3.2: Protection Paladins

Changes

• Block Value: The amount of bonus block value on all items has been doubled. This does not affect the base block value on shields or block value derived from strength.
• On-Use Block Value Items: All items and set bonuses that trigger temporary increases to block value have been modified. Instead of increasing their block value amount by 100% like other items, they have all had their effect durations doubled. This applies to Glyph of Deflection, Gnomeregan Autoblocker, Coren's Lucky Coin, Lavanthor's Talisman, Libram of Obstruction, Tome of the Lightbringer, Libram of the Sacred Shield, the tier-8 paladin Shield of Righteousness bonus, the tier-5 paladin Holy Shield bonus, and the tier-5 warrior Shield Block bonus.
• Blessing of Sanctuary: This blessing now also increases stamina by 10%. This effect is not cumulative with Blessing of Kings.
• Righteous Fury: No longer has a duration or mana cost, remaining until cancelled or death. Also cancelled when a Paladin activates a different talent specialization.
• Seal of Vengeance and Seal of Corruption: These seals have been redesigned to deal substantially more damage. Now, once a paladin has 5 copies of the debuff from these seals on his or her target, on each swing the paladin will deal 33% weapon damage as Holy, with critical strikes dealing double damage.
• Shield of Righteousness: Now deals 100% of shield block value as damage instead of 130%.
• Ardent Defender: Redesigned. Currently, any damage taken by the paladin while at 35% health or below is reduced. Instead, any attack that would reduce the paladin to 35% health or below has its damage reduced. In addition, once every 2 minutes an attack that would have killed the paladin will fail to kill, and instead set the paladin's health to 10/20/30% of maximum.
• Vindication: Redesigned. Now lowers target attack power, is consistent and does not stack with Demoralizing Shout.

Blocking

Blocking becomes a bit better, though Shield of Righteousness is nerfed slightly. The real problem with Block though, is that it just isn't as attractive as Avoidance.

Blessing of Sanctuary

I guess Blizzard is trying to set up a system where the first paladin does Kings+Sanctuary, while the second paladin does Might+Wisdom. This change does solidify Sanctuary the priority blessing for tanks. To be honest, the real issue is that Greater Blessings are done on a per-class basis, but the desired order depends on the specific spec. The real problem with Sanctuary is that it makes handing out Blessings more of a hassle.

Actually, you know what might be cool--but possibly overpowered--is if Sanctuary wasn't a separate Blessing, but rather an Improved Blessing of Kings. If you had the Sanctuary talent, your Blessing of Kings gives the 3% damage reduction. It's potentially too good, but this would make handing out Blessings so much easier.

Ardent Defender

This is a major change. I think the "unleapfrogable" nature of the new Ardent Defender is possibly too good. It's the equivalent of just getting 10% more health. I'd be somewhat surprised if this went Live as is.

The automatic Avoid Death is cool. The only issue I can see is not knowing whether the effect is available or on cooldown. This could be important for coordinating external cooldowns. If the effect is on cooldown, you might need to call for a Hand of Sacrifice to survive a burst of damage.

Other Changes

Righteous Fury becomes more stance-like. Seal of Vengeance becomes stronger, but this is balanced by the Shield of Righteousness nerf. The Vindication change allows a Prot paladin debuff the mob, freeing up a warrior or warlock to do more DPS.

Conclusions

Overall, Protection doesn't change that much. Blocking becomes a bit stronger, a Protection Paladin effectively gets more health, and she obtains a new cooldown and debuff. Coupled with the Death Knight nerfs, this should leave paladins in a decent position.

3.2: Holy Paladins

Test Realm Patch notes are available. There's lots of changes, so I'll take them one section at a time.

Sometimes I feel that no one at Blizzard plays a paladin. Then I see patch notes like these and I know that no one plays a paladin. These are the changes which effect Holy Paladins.

