to survive the trip, does that show that slavery is evil, or does it really show that you rigged the game to ensure the "right" outcome?

The rules of a game can simulate many things. However, I'm not sure they can get across fundamental moral points like the idea that it is wrong for one human to own another.

The second concern is that game rules can be thought of as just problems that can be solved. Such problems are often isomorphic to different problems. That means the underlying rules, constraints, and solutions are the same, but the context is what determines the morality.

For example, consider the game Train described in the article:

The object of Train is to get a collection of people from Point A to Point B by placing them in a boxcar and sending them on their merry way. Played among a group of three people, players draw cards from a pile that can impede other players or free them from existing obstacles. The first player to reach the end of the line wins.

The destination? Auschwitz.

Now, the article doesn't really expand on this, but the underlying problem is a logistics problem like the ones faced by airline, trucking and other transportation companies every day. The shock comes from the context: that the people being transported are Jews and the destination is a death camp. The context is very important, but I don't see what the *game* part actually adds.

Or let's look at the second slavery example again:

Then Brathwaite devised a primitive resource management mechanic. It took 10 turns for the boat to cross the Atlantic. The boat had 30 units of food. Each turn, the player had to roll a d6, and reduce their food stores by that number. By the trip's halfway point, it was clear to her daughter that her "cargo" wouldn't make it.

Let's change the context. Instead of slaves, let's say the boat contains refugees fleeing a city that is being destroyed. As they cross the ocean, they realize that they don't have enough food for everyone to survive. Now the lesson the game teaches is about hard choices, and maybe even about the nobility of sacrifice. It's diametrically opposite from the evil of slavery, but the underlying game mechanics are identical in both cases.

The context, or the "fluff", determines morality, not the game rules. But if you're using a game to teach the moral concept, and someone sees through the game to the underlying isomorphism, that weakens the lesson. It makes it easier to declare the two situations equal, to justify actions taken.

Games are problems where you need to find a solution while being bound by rules and constraints. These rules and constraints are the most important parts, more important than the context that surrounds them. As such, games are a poor medium for conveying lessons about morality and social problems. Rather than focusing on the moral issue, the game becomes about trying to achieve an acceptable outcome by outwitting the rules.

Rhaina On Crutches

In this thread about dual-spec, one poster makes the common claim that certain mechanics are "crutches" which weaken guilds who use them. Rhaina posts a beautiful response that struck me as being so perfectly right that I took the liberty of reposting it here:

If you lack one leg, a a pair of crutches is an indispensable possession that allows you to move about in the world.

If you have two perfectly good legs, a crutch is unnecessary.

If you have two perfectly good legs, but you injured one, a crutch can be a temporary necessity. Eventually, you don't need it anymore. In my experience, the physical therapist thinks I don't need it before I do. In my brother's experience, the physical therapist is trying desperately to get him to keep using it for a week longer than he thinks he needs to.

I don't think it's at all reasonable for a person who can walk without a crutch to sneer at the one-legged person for whom the crutch is mobility and independence.

There are raids where intentional use of dual speccs makes the raid capable of meetings its specific goals. There are raids where relying on dual speccs is unnecessary and just causes angst for no good reason, and may even make the raid less capable overall.

Unfortunately, we can all look at the one-legged person and see that a crutch is a boon to her. We're not so good at just looking at a person who has two legs and knowing who will benefit from the crutch and who just weakens himself by using it.

Roundup

Ulduar Progression

The guild is progressing steadily through Ulduar. We have killed everything except Mimron, General Vezax and Yogg-Saron. We also grabbed the medium-difficulty version of Iron Council (where you kill the medium-sized vrykul Runemaster last), so that we can start people on the quest chain for Algalon.

I really like the multiple difficulty modes of fights. It allows for much greater granularity, and it allows you to slowly introduce new elements into the fight. For example, Phase 1 and 2 of the Iron Council fight are pretty much identical to the easy mode, it's just Phase 3 which is different.

Boss Names

As a complete aside, it's interesting how the playerbase calls that fight "The Iron Council". The real name--which is the one referenced in the game and fight voice-acting--is "The Assembly of Iron". And yet in almost every forum discussion I've seen, the players refer to the fight by the different name. Is it because "Iron Council" is shorter? Maybe more evocative? Are there other bosses where the players use a different name than the given one?

