(no subject)
Watched the Blizzcon coverage this weekend. There was a lot to get excited about. I wish I had thought to submit some questions for the Q&A; not that I think I'd be picked, but I do have some definite thoughts on things.
They probably got asked this a TON, but...more character slots? We got word there will be a new race AND a new class. And I now have 7 85s, 1 80 who will be my next target, 1 76 and 1 throwaway worgen I should delete now that I've seen the starting zones. I would like to have some Horde chars just to see the quest differences...even if they mostly are, as I suspect, instead of collecting 8 Darkshore bear asses you collect 8 Durotar boar asses. I would like to have a Dwarf shaman, even though I'm sad the totems are not kegs. I'd LIKE to have a Worgen shaman but I guess "inflicted with a curse that forces you to become close to an animalistic spirit" isn't enough to qualify you for communion with elemental spirits. In any case, we are allowed 50 but each realm can have a max of 10. Why? It isn't like we can log all 10 at once. Let us allocate our 50 wherever we would like.
Someone asked in the Q&A about GLBT interactions in WoW. To that I will say...Tholo and Anren? Cutest couple evar. You CAN'T tell me there isn't an extra bit of closeness with those two. "Druid Combat Circle" oho. Also, Jaina's tried men, she's tried orcs, might be time to give the other faction a chance. And I'm not talking Horde.
Someone asked about the huge snake in the tunnel under Gundrak. Which amuses me because I was IN Gundrak on my rogue at the place where the snake is...so I could just turn around and look out over it. Nothing I wanted to ask about that, it was just pretty amusing coincidence.
But so far as I saw, nobody asked one thing I really want to express. MY question would be...Tanks and hit/expertise rating. They have moved away from it as a priority; in BC I used to have to juggle 102.4%.ctc/8% hit/26 exp/490 def rating along with stam, and I LIKED that complexity. In Wrath it changed completely, with removal of crushing blows for raid tanking and bosses that had unmitigatable bursts of damage or lots and lots of magic damage: get 540 defense, then stack stam. It also was a clear indicator of tank "skill"...moar hp = better than, and if you zoned into a heroic with your 50k hp jaws would drop. Good luck being a starting tank with a "measly" 24k and not getting kicked right away, despite the fact that it was all we had when WE started Wrath heroics and they were perfectly doable. But it was easy - and important! - to be defense capped, stack stam and still maintain hit/exp cap, especially with the prevalence of tank swap bosses and how catastrophic a missed taunt could occasionally be. And now, in Cata, we are back to the BC "avoidance/mitigation is king" paradigm...but defense is gone and hit and exp have fallen by the wayside. They gave us all interrupts, but made them unable to be missed. Taunts can't miss. They boosted our threat repeatedly, with Vengeance and with stance buffs. But it is NOT fun to miss 5 of your starting attacks in a row; or mash your finisher repeatedly because it gets dodged or parried each time. All the bonus threat in the world won't help that trigger-happy dps in the first few seconds of the fight, when you can't hit the boss to begin with. Sure, it's just luck that you missed so often. But it isn't fun to have such a large part of the fight depend on luck. They've already baked certain things into the "tank" specialization. Why not make it so "bosses can no longer dodge or parry you, and you can't miss" innately as well? They may not want to because then tanks only have 3 possible stats to choose from (dodge/parry/mastery) which is boring and there is no dilemma over upgrades; there's barely any dilemma now, though. ONE of my pieces of gear has hit. Not a single piece has expertise. Put enough hit and expertise onto the gear that even with what you reforge out of, you still get a healthy amount, if you must. Make hit and expertise rating matter; if you as the active tank hit the boss, he is staggered, and has a x% increased chance to miss (or do less damage) on HIS next swing, making your steady hits on the boss benefit your mitigation as well. He dodges or parries you, he does MORE damage on his next swing (balanced against your own mitigation, so you still may avoid or block the increased damage), you miss him, no change, but you lost out on some boss damage reduction you might have had. Make it only for attacks done by the active target, so dps or the idle OT in a tank swap fight don't wind up gibbing you. But do SOMETHING, as it's very frustrating to be told "if you want to cap hit and exp, you should be playing ret."
I don't think I would be able to fit that into Twitter, though. *^_^*
Got my hunter to 85, doing 10k single target on heroics and am hit capped for raids. I fail to see how I can consistently get idiots in the t11 25-mans that do less dps than the tanks. Also doing my part to reduce the huntard stigma; took over the suit when nobody else would in DM, got the group the achievement. B) And in BRC, the tank had never been there before and was having issues with Karsh, either not sticking him the fire in time or not putting him in at all. On the third try, I zip around the fire, distracting shot, boss ignites, FD. Zip around the other side of the fire, distracting shot, Karsh keeps his stack, deterrence. Zip around the fire, distracting shot, tank finally gets the hang of it and taunts. Rinse and repeat. Still do good damage on the boss, who didn't lose his stack once, and we kill him easily. Tank was like "lol that's one way to do it" and the healer was all "gj hunter". Heeee. ^_^ Clearly didn't do well enough to deserve a name, but hey, praise, I'll take it. DID also do really well at something on our FL alt run; I wanted to try going up to dps the boss on Alys, since tanks were being easy to heal and overall dps was being a bit low, plus we had some derpy pugs who kept dying to easy crap so I didn't trust them to do it. I ended up pulling about 26k, and considering how rarely I play as shadow and how I've NEVER gone up to dps the boss or actively try to hit rings before, I was quite pleased with myself. Nobody else was, but *I* was happy :p
They probably got asked this a TON, but...more character slots? We got word there will be a new race AND a new class. And I now have 7 85s, 1 80 who will be my next target, 1 76 and 1 throwaway worgen I should delete now that I've seen the starting zones. I would like to have some Horde chars just to see the quest differences...even if they mostly are, as I suspect, instead of collecting 8 Darkshore bear asses you collect 8 Durotar boar asses. I would like to have a Dwarf shaman, even though I'm sad the totems are not kegs. I'd LIKE to have a Worgen shaman but I guess "inflicted with a curse that forces you to become close to an animalistic spirit" isn't enough to qualify you for communion with elemental spirits. In any case, we are allowed 50 but each realm can have a max of 10. Why? It isn't like we can log all 10 at once. Let us allocate our 50 wherever we would like.