Changes

• Mana Regeneration: All items that provide "X mana per five seconds" have had the amount of mana they regenerate increased by approximately 25%.
• Replenishment: This buff now grants 1% of the target's maximum mana over 5 seconds instead of 0.25% per second. This applies to all 5 sources of Replenishment (Vampiric Touch, Judgements of the Wise, Hunting Party, Enduring Winter Frostbolts and Soul Leech).
• Lay on Hands: The buff from this ability now reduces the physical damage taken by the target by 10/20% instead of increasing the target's armor. (I assume this is Improved Lay on Hands)
• Sacred Shield: When a paladin casts Flash of Light on a target with this buff, they also now place a heal over time effect on the target, healing that target for 100% of the Flash of Light amount over 12 seconds.
• Judgement of Light: Now heals for 2% of the attacker's maximum health instead of a variable amount based on the spell power and attack power of the judging paladin.
• Beacon of Light: The healing amount on the Beacon of Light target is now based on the total healing done (including over-healing) instead of the effective healing done. Radius increased to 60 yards. Multiple Paladins can now have this active on the same target. Buff indicating a player is within range of the Beacon target is no longer displayed.
• Divine Intellect: This talent now gives 2/4/6/8/10% increased intellect instead of 3/6/9/12/15%.
• Illumination: This talent now returns 30% of the mana cost of the spell instead of 60%.

Mana Regeneration

Major reductions in mana regeneration. Our regeneration from critical heals is halved. There is about a 20% nerf in regen from Replenishment and the change to Divine Intellect. We do get an increase in effectiveness from mp5. On the whole, mana conservation and controlling overhealing will become a lot more important. I don't think that Holy Light will be able to be used as heavily as before.

However, I think this is a good thing. I called for Illumination for Holy Light to be cut to 30% back in December. We've been ignoring mana for too long, and it will be good to have to consider it once again.

Beacon of Light

First, let's get one thing straight: This is a complete buff for paladins. The new Beacon effectively doubles paladin throughput.

However, it's also a terribly stupid idea which doesn't actually solve any problems that paladins were facing.

In my experience, the fights where I feel the most constrained as a paladin are fights like Mimron Phase 2 or XT's Tantrum. Fights with a lot of raid-wide damage. The new Beacon does not really change much for these fights. It also doesn't change much for the 3rd or 4th paladin healer in a raid. Those paladins are still useless and can't really contribute. Tank healing is already been taken care of by the first couple paladins. I know that having 3-4 paladin healers is not ideal, but it is a much worse position than having 3-4 of any other class.

Second, it changes the dynamic between healer and tank. Paladins will be tank healers who never, ever cast heals on the tank. We heal the tank by not healing the tank. Even if everyone else in the raid is at full health, it is better to cast a heal on a random DPS than it is to cast it on the tank.

This is just wrong. I like casting heals on the tank. I think that going from spamming heals on the tank to spamming heals on everyone but the tank is just stupid, and not in line with what a healer should be doing.

Honestly, I don't see how Blizzard can manage to miss the mark so completely. We're fine as tank healers. Our problem comes when when the tanks are already being taken care of by others. If that ever happens, our usefulness goes to zero. The new Beacon does nothing to rectify that situation.

Other Changes

The other changes are pretty decent. Imp Lay on Hands gives another cooldown that's useful all the time. The new Flash of Light/Sacred Shield interaction adds some more ablation on the tank, while still preserving the doubled throughput. Judgement of Light is reigned in, and now will probably be cast by Holy paladins, allowing the Rets to maintain full Wisdom uptime. All good tweaks.

Conclusions

Mana regen changes hurt but are necessary. Beacon changes are a buff, but are stupid and miss the mark. The other small tweaks are good.

Ad Infinitum Recruiting

I don't often do this, but summer is here, and my guild could use a few good recruits. I'll put up the blurb:

---

<Ad Infinitum> was formed three years ago on the premise that raiding smart could be just as effective as raiding a six day a week schedule.

We see end game content and do hard modes while maintaining a schedule that allows time to do other things. We manage this by coming to raids prepared and ready to accomplish our goals. Fundamentally, we believe the most efficient use of our precious time is to prepare for content through discussion and theorycrafting before we even enter a raid zone.

When: Wednesday, Sunday, Monday (as needed); Invites 6:45pm PST, First Pull 7pm PST.
Where: US-Lethon[PvP] Server
Who: People who are Achievement Driven and Progression Oriented
http://www.wowprogress.com/pve/us/lethon/rating.ach

Things to consider:
- Gear: Be prepared for T8 Achievements and Hard Modes
- Know your role: Our standard is set high. Raiding is not a tourist attraction. Raid members not only understand but can explain all details of an encounter. Trials are called upon in raid to explain boss mechanics so be ready for pop quizzes.
- Attention to Detail: We raid for 4 hours a night. Be as mentally fresh, focused and excited at the end as when we started.
- Connection/Hardware: Is your connection reliable? Do you get more than 15 FPS? Do microwave ovens disconnect you from the interwebs?
- Attitude: Raiding is a team sport with egos checked at the door. We have honest, direct, and productive conversations about raid performance.