Ulduar Nerfs

Blizzard has been steadily tweaking the early fights of Ulduar. I don't disagree with a lot of the nerfs. I think Blizzard overestimated the amount of DPS put out by the average guild. Though to be honest, there is a really big gap between the very high-end and the rest of the guilds.

Even my guild is probably averaging 500-1000 DPS lower than the edge guilds, and I've seen parses from a friend's guild where the average DPS is 1000 DPS lower than us. I think the gap is excessively large at this point, and Blizzard should probably look into things they could do to tighten things up.

Predictions Coming True

It's a really interesting experience, watching some of your negative predictions come true. On the one hand, you're happy that you made the correct call, but on the other hand, it would have been better all around if you had been wrong.

I made some predictions about Dual Spec, and I think this Guild Relations thread is solid evidence of the new expectations emerging.

Similarly, a long time ago I posted about the pressure to "do more". Sadly, my guild has decided to add an extra day to the raid schedule, going from three to four days a week, following precisely the logic laid out in that post. The idea is that the extra day will allow us to progress faster, and upping our world ranking and making us a more attractive prospective to skilled players looking for a new guild.

I can't really argue with that logic, because it's probably true, and I can make a four day schedule. But to me, guilds at our level are fairly common. However, they all seem to raid 4-5 nights a week. A guild at our level which raids 3 or less nights is rare, and what attracted me to this guild in the first place. But that of course, might be biasing me. I see a skilled guild which raids 3 nights a week. The rest of my guildmates see a skilled guild which raids 3 nights a week. We emphasize the aspect which is most important to us.

Breaking Tier 7

I've been considering a gearing dilemma lately. The 4-piece Holy Tier 7 set bonus (-5% to the cost of Holy Light) is really, really good. Insanely good, in fact.

However, you can't just wear Tier 7 forever. At what point should you break the set? Should you break it when you get your first upgrade, or should you wait to upgrade a couple pieces simultaneously? Maybe I should upgrade at the first opportunity, but keep the T7 in my bags, and swap back if I am having mana issues.

Retribution System Idea

Exorcism cannot be used on players anymore and Ghostcrawler has put up an explanation. He also states:

In the same patch where we remove the “not on players” limitation for Exorcism, we are going to change the way paladins do damage so that their normal combat moves have more depth to them instead of just using abilities every time they finish their cooldown. This should make causing damage as a paladin more interesting and also less bursty. While we have some ideas on how to accomplish that, if you have suggestions or your own ideas about how this could work, this would be a good time to share them. (As examples of abilities you don’t just use whenever their cooldown has finished, you might look at Conflagrate, Brain Freeze, Rip, Overpower or Arcane Blast.)

It's hard to work with Ret, as you can't make changes that will seriously affect Holy or Protection. Here's an idea I had that's relatively simple, but might tone down Ret and make it more interesting.

1. Increase the talent Vengeance by 2 points for 5 stacks of 5% each.


2. Change Crusader Strike to require 2 stacks of Vengeance, and to consume 2 stacks of Vengeance when used.


3. Change Divine Storm to require 3 stacks of Vengeance, and to consume 3 stacks of Vengeance when used.


4. If Crusader Strike or Divine Storm crits, they still generate a stack of Vengeance (net loss of 1 and 2 stacks respectively).


5. Tune the numbers so Ret puts out the damage you want.

This is a very simple system, but CS and DS now eat Vengeance charges, while auto-attacks and Judgment generate them. You can't burst right off the bat, as you have to build Vengeance charges.

As well, I don't know what the optimum time to use an ability is. If you're at 2 charges, do you wait for 3 charges to Divine Storm, or do you Crusader Strike right away? If your Judgement cooldown is coming up, should you delay a special in order to maximize Judgement damage? Will the value of Haste and Crit go up? Will slightly faster weapons be better than slow weapons? There's a fair amount of room for the theorycrafters to play with.

It might even be good in PvP, as you can trade off using an ability right now for a bigger ability later.

Finally, this is fairly simple to implement. We only touch 3 talents in the top half of Retribution. Vengeance is already the heart of the Retribution tree, so making it even more important is not much of a stretch. It doesn't affect Holy or Protection at all. It also works fairly well for a leveling paladin. First they would get Vengeance, which is always good. Then they get Crusader Strike, and that introduces the mechanic at a very simple level. Ten levels later they get Divine Storm and the full range of choice.

