I’ve played a little bit of Hearthstone now and I want to drop a little feedback. Keep in mind, it’s still in beta, but it plays like a pretty complete game. For that, I’d say they’re doing a good job with it so far. It’s fun, but it’s far too simple. I have a decent win/loss ratio (I think) but games are nearly always one sided. Either I wreck them or they wreck me – it’s hard to be much fun on either side of that. This is because of the simplicity. Bad draw early on can create a deficit that can never be recovered from. However, it’s the lack of countering that is my real complaint. I played a game where on turn 3 or 4, the opponent played a card to “steal” one of mine, used that to kill my taunt creature and (clearing my side of the board) and dealt 10 damage. Prior to that turn we were equal with full health but I had 2 strong(ish) cards in play and he had one weak one. At the end of the turn I’m down 1/3 of my health and he had 5 minions to my 0. No way to stop it. No way to counter. What I’d love to see is a Magic the Gathering style counter spell mechanic. The ability to cast certain types of spells during the opponents turn would be such a huge improvement. It would at a little complexity. Do I save this burn spell to see what my opponent does or use it now? I’ve seen many games where either side could have stopped a loss by simply being able to stop one spell or one minion during a key fight. It just needs a little more. (more…)
Tag: priest
Daily Thoughts: 4.0.3a Feedback Pt.1 – PreLogin
As of this writing, servers are still down, and I’m not on a computer with WoW anyway, so I can’t see all the massively redesigned zones in Azeroth. I can’t make a tauren paladin or personally check out any of the changes happening today. What I can see though, are the patch notes for patch 4.0.3a, which contains a ton of class changes along with the shattering of the world.
Good news for those who wanted to try out their new race/class combos along with the option to race change existing characters to one of the new pairings, as soon as WoW is live you’ll be able to do both of these things. This does not include worgen/goblin toons which won’t be available until Dec 7th at cataclysm’s release. Also, I’m pretty excited about the 20% reduction in leveling experience required for the 70-80 leveling bracket. I might get around to finishing up my level 72 rogue before cata after all. Join me after the break for more, including some class specific thoughts.
4.0.3a Official Patch Notes
World of Warcraft Client Patch 4.0.3aThe latest patch notes can always be found at http://www.wow-europe.com/en/patchnotes/
The latest test realm patch notes can always be found at http://www.wow-europe.com/en/info/un…testrealm.html
Daily Thoughts: Let’s Talk Leveling
I didn’t too much max level content last night with the exception of a couple of weekly quests for some Justice points. I do have some thoughts relating to that, but I’ll get to it at the end of this post.
Lowbies are OP
You read that right. Low level characters are crazy over powered right now. I’m going to extend this to all the ones I played with or encountered last night; warlocks, priests, warriors, rogues, shaman, and especially paladins. On my warlock I queued up with a priest healer friend of mine and we tore up 7-8 instances last night. As healer, the priest was completely bored the entire time for lack of anything to do. All the runs were fast paced chain pulls and he barely had to drop an occasional bubble or renew. As a lock, I could pull ahead of the tank and eat the aggro without worry because most mobs would die before they ever got to me. Keep in mind, we’re not overgeared, twinked or even using heirloom gear. At level 22 we have only 1 ring each, no trinkets, no shoulders, no head-piece, and I’m using a melee dagger cause I’ve gotten nothing better from our chain runs. I do 100 dps at level 20 in destro. My immolate DoT can crit for 150+ and the initial damage has hit for 250. I’ve seen over 300 damage hits from my Searing Pain spell (which I can make automatic crits with my soul shards ability).
So Define ‘Overpowered’
One of our runs had a pally tank in full heirloom gear. I say tank because of the role but he was running in ret gear/spec. At level 20 he was averaging between 200-250dps. His Templars verdict ability that uses his holy power never hit for under 700. I saw it hit over 1100, almost one shot an elite mob and easily enough to one shot anyone in the group. I think being able to do 50-100% of a potential PVP enemy’s health in one move is overpowered. Of course, the priest with me could do 50% of our best geared tanks health in one crit. The relatively geared rogues in our groups between levels 16-18 were already doing 100 dps and could do finishers for 250+, or half of their health. Each instance, be the characters geared in heirlooms or mixed questing greens, was a mad chain pull with no deaths or wipes or breaks needed. We plain destroyed the content. Admittedly, it’s possible that every player in all the groups were total pro’s with 8 alts they’ve run through the content before, but that seems unlikely. More likely, is with the new level 10 talents and bonuses for picking a spec, lowbies are just OP compared to level appropriate content.
Outside of the instances, a level 1o shaman wearing heirloom gear that dueled me could do half of my level 18 health in 2 globals. Fortunately I didn’t lose, but a level 10 who can do 175 damage earth shocks is pretty intense.
Maybe it isn’t just low levels
Last night I joined a random group to do the weekly quest which was XT-002 The Deconstructor. This of course required us to do the vehicle boss fight vs Flame Leviathan. FL, as it has been for months, was terribly easy even with half of the players hardly doing anything. My issue comes up on our fight with XT. For those who don’t know the fight, there is periodically a phase where his “heart” is exposed and if you kill the heart during its timer, hardmode is triggered. Here we have a group that had enough gear to easily kill the heart, a feat which was considered a gear check at the time it was relevant because of the high dps required to do it, yet lacked the skill or experience to know they shouldn’t kill the heart. With gear inflation and boosts from talent points and scaling recently we’re able to hit harder and do more damage than our skill would otherwise represent. After the group killed the heart, even with at least one dps (myself) stopping and possibly another, the hardmode easily bested us as only two people there had any idea what the mechanics were at that point. Sounds like a case of “with great power comes great responsibility”. The characters are more powerful than the players know how to handle or when to slow down.