Blog Posts from "The magical house of leprechaun faeries" - Gameriot.com

Incentive to play WoW?

no.spam@gameriot.com (kireiray) — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 23:00:05 -0500

tl;dr at bottom yo.

WoW (and most other MMOs) are designed to take up as much of your time as possible to maximize their profit. This should be obvious to everyone when you look at the repetitive nature of daily quests, quests that are the same objective with a new name, and how the cycle is basically hard stuff -> get gear/stop suck -> stuff is no longer hard -> harder stuff comes out.

So what then, becomes the reason to log on? Whether it's just a hobby for when your friends (imaginary or real) are busy, the reason for your existence, or a way of making money from selling PR/characters/gold, it gets old after a while. Logging on to do the same dailies so that your rep with a pixelated faction goes up, kill a few bosses hoping you get a new piece so you can gain xx spell damage/ap/resil, or quest so you can level another alt. It's simply boring once you look at how much you've already done, and how it's possible for blizzard to just add in another faction with a slightly better wand, and you'll have to spend hours of your life on it.

Don't take this as a QQ about the boring state of wow, because it isn't. I'm just observing that after a while, it simply becomes easier to just neglect that tiny bit of min/max to save some time/sanity, and just go do something else instead. However, with ulduar 1-2+ months in the future (PTR testing soon?), pvp gear from pve removing the incentive to do arena whatsoever except for weapons/shoulders/helm, which have far superior pve alternatives, and all the tears about class balance being completely broken and stupid, it's easy to see why so many "e-famous" players have already left. And when Ulduar comes out, how long will it be until we realize it's rewashed content with new names? Same boring pve instance, and it will probably drop amazing s6 gear as well, further lowering the point of actually pvping to get the top pvp gear.

Catering to your 11.5+ million player fanbase is hard when half of them scream for a hardcore game, half of them fight for a casual game, and most of them crying about the other 90% of them that player another class, and why it's "unbalanced". Reality is, it won't be balanced as long as long as there is competition, because someone will always have a justified reason about why they lost and how it wasn't due to skill.

tl;dr

these are the same qq arguments that have been posted many times
pve gear is dumb, fix resil
pvp gear from pve is dumb, fix blizzard
wow becomes boring after a while, agree/disagree

peace.

Mutilate - Boring, or is just me?

no.spam@gameriot.com (kireiray) — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 19:43:33 -0500

tl;dr at bottom

I've been playing shadow dance for over a month now since the discovery of the hat bug basically forced me to raid as that spec. Simply grinding eviscerates over and over instead of actually looking at hfb times and deadly poison stacks for an incredible damage increase is stupid, but hey, being 1st instead of 5th was worth it. I actually spec'd mutilate for 3s and 5s this week and I have to say, it's incredibly boring. In the state of the game as it is, your sustained damage, ability to keep mind numbing up, and the extra heals from quick recovery don't mean anything. People die in 1-2 globals, and having the shadowstep -> shadowdance burst when the opportunity arrises far outweighs the strengths of mutilate.

I feel this way because of the pros and cons each bring:

Mutilate
:: Pros
- Vile Poisons allows you to stick on a target much more effectively and keep MN/Wound up.
- Quick Recovery helps alot in terms of overall survivability
- Being able to attack from the front (not that you would ever want to, in ideal circumstances), is huge.
- Fleet Footed means you have a speed advantage and can enchant your boots or use a meta for more offensive power
- Find Weakness / Murder / DW Spec just mean over the course of a fight, you will far out damage a dance rogue. (This is arguable, and I list why below)
- Cold Blood allows for on demand burst, and is un-ccable. Once people start paying attention or getting spell alerter, it will be a simple thing to focus you and blind/disarming shot/hoj/repentance, any other myriad of ccs as soon as you pop it. There are many ways to lower your risk of being cc'd in dance, but it will be hard to pull off a successful burst combo once opponents start looking for it.

:: Cons
- Easilly kited & Hard(er) to get openers then a shadowstep rogue. Shadowstep sap -> opening on someone else makes it very easy to swing the momentum your way. A mutilate rogue might have to blow sprint or risk losing the opener to random aoe or someone spotting him.
- Survivability. Once we start getting a few offset pieces of resil, or wearing the full resil set, cheat death will actually count for something, and be game breaking.
- Target must be poisoned for you to deal full damage. VS Comps involving shamans or shamans + druids/paladins, you will be hard pressed to keep poisons up through kiting, totems, and constant cleanses, especially now that wound is a 1 stack deal.

