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Daily mage

Daily Thoughts: Arcane in the Membrane

June 24, 2011

Man, I’ve really been slacking on keeping up my Daily Thoughts here. Someone once commented that I should consider calling it “Weekly Thoughts” and that is seeming more accurate right now, but the name doesn’t sound quite right. Let’s continue!

Not too long ago, my mage reached level 85. I leveled using mostly a mix of frost and fire specs. 5 minutes after reaching max level, I was ready for heroics. Wait? Apparently it’s pretty nice reaching 85 with nearly max justice points and honor points through a long series of dungeons and battlegrounds. I picked up my vendor gear and had 331 item level, well clearing the 329 requirement to get into heroic dungeons. I got fired up, ready to go, and prepped for my unfortunately long 30 minute wait to get into a heroic dungeon…and found my DPS startlingly lacking. (more…)

Daily

Daily Thoughts: MMO Death & Consequences

June 6, 2011

I’ve always found there to be something wrong with a lack of consequences for any given action. In the real world there are plenty of repercussions for bad decisions and failure. If you gamble and lose, you lose money and possibly go into debt or face other personal problems. You wouldn’t likely run in the middle of a gang shootout or busy intersection without good cause. In traditional video games, dying usually means reverting to the last saved location, but in multiplayer online games, there are varying and often insignificant consequences. Game developers have a tough job of balancing the feeling of risk with keeping the game fun.

There was a poker application on myspace that I played for a little while. There was “chips” that you could bet and collect but had no real dollar value attached. Most players played in a similar fashion to how a realistic game would go. You don’t bet big unless you have a good hand or really think you can bluff your way through. Ocassionally though, a player would join a table that would simply max bet every hand. Complete disregard for the normal consequences of betting all your money. Unless they were challenged and lost quickly, it would pretty much ruin any table. Other players would fold, leave, or sometimes call the bet and be taken out completely in one fell swoop. Of course, there is a chance someone feels ballsy and goes all-in, but not every hand or that commonly. The realism and fun of the game was hurt because losing the chips meant nothing, a player could log back in or re-install the app and be good to go yet again. In other types of multiplayer games, specifically WoW, the lack of penalties for dying or losing sometimes can hinder the behavior and strategy of some of the players. (more…)

Daily mage

Daily Thoughts: Ding! The Consequences of Leveling

June 3, 2011

Leveling is probably one of the most satisfying events while playing WoW. Not quite as satisfying as letting a jerk dps die when they pull a pack of trash without waiting for tank, but still pretty satisfying. Pretty much every new level there is a talent point or new spell enticing us to reach the next plateau.

My mage reached level 80 and started Cataclysm content just recently. Which, I must say is a nice change of pace from previous content. Wrath of the Lich King content was great when it was relevent. Now it seems slow and clunky like BC content once was – not just because I’ve done it so many times on other alts – but also because the questing system and layout for this expansion is that much better. Reaching 78 was actually the biggest jump in “power” for my mage though, because of the Cataclysm quality greens. My spell power doubled and stamina tripled going from 77-79 because of the massive item level difference. After that, the power growth jumped again upon receiving mastery at level 80. It took only slightly longer than an hour to reach 81 but here I noticed something. My DPS didn’t really go up. A couple of upgrades had only a tiny effect. Level 82 and a couple more upgrades and my DPS remained constant. How can I gain a few hundred spell power, more haste/mastery/crit rating and not gain DPS? (more…)

Daily

Daily Thoughts: Freezing Frost Mages Batman!

May 26, 2011

I have to be honest: I hate frost mages. Not quite as much as I hate the fear mechanic, but pretty fiercely nonetheless. That said, mine is level 74 and I’m having a blast being a royal pain in the butt to countless alliance that dare cross me!

Frost is Broken

My 74 mage is dual spec frost and fire. In full heirloom gear (head, chest, shoulders, weapon, trinks, back) and a mix of quest/dungeon gear otherwise I’m finding myself pulling about 2300 dps in fire. This isn’t a difficult rotation but does involve a handful of buttons and paying a little attention to DoT timers. On the other hand, frost can do 2100 single target DPS while pushing only frostbolt and ice lance during a fingers of frost proc or while moving. I hear the problem isn’t so bad at max level.

