I've reconnected to my gamer psyche recently: for a good many years it was limited to casual games, but now we're looking at an almost-regular dose of World of Warcraft, where a lot of my gamer attention is spent.
I'm talking about: World of Warcraft and your career
A recent article on WoW.com caught my eye: would you list [World of Warcraft] experience on your resume? Previous musings on the subject and the recent hullabaloo on RealID have pushed some introspection on the subject in my head, and the article reminded me of it.
Silmarien after learning she got the job
Playing in a social capacity in World of Warcraft entails talking to people, managing people, and organizing people. Oh, you can play without ever talking to other people, but a good number of people also employ quite a number of interesting skills while in-game:
The ability to manage people’s expectations–and, well, people–in a raid group
The ability to analyze a fight to pick out what went wrong and how to improve on execution
The ability to successfully mediate between people regarding all kinds of issues
The ability to “sell” a guild’s reputation and “brand”
Those are only a few of the things that people pick up as they progress into the game. You have people developing and practicing everything from leadership skills, marketing and brand management, team buildup, analysis, financial acumen…you name it, somewhere in the world (…of Warcraft) a player will probably be enhancing his skills on a certain work-related (or work-enhancing) skill.
The ongoing stigma
In a lot of industries and communities, being a gamer has a lot of negative connotations: this is one of the reasons why there was strong resistance to Blizzard’s initial RealID designs that required you to reveal your real full name on forum posts.
WoW players are seen as losers and no-lifers; people who sit in front of the computer and eat chips scattered all over the keyboard; people who scream, swear and throw tantrums at every little thing (link NSFW due to language); people who stay up all night and show up half-asleep and zombied out at work. With a lot of people, it won’t matter if you look very dapper in a coat and tie, that you graduated top of your class: you just get crossed out because you’re a wildcard. “Ha ha, he plays WoW, must be a loser.” *toss*
And that’s a shame. Oh, there must be “losers” in WoW, there are plenty of those in my humble reckoning. But there are losers everywhere. Some guy might play tennis but he parties all night and subsequently always shows up half-asleep and zombied out. Some guy might be your average joe, but he sits on the couch five hours a night and fifteen hours on weekends and eat chips all day. You don’t scoop out the crud by ignoring WoW players: you just might be passing up on someone who applies himself really well to the job.
Not all hope is lost
I remember this one time (no, not at band camp) when a colleague and I had to interview a couple people for an opening at our company. We went through the short stack of resumes as we went along, and came across this one resume which boldly announced “World of Warcraft Guild Master” in his extra-curricular activities, along with guild size, responsibilities taken, and improvements done (like, “raised guild recruitment levels up 15%”, how cool is that?).
My friend and I both play WoW and, of course, mentioned it in the interview. Cue ten-minute animated discussion about his guild and how being a guild master was like (and possibly, uh, other things too).
You know what? We were able to shortlist only two from over a dozen resumes given to us. He was part of that short list. He was conversant, alert, he knew his languages, and his experience was solid. We could see he didn’t take himself too seriously, that he knew how to work hard and stick to his guns while not turning into a monster in the process.
So, would I?
I’ve already mentioned World of Warcraft in my resume, but honestly have not thought of expanding that to include actual activities within WoW: space is at a premium and I already have it relatively full. Maybe if I ever am foolish enough to start my own guild and stubborn enough to stick with it ;)
Its inclusion was a very deliberate action on my part, however: I don’t want to be in a company that would look down on me because I choose to kill Internet dragons with friends.
gamewhims, a irresistible, breathtaking, inescapable and sagacious lady
For the past couple of months, I’ve been dabbling in a new browser game called Echo Bazaar, a turn-based role-playing game. They are currently in beta, which means that many things may be subject to change in the journey to 1.0-hood. Recently, they updated game mechanics to remove a slow-refresh feature, introducing a hard limit on how many actions you can play every 24 hours. Users have a pool of 70 actions everyday that refresh at a normal rate of seven minutes per action; prior to the change, after these 70 actions are spent, the refresh rate goes down to 70 minutes per action.
In their blog post regarding this change, the reasoning for the removal is that users do not get as much out of the slow refresh rate, in return for niggling, annoying bugs (countdown going to negative, for example), possible well-known “exploits”, and spending a lot of time on support due to users not understanding the slow refresh mechanics.
The change is a controversial one, ranging from those who love it and those who are strongly against it. While I’m far from being on the warpath on this, this change initially did spark a strong sense of disappointment (and feelings of betrayal? “How dare they limit how much I play!”, lol). Along with it, however, are thoughts on gaming and communities in general. Echo Bazaar is far from hardcore gaming, but as a gamer and as someone who works on community-related projects, I am interested in the issue not just as another user but as an…intellectual puzzle, if you will.