Shadow Dance
:: Pros
- Waylay, should you choose to get it, means it will be very easy to control a target straight from the opener to your shadow dance.
- Deadliness / Calling / Slaughter from the Shadows and Master of sublety all mean that if you are able to stick to a target more easilly (depending on your comp), you WILL be doing more damage then a mutilate rogue who doesn't have shadow step.
- Shadowstep. No brainer here.
- Dance, if properly used, is probably one of the stronger 51 point talents out there. You can use it to blind->sap without using vanish, reopen with an un-dr'd cheap shot to assist burst, garrote for silence, and ambush for burst. The possibilities surrounding this talent are only binded by the players ability to see openings and play to their comps strengths.
- Cheat Death (Read Above)

:: Cons
- You won't have mind numbing up unless you are using an offhand to shiv it, which will lower your damage output significantly. This is okay if you're playing a comp where you are more for control then burst, though.
- Forced to use a run speed enchant of some sort.

As you can see, mutilates strengths are basically shadow dances weaknesses, and vice versa. Both have the potential (read: rng) for incredibly high burst when played right.

So, what do I think about mutilate vs dance? Mutilate will be more powerful when people get resilience and healer/rogue comps start making their way into the spotlight, but for now, shadow dance is superior.

tl;dr
- shadow dance is cool yo
- mutilate is hella boring and you get kited to death
- shadow step is the ****
- healers are overrated
- happy holidays everyone!

My Introduction - Week 1 Recap / Shadowdance opinions.

no.spam@gameriot.com (kireiray) — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 17:40:08 -0500

tl;dr at the bottom.

Hey. I've never been to any tournaments, played on tournament realms, or attained a rank 1 gladiator title in any season. I'm average, probably carried by PvE gear, and use (mostly) a default ui. I was part of a guild that cleared all the content (except 3 drakes 10 sartharion) and then stopped raiding due to boredom and the holidays. So, why am I here on this site filled with nerd PvP superstars? To talk about things most of you won't care about, but some may find mildly useful.

As you can see from my armory, http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Vashj&n=Tigrus, I play an orc rogue using all PvE gear with 84 resil. I'm also shadow dance, widely believed to be the inferior spec that has more potential (more buttons = more skill, right?). I play rogue/mage 2s, rogue/mage/hunter 3s, and rogue/mage/hunter/warrior/shaman 5s. We all have PvE gear up the ass except our healer, so we're milking the low resilience train zerg as long as possible. I personally think shadowdance is going to be the superior spec in 2s due to the many ways you can use shadow dance and shadow step to your advantage. Guaranteed openers, locking someone down in LoS for your mages casts, and quick target swaps are just a few bonuses. Also, many rogues that run mut in 2s are using 1/2 or 0/2 heightened senses and 0/3 camouflage. If you run shadow dance you have 2/2 hs and possibly a few points in camo depending on your preference, giving you a large advantage vs other stealth. Shadow dance will also be the premier 5s spec if eviscerate remains in this state, especially if you run comps with hunters or warriors and see alot of cp generation from hat. Until resilience is toned up and evis spam becomes second to wound/mindnumbing poison control, mutilate seems like the weaker spec to me.

So, week 1 of arena. If you were a priest or druid (non feral), I'm sorry. The odds were stacked so heavily against you, many exceptional players I know couldn't get past 1750 due to cheesy double dps/triple dps/4-5 dps comps running around in full naxx gear. Shamans had it a little better off, especially if they were lucky enough to get some deadly/hateful before the season actually started. In 5s, our shaman basically blew bloodlust and then ate the floor before the swirly animation on his trinket went through to NS.

For rogues/hunters/feral druids/dks/enh shamans/etc, it was a blast. Physical dps in full PvE gear vs other people in no resil is amazing. Three shotting people in the opener without popping shadowdance is completely unfair, but incredibly fun.

For warlocks/mages, you were basically holed into going metamorphasis or arcane. Mages, you get your burst off, pop block, and then wait to die. If you had some resil, you may have gone frost and actually been able to cast. For warlocks, you pop metamorphasis, spread dots, and hope somebody dies before you do. I had games vs warlocks that where if I got the opener, they died. They would pre-pop it before I ever opened, and we would just wait it out.

In 2s as shadow dance/arcane mage, we faced nothing but holy/ret paladin/unholy dk. We used the same strat every game and it usually works: cc dk hard and rape the paladin. Try to open up with a sap, if not, CS -> Poly the DK. The paladin usually won't have the globals to cleanse with shadowdances burst through cheapshot -> evis -> ambush -> ambush -> kidney.Â As soon as he bubbles, the mage will probably have to block and sit for the full duration. Once bubble ends, you reenter the fight and blind the dk (hopefully he's trinketed by now). As ice, it would be far easier to force him to trinket a deep freeze. but with a 100-200ish resil mage vs dk teams, you won't be getting too many casts off.

tl;dr

rogues are fun and shadowdance is cool
pally/dk is the new warrior/druid
get resil fast or keep dying and crying about it
vacate is annoying

Thanks for reading, and to those of you who won't and will just flame me in comments - I love you too.