Apply:
http://ai-lethon.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2974

Openings:
Druid (Balance) - medium
Druid (Restoration) - high
Hunter (Survival) - high
Priest (Holy) - high
Shaman (Elemental) - medium
Shaman (Enhancement) - medium
Shaman (Restoration) - medium
Warrior (Arms) - medium
Rogue - medium
Deathknight - medium

Contact:
Tanks: Trixie
Healers: Aibe
Caster DPS: Bannination
Physical DPS: Rukei

God Luck, We hope to see you there
~ The Officers

---

We're a pretty decent guild. You're expected to know how to play, know your basic theorycraft, gem/gear properly, etc. We're not a Top 100 guild or anything, but the people in the guild do care and try hard. We do try to stick pretty close to the 3 nights per week + 4 hours per night. We're generally good about starting on time and finishing on time. We don't like unnecessary AFKs, but we have a break in the middle. Raiders are expected to use a Flask and stat Food at all times, even on farm bosses.

Lethon is a PvP server, but it's a fairly quiet one. It used to be low-pop, but was a Recommended server for a while, so it is now medium to high-pop. The Auction House is pretty wacky, but you can find most things you need. It's Pacific Standard Time, and the majority of the guild plays on Pacific time.

Loot system is DKP with English Bid. That's like a standard Auction with multiple rounds of bidding. There are three pools of DKP: Normal, Tier Set, and Vanity. Main-spec before Off-spec, Pawn (our Raider rank) before Members/Trials.

A final note: we aren't joking about "Trials are called upon in raid to explain boss mechanics so be ready for pop quizzes." Before a boss, especially one we haven't done before, the raid leader will sometimes call on someone to explain the fight. That person is expected to give an overview of the fight, the main boss abilities, and the general strategy. So you should have either read up on it earlier, or have enough wit to pull up a browser window with WoWWiki. You don't have to get it perfect, but you shouldn't go in blind.

If this sounds like a guild you'd be interested in, you can apply at the link above. If you have questions, feel free to ask in the comments, email me, or roll a character on Lethon and bug an officer.

New Paladin Mount in 3.2!

From the Under Development page:

New Mount: A new Argent Crusade paladin-only charger will be available.

Exciting!

Rumor identifies this as the possible new mount:


Looks pretty good.

My Brute

Here's a neat little web game: My Brute.

It's silly and fun. It's basically a Pokemon-type game where you have a fighter and the fighter fights duels. It levels up and gets weapons and abilities. The graphics and style is very well done.

However, look at the sign-up process. It's elegant and streamlined, and is quite beautiful. If you're looking at making a web game or RPG, take a look at what these people do. They don't require you to sign up ahead of time, signing up is done after the fact.

A Classic

I was wandering around YouTube, and came across this classic video. Old-school paladins should remember this.

Cooldown Rotations

One of the current controversies in the tank world are tanking cooldowns. These are abilities which greatly reduce the amount of damage taken for a few seconds. Though originally created as emergency measures--Shield Wall originally had a 30 minute cooldown--Death Knights were given cooldowns that could be used multiple times a fight. This meant that if a fight had a predictable spike in damage, the Death Knight could line up their cooldown to mitigate that spike, making them much easier to heal.

Since spike damage is generally what kills tanks, this made Death Knights the tank of choice on such fights. The other tanks had their cooldowns improved to match the Death Knight. However, the Death Knight still has the best cooldowns, and is often considered the best tank because of this. Paladin tanks, who only have one cooldown, are considered the worst.

However, two healer classes, Priests and Paladins, also have cooldowns that they can use to mitigate spike damage. Holy Priests have Guardian Spirit, Disc Priests have Pain Suppression, and Paladins have Hand of Sacrifice (coupled with Divine Shield to keep the paladin from dying). Instead of just relying on tank cooldowns, you can set up a cooldown rotation with your paladins and priests to help mitigate damage.

