What is the benefit of Casual? Is there any?

Have you ever written a blog post containing nothing but questions? I wonder, would it even work? How many readers would be driven crazy by the incessant ramblings of a person who couldn’t formulate an articulate opinion and relied on the imagination or input from readers to draw conclusions?

How many of you laughed at those in trade chat last night as they asked “when do Assasination Rogues get Mutilate”, and be told “level 82”? How many of you felt sympathy for those players who had no idea not only that patch 4.0.1 would drop but about all the changes contained therein? Could there be an easier way to assist these needy souls and help them through what happens to be the biggest changes to class play since who knows when? Wouldn’t it be great to have a HELP channel? That’s a silly question, for don’t we already have forums for that purpose?

Who will champion the cause of helping the casual? You? Me? Nobody? Are there not already a plethora or resources for these players to access that give them valuable insight and proven, tested methods that will help the player achieve high dps, high threat, or high throughput? But are these people not called casuals for a reason? What could possibly motivate a casual to log on to the internet and perform a search for the best, new Unholy DK DPS rotation?

So when these casuals logged in, or tried to, did not they and you sit face to face with a blizzard downloader and then a new WoW Launcher? Did they not say to themselves, “oh, look at that, a new patch, I wonder what it has for me”? Are you in a position to deny that they said this to themselves?

So to you, Mr./Ms. Casual, what was the biggest shock to your system when you finally saw your character standing there before you with your talents reset? Did you quietly search your talent tree for those comfortable, safe talents that boost Shadow damage by 2/4/6%? Or did you open your heart in trade chat, admit your ignorance and ask for help from the general populace? Did you regret your decision to ask for help from strangers when you were told that the Mage class was being discontinued? Did you fire off a frost bolt just to prove those trolls wrong?

Alas, Mr./Ms. Casual, what shocked you the most? What did you say to yourself when you found that it would take you a month’s worth of heroics just to purchase one PvE heirloom item? Were you mad or were you pleased (for some strange reason)? Did you cry to see all your hard earned stone keeper shards disappear only to discover that they had been converted into Honor Points?

Are you a Druid? Did you mourn the loss of Tree of Life Form as you have come to know and love it? Are you a Paladin and are totally confused at how your DPS can go from 8K to 4K overnight, realizing that now you may have to actually do something to do competitive DPS? Are you a Shaman, realizing that all your abilities to clean yourself, save it be curses, was stripped and torn from you violently? Did you lash out to your family, your guild, other trolls?

In the end we learn a valuable lesson, do we not? Did we not learn that Mr./Ms. Casual has one advantage over all of us who learned about all this stuff beforehand? Did we not learn that to be casual and ignorant is one way to remain innocent and allow us to be truly surprised and have true emotional responses when changes (major or minor) come our way?

I don’t really have any answers, so I’m asking, what do you think?

Gearing Up the Hard Way

I would never suggest to anyone interested in obtaining Tier 10 gear (I'm talking to the little guy, not you been there, done that crowd, so hold on to your pantyhose). What was I even saying? I lost all my thoughts in an attempt to retain all my target demo audience.


Ah yes, T10 and you - the, "don't do it this way" way to gear up. I've got 3 level 80's, and Gronthe is fast approaching, now questing at 72 in Dragonblight. I had raided regularly with my Shaman up until about a month ago, I use my DK to run around the world and get as many achievments as he can, which leaves my poor Priest to wallow in the absolute emtpyness that is being a middle-child.


My Priest has been doing the weekly raid quest and daily dungeons for her 2 emblems of frost (although I admit not every week and definately not every day) for many, many months. While my shaman has full 4 sets for both specs, my priest has yet to claim her 4 pc Shadow set. That is until today. Later this evening (West Coast USA baby!) I shall log in, queue up, get my 2 frosts, then go buy some leggings and complete her 4 pc T10 set. FINALLY!!! It's taken about 8 months of very few VoA runs. Quick tangent:


I don't hate VoA per se. What I absolutely cannot stomach is the squeeling that goes on whenever we win Wintergrasp. Yeah, yeah, I know it's because we're on a timer and people want to get it done, and there's no guarantee (especially on my server where Horde rocks PvP in BG's) that we'll ever get it back, and that like me other people are on a schedule and don't have all day to play that people get very anxious about running some version of VoA...but the squeeling!!! I can't take it sometimes, really I can't, so I rarely run it. That and my guild leader got the 264 legs for his Priest the first time he rand VoA 25, I've run it a dozen times and they've never dropped, let alone won a roll for them. Screw you VoA!!!