What is Echo Bazaar?
The game, which won Best Browser-Based Game in the 2009 Escapist Awards, is set in London–Fallen London, that is. You have been sent down to the ‘Neath, situated “a mile underground and a boat ride from Hell”. What you do, what you live for (as death is not permanent in the ‘Neath) is all up to you.
The call of Echo Bazaar is the prose. Oh, the prose. The prose is simply beautiful. You are not simply a success with the audience, they are
…quietly captivated. Your poetry ravishes. Your music entrances. Your drama transports. They love you, today. They may even love you tomorrow. You are toasted with fine wine.
I knew of the prose before I knew the game: I’d been seeing a friend tweet random snippets with the #ebz hash tag, until, my curiosity piqued at the charming little phrases, I clicked through. And was hooked.
The Starveling Cat! The Starveling Cat! Quick as a ratgun! Sharp as a gnat!
“Whose name’s on your collar Mr Starveling Cat?” “Come closer, my dear, if you want to read that…”
Starveling Kitty! Starveling Kitty! Ruled the roofs of five stolen cities!
Just who is this Starveling Cat?! It called out to me, and continue to keep me interested through various content updates.
The good things about the change
I can well imagine the relief the Echo Bazaar team had in washing their hands of this feature. I’ve noticed the glitches, the times when my refresh timer would dip into the negative, and it was distracting and “annoying” at first, but in time, I learned to ignore it. (Clarification: it was “annoying” for me because as a frontend engineer, I felt like, but why can’t you fix it! Call the server again at any time the timer is at negative when uer does an action! Of course, it’s not that simple with all systems.) And since it seems that a lot of users have been complaining about the bugs, or is unable to grasp this feature, to be able to say “okay, it’s gone now! Don’t bother us anymore!” is something I have wanted to be able to say multiple times myself ;)
This freeing up of resources, specifically time (which is, as we all know, gold), allows the team to work on other things. Better things. More narratives, more features, fix other bugs. This can only be good.
The hard limit of 70 actions a day also frees up users from feeling any sense of obligation from playing the game. Personally, the knowledge that an action is slowly trickling in does not completely free up my RAM, so to speak. If I get home at 9pm, I quickly open up my machine because my 24-hour refresh will be up soon, and I want to use whatever actions I have managed to get during the exhausted timeframe. I have Echo Bazaar on a tab in my browser at almost all times of the day, for a quick run through my ten actions (I am at end game, or nearly at end game whenever they raise the content cap: that means I’m either just farming items, or quickly going through opportunity cards, or cycling through content I’ve done before; new players or arrival of new content would likely not run through the actions as quickly).
With the hard limit, once the middle of the day hits (which is usually when I’ve used up all my actions), I can finally file Echo Bazaar away. There is nothing more to be done for that day, no matter what I do, so my brain shuts it out of active RAM. I’m free.
But there are bad things about the change, too
I do most of my world-exploring during the slow-refresh period. With an “unlimited” pool of actions (it’s arriving slower, but it’s there), I don’t mind listening to a friend’s Nightmares; endlessly trying out a low-yield storylet to get a Rare Success that increases a minor, hard-to-get quality; trying dubious actions; etc. With the slow refresh rate, I can pretty much endlessly flip through my opportunity cards for nice cards to use up (after 70 minutes, when I have another action) which frees my hand for other opportunity cards which I can flip through. This pretty much means I am always going back to the site to “look for stuff to do”. As a roleplaying game, user exploration and immersion is a big thing.
With the implementation of a hard cap (it is not a “bug fix” as some are saying: a bug fix fixes bugs, not removes the feature), once my 70 actions are up, there is no more reason for me to go back any time that day. I can’t do anything on the site anyway, so there is no reason (or maybe, alibi) for me to go back and flip through my cards (and my hand will fill quickly anyway with cards I’d like to “save” for later use). Once I reach the hard cap, I turn off the game.
If you’re an Internet company, having people always on your website is the name of the game. (It’s probably not limited to Internet companies, but that’s the type of company I know.) People are always harping about user engagement. Pageviews are fine and dandy, but it’s engagement that wins the community, because it is engagement that keeps your users loyal and clicking all those pages. Oh, your servers will take a hit with all that traffic and usage. Your servers might go down. But you know what? That’s the kind of problem that’s great to have. Your users love you! They can’t get away from you! They try but they keep checking back!
How cool is that?
Unfortunately, this particular user’s engagement with the game is slowing down.
The monetary angle
One thread of thought that has surfaced in the discussions about this change is the subject of Fate. Fate keeps Echo Bazaar afloat. Users can buy Fate, which allows them to do some special things, “premium” things, which are not necessary to play the game. One of those things is to get extra actions. If I’m out of actions, or I can’t wait for my actions to trickle in, I can buy Fate and get actions. We all win.