Personally, I find cooldown rotations a lot of fun as a healer. It gives you a chance to coordinate with your fellow healers. It adds a little extra spice to healing, and saving a tank from death with a well-timed use of a spell which is not spammed is fun. Honestly, that's the most fun as a healer, using a spell at precisely the right time to save someone.

Tanks have tanking rotations, where they trade-off mobs. DPS have interrupt rotations, as they trade-off interrupting spells. I think adding cooldown rotations for healers would add a little extra element to the game. It's something more than healing spam, and requires us to work together a bit more.

I think Resto Druids and Resto Shamans should each get a cooldown (like Hand of Sacrifice, etc.) so they too can join in the fun. Then I think that the number of cooldowns the tanks have should be reduced, or the cooldown timers greatly increased so that they go back to being emergency buttons. That should reduce the disparity in tanks, while improving the gameplay for healers.

Ask Coriel: Prot/Ret Viability

Kevin writes:

Iv been thinking about this type of hybrid for a very long time, one that stacked shield block and anything with a high amount of strength. As a prot pally who isn't trading avoidance for block (yet) I can hit pretty hard with Shield of Righteousnouss. The person in the following video is using the ideal gear, but he is full Prot.



see that 13k crit at the end? take that value and multiply it by 9% from Vengence, 3% from Sanctified Retribution, 3% from Crusade (6% in most PvP/PvE situations) as well as a 20% stat reduction on theh enemy and you pretty much have a 1 shot spell. Of course this damage would be reduced by a high amount of resil, as well as other spells, but this is still a really high value. It might even be considered a decent PvE spec by some (off tank/dps). Now that dual spec is out however, it pretty much eliminated all hybrid specs, because they are not needed any more. Personally, I enjoyed playing hybrid specs because of the different style of play they offered. This is one of the few specs that I havn't seen, but I am eager to try when I get the correct gear. Any thoughts on if this hybrid would be accepted into PvE? I estimate you could push around 3-4k dps in the right gear.

I'm not seeing how your PvE DPS would be so high. You're missing a basic attack in Hammer of the Righteous. Yes, you would get very high Shield of Righteousness hits, but I don't think it can make up for missing an entire attack.

I'm looking at one of my Prot Pally tank's WWS. HotR contributes 17% of his damage, and SoR contributes 21%. You'd need to almost double the possible SoR damage to make up for the loss of HotR, and I don't think the few extra points in Ret will do that for you.

Personally, I'm not sure that this would work. An extra button to press--to fill up empty space in the rotation is huge--and is a much bigger advantage than extra damage talents. This concept might be fine in PvP, where burst is very important, but it won't be good for sustained PvE DPS and threat.

Shroud Loot System

Runycat, from Unbearably HoT, has an interesting overview of her guild's loot system: Shroud Loot System. I haven't looked at a loot system in a while, and Shroud has some interesting properties that are worth examining in detail.

This is a quick overview, so I'm going to ignore off-spec loot for simplicity's sake.

Description

Shroud is a loosely-coupled DKP system. Earning DKP is pretty standard. Points are awarded for whatever the guild thinks is appropriate. Runycat's guild primarily awards points for Time Spent Raiding, but you could easily award points for Boss Kills or whatever other metric you deem appropriate.

Spending DKP is where the system gets interesting. When an item is up for distribution, a raider may choose to "shroud". Of the raiders who shroud, the one with the highest DKP gets the item and loses half her DKP. If no raiders choose to shroud, interested raiders can roll for the item. The raider with the highest roll gets the item and pays a standard fixed minimum fee.

Here's a quick example: Coriel has 500 DKP and Kent has 600 DKP. If an item drops and both raiders shroud, Kent would win and pay 300 DKP. If only Coriel shrouds, she wins the item and pays 250 DKP. If neither raider shrouds, both /random. Coriel rolls a 84 and Kent rolls 22. Coriel wins and pays 10 DKP for the item. If Kent had rolled higher, he would have paid 10 DKP for the item.

Main Insight

The main insight of Shroud is that there are three values of loot:

1. Sexy loot - this is loot that is greatly desired. For example, Tier sets and Best-in-Slot weapons.


2. Everyday upgrades - these are items which are upgrades, but which a raider doesn't get excited about. She''ll take it to keep it from being disenchanted, but isn't really going to care if another raider gets it instead. The majority of loot in the instance falls into this category.