So here I am, on the precipice of a talent respec. What? What does talents have to do with getting a 4 set T10 piece? If you're asking that you don't know what the 4 set bonus does for Shadow Priests. See it here. Basically it's a major haste boost to our Mind Flay spell, a channeled spell that slows your butt down in PvP, and does some serious damage with good amounts of spell power and made better with haste. It's so good, in fact, that most Shadow Priests re-tune their talents by taking out 5 talent points that reduce the cooldown on our major nuke by 2.5 seconds and put those points elsewhere in the tree. I'm not sure that when all of this was planned that the devs deliberatly designed it so that (mostly raiding) Shadow Priests all over the world were changing their talent trees this late into the expansion.

I would venture a guess that the devs want to avoid this happening again in the future. Surely with the 31 point talent trees, it would be extremely difficult to even attempt such a drastic re-talenting at level 85 on the third tier of raiding. The trees and their forced "31 talents in one tree" will not allow that. But it's available now, and it will be both fun and interesting for me as I move my talents into places that I only dreamed about before.

I would not suggest taking 8 months to do it, however, and point to myself as a bad example for any raider with any aspirations of greatness to follow my example. Then again, come Cataclysm it will supposedly take longer to gear up for raids to begin with, but I doubt it will be 8 months. So go, run wild, run fast, run with a reckless abandon and gear yourslef up as fast as you can. If you do it may just provide you many, many months of power compared to just a couple months for myself.

Gronthe will never get his Tier 10 Warlock gear, and for him I am sad. But that's ok, I'll get him to 80 soon enough and he'll fancy himself sporting some hideous T9 stuff and run Ulduar at least once while it's still semi-relevant for some people very late to the party. So, that's it, journal entry completed. I'm thinking of changing the tone to my blog, perhaps every post will be in the form of some poetry. Or maybe I'll write every other post in Hebrew, or Arabic, or Chinese. Just a thought.

Talent Thoughts...I know it's Beta still

The fun part about complaining about talent trees during a beta period is that they are sure to change, which means that you'll get multiple opportunities to complain. Yay for multiplaints (multiple complaints in Newspeak).

I've got a problem with Shaman talents. The FACT is that with the exception of Feral Druids, which have a total of 44 possible talent choices in their tree, all Shaman trees have more talent points per tree than all other class/spec combinations. Elemental has 42 choices, Resto 43, and Enhancement 46!!! (Unholy DK's have 43, but they're all stupid, so they don't count).

The mean accross all classes & specs is 40, the median is 41, the minimum is 37 shared by Ret Pali, Shadow Priest, Affliction & Demo Warlock and the Balance Druid. 37 compared to 46. Given the new "reduced" talent trees, 9 added talents is HUGE! This means less of a chance to spec into a secondary tree, and more of a need to place just about everything in your main tree. 9 talents!!! In my oh so very humble opinion, all trees should have between 38-41 possible talents, no more no less. Less means greater customability into a secondary tree, more means less (and by extension the need to pick up "mandatory" main spec talents). Choices here Blizz, that's all we're asking for, it's what you promised.

"You don't have to put 46 talent points in your Enhancement tree" said one make-believe Blizzard official. "You couldn't even if you tried, you'll only have 41 talents to play with anyway, leaving you with 5 remaining talents to spend on shower curtains and lolli-pops."