On the other hand, in PVP the issue is magnified. I can ice lance crit other players for 70% of my HP repeatedly if they’re frozen. Frost nova + ice lance is brutal. Not to mention adding deep freeze (a 5 second stun) plus a counterspell that is also a 4 second silence. I can often easily kill a healer of equal level and greater health without giving him the chance to even cast a spell. If there’s already a HoT or bubble on the target, spellsteal makes it mine. I got to witness an exaggerated version of this in arena at max level. Two weeks ago my druid/warrior 2’s team had 6 wins 3 losses with 2 of the losses against teams with frost mages. The week after that, we went 7 wins 10 losses, 9 of the losses being teams with frost mages (including a team that was dual frost mages). We did beat 2 teams with frost mages though. There is of course a possibility that our comp or skill just doesn’t have the tools to beat a frost mage, but I don’t feel like the problem should be that substantial. Finally, players tend to gravitate to what is most EZmode or over powered. So, 11 teams with frost mages out of 17 matches total? Seems a bit excessive. Wonder why the players are gravitating that way?

Frost is also freakin’ fun

There is another pretty strong reason players have decided to rock out with their frost out in PVP. It’s really fun! I’ve been spending most of my leveling time between 40-70 leveling and up until almost 70 I was playing with the fire spec. The talent points on my frost off spec slowly grew and grew, unspent, unloved. Until finally, one evening, I had my face repeatedly beat in by frost mages while pvping on a different toon. I decided that there must be something to this frost mage thing – and I’ve been slowing, freezing and murdering alliance as they try to feel in terror ever since. Leveling frost is definitely a solid choice for anyone bring their mage up. Although all specs can bring something interesting to the table, frost has a great skill set for preventing getting beat on by mobs or other players and makes it ideal for a class not running around in plate.

Daily Druid

Daily Thoughts: Resto Druid PVP

May 18, 2011

In Wrath, Resto Druids were arguably the most over powered healing class in PVP. While that title is now often thrown at Resto Shamans or Holy Paladins, we former trees of HoT-ty goodness can still definitely hold our own. Aside from that, playing a resto druid in PVP is fun as all hell. There’s almost nothing like jumping into a large mass of players fighting, rolling HoTs on your team and turning the tide as, suddenly, the enemy can’t kill your teammates. Combine that with having a host of instant-cast spells and being able to break snares when changing form (something only resto druids can do now) and they can be really, really hard to bring down. (more…)

4.1 Daily

Daily Thoughts: Patch Day Blues

April 26, 2011

So 4.1 is in full swing and with that comes all the wonder and joy of new content and new ridiculous bugs. Fortunately, I wasn’t struck too seriously by the patch day blues. The majority of my addons worked right off the bat. The only notable exception for me was recount, but I can still raid without it. Yes, I can raid without watching my epeen grow and flourish. I got home about 20 minutes before raid time, downloaded the patch content, and went right to work tanking BWD and BoT. There were a few hiccups along the way to this otherwise very successful evening. A few of our raiders had trouble zoning in to the instances. They were getting odd error messages such as the instance cannot be found. Others disconnected when releasing from their corpse after a wipe. The most curious was on the Omnitron encounter. When the first boss mob reached 50 energy, it did not trigger a second. Eventually it ran out of energy and powered off without spawning any more bosses. I’m pretty sure someone declared we dps’d too hard that we broke it. Needless to say, we didn’t break it. If you get this bug, don’t fret too much. Just get everyone out of the instance and come back in. After that it was all smooth sailing. I tanked Chimaeron, Atramedes and the Twin Dragons for the first time and one shot them! Go me… ugh, I mean us… go us!

So you might be wondering, is there a list of known issues with patch 4.1? Why yes, yes there is. Blizzard was nice enough to post them HERE – a location which should have more current issues as time goes on. I’ve also included the entire list after the break, at least as it was at the time of this posting. Also check back on this blog in the next couple days for info on the new instances! (more…)

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