Raining Titles, Other Updates

I've picked up a ton of titles in the last week or so:

• the Argent Champion
• the Explorer
• Loremaster
• Ambassador
• of Stormwind (from the Argent Tournament)

If you're looking for money, get to the Champion level of the Argent Tournament as soon as possible. Each daily is worth 13g, and you can get an additional 10g from the Champion's Purse. (You can get a Writ instead of the Purse if you want Reputation instead.)

I'm still a terrible jouster, but I will share my super-secret jousting technique: Put up 3 shields and melee the opponent. When they start to move away, Shield-Break them and then close to melee range before they can charge you. Then continue meleeing. It's pretty slow, but it works all the time.

I'm a bit disappointed with the end of the Black Knight quest. It feels like Blizzard squandered an opportunity there.

Fishing in Wintergrasp is awesome. Pretty much the only fish you get are the ones needed for Fish Feasts, so it's the best place to fish for raid consumables.

Uldar is lots of fun. I've killed Flame Leviathan, Razorscale, XT-002, and Iron Council so far. My guild runs with 3 Holy paladins and 1 Resto Shaman, and I can't help but think life would be so much easier if the numbers were flipped.

I've decided to try a new technique of primarily healing with Holy Light and Holy Shock. The new Infusion of Light works out to an extra 6-10% crit rate for the next Holy Light. It seems pretty decent so far, but more testing is required. I'm even considering replacing Glyph of Flash of Light with Glyph of Holy Shock.

Still haven't got enough money for dual-spec, as raiding costs are chewing up the income from the dailies. I'm considering going Protection as my second spec. There's a really intriguing Prot build that skips Spiritual Attunement, opting to use Glyph of Seal of Blood for mana regen instead. It features really high threat and DPS, and its mana does not depend on incoming damage at all, potentially making it amazingly good for off-tanking. The cost, however, is the self-damage from Seal of Blood. But since Blood has been rebalanced away from the burst damage of the Judgement, the self-damage might be tolerable. I have no idea if this build will actually work, but it's a very interesting idea.

Also, I could use some help updating Raider 101 to 3.1. If you're up to speed on the new theorycraft for your class, please consider editing the page or leaving a comment.

Raid Healing Idea

Right now, paladin healing is almost in a good place. The only issue is raid healing. I know that paladins are supposed to be weak at raid healing, but I think the current situation is excessive. Relying on Glyph of Holy Light is insane.

As well, Flash of Light is really weak. It's still highly efficient, but it just isn't powerful enough to handle current damage levels. Holy Light has pretty much become the weapon of choice these days.

Because I like trying to kill two birds with one stone, here's an idea to help both problems:

What if a paladin had a glyph or high-level talent such that casting a Flash of Light automatically cast a second Flash of Light on a injured target within 10 yards. Flash of Light would become more useful, we get a little taste of smart healing, our throughput when raid healing would increase, and we could hit more than one person at a time. I think it would still be weaker than the three other classes at raid healing, but it would close the gap some.

Here's my idea in Glyph form:

Glyph of Light's Mercy
Major Glyph
Your Flash of Light heals an additional friendly target within 10 yards. Increases the cost of Flash of Light by 100%.

So Flash of Light's cost doubles, but we can use it to raid heal somewhat effectively.

Patch First Impressions

I really need to update more.

Servers were pretty unstable on Tuesday, but seem to have stabilized last night. We killed Flame Leviathan and then banged our heads against Ignis for a few hours. Good times.

Lots of little things I like in this patch. In no particular order:

• Swimming mounts are great! No more getting randomly dismounted.


• I really like the changes to the Quest tracker. Being able to use quest items--as well as opening the quest log by clicking on the tracker--is extremely nice. As well, allowing multiple Achievements to be tracked is great.


• Previewing talents is awesome! If you haven't enabled it yet, it's in Interface Options -> Display -> Preview Talent Changes. This allows you to play with your talents before locking them in. Sadly, I forgot to enable it before doing my initial spec, promptly made a mistake, and had to pay 40g to fix it.


• I like the changes to fishing, especially the daily. Always catching something makes it a lot smoother than before, and using bait to catch better fish just makes sense.