Uh, if there was ever a case of a particular tree to demand that some talents be made passive abilities, it's the Enhancement Shaman. 46 compared to 37 for those stuck up little Ret Pali's! AAARRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHH! I'm a bit peeved. __________________________________________________

On a similar but unrelated note, I've had to postpone my raiding activities. What's worse, I was 32% away from my Kingslayer the other night, but the night reinforced what I had known for the past couple months, that my physical pains and disability just wouldn't allow me to sit for 3-4 hours at a time in a focused manner in a raiding situation. The pain was just too much, and so I had to stop.

But I'm content, mainly because during the LK fight I did everything perfectly. Before ever seeing the fight I wondered why people lamented upon hearing the word "Defile".../laugh...now I know. Curiously, I'm not sure what's so hard about getting and staying out. Maybe it's because after about 2 or 3 runs it just clicked for me and I knew what to do. All the while healing the tanks and the raid in heroic fashion. But for many of the DPS in the group, they were still struggling with defile recognition and movement. It's weird now, I feel isolated from my guild, a sort of traitor. Well, traitor is NOT the right word for it, but a sense that I let them down for sure. If I were in a true "Hard Core" raiding guild I know that I'd be flying solo right now.

I suppose it's a credit to the sociality that exists among my guild members that nobody has come down hard on my case. I suppose that they understand why I had to stop, that I need to try and rehab my body enough to where I can play with them again. I've been afraid to get on vent, I'm not sure how everyone will react. I still play a little bit each day, trying to slowly get my last piece for my 4-T10 set, but it's always quiet when I get on. I've switched my healing set for my range DPS gear that I've been storing up slowly and can run around dungeons doing 4-5K easily. I'm pleased about this considering I've only played Elemental for a total of 45 minutes before this change.

______________________________________________

I'm still angry about the talent point disparity, I wish that all trees would be somehow equal in the number of available talents. I understand a deviation of 2 or 3 between trees, but not 9!!!! If I could just get a 1 on 1 with GC, and be sure that he was listening, I'm sure he would understand and grant every wish like the genie he is.

Helping Hand

Seeing as I can't get an invite to the beta, I'll have to drop my knowledge here where 7 of you will see it. I'd love to give feedback to the devs about class abilities and talents, but I can't. Why? Because I'm not cool enough yet to receive an invite.

The other day I postulated on the wonders of Expanding Talents, as opposed to thrashing them into a fraction of what they were in order to assist those dummies who will put talent points into meaningless talents. I couldn't help but notice that a good number of PvP talents were also cut from the trees, making them more and more PvE centric. Sure, there are still some PvP talents there, but not as many. I've seen comments here and there from PvP oriented players that they are not happy about that design move. Well I have a couple probable solutions. So if anyone from Blizzard is listening, here's another bit of a helping hand at your talent tree design.

Ready?....Drumroll please!!!!!!! (How do you write out a drumroll sound anyway?)


Dudududududud or d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d- or tat-tat-tat...forget it, here you go!


Make 6 talent trees.

Now before you dismiss this idea, I ask that you allow me to make my case, however weak it may be.

Specializations
I like the new plan to allow someone to specialize in a particular talent tree, giving them iconic and powerful abilities at level 10. I agree that it will make for a rich and exciting leveling experience, as players have more time to understand thier more important abilities and hone those skills for more than just 10 or 20 levels. So let's keep that. But I'm going to throw in a curveball here. Give a player dual-spec specialization at level 20. At level 20 the player can make a second decision: Specialize in a secondary PvE role or take an alternate path and simultaneously level a pure PvP spec, complete with PvP talent tree.

I'll use a Shaman, for example, because that's what I have most experience with. At level 10 I choose to become an Enhancement Shaman (because we all know that's the best). At level 20 I can choose a secondary specialization, either Enhance PvP or Dual-Spec Elemental (because I'm sick of healing). We're familiar with how dual-spec works, so I won't say anything except that every level or two you gain a talent point that can be put into both of your specs, just like a dual-specced toon can now.

