Scourge Strike Nerf Not So Bad, How Aion Stacks Up To WoW Currently

Patch 3.3 Scourge Strike
For Death Knights, 3.3 seems like a pretty significant nerf patch, with the biggest one seemingly being the nerf to scourge strike, splitting it up into physical and shadow damage. However, after the PTR changes to it were clarified, it doesn't seem half-bad:

• 1) Scourge Strike should crit for 200% damage like other DK spell effects.
• 2) The Shadow part of the damage should never miss if the physical part hits.
• 3) The Shadow part of the damage should never be decreased additionally to the physical damage. It should not "double dip" from resilience et al. Example: My physical portion that hits for 2000 is reduced to 1000. The Shadow part should then hit for 1000 (modulo bonuses) and not 500 or whatever.
• 4) The Shadow part of the damage will still be increased additionally by talents and anything else that buff Shadow damage. It will "double dip" in the DKs favor. Example: My physical portion hits for 2000 and is reduced to 1000. The Shadow portion hits for 1500 because I have +50% Shadow damage.

Overall, I think it will actually break about even. On heavy armor plate targets, you'll do a decent bit less damage obviously because the physical portion will be mitigated, but against leather and mages with mage armor on, DK's will probably actually notice an increase in damage for SS. This change will also allow DK's to drop their spell penetration from the current 130'ish optimal amount down to around 75 just to counter MotW because the shadow portion of SS won't be the entirety of it anymore.

Despite not being as bad as originally perceived, I still don't quite understand Blizzard's logic in nerfing scourge strike so that it is not fully magical damage meanwhile retribution paladins still do enormous magic damage: judgements, seal damage, hammer of wrath, and excorcism are all magic damage; unresistable holy damage at that. I think the change might have been warranted if ret paladins were addressed at the same time, but using a double standard for the same principal is pretty asinine.




How Aion Stacks Up To WoW Currently
It's really no secret that I've taken a hiatus from WoW to level up in Aion. It's been pretty fun and addicting thus far, if not for any reason other than being a new game, but like any other MMORPG to ever hit the market in the future, it is and always will be compared to WoW because of the benchmark that Blizzard has established for all new games. So how does it stack up? Let's compare.

Leveling - This is the deal-breaker for a lot of gamers. Leveling in Aion can either be seen as extremely brutal or very rewarding. Level 1-40 is pretty time-intensive and will even make most hardcore WoW players a little tired from the grind, but when you hit the 40-50 range, it gets pretty ridiculous. The exponentially increasing XP requirement to level gets absurd and I kid you not when I say that each individual level at 40+ in Aion takes around the same time as it takes to get 70-80 in WoW in total. To make matters worse, quest experience is very minimal proportionally to how much XP is needed to level, thus forcing players into mandatory grinding, which many players simply cannot stomach. I just hit 47 tonight myself and although it seems that I'm close to the finish line, I still know that there's so much more left to be done.

PvP - PvP in Aion is a double-edged blade right now. Roaming/world PvP is definitely a blast, especially when "rifting" into the enemy realm, but also has very unattractive aspects such as ridiculously powerful guards and the rarity of rift spawns. Fortress sieges are the same way: incredible events to attend typically where you have over 200 members of each faction battling it out for the fortress, not even considering the 3rd NPC Balaur faction that exists to kill both factions indiscriminently. However, the biggest drawback I can see right now to siege warfare is how absolutely mindless it is to siege a balaur-controlled fort. In Aion, there are these things called "Kisks" which allow a player to rez there. Well, you can also buy mobile Kisks and place them very near the fort so that when a person dies, they rez very nearby and you effectively just rez zerg the deity general (fortress boss) for hours literally until it dies. It's quite stupid and I really hope to be adressed.

UI/Graphics - NCSoft is committed to keeping Aion mod-free and I actually like this approach. I think that mods make WoW even easier than it already is for many players to play and in some cases provide unnecessary advantages to other players running certain mods. With everyone basically forced into running the default UI in Aion, everyone is on relatively the same playing field. That's not to say that the UI is bad at all, because it isn't. It's actually remarkable intuitive, customizable, and good-looking all at the same time. The graphics are also as good as you can expect from a new-age product. They simply make WoW's graphics look like something from the SNES and although you can say that it's because WoW was released so long ago, Blizzard has had several expansions to update the engine so they're not entirely free of blame for this.

Without going into too much more detail since this is a WoW portal/blog, after all, my point basically is that Aion is incredibly fun so far, if you're the right player with the stomach to do an enormous amount of necessary grinding. If not, stick to your dailies and keep enjoying WoW... at least until NCsoft buffs quest experience gains.