• The Argent Tournament is pretty neat. I'm rather terrible at jousting, but it's still fun. I really like the shield graphics. Using vibrant colours and graphics in that manner was excellent work.


• The Exorcism and Shield of Righteousness changes are very useful for Holy soloing. I still haven't scrounged up the gold for dual-spec, but being able to use Exorcism more is a god-send.


• Also great is moving the page forward/back on the AH to the top part of the UI. Having to scroll down all the time was annoying.

All in all, it looks to be a pretty good patch. Blizz just needs to resolve the server performance issues, and everything will be fine.

As for Ulduar, the only thought I have is that there seems to be a lot of raid damage. We went in there with 4 Holy paladins, a Disc priest, and 2 Resto druids and it was pretty painful until we added a Resto shaman. As well, Flash of Light is almost totally useless now. It isn't even strong enough for raid healing! I was half-tempted to just remove it from my cast bars. Also, I really miss multiple Sacred Shields.

Ulduar!

(Video by Cranius and Summergale)

Oh man, I am so not ready for this patch. I don't have enough gold for dual-spec, and I really should have done some fishing last weekend.

Heh, one of the advantages of Blizzard taking so long to release patches is that there's always a thrill of excitement when one comes out. People make movies, there's breathless reporting on everything coming out, everyone is blogging and chattering away. Energy levels are very high.

If Blizzard released a patch every month, I don't think it would have the same impact.

Made Me Smile

I just showed a newbie dwarf paladin how to get from Ironforge to Stormwind via the tram.

Good times. :)

Dual-Specs and Loot Distribution

Karl asks:

What are your thoughts on loot distro for classes that dual-spec during raids? Use dkp, or main spec rolls (but what is main spec now? and is it fair to classes who likely won't change specs? (ranged dps mostly)

It really depends on how your guild handles loot now. The guilds that run on pure DKP probably won't change anything. Pure DKP systems don't disadvantage pure DPS because the hybrids purchase more items, which tends to keep their DKP lower than the pure classes. In my experience, pure classes usually have more DKP than hybrids of similar attendance.

However, guilds with a priority system in place will probably have their members declare a main spec, and use that to determine who gets what. They may add a new level to the priority scheme. For example, "main-spec > off-spec > alts" might become "main-spec > 2nd-spec > off-spec > alts". But they may not, feeling this is more trouble than it is worth.

If you're really min-maxing, say with a Loot Council, you may see gear distributed with an eye to how much time is spent in each role. For example, pure classes might get preference on DPS gear because they will use it 100% of the time. Tank/DPS hybrids might get preference over Healer/DPS hybrids because it is more likely that a Tank will need to switch to DPS for several fights.

I don't think dual-spec will really change loot distribution though. Most hybrids already pick up multiple sets of gear under current systems, and I don't think it is worth the effort to formalize it.

It might cause drama in PuGs. PuGs will probably have to declare what type of loot they are looking for at the start of the run, as a DPS-main might be switching to healer just for this run, but would still want to roll on DPS gear.

Optimizing Judgements in 3.1

3.1 will bring some changes to paladin Judgements. As a result, the optimal way to Judge in a raid is unclear. Here is a breakdown of the issue.

Constraints

1. Holy can only Judge Light or Wisdom from range.
2. Protection cannot share a Judgement with another spec because Judgements of the Just will be lost.*
3. The maximum amount of healing from Light comes from Retribution.
4. Wisdom and Justice have the same effect regardless of which paladin Judges it.
5. Wisdom increases the DPS of the raid by allowing DPS to spend more time in full burn mode.
6. Justice generally does nothing useful.

* I'm not 100% sure on this point, but I think it's the current accepted wisdom.

Solution 1: Ret judges Light, Holy judges Wisdom, Protection judges Justice

Pros: Maximizes healing from Light; no interference with Judgements of the Just

Cons: Relies on Holy to keep Wisdom up, Holy has to judge at least once every 20 seconds, does not guarantee 100% uptime on Wisdom

Solution 2: Ret judges Wisdom, Holy judges Light, Protection judges Justice.

Pros: 100% uptime on Wisdom; no interference with Judgements of the Just

Cons: Much lower passive healing from Light

Solution 3: Ret judges Light, Holy judges Light, Protection judges Wisdom

Pros: 100% uptime on Wisdom; no interference with JotJ; Holy spends the minimum amount of time judging possible

Cons: Slightly less than maximum heal from Light possible; if Protection is not tanking the focused mob, Wisdom is not helping the bulk of the raid.