If you want to run battlegrounds a lot while leveling, you can easily switch between your Enhance PvE or PvP spec, as easily as you can switch between your dual-specs today. The PvP tree will open to you at level 20 and immediately grant you 5 talent points. From that point on until you reach level cap, you are granted 1 talent every 1 or 2 levels to put toward your PvE tree, and 1 talent point every 4 levels to add to your PvP tree. By the time you hit 84 you will have earned 21 PvP talents that can be put anywhere in your PvP tree.

PvP Tree
Your PvP talent tree will consist of talents which, if you could max them out, would require an investment of 29 talents. But you won't have 29, you'll only have 21. You can move to the next tier of PvP talents every time you invest 2 points. That way you can reach your capstone talent and then fill in points here and there where you choose. The key word there is choose. The PvP tree will force you to make a lot of decisions. Do you fill out 2/2 for talent X or just 1/2. At the same time as you allocate points to your PvP tree your PvE tree will also grow, providing you with the damage talents you need to actually kill someone in PvP.

One major difference between PvP dual-specialization and PvE dual-specialization will be that when you activate your PvP specialization you will have the power of both PvE and PvP talent trees boosting you to your best performance. However, and here's the catch. You can only activate your PvP tree in 3 places: The Battlemaster's headquarters (with class trainers available), Arena's and Battlegrounds. If, for example, you go to a Battlemaster's headquarters then ask your friendly Lock to summon you to a raid, your PvP talent tree will automatically deactivate. Sorry, no cheating allowed.

For the sake of dueling, there will also be pre-designated areas in all capital cities and many small villages where players can also activate their PvP talents and duel to their heart's content.

Solution?
This idea comes as a result of disappointment from some in the PvP community about many PvP talents being taken away from the "new and improved" talents we see in the Cataclysm beta. But after having thought about it for...a bit...I actually think that this or something close to this may be possible. It would allow for people to follow two paths simultaneously and open up talent trees for more focused talents (i.e. only PvE talents in one set of trees and only PvP talents in another set).

I'm sure this idea is full of holes, errors, impossibilities, coding error, blah, blah, blah. But it's not the worst idea I've heard of. But I'd like to hear from you. What's good/bad about this idea? How would you alter it? What's the best way to create and manage talents?

Expansions of All Sorts

I decided to write about two very different kinds of expansions, one relates to the social aspect of WoW, the other to the more technical, theorycrafting side.

Talent Tree Expansion
I hope that all know about or have seen the new, revamped talent trees (31-point). There are many opinions on them, myself I am reconsidering some previous positions and have had other reinforced. But I was wondering, what about instead of dramatically reducing the number of talents available, we increased them by...a lot.

Let's stick with the Wrath style trees and add 20 talents points to them. 10 for levels 1-10 and 10 for 81-85 (two talents awarded each level). What would be the ramifications of adding 20 talent points to your pool?

For one you could really start to reach down into a secondary talent tree and maybe pick up 1 or two formerly especially unique abilities that before you didn't have a chance to get. A good example would be a Priest that could cast Penance and Circle of Healing. Overpowered? Who freakin' cares!!! Then we'd all be over powered and therefore nobody would be.

Admittedly the difficult part would be when trying to create tricky hybrid builds, like Feral Druid. What real benefit would they gain from 20 extra talents? Would they delve deeper into Restoration tree only to be gimped by the lack of Resto gear as a part of their normal Feral set? What about an Enhancement shaman that went deep into Elemental? Would that build benefit from more Intellect/Spell Power and therefore cause debates on gear drops?

I think the winners of the debate would be PvPers, potentially being able to pick up a lot more pvp talents than they can currently. Some are saying that the current 31-point trees gimp PvPers, and that maybe the cutback on these trees was too severe, taking away too many important and useful PvP abilities. But if you go the other way, expanding access to even more PvP abilities, then that means that those players will have more tools at their disposal, more choices to make in a very short amount of time.

I'm all for specialization and getting some iconic abilities at level 10, it will really spice up the leveling experience. But since we're gaining more levels and therefore more power, let's really make it more complicated and significantly EXPAND the talent trees. Dual-spec would still be around, you wouldn't be able to fill out two complete talent trees. But if they really want healers to DPS, then give them more talent points to spend in the DPS trees to further enhance their healing capabilities.