(Yes, I bought Fate for actions when I was relatively new to the game and the honeymoon period was in full swing. I don’t know how much I’ve purchased, but it probably rivaled my World of Warcraft yearly subscription. And I bought for two accounts. *nods sagely*)
Edited to add: I’ve just done the math, and yes–I spent around 60% more on Echo Bazaar than on WoW on a monthly basis (i.e., total Fate purchase divided by number of months I’ve been playing Echo Bazaar).
One line of thought in this Fate thread is that with a hard cap, people will buy more Fate because they can’t get any more for the day. That seems like a sound conclusion. But as I’ve gone through a day of playing with the new mechanics, I feel–and some others feel the same–that it’s giving me the opposite effect. There is no reason to buy Fate while I have my 70 actions. But after that seventy actions, if I’m not even on the site, how will I be compelled to buy Fate to get to that very tempting storylet/card?
I have a feeling that the sort of people who will be “reliable” Fate-buyers would be the same people who would spend on a monthly subscription to play a game (*cough*). But if I’m a gamer who sits down on a specific time each day to play games, and then get up afterwards and forget about it–I’d be less likely to need to buy Fate. I would be more likely to buy the “second candle” feature that was rolled out in the same time, so I suppose only time will tell if purchases of the second candle will be enough. Having no knowledge of how things are, I have no idea how “popular” Fate-buying for actions is. Maybe it just wasn’t enough, and the second candle just might do the trick.
The game has changed
Time will tell if the good things outweigh the bad. I can only comment on how it’s affected my gameplay and my view on how it may affect Echo Bazaar from a web professional’s point of view. Not all games need to have hardcore users that will stay on it almost 24/7; not all games need to take over the world.
So a while ago I’ve gone and respecced Eilonwyn’s secondary, never-used spec to a frost PvE raiding spec. I’ve always been arcane since level 78, when I changed specs from a frost leveling spec to an arcane end-game raiding spec in order to learn the arcane mechanics before I hit the big 8-0 and started dungeons (when Naxxramas was the highest raiding content available). I love the arcane mechanics even before everyone started going arcane because omg buff!, and I daresay I will continue to raid as arcane even if Fire pushes ahead. (They’re currently neck and neck now, with Fire ahead in heroic best-in-slot equipment.)
Sadly, frost has never seen this sort of attention. I know frost is really good for PvP, which is the reason behind why Blizzard can’t really buff frost too much because it would be too overpowered then. However, I do miss my Water Elemental, who I’ve been with for a good many weeks while I died and ran and rode my way to end-game. And frost PvE has been buffed recently, with a permanent Water Elemental and Deep Freeze damage on bosses (those permanently immune to stuns). So I decided I’d give it a whirl for fun purposes.
So I took the cookie-cutter frost PvE build and tested it out on a boss training dummy. Since stat weights are similar for frost as with arcane, I didn’t change anything; I’d forgotten about arcane having 6% hit and frost having only 3%. Meter sample incoming:
Missing 3% hit: 5254.7 dps over 1,006,856 damage
Not too shabby. Note that I am basically missing 3% hit as well as slows on the target dummy (to proc Torment the Weak); the actual DPS value of TTW is anywhere below 12%, since I have my mirror images with their frostbolt and the occasional Brain Freeze-d frostfire bolt occasionally slowing the dummy.
Next, I went and queued up with a tank friend for a random dungeon to try out my frost spec on a boss. We got Culling of Stratholme, but sadly I wasn’t able to get a screenshot of my meters then. Meathook meters were 5,152 dps over 237,440 damage. (I went arcane for the rest of the dungeon, to get the fights over with, and because I felt I needed to redeem myself, lol.)
During the dungeon run however, I kept pulling from Vhinz, which I felt was completely crazy given that, um, I was doing less damage as frost. The culprit? Only 10% threat reduction (although the Water Elemental accounts for some of the damage, hence less 10% threat as well?), and no threat reduction for fire talents (i.e. frostfire bolt). Pretty significant coming from an arcane mainspec, with its 40% threat reduction. (Thanks to the people over at Elitist Jerks’ Frost PvE thread.)
After all of this, I realized I was under hit. -_- So I just went and tried myself again, against a training dummy. Much better numbers, my tests kept running at around the following meter:
Hit capped: 5550.7 dps over 1,204,615 damage
Not too bad, although to give it a little perspective, as arcane I was anywhere between 6500-6900 dps in the same fight duration (3 minutes) and identical buffs. Applying Torment the Weak modifier at only 9% (to account for mirror images and frostfire bolt slows — obviously a number just pulled from the air though), dps rises to 6050.3, while arcane would likely be around 7200 up. But it wasn’t very dismal; as frost I can still go into 25-man Vault of Archavon and not shame myself silly. Raid buffed I would likely reach above 6200.