---

Personally, I like Solution 2. It maximizes DPS, and leaves healing in the hands of the healers. Large amounts of passive healing is very helpful, but can be compensated for by direct heals. In my mind, ensuring maximum DPS is more likely to win the fight for you than extra undirected healing.

However, there are other opinions. Ferraro argues for Solution 1, insisting that it is not very hard for a Holy paladin to have 100% uptime on Wisdom. I'm skeptical of that claim, especially as the fights get harder. If something goes wrong, Judging is the first thing to be dropped by a Holy paladin, in favor of spamming heals.

Solution 3 is pretty good, but if you don't have a Protection paladin, you end up having to go back to the Light/Wisdom debate. As well, if the Protection paladin is off tanking her own mob in a corner, then the raid doesn't get the benefit of her Judgement.

Fixing Chain Disconnecting

Cadfael at Elitist Jerks has written a guide to fixing disconnecting in raids. It's long and detailed, with several fixes that can help if you are suffering from:

• Sometimes disconnects after porting / logging in to Dalaran
• Disconnects at heavy raid AOE damage and events like Thaddius, Gluth
• Chain disconnects in general
• Excessive disconnects at Sartharion
• Excessive long phase of "red question marks" after a patch when the client's cache was deleted or you don't see NPCs and player for a long time or even disconnect seemingly unmotivated after a new patch often
• Often disconnect after porting in or out of an instance

It's an extremely good article that has a lot of suggestions that can easily be implemented.

Email Scam

So I received this email today:

***NOTICE OF FINAL WARNING***

Account Action: 3 Hour Suspension

Account Offense: Violation of EULA and Terms of Service - Transfer of Account Ownership

Details: An investigation of your World of Warcraft account has found strong evidence that the account in question is being sold or traded. In accordance with EULA section 4, Paragraph B, listed below:

World of Warcraft -> Legal -> End User License Agreement

and Section 8 of the Terms of Use:

Blizzard Entertainment -> Legal -> Terms of Use

A 3-hour probationary suspension is pending on this account, awaiting confirmation from a specialist. A final warning has been issued. The investigation will be continued by the Account Administration team to determine the any further suspensions. If the account in question is found in violation of the EULA and Terms of Use, further action will be taken. Be aware that any additional inappropriate actions may result in the permanent closure of the account.

Thank you for respecting our position on this matter.

**In order to prevent an elongated suspension, we request that you verify your legitimate ownership of the account here:

[Address redacted]

Any disputes or questions concerning this account action can only be addressed by Account Administration. To learn more about how Account Administration is able to assist you, please visit us at http://www.blizzard.com/support/wowaa/.

Account security is solely the responsibility of the accountholder. Please be advised that in the event of a compromised account, Blizzard representatives typically must lock the account. In these cases the Account Administration team will require faxed receipt of ID materials before releasing the account for play.

Please visit the World of Warcraft Policies and Terms of Use Agreement: (http://www.blizzard.com/support/wowgm/?id=agm01712p) and (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/termsofuse.shtml) for further information.

Regards,
Ezartial
Billing & Account Administration
Blizzard Entertainment
Account Administration Overview

This email is a scam. But I have to admit that it is very good. It looks professional, has lots of links to real Blizzard sites. Heck, it might even be a real Blizzard email, but with a couple extra lines added. It almost got me, I actually logged into WoW to check if my account was suspended. But the middle link (which I redacted) actually points to some *.tk domain. Thankfully I didn't click on it.

I sometimes wonder what would happen if you cannot trust your communication lines at all. Email is rapidly approaching that point. Phone lines have begun their slide, as anyone who's received those automated voice notifications of winning contests will know. Maybe we'll have to go back to imposing a per-message cost on communications, so scams like this become economically unfeasible. I don't really want to see the cost of email increase, but better that than having email/phones become completely useless.

Good Enough, Part II

Gevlon comments on the previous post:

My point was that the content defines "good enough". You are right that you can select the guild. However the selection goes for content and not for effort. Effort is defined by content.