3. Unwanted items - these are items the raider doesn't want at all.

Is this valuation correct? My experiences lead me to believe that it is correct. My guild runs a pure English Bid Auction system. This is the system used by traditional auctions with multiple rounds of bidding and a fast-speaking auctioneer. Not the fastest system in the world, but items end up being sold at their true value at that point in time. What I've noticed is that loot either goes for hundreds of points or it goes for near-minimum. There's not a lot of in-between. As well, it's very few pieces--primarily Tier sets, BiS weapons, and amazing trinkets--that have the sky-high prices.

Shroud handles each of these categories of loot in a different fashion. Sexy loot is distributed in strict accordance with the point system. The person who wins that loot has the most points, end of story. Meanwhile, everyday upgrades are distributed randomly, with minimum points spent.

Advantages

Shroud has all the advantages of a traditional DKP system when it comes to the highly-prized loot. You won't get the case where someone who raids a couple days a month beats a 100% attendance raider on a Best-in-Slot weapon. That type of situation is what causes high-attendance raiders to seek out a new guild.

However, raiders of all attendance levels have equal shot at the everyday loot, which comprise the majority of the epics in an instance. This gives your more casual members a good shot at getting some loot, rather than having all of it monopolized by the high-attendance raiders.

Shroud also avoids the disadvantages of a system like Spend-All DKP or Suicide Kings in that a raider can still obtain smaller upgrades while saving for a prized item. Loot that can be used should never end up sharded with this system.

Shroud also allows raiders to determine what loot is really valuable and what is not. The choice to shroud or not remains with the raider, not the officers.

Finally, since shrouding costs 50% of your DKP, hoarding of points is discouraged and people are brought back to the rest of the group fairly quickly. There are no worries about inflation in this system.

Disadvantages

The biggest disadvantage is that the system is complex and that makes handing out loot more time-consuming. You first have to see if anyone wants to shroud. If no one does, then everyone who wants the item must roll, and you need to see who has the highest roll. The amount of complexity is probably unnecessary for a guild where the raiders have similar attendance patterns. A single-bid or fixed-cost DKP system would probably be faster and just as accurate.

The complexity increases even further when you consider off-spec loot. Should you let someone shroud on off-spec loot? Maybe, maybe not. Even without that, off-spec loot would add another round of waiting to the process.

Shroud also has the overhead and record-keeping of all DKP systems, as you have to track points as they are earned and spent.

The final disadvantage that I can see is that a raider might attempt to game the system, choosing not to shroud and betting that no one else wants to roll on the item. Then she gets upset when someone with much lower DKP wins the roll over her. While it is her fault for not shrouding, drama is rarely rational. Indeed, sometimes people get more upset when they are the ones at fault.

Conclusion

Shroud is a decent loot system for a guild with a core of high-attendance raiders filled out with a number of more casual players. It gives both types of players a shot at rewards, ensuring that neither side is treated unfairly. It avoids several pitfalls of other systems--like Suicide Kings, Pure Random, or Pure DKP--that are traditionally used by this segment of guilds.

However, the price that is paid is increased complexity. And you have to wonder if this complexity is really necessary. Shroud is really close to Pure Random, and Pure Random is so much easier to deal with. The real question a guild should ask is how likely is the situation where a low-attendance raider beats a high-attendance raider? How much will the guild care if that happens?

If the guild can handle that situation happening without drama, I think Shroud becomes unnecessary, and Pure Random becomes the system of choice. But not many guilds can actually handle that. And for a more casual guild, losing a raider who is part of the backbone of your raid team can be much more devastating to your ability to raid than losing someone is for a traditional raiding guild.

Yogg-Saron

We finally got Yogg-Saron down on Wednesday this week. It's a really nice fight. It's all about directing the right amount of DPS at the right targets at the right time. It's odd, but it took us a fairly long time, at least compared to the rest of the instance, much to the dismay of our raid leader.

We were having a lot of problems with phase 1, but on Wednesday it just clicked and we nailed Phase 1 perfectly on every attempt. After that, it was just a matter of deciding how much DPS went towards adds and how much went towards Yogg-Saron. I think part of our success may have been that we took two 10-man groups through Ulduar-10 last weekend, and both groups beat Yogg, thus helping us understand the fight in its entirety.

