The Children of Wrath

Cross Realm Raiding is a Go!

2012-01-31T23:36:00.000-08:00

Saz, of World of Saz, has been kind enough to set up an enjin site for all the twitteratti and Bloggers who want to take advantage of the new cross realm raiding feature introduced in the recent patch.

You can find it here. I'm going to try and squeeze in a few raids if at all possible, and I'd love to see it flourish.

Fail of Deathwing

2012-01-31T18:03:00.000-08:00

Yeah, my guild hates Madness of Deathwing. I've never seen so much vitriol reserved for an encounter we downed in five attempts the first time we tried it. For an encounter on normal mode, this amount of hate is truly unprecedented. Personally, I'm kind of ambivalent towards it, but the fact that I've had to drag raiders kicking and screaming to finish the encounter has prompted me to take a hard look at what exactly creates such antipathy towards this particular encounter.

1: "It's a trash fight!"

Personally, I don't subscribe to this idea, that just because you're not crossing swords with your foe directly makes the encounter dull. I firmly believe that the finest end of tier boss this game has produced was Yogg-Saron, a fight which consisted of me doing nothing but tanking minions and tentacles. At the same time, having a static boss that can't change position does severely limit the perception of freedom in an encounter, and I can understand that idea.

2: "It's so looooooooong..."

Yeah, fifteen minute fights can be a pain in the ass. They can also be amazingly epic. Kil'jaeden, Yogg-Saron, Lich King, Nefarian in both incarnations, were all amazing encounters that took a long time to kill, even when they were on farm. It sucks when you wipe late in an attempt and you have to start all over, and it's a bit of a kick in the crotch when you look at the clock and realize that despite whipping your raid for quick turnover between wipes, you've spent an hour and only gotten four attempts in. I don't think that this is something that makes a fight bad in and of itself, but it really exacerbates other factors, such as...

3: "Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, wipe"

I understand what Blizzard was trying to accomplish here. They wanted to make a dynamic encounter that evoked shades of Yogg-Saron with the four godlike beings assisting you at varying levels. This is what they wound up with: a fight where nothing matters until ten minutes into the fight. The encounter is completely trivial until the final platform. A lot of the mechanics are solid, CD coordination checks, positioning checks, AoE strength checks, and single target coordination checks. They're all good, but for most of the fight, they're completely trivial. It amounts to the Kael'thas or Tirion RP before the fights in BC and Wrath, it's cool the first time, but God it gets old fast, and I can't even go get a drink during this stuff.

4: "Thrall Hates Me."

This is the one that really irks me. Blizzard dropped the ball on the coding for the wind tunnels on this encounter, and often enough to be a noticeable problem, Thrall will just drop players while making the transition to Kalecgos' platform, which also tends to be the one that groups go to last. While it's bad when this happens to a DPS, when it happens to a healer or tank, it's pretty much guaranteed to be a wipe. You can't battle rez them, you can't prevent it, you can only lament the ten minutes of your life you'll never get back. It's happened to me with two different guilds, and at least seven different players. I'm not the only one who's seen this problem. Honestly, Blizz, what were you thinking here? Besides, Green Jesus is supposed to be the Aspect of Earth. Just have him make a goddamn bridge. A nice solid bridge of stone that if a player falls off, its their own damn fault. On an entertaining side note, if you open a ticket citing this glitch as an example of Horde Favoritism, a GM will answer it in three minutes flat.

While Spine of Deathwing doesn't have near as much hate as Madness on normal mode, it still suffers from the same flaw of repetition.

So, how would I have fixed this problem, making Deathwing into a fight worthy of the end of an expansion?

1: Combine both encounters into a single fight.

No break to loot in between Spine and Madness. You pry the armor plate loose, Thrall takes his shot, everyone lands at the Maelstrom, DW erupts