This is true to a degree. But I think it's still a good idea to farm and exceed content requirements for several reasons:

1. Future Content

We are not just gearing for the current fight, we are gearing for future fights. Sure, if Patchwerk only requires 2.5K DPS, you're fine. But what do you do when the next fight requires 5K DPS? If you prepare beforehand, you're golden. Otherwise, you have to work on getting the required gear instead of trying the fight you really want to do.

The moment Ulduar comes out, we're going to drop Naxx like a hot potato and dive straight in.

2. More Options

If your gear exceeds requirements, it gives you more flexibility. You can do easy encounters or hard encounters as you choose. You can bring alts, because the mains can handle it. You can let a healer attempt to DPS Scions of Eternity for an Achievement, instead of needing her to heal 100% of the time.

It's like having a lot of gold. You don't need 50K gold. Personally, aside from buying my Epic flying, I've never exceeded 5K gold at any one time. But having more gold on hand makes life easier, because it gives you more options.

Additionally, it also gives you flexibility in recruiting. If a portion of your raid exceeds minimums, it allows you recruit good under-geared players and gear them up without having to go back and farm old content.

3. Greater Margin

Better gear reduces the probability of a catastrophic mistake. If you kill a boss in 5 minutes instead of 10, it's less likely that someone will make a mistake which causes a wipe.

As well, better gear allows you to be successful with less skill. Yes, Ensidia and the other top 10 guilds can probably blow through content with minimum gear requirements. But most of us are not Ensidia. If my time-on-target is 10% less than an Ensidia rogue--because she's better at movement--I'm going to need to hit 11% harder in order to do the same damage.

4. Raids are More Fun

Most of us raid because we enjoy raiding. But honestly, wiping on content we've already beaten is not fun at all. A high degree of effort leads to faster, cleaner raids which is more fun for everyone.

Wipes also increase the effort required. For example, my guild uses Food+Flask on all our Naxx runs, even though we probably don't need to. But wiping incurs repair costs and wastes time. The Food+Flask contributes to a faster run with a minimum of additional costs.

5. Expectation Management

If you expect more from people, they will respond to that, and rise to the challenge. If you expect the bare minimum, then the minimum is all they will give you.

Maybe Food+Flask is unnecessary. But it is a signal to the raid that you are willing to give 100% on this attempt. That you are willing to incur a cost, maybe even just a symbolic cost, to ensure success.

I think people respond to that, mirror the group they find themselves in. If you're in a raid where people slack off, often you will start to slack off as well. If you're in a raid which has high expectations, often you will rise to meet those expectations.

Conclusion

The most important part is to have the entire raid on the same page as to what "good enough" means. But there are significant advantages to having a higher standard of "good enough" than is strictly required for content.

However, it's also possible to take this too far, especially when looking at new content. By far the most important element in mastering new content is spending time on it, not gearing up for it. If Ulduar comes out, and you decide to spend a few weeks farming Kel'Thuzad instead of trying new bosses, you are making a mistake. But having a raid that chose to exceed the minimum requirements back in Naxx will help you greatly in Ulduar.

Good Enough

Gevlon had a post up about gear and effort where he states that "hunting for best-in slots, grinding an ilvl 213 to replace an ilvl 200 epic is pointless." He is immediately taken to task for this attitude in the comments.

However, I'm much more sympathetic to Gevlon's view. We all have our limits, the things we are not willing to do.

For example, here's a list of things I'm not willing to do:

1. Switch professions. I'm Enchanting/Mining, and I really have no idea why. But I'm not willing to switch and power-level professions to whatever the flavor of the month currently is.*
2. Raid more than 3 days a week.
3. Take time off work.
4. Give someone else my account information so they could play my characters if I am not there.

A lot of these items are common practices at the very top end.

Everyone settles for "good enough", it's just that our definitions of "good enough" vary. One of the important factors when looking for a guild is find a guild with a similar definition of "good enough". If one person's definition is much lower than the rest of the guild, or much higher, it will cause resentment, and eventually drama and unhappiness.

If you food+flask every fight, and other people don't, it will grate. If everyone uses food+flask, but you're unhappy about spending the time to get consumables, it will grate on you as well. In both cases, you would probably better off in separate guilds (or at least, in separate raids).

Again, it's about shared expectations. Groups work best when everyone is on the same page, and has the same understanding about what "good enough" really means.

*Actually, I am thinking of switching Mining to Jewelcrafting or Blacksmithing. But I don't have a gatherer alt, so I'm procrastinating.