I don’t think I’ll ever see me in raid with a frost spec, however; especially seeing as how I’ve gotten a fair amount of ribbing from the guild that it’s escalated into something being very annoying. Additionally, as one of the usual hard-hitters in the guild, it’s unlikely the guild will be able to afford 15% lesser dps; it makes me a little envious of some raiders whose guilds allow them that flexibility, though I believe these are usually either theorycrafters or those not too serious with progression raiding. Neither of which I am, or my guild is.
But, as my guild master said: “At least it’s not like the 2,000 dps like I thought it would be.”
I’m possibly one of a minority of players who has finished the new World of Warcraft raid but hasn’t stepped foot inside any of the new 5-man dungeons. /facepalm As my guild raids on Wednesday and maintenance is usually done Tuesday night, the only time I’d have to do non-progression stuff is right after maintenance (Wednesday dawn) onwards, up to before scheduled runs. Looks like I really can’t be arsed to wake up at 5am after maintenance even when a new patch is out. ;)
(All my recent posts are WoW-related -_- I do have other things ongoing but none I can talk about yet!)
On the new Looking For Group mechanism
But before the scheduled progression run I did get to try out the new LFG and random dungeon option (not gonna pass up my emblem of frost, y0). After the raid, I also went a second time. Both times were… quite different. It feels like I went the full pickup group experience spectrum, actually; which is to be expected, I suppose.
For the first group, we got Nexus and it was quite a fast run; one pull after another, finished flawlessly plus some chatting about the new LFG. It was a nice, friendly bunch of people, with some jokes and laughter all in. If I could add them to friends list, I would have. (Much love to the new disenchant option. I’ve grown to hate doing it, it’s such a chore to look through rolls manually and whatnot.)
For the second group, it couldn’t be any more different; once I got zoned into Drak’Tharon Keep, the tank already had aggroed the first few trash mobs. And he kept going through the whole hallway. Straight to business, eh? By the time the last trash pack in that hallway was down, I was almost out of mana, and wasn’t able to pick up any of the loot from the earlier mobs. Without waiting for the healer or myself to regen, he pulled two of the abominations and goodness knows what else in the room before Trollgore. No communication whatsoever, mind. Naturally, we wiped. On DTK trash.
We went in again, got Trollgore down. Pulled all the spiders. Started Novos right when running in (no regen), didn’t finish off adds coming down. No regen, went directly to the room with the bats. Straight on to the dinosaurs and riders. (Still no talking at this point.) Once we got to Dred, tank said, don’t heal, I’m pulling all. He went directly to the end of Dred’s area, and didn’t come back. We wiped. He asked why he didn’t get any heals, and the healer said LOS (line of sight [issues]). Why where you LOS? he asked.
Healer quit.
I don’t blame the healer in the least, man. Tank has the gall to say, why did he quit? What the hell. The kitty with us commented that he shouldn’t have pulled all; I asked, are we in a hurry? Kitty said no, tank remained silent. Seriously, if you’re going for a quick run, make sure the rest of the party is in the same boat as you. It’s not like old LFG where you can whisper prospective party members and say “fast run only” or whatever. You should have woken up and smelled the coffee when we wiped on trash mobs, slow down a bit, y0.
We did finally get to have a healer stay for a half-finished dungeon, and finished the rest of the dungeon without much more fanfare (and no more stupid too-fast chain pulling). And I’m ashamed to say that the tank apparently is a Filipino player (based on his name anyway). I was going to get chatty and say I was too, but given that kind of player? Hell no.
I forgot to put that tank on my ignore list. I’ll have to check out how later.
On the new Icecrown Citadel raid
We went for 10-man last night, we had three groups running concurrently. I finished the whole raid, but on different toons. :D For the first group we ran into a problem when our warlock disconnected on the gunship battle and didn’t come back online, and we couldn’t get a replacement; after a couple more tries 9-manning it, another guildie needed to go, so we called it and continuing later tonight.
After going back to Dalaran, my guild master (who was raid leading the second group) asked if my priest was 80, etc. So I came in a subbed on the gunship battle as well. We got both the gunship and Deathbringer Saurfang down! So essentially I did get to complete the whole raid within a night, just on different toons. Heheh.
The fights were prety interesting; I should think gear is important but they felt more like mechanic-driven fights than anything else. There are plenty more qualified sites that talk about strategy, so I’ll just add a couple of my own notes on the fights:
Interesting movement fight, can be rather challenging to find a place to run to when he whirlwinds and there’s cold fire all around. A target Bone Spike macro should come in handy here for casters–I couldn’t tab to it half the time and had difficulties clicking on it to target and dps down.