Someone asked in the Q&A about GLBT interactions in WoW. To that I will say...Tholo and Anren? Cutest couple evar. You CAN'T tell me there isn't an extra bit of closeness with those two. "Druid Combat Circle" oho. Also, Jaina's tried men, she's tried orcs, might be time to give the other faction a chance. And I'm not talking Horde.
Someone asked about the huge snake in the tunnel under Gundrak. Which amuses me because I was IN Gundrak on my rogue at the place where the snake is...so I could just turn around and look out over it. Nothing I wanted to ask about that, it was just pretty amusing coincidence.
But so far as I saw, nobody asked one thing I really want to express. MY question would be...Tanks and hit/expertise rating. They have moved away from it as a priority; in BC I used to have to juggle 102.4%.ctc/8% hit/26 exp/490 def rating along with stam, and I LIKED that complexity. In Wrath it changed completely, with removal of crushing blows for raid tanking and bosses that had unmitigatable bursts of damage or lots and lots of magic damage: get 540 defense, then stack stam. It also was a clear indicator of tank "skill"...moar hp = better than, and if you zoned into a heroic with your 50k hp jaws would drop. Good luck being a starting tank with a "measly" 24k and not getting kicked right away, despite the fact that it was all we had when WE started Wrath heroics and they were perfectly doable. But it was easy - and important! - to be defense capped, stack stam and still maintain hit/exp cap, especially with the prevalence of tank swap bosses and how catastrophic a missed taunt could occasionally be. And now, in Cata, we are back to the BC "avoidance/mitigation is king" paradigm...but defense is gone and hit and exp have fallen by the wayside. They gave us all interrupts, but made them unable to be missed. Taunts can't miss. They boosted our threat repeatedly, with Vengeance and with stance buffs. But it is NOT fun to miss 5 of your starting attacks in a row; or mash your finisher repeatedly because it gets dodged or parried each time. All the bonus threat in the world won't help that trigger-happy dps in the first few seconds of the fight, when you can't hit the boss to begin with. Sure, it's just luck that you missed so often. But it isn't fun to have such a large part of the fight depend on luck. They've already baked certain things into the "tank" specialization. Why not make it so "bosses can no longer dodge or parry you, and you can't miss" innately as well? They may not want to because then tanks only have 3 possible stats to choose from (dodge/parry/mastery) which is boring and there is no dilemma over upgrades; there's barely any dilemma now, though. ONE of my pieces of gear has hit. Not a single piece has expertise. Put enough hit and expertise onto the gear that even with what you reforge out of, you still get a healthy amount, if you must. Make hit and expertise rating matter; if you as the active tank hit the boss, he is staggered, and has a x% increased chance to miss (or do less damage) on HIS next swing, making your steady hits on the boss benefit your mitigation as well. He dodges or parries you, he does MORE damage on his next swing (balanced against your own mitigation, so you still may avoid or block the increased damage), you miss him, no change, but you lost out on some boss damage reduction you might have had. Make it only for attacks done by the active target, so dps or the idle OT in a tank swap fight don't wind up gibbing you. But do SOMETHING, as it's very frustrating to be told "if you want to cap hit and exp, you should be playing ret."
I don't think I would be able to fit that into Twitter, though. *^_^*
Got my hunter to 85, doing 10k single target on heroics and am hit capped for raids. I fail to see how I can consistently get idiots in the t11 25-mans that do less dps than the tanks. Also doing my part to reduce the huntard stigma; took over the suit when nobody else would in DM, got the group the achievement. B) And in BRC, the tank had never been there before and was having issues with Karsh, either not sticking him the fire in time or not putting him in at all. On the third try, I zip around the fire, distracting shot, boss ignites, FD. Zip around the other side of the fire, distracting shot, Karsh keeps his stack, deterrence. Zip around the fire, distracting shot, tank finally gets the hang of it and taunts. Rinse and repeat. Still do good damage on the boss, who didn't lose his stack once, and we kill him easily. Tank was like "lol that's one way to do it" and the healer was all "gj hunter". Heeee. ^_^ Clearly didn't do well enough to deserve a name, but hey, praise, I'll take it. DID also do really well at something on our FL alt run; I wanted to try going up to dps the boss on Alys, since tanks were being easy to heal and overall dps was being a bit low, plus we had some derpy pugs who kept dying to easy crap so I didn't trust them to do it. I ended up pulling about 26k, and considering how rarely I play as shadow and how I've NEVER gone up to dps the boss or actively try to hit rings before, I was quite pleased with myself. Nobody else was, but *I* was happy :p