Evaluating Wrath Design, Part I

With 3.1 coming in the near future, it's time to take a look back at 3.0. However, rather than focusing on specific elements like raids or questing, let's examine some of the changes in direction that Wrath came up with. I'll keep to a very simple thumbs up or thumbs down system, and this will probably span multiple posts.

Bring the Player, not the Class

The concept of "Bring the Player, not the Class" has proved to be extremely attractive to the playerbase. It caught the imagination, and has pretty much been embraced whole-heartedly. As for execution, I think Blizzard has done a really good job. There's a couple of exceptions, such as Death Knight tanks with cooldowns, maybe Rogues in general, and Shaman Bloodlust/Heroism, but overall you don't really need to min-max raid composition anywhere close to what was necessary before Wrath. Just grabbing a good mix of classes is all you need.

Verdict: Thumbs Up!

Phasing

The new phasing tech, where how the world is presented to you changes as you complete quests, allows players to actually have an effect on the world, and is extremely cool. The Ebon Blade and Argent Dawn questlines in Icecrown are cited as a high point of the questing experience, and it is entirely due to their use of phasing. I am quite excited to see how Blizzard develops this further.

Verdict: Thumbs Up!

Championing

Championing factions, where you gain rep with a faction when running instances wearing their tabard, is a much, much better way of earning reputation than the previous methods. Breaking the link between factions and specific instances was really necessary. It gives you so much more flexibility in choosing what instances you want to run, and ensures that you are always working on the reputation you want.

Second, I think championing works very well on a thematic level, tying the current faction to the tabard you wear. Theres a nice visual and thematic emphasis there, that just makes the whole mechanic work. Wearing the faction's tabard really drives home the point that you are doing things in their name. As well, the tabard slot doesn't cause you to lose a gear slot, unlike previous versions such as the Argent Dawn trinket.

I like championing so much, I was very disappointed that the Sons of Hodir didn't have a tabard.

Verdict: Thumbs Up!

Glyphs

In the original incarnation of glyphs, they often had both a positive and a negative side. They weren't just bonuses, but they actually changed the nature of the spell. The classic example is the Flash of Light glyph, which cut the heal in half, but added a HoT.

That idea seems to have been mostly abandoned. Now most glyphs are outright bonuses to your chosen spells, and are far less interesting. To be honest, Glyphs seem unnecessary to me, occupying much the same space as talents.

Verdict: Thumbs Down!

Ask Coriel: Healing Mods

Mike asks:

I wanted to know if you use any mods to help in seeing who needs to be healed and who needs buffs. I don't plan to heal much just in those cases when my guild do old world runs for fun and I'm the only healer class available. well I take that back I might dual spec healing once it comes out :)

I use the mod Grid to see the healthbars of everyone in the raid. Grid can also be configured to show when a specific buff or debuff is on a character, and I have mine set to show Beacon of Light and Sacred Shield.

For paladin Blessings, I use PallyPower.

Those are pretty much the only mods I use. I do have all my heals use a macro so they cast on mouseover.

/cast [target=mouseover, help][] Holy Light

This allows me to just hover my mouse cursor over the person's healthbar on Grid and cast the heal, rather than explicitly switching targets.

That's about it for mods and macros that I use for healing. It's pretty much just Grid + mouseover macros.

Sheath of Light and Paladin Scaling

I like the idea of Sheath of Light. But the way it has been implemented has contributed to some weirdness with paladin scaling. The purpose of Sheath of Light was to let heals cast by a Ret paladin scale in a small way, rather than remaining extremely weak all the time.

However, there are 3 types of paladin abilities:

1. Abilities that scale with Attack Power only. These are mostly offensive abilities that belong to Protection and Retribution.


2. Abilities that scale with Attack Power and Spell Power. These are baseline abilities that all specs use, such as Judgement and Consecration.


3. Abilities that scale with Spell Power only. Heals, and Holy Shock.

The interaction of Sheath of Light and category 2 in particular is problematic. I remember that during the Wrath Beta, Seal of Righteousness was often the best Seal for Ret. Eventually it got nerfed down, but became very weak for Holy, and had to be buffed with a deep Holy talent. The reason this happened is because if the SP coefficient was high, Sheath would allow Ret paladins to use a lot of that SP coefficient, and the ability would outstrip Category 1 abilities. Balancing paladin numbers would have been a lot cleaner if Sheath did not affect abilities in Category 2. That way you could balance the AP coefficient around Retribution/Protection paladins, and separately balance the SP coefficient around Holy Paladins.