Add fight, basically. It looks like getting most DPS on the adds and getting them down quickly and then switching to the boss’ mana shield is the way to go. It was a little messy and crazy, and should probably bear with some reading up on the fight to smooth out the fight next time. Good thing 10-man didn’t have the crowd controlling part–really need to work that in somehow (buff and debuff notifications are a little off when using Pitbull for raid frames and nothing else).
And, elevator! Do you get squished if you stand underneath?
Absolutely fun fight! You equip a rocket pack on your shirt slot and using the rocket pack allows you to target somewhere and, well, fly to that area. Some fall damage is imminent if you fly too high/far. What I did was, I bound it to my fourth mouse button for easy usage/targeting. Win!
Very simple fight over all, just rinse and repeat (and don’t 9-man while doing progression).
After wiping a couple times, what we ended up doing was running with two heals for higher DPS. The damage is manageable (considering that we had a geared resto shammy and my, er, not-so-geared disc priest) as long as you know who to focus on and keep alive (tanks, and whoever has the Mark of the Fallen Champion). I’ll be trying this as DPS later tonight, so should be an interesting fight as DPS as well.
The take so far
All in all, rather pleased with the patch so far, if a bit pressed for time–too many errands and things I need to do as Christmas vacation is looming closer and closer. Looking forward to finish off the available raid wing tonight, and actually get to see the 5-man dungeons. XD
I’ve been meaning to do a post on my World of Warcraft UI for a while now, mostly because I love tweaking my UI and seeing other people’s game UI as well. Unfortunately it’s always been delayed because I keep discovering addons, better ways of using addons, and not being satisfied with screenshots I take.
So I’ve decided I’ll just post two screenshots — one which is fairly recent but in solo dummy combat, and another slightly dated screenshot in a ten-man raid. Both shots are of my mage UI, although my priest UI is very similar (only a couple settings like aura changes are different).
WOW UI Screenshot (click to enlarge)
The addon differences are minimal; the only change visible is the switch from using FuBar to LibDataBroker/DockingStation (as well as general cleanup of some actions on the action bar). I’ll list all the endgame addons I use later, but wanted to point out a few notable addons, most of them visible in the screenshot:
Used to customize unit frames (target, raid, etc). On a 25-man raid, there are 5 columns down the lower portion, extending to the left of the currently-shown raid members.
A really great buff organizer, I use this to show only buffs in the top right corner, my debuffs below my unit frame, target buffs and debuffs I care about below the target frame, debuffs I need to track/refresh on my target (not shown in screenshot), and short-term buffs I get (upper left of my toon).
I use it for immediate, visual representations of stuff I need to react to. Now it’s just mostly buffs, procs and cooldown availabilities, but earlier I’ve also used POWA to show important debuffs like a Grobbulus injection and Thaddius charges. The screenshot shows my combat auras when I’m at, er, full power: Missing Barrage, Arcane Blast stacked to 4, Arcane Power, Icy Veins, a shield is on me and Incanter’s Absorption has procced, plus another random spellpower proc (like Lightweave for example).
The must-have of raiding. I also use it for timers like when I can click my pew pew button again, when I can use the last ticks of Icy Veins to Evocate if I needed to, or when to pop Invisibility when my Mirror Images are about to expire.
A relatively unknown addon, but really fabulous. It’s also an action bar replacement addon but I like using it and bartender together especially for my mage. It’s collapsed in my screenshots as I’m in combat (you can choose not to collapse them automatically, naturally) but in the smaller screenshot on the right you can see that buttons around the sphere can be expanded into submenus. I use it to house my portals, professions, food, buffs, and whatnot. There are a LOT more utility features in the addon, as well.
I like the cinematic feel of the viewport set up the way it is. It also shows me a lot more than how it is normally.
Here’s an annotated screenshot of the raid screenshot above. I’ve since replaced FuBar as previously mentioned, as well as LiveStats with LDB plugins as well.
WOW UI Screenshot, annotated (click to enlarge)
And my list of endgame addons (endgame addons mean stuff like QuestHelper, Auctioneer, etc aren’t included):
I’m always on the lookout for useful addons and ideas on UI improvement, so probably this time next month my UI will be slightly different again. XD Would love to hear about any addons others are using, so comment if you have a suggestion or question!