Ah well, now to work on Hard Modes.

A Side-Effect of Easy Tanking

It occurred to me that Ulduar has managed a feat that I have long wanted in raid fights: mechanics that make the ranged DPS run all over the place, while ignoring the healers. And it's all due to the Wrath changes that made tanking much easier.

In Wrath, it's a lot easier for tanks to generate threat. This has made tanking 5-man instances much easier. Not everyone is happy with this development, citing that 5-mans have become about AoEing everything down, but I think that in general it's made it easier and more fun for tanks and less skilled players.

Because of the easier threat generation, the tanks have a large lead in threat over the dps. In Ulduar, this has allowed many fights to use "Runes of Power". These are area effects where anyone inside gets a boost to their damage. As Runes of Power appear and disappear on the map, the ranged DPS has to run from one Rune to another. In TBC and 1.0, these mechanics might not have been as useful, as DPS were more likely to push threat and steal aggro.

These Runes generally do nothing for healers, so healers are free to ignore them. But DPS has to keep them very much in mind if they want to do maximum damage.

Of course, there's a limit to how much you can do with Runes of Power, as you can't make them too important without leaving melee behind. Still, it's a pretty clever mechanic that takes advantage of the greater threat generation in order to make a more interesting fight, while sparing the healers.

Regenerating Mana and Healing

Ghostcrawler has mentioned several times that Blizzard is trying to constrain mana regeneration for healers, in order to encourage healers to heal more efficiently and more thoughtfully. For the most part, Blizzard has failed in this task. The 3.1 changes haven't really had much effect on mana concerns.

There is one fight in Ulduar where mana conservation becomes vital: General Vezax.

Vezax has an ability called Aura of Despair which shuts down pretty much all mana regeneration for casters. No Illumination, no mp5, no spirit, no Replenishment, etc. The only way casters can regenerate mana is by standing in pools of saronite vapour every so often. However, the vapour damages you as it returns mana. Hard-mode for Vezax involves not using the vapour at all.

In our first attempt on Vezax, I tried using the vapour, but managed to kill myself while only regenerating 600 mana. I'm still not 100% sure what happened there, but I chose to ignore the vapour for the remaining attempts.

Vezax was the most fun I've had healing in a long time. It's so good to watch overhealing once again, to heal carefully, to predict damage and use cooldowns appropriately, rather than spam madly. Almost all the raid damage in the Vezax encounter is avoidable.

But the lengths the fight had to go to create that dynamic. No regeneration at all. Entire stats and talents become useless. Blizzard's tiptoeing around for the rest of game, cutting the effect of spirit by a few percent, or nerfing Illumination, none of that had the effect of simply saying, "No Regen."

I still think that mana is the best resource for healing. I've played games that use an energy-like system and--while energy is great for DPS--it just isn't as good as the gameplay involved in healing while keeping a careful eye on a dwindling mana bar.

It's too late for WoW, but I think that future MMOs based around the tank-healer-dps trinity would be well-served by taking a cue from General Vezax and simply not allowing healers to regenerate mana in combat. Give them talents that add extra effects, or do new things, but close the door on regeneration permanently. It seems to be the only way to prevent healing from falling into the mindless spam routine.

The New Immortal

I posted before about the Immortal Achievement. I did like the idea of Immortal, and have great respect for those who got it, but in practice it was too stressful and just wasn't fun.

So what of the new Immortal: Conqueror of Ulduar?

It definitely isn't as impressive a feat as the old Immortal. But I think that in practice, it's going to be a lot closer to my ideal of "a side-effect of playing perfectly, rather than a goal that is worked towards in and of itself."

Last night was a rather mediocre raid night with a lot of wipes on Mimiron. But we did pick up a flawless Ignis and a flawless Freya¹, marking the first two fights for the Achievement. It wasn't something we were explicitly trying for, but it was just a great bonus for doing the fight well. As well, it's only week three or so, so that hopefully gives us a long time to work towards the entire Achievement.

We don't have to play 100% perfectly for the entire instance, but this Achievement rewards striving for perfection, even if you only reach those heights occasionally. At this point, I'm really happy with the new version of Immortal.

¹ Technically, Freya wasn't flawless. Several people got too eager and managed to blow themselves up after Freya was defeated. But it still counted for the Achievement.

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.