Even in Category 3, Sheath doesn't affect all abilities. Most notably, Sacred Shield doesn't scale with the granted Spell Power. This may have been an oversight at first, but now is maintained for PvP balance reasons.

When you get right down to it, Sheath of Light as it exists right now is overly broad. We don't really want to give Ret lots of Spell Power for general use. Most of the abilities Retribution uses scale primarily with AP, and adding extra SP scaling just complicates things. But we do want to give a Retribution paladin the option of increasing the power of her heals.

Sheath of Light should become a lot narrower in scope. The SP granted should explicitly apply to Holy Light and Flash of Light only. Then the coefficients of all the Category 2 abilities should be retuned so that each spec has an appropriate result. (The same idea would apply to Touched by the Light in Protection.) I think this would make paladin scaling cleaner and simpler. AP and SP scaling would no longer depend on each other, but would remain completely separate.

Of course, this would drastically change the value of Sheath of Light. It might come to be considered a PvP-only seal. But untangling AP and SP from each other would be an overall benefit for the paladin class.

Will the Last Hybrid Paladin Please Turn Off the Lights?

From the latest patch notes:

Spiritual Attunement: Removed from trainers. It is now available deep in the Protection tree for 2 ranks at 5/10%.

I don't speak for all paladins. In fact, at this point in the game I probably speak for very few of them. I belong to the Hybrid faction of paladins. It's probably because I created my paladin so many years ago, when the class was very different.

The Hybrid faction holds that the paladin should not overspecialize, that the baseline 0/0/0 paladin should be minimally compentent at healing, DPS, or tanking. Not raid-viable, but minimally competent. A Ret paladin should be able to heal a little bit, to tank at least the normal instances and group quests in the proper gear. In a pinch, maybe even play a small part in a raid. A levelling paladin should be able to handle all of these roles, regardless of spec.

I've tanked Tidewalker murlocs as Holy. I've healed as Protection. I've tanked all the normal Wrath instances as Retribution. To me, being able to do all this is an essential part of the paladin identity. I understand the need for specialization in the current game, but being a hybrid--being able to contribute to a role that we are not specced for--is still important to some of us. It's why we chose this class over all the others.

But for this to work, the baseline paladin must have access to all the necessary tools. For healing, we need Flash of Light and Holy Light. For damage we need Judgement and a damage Seal. For tanking we need Righteous Fury and Spiritual Attunement. By themselves, these tools alone will never make us raid-viable or preferred. But they allow us to try.

In the past, Blizzard has understood the Hybrid perspective. They gave us talents like Sheath of Light and Touched by the Light that allow the non-healer specs to heal more effectively. They reworked Fanaticism when the threat reduction was introduced, so that Retribution would still be able to tank.

Holy needs Spiritual Attunement to tank, to fulfill the hybrid nature of the paladin. Retribution at least has a replacement with Judgements of the Wise.

Maybe this doesn't matter in a world of specialists. Maybe dual-specs puts the final nail into the paladin-as-hybrid coffin. But I hope Blizzard reconsiders removing Spiritual Attunement from Holy's reach. I know that Spiritual Attunement is broken for a healing paladin and raid damage. But I think that there are other, better solutions.

My suggestion is to fold Spiritual Attunement into Righteous Fury and add a penalty to keep Holy from using it. Turn it into more of a true tanking stance.

Righteous Fury
24% of base mana
Instant cast
Increases the threat generated by your Holy spells by 90%, but the amount healed by your spells is reduced by 50%. When healed by other friendly targets' spells, the paladin gains an amount of mana equal to 8% of the amount healed. Lasts 30 min.

Alternatively, rather than a 50% reduction in healing power, maybe you could condition Illumination to only work when Righteous Fury is not active, just like Fanaticism. The baseline paladin could still tank if necessary, but the extra threat makes RF unattractive to a dpsing paladin, while the healing penalty makes RF unattractive to the healing paladin.

Even if you don't like my suggestion, I hope that you understand my perspective on the paladin class. It may not be a common perspective anymore, but I think it is still of value.