I never got around to announcing it beforehand, but my priest dinged 80 around two or so weeks ago! /cheer
Hence I’ve been focusing on getting Talá geared over the last week. She can now heal Onyxia’s Lair (both 10- and 25-man versions) and Trial of the Crusader 10, possibly also the 25-man version (but have not tried yet). She’s discipline/shadow-specced at the moment. She’s a bit of a spoiled brat really, getting mats and stuff for crafted BOEs from her older sister Eilonwyn. :P
Healing is quite enjoyable, in a different way as opposed to being a damage dealer. I find that a lot of times, it hits extremes of pretty much any experience in a dungeon or raid; at easy heroics with a geared tank I get sleepy, but in raids where my gear is just right for it, it can be quite nerve-wracking. You also get to be really happy (“my heal target lived!”) or really sad (“omg I’m so sorry lag spike QQ”). I feel that DPS is a lot more linear in this regard; even if you’re overgeared for the dungeon, you’re still doing something pretty much all the time, as opposed to the healer throwing a bubble on everyone and then waiting.
I’m also finding that gearing up healing is slightly hit and miss. From the perspective of someone who’s been a damage dealer for the longest time, with tools like Rawr that tells you equipping this item or using the gem gives you +x amount of damage per second, it’s not as straightforward for healing. There are stat weights, but even juggling between throughput and longevity depends on a lot of factors–factors which you’ll only really know through experience. For example, I thought my intellect was more than enough, until I ran dangerously OOM on Koralon.
Even healing styles are varied, and from the discussions I’ve seen there is no hands-down right way, unlike when you DPS it’s usually pretty linear when you have your rotations down pat. It’s possibly easier for other healing classes, like trees (uhm, bind everything to rejuv and roll face on keyboard) but I’m constantly feeling that I’m not using my priest abilities to its full potential. I don’t use a lot of them enough: binding heal and prayer of healing to name a few (but I love divine hymn; it’s like my lazy button).
Being disc, though, I’ve already come across people who complain about my performance on the “healing done” meters. I’m usually last; while gear probably plays a small part here, the biggest reason by far why disc priests would be lowest on the healing meters is that discipline’s strength is in damage mitigation, such as through Power Word: Shield and Renewed Hope. Sadly most people just love looking at nice big numbers. :( Yes, you’re a pally, you have heavy, huge-ass heals. I’m not, kthx.
Maybe once I’ve got disc down pat I’ll change over to disc/holy and see how raid healing goes. I like the focus-target style of disc, but can’t hurt to try other heal styles, too. Now, just need to find out how to change the clickbindings in Clique automatically based on what spec is active. Hmm. *goes to hunt*
So a while back I’ve braved the horrors of LFG and pugged a couple of normal Utgarde Keep and Nexus runs for my then-early-70 draenei priest, Talá. My first ever try at healing in 70+ instances was UK at 69, which was somewhat traumatizing, even with a kind group (read: a group who didn’t kick me out for the number of times we wiped, or I died, or the shadow priest had to backup heals; the whole group actually either had healer mains or alts, lol).
Talá, the priest
Prior to Northrend, I’d been healing holy-specced with Healbot. As I did lowbie instances though, I realized that I was doing a lot of shielding; so it made sense to me to respec to discipline. I’d also felt that in addition to having too many raid frames (on Eilonwyn I was running with Pitbull and Decursive; on my priest I was running with Pitbull, Decursive and Healbot!), Healbot was sometimes being a bit too smart for me. It’s possible I just hadn’t configured it correctly, but knowing plenty healers went with Grid and Clique for healing, I decided I’d go with Pitbull and Clique (and get rid of Decursive).
So, a spec change and a UI change was probably not the best way to go about trying a “new” dungeon as heals. It put me off even playing with Talá for a while, as I wasn’t too keen on leveling her if I was just going to go DPS in endgame again.
After a while, I finally did join LFG, with a comment about being a newbie disc heals. Almost surprisingly, I did get people to invite me along (woo!) and was able to practice, and I seem to be doing relatively well as the parties I’ve been to have told me. The last one I’ve tried (after a long break of not playing her) was Old Kingdom; sadly we kept wiping :(
I can certainly use more practice, especially with the “rotation” (and my click-bindings!), but it’s not so bad. I basically keep shields up on the tank, drop a Prayer of Mending on a melee DPS everytime it’s up (ranged sometimes too), and shield people up if there’s raid damange going around. I can have a good bit of trouble with too much raid damage though, as I haven’t exactly found the best way to deal with it other than Circle of Healing which positively consumes mana like arcane mages (nom nom nom!).
The gameplay is certainly quite different from a DPS point of view, and something I feel keen enough to continue playing with. The pressure can be worse, and the rewards not-as-evident. With DPS there is a sense of satisfying finality when the boss dies; with Arcane there are even “exciting” phases when you pop all your cooldowns and burn mana for some extreme pew pew. With heals it’s either you failed to keep people alive, or you didn’t. It’s certainly a good thing to experience though; healing has opened my eyes to a couple things in fights I’ve done countless times as DPS, like how annoying it really is for the healer if the DPS is being stupid, or even small things like “oh, there is raid damage in this encounter?”