I know it probably won't happen, but I can dream, can't I? What good or bad do you think would come of a significant expansion of the talent trees, as opposed to the reduction that has recently occured?

Guild Expansion...The Good and the Bad

Have you ever been in a relatively small guild? I mean 20-30 people, 10-15 of which are on most of the time. The individual personalities that make up a guild each have their own point of view as to the best kind of guild as far as numbers and requirements for entry. For example, I view massive guild expansion as a bad thing, I think huge guilds take away from any intimacy that could have otherwise been present. Smaller, not tiny, but smaller guild I think have a greater chance at providing positive social experiences. It's easier to really get to know people, not just their avatar but their person. The larger the guild the less time and opportunity there is to get to know other people, unless you particularly single somebody out.

Maybe I'm just feeling remorseful about my own guild's recent expansion, which has been significant in the past 3 months, adding well over 70 new recruits. It's made raiding easier, sure. I no longer, however, have the chance to talk to my older guild-mates like we used to. There's far more idle banter (not that I'm against it, but in small and clever doses only). Any significant conversations are no longer, there's just too many ears and fingers scrambling for attention.

Ah well, that's the growing pains of a growing guild, I suppose. There's still the core group of a year ago, but it's not the same anymore. Then again, maybe it is just me...it probably is.

In summary...Talent Expansion Good (imo)...Guild Expansion (massive expansion) Bad. That's my story and I'm sticking to it...for now.

Now That's a Cataclysm!

Yeah, I've been heavily consumed by the Real ID crap this week. I had to put up a second post today to get back into the mood of my anticipation of Cataclysm. As I've stated, I'm not quitting this game because of the Real ID plans for the forums, I'm continuing to play the game because for sanity-sake I need to and want to.


I was afraid of the initial Cataclysm talent trees that were made available to the public becuase frankly they were pretty much...EXACTLY THE SAME, with only a few small changes. Seriously, they were just about the same as what we have now, and that was a disappointment since I thought we were going to witness a Cataclysm.


Now we have, and it's rocking our world. Talent trees are gettin-a-blowed-up! Leveling, as a result, will change dramatically as well. Examples:

*Mage (Frost) Summon Water Elemental
*Paladin (Retribution) Divine Storm
*Priest (Discipline) Penance
*Priest (Shadow) Mind Flay
*Rogue (Assassination) Mutilate
*Rogue (Subtlety) Shadowstep
*Shaman (Elemental) Thunderstorm
*Shaman (Enhancement) Dual Wield, Lava Lash
*Shaman (Restoration) Earth Shield
*Warrior (Arms) Anger Management, Mortal Strike
*Warrior (Fury) Bloodthirst
*Warrior (Protection) Shield Slam, Vitality

This, my friends, is a real Cataclysm. Frankly I'm not one to care right now if it's a good or a bad thing, I'm just glad that it's a massive change. Why? Because they promised us big changes to the talent trees. And what happened when they "officially" released a sneak peak into a few of the trees?

"Oooooooooooh, Aaaaaaaaaah! I see one, no two, no make that three small changes to the talent tree...amazing!"

Hyperbole, maybe, but not that far from the truth. The first draft of Cataclysm talent trees had a lot to be desired in my oh so humble opinion. The Shadow Priest, for one, had virtually no other viable options in the other trees, making it necessary to take just about every, single shadow talent in that tree.

On one hand I dispair, I had fun trying to create a Priest build that gave me Chakra, Circle of Healing, Improved Shields, Power Word: Barrier, Divine Aegis and Power Infusion. Oh well, I guess true hybrid builds are a thing of the past.

Specialization is the new word in town. And as a perk to choosing a specialization you will be given an iconic, unique talent starting at level 10. For someone like those poor Ret Pali's this is a good thing. I've got my poor Pali to level 20 and there is still only 1 offensive spell (a Judgement), aside from Auto Attack, that I press.