I haven’t really decided on getting parties and raids will be easier on a healer. I know there is a general shortage of healers/tanks sometimes but I’ve seen a lot of instances where you end up being on standby if you have a particular “role”, i.e., a tank or a healer; one raid can only bring so many tanks and healers into an encounter after all.
But, cheers for all end-game healers! This is one (squishy) DPS who certainly appreciates you. <3
I’ve waited a while before posting my thoughts about the changes as I wanted to give them a couple of raids before making conclusions; during the first week, I was only able to raid Trial of the Crusader (both 10- and 25-man) with the guild, and pugged Onyxia; I saw a significant increase in damage done and DPS for all raids, but as PUGs are obviously wildcards, I didn’t want to take that into consideration.
Missile Barrage proc on Ulduar trash
The succeeding raids, however, saw the same general result: higher overall sustained DPS, and naturally arcane burst was still top-notch; fabulous enough to suddenly be called OP on the Lord Jaraxxus fight, apparently <_< I wish I had thought to take a screenshot of Recount data, though, for posterity’s sake; we didn’t have logging on that night. Heroism + Nether Power + cooldowns + procs = absolutely yummy! I’ve never been one to look at how much and how high I crit, but I had a 48k crit that night (care of my other guildies who actually looked into Recount, haha).
The way I see it, it’s a given that mana is less of a constraint for arcane with the changes done. With generally lower mana costs, and free Arcane Missiles on proc (seemingly only when Arcane Power is not in effect), mana is certainly less of an issue than previously. It’s not just the mana savings though; since the patch came out I’ve been spamming my Arcane Blast key a lot more as I felt it was “safer” to spam it. That probably counts for significant increases in damage done, too. So actual and psychological changes = win!
So what’s with the rotation?
What rotation to use when you’re arcane specced can depend on your latency in-game, although not by much. Personally, I do:
ABSpam04MBAM
That’s spamming Arcane Blast up to four stacks, consuming the Missile Barrage proc with Arcane Missiles if you either have zero stacks or 4 stacks. That means fishing for a Missile Barrage proc by spamming Arcane Blast; once mana dips too low because of AB spammage, I do a no-proc Arcane Missiles to consume the Arcane Blast debuff and start all over again. I’d have to say that these occurrences aren’t that many, since the likelihood of getting Missile Barrage on Arcane Blast has been raised significantly.
The high DPS rotation is basically the same, except that the Missile Barrage proc can be consumed at any time. Admittedly, this is something I’m still getting used to, but owing to the very real danger of me running out of mana when I blow all my cooldowns, I should really get used to hitting Arcane Missiles on proc. It has to be noted though, that there have been a couple of posts pointing out that Missile Barrage when combined with Arcane Power is not free; but definitely almost-free. 20% of the original cost, from the looks of it.
Obviously, it doesn’t mean that there is no more danger of running out of mana. There is, especially when you burn your cooldowns and you get a 1-second Arcane Blast/MBAM. The spec is more forgiving, but it doesn’t mean you don’t need to deal with the consequences. I’m also seeing a lot more occurrences of getting aggro from the tanks; never really used to be a problem before, but now Invisibility is becoming one of my best friends.
Arcane Empowerment: This talent now also grants 1/2/3% increased damage done by the mage’s party or raid for 10 seconds after the mage gets a critical strike with Arcane Explosion, Arcane Missiles, Arcane Barrage, or Arcane Blast. This effect is exclusive with Ferocious Inspiration and Sanctified Retribution.
Woo! Arcane raid utility! Hot damn, I’m excited. Now I’m not just the raid vending machine/mini-fridge and Focus Magic giver, but I actually give all DPS a boost! I would say that +haste to the raid instead of +damage sounds like it would fit the spec more (as we eat haste! om nom nom!)–I’ve heard of a couple suggestions like adding an aura to Netherwind Presence which fits nicely with arcane flavor. But the +damage isn’t shabby at all, and makes sense in a “enemy becomes susceptible to more damage because of arcane damage from a mage” point of view.
We’ll see how this raid utility modification pans out. \o/
Saw this today, and just can’t help but post quickly about it — World of Warcraft patch 3.2.2 will be on live servers this week. Sadly, I’ve not been able to actually try Onyxia before this patch is out, though I’ve been meaning to. Oh well! I’m quite excited about this patch, more because there are a number of arcane mage changes that are coming:
Arcane Blast: The buff from using this ability now stacks up to 4 times instead of 3, and each application increases mana cost by 175% instead of 200%. In addition, the duration of the buff has been reduced to 6 seconds.
Arcane Missiles: Casting this spell while both Missile Barrage and Clearcasting are active will cause only Missile Barrage to be consumed.
Missile Barrage: The effect from triggering this talent now removes the mana cost of Arcane Missiles. In addition, the chance for Arcane Blast to trigger this talent is now 8/16/24/32/40%. All other listed spells continue to have a 4/8/12/16/20% chance to trigger it. This talent no longer has a chance to be triggered when spells miss.
These are quite interesting changes, as they affect arcane mage playstyle–for better or worse, I’ve yet to decide. Basically, arcane playstyle has always been around mana management and finding the right moment to replenish mana as well as when to blow all your cooldowns. I find that I like this about arcane as it’s not as “reactive” as I find Fireball or Frostfire bolt specs to be (on initial tryouts of the specs). I know that the theorycrafting around arcane rotation is that you cast arcane barrage when you don’t have a missile barrage proc, but with my latency I cast arcane missiles at every 3-stack of arcane blast. Slightly lesser damage per second but higher damage per mana.
With those changes, it looks like the rotation would be arcane blast to four stacks, and hit arcane missiles if missile barrage procced, but otherwise keep doing arcane blast until you get a missile barrage proc. It looks relatively static; a number seem to like the changes as it’s making arcane more competitive, but a number don’t as it looks like it’s dumbing down arcane too much. I’ll reserve judgment for later, when I actually get to play ;)
In other patch news–damn that Pandaren Monk is cute :D Want!
This category has gone entry-less for the longest time as I’ve had difficulty deciding on what to write for a first entry. I’ve never really blogged or talked about the computer games that I play; but I suppose you never really blog about playing Bookworm or Zuma, eh? Well, that’s changed a bit since I’ve been blogging (though I still play those), so I suppose the only way to start off this category is to talk about what I’ve been doing recently on the gaming subject: World of Warcraft.
I’ve always been very interested in RPGs, but also very wary of the way it just sucks me into the game. I don’t know how many hours I’ve spent on Diablo II, Neverwinter Nights, some Final Fantasy games, The Sims, etc etc when I was in college. That said, I’ve only started playing this game late last year, as I was avoiding it. Well, it came to my house (or I went to theirs?) now that I’m renting a place with a couple of friends; one of them plays WOW.
So now I’m hooked.
Eilonwyn the Explorer
I have a raiding 80 human mage, Eilonwyn, who is my first toon. I raid as arcane with Mad Prophets, a casual raiding guild on the Dath’Remar Oceanic server. Yes, her name comes from Eilonwy in the Chronicles of Prydain story; I just added an “n”. (Also, I have a lowbie human paladin named Tarann, and another lowbie human warlock named Achrenn.) I also have a 70 draenei priest named Bituin, who I plan to go discipline heals during endgame. Heals is scary for me at the moment though, so she’s not seeing a lot of action at the moment.
I’m not entirely sure which player strata I fall under; I play regularly, dedicating time to join raids and making sure my character (or toon, in WOW lingo) has enough to get by and a little extra, but I’m also relatively casual in the sense that I don’t want to raid all the time, or do PvP/achievements/leveling all the time, either. Somewhere in the middle, admittedly slightly more on the hardcore side than the casual side.
I tend to sometimes be quite caught up in the odd things, like the time when I made up my mind to get the Explorer title; everyone seems to prefer getting Champion of the Frozen Wastes but meh, Explorer is so much cooler. (And yay for alliteration!) Or, spending a lot of my time grinding the Timbermaw faction (on my first toon, and not even maximum level yet). Or, fishing for Old Ironjaw and Old Crafty (sad note: I caught Old Crafty, but hit my cast button, and didn’t get to loot Old Crafty. I haven’t had any luck again so far).
I’m also a bit of a UI geek; I like customizing my UI and making it pretty–and functional, of course. The original UI is good, but more organized information where you need it is always good, from a raiding perspective. Plus there are those which is just plain fun. I’ll get a screenshot up sometime.
Naturally, a chunk of my playtime is spent on raiding and dungeons. I like shiny loot and achievements just like anyone else–in fact I enjoy fiddling with Rawr (though far from really good at it) to mix and match what equipment I have and which is the best to use. However, that doesn’t take away from the fact that a big factor with dungeons and raiding is the enjoyment of playing with friends. Having only one 80, it’s still nice to relax and do fun runs, even if I don’t need the loot. I don’t raid lead, but I enjoy organizing fun raids (as long as someone else is doing the directing part!).
If anything, the biggest reason why WoW has stuck with me is the social aspect of the game. It’s fun to play with friends, and meet new friends too; I’ve met a number of guildies from the two guilds I’m in, and know more people in-game who I enjoy running with a lot as well. Oh, there are the jerks and the know-it-alls, but it’s usually better to just ignore them. :D
I was actually surprised to find out that a couple of online friends play WoW as well, as I’d never known them to before. Which makes things all the more fun! So if you play WoW, and you’re ever an ally on Dath’Remar, let me know! :)
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