But will specializations take away the ability for someone to be "special"? Don't really know, haven't seen the new trees yet. To speculate would be ignorant of me since I don't have the information in front of me. Right now all I see as a positive is that they actually DID produce the massive overhaul of talent trees promised. Maybe this was Blizzard's way of saying, "See everyone, we do keep promises."

(One note on specialization and diversification: How many of you really played with talent builds that were 28/24/19? Nobody, unless you REALLY didn't care about your talents. Most played with optimal builds that meant 58/13/0. The new talent distribution won't be that much different, but I don't think anyone was going to go the 28/24/19 route anyway. We wouldn't receive any significant Mastery Bonuses. You know it and I know it, so let's just roll with the new talents until we can prove they suck).

Anyway, as far as the feeling of leveling and the playstyle I think it can only be good. I never did feel like a Shadow Priest until I got to level 40. That's half the game of no particular feeling of specialness. Making the class and spec feel special and unique from very early on isn't diminishing the "specialness" of those super cool, iconic abilities, it's giving us a chance to immerse ourselves in a role. Until, for example, an Enhancement Shaman get's Windfury AND dual wielding, the play style is 80%+ Elemental mechanics (Lightening Bolt, Lightening Bolt, Shock, Melee, Shock, Dead). At least now I'll be able to smash things with my thunder fists from an early age and gain the experience of thunderfisting bad guys the way an Enhancement Shaman should.

I'm not disenchanted with the game, but with capitalism at it's worst. That's why I can still see some exciting things about Cataclysm. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe these changes will totally suck, but speculating about it can be fun and unproductive...a perfect combination. I just wanted a real Cataclysm to the talents, and until now that didn't happen.

Random Cataclysm Thoughts

If you haven't seen the early talent previews officially released then you don't know how to work the internet. I saw them today, and at first it caused a certain amount of consternation, but I'm over it. Now that I've looked at things closely I have just a few random thoughts to share.

1) Healing will be different for everyone. Of course I haven't seen any Holy Pali changes yet, but Priests, Druids and Shamans all have talent changes that will increase their healing after doing damage with spell X, Y or Z.

Analysis: I think that's pretty cool. I have no idea how healing will feel in Cataclysm, but I'm hoping it'll be enough of a change that I will definately feel it. Healers will be a part of the fight, not just some oafs standing in the back watching bars. Yes, we'll still watch bars, but we'll have to pay attention not only to the heals we cast but to the damage spells we cast the the resulting procs. As if healers didn't already have enough to worry about. Can you say "more addons" to track all this stuff? Or simply expanding the use of current ones, like Power Auras (which I still struggle to set up, so if anyone can point me in the right direction for a really good examples I'd appreciate it).

2) It's Early - Stuff is still in trees that Blizzard said wouldn't be.

Analysis: I'll give them time. On one hand they say they want to get rid of more passive abilities that do x% increase, but I don't see how they can get around it given that that would require an absolute, complete overhaul of talent trees. Redundancy, for example, should be eliminated. For example, the Shadow Priest has a 2 pt talent in tier 1 of their tree Dark Thoughts, which reduces spell pushback while casting shadow spells by 70%. Standard spell that every caster has. But look at Improved Shadow Form, that has an effect that will also reduce cast time lost by 70% when taking damage while casting any shadow spell while in shadow form. Um, Blizzard, it seems you got two talents that do the same thing, just worded differently. One is for early leveling while one is for level cap? Just take out the tier 1 talents later? Maybe, but it still seems like a waste of talent points to have such redundancy. I hope there isn't other talents for other classes with this problem.

3) It's Early

Analysis: Sort of like #2. I realize these are as preliminary as they're gonna get. There is definately some cool stuff out there to be had and a lot of boring stuff too. I really do hope that whatever changes they make that we're given more flexibility than we are now. As I see it, however, there's still very little flexibility and very few if any talents that one can look at and say "I don't NEED that one, let me pick up something that better fits my play style." Blizzard said there wouldn't be as many mandatory talents, well Blizz, you got a few months to make it so.

That's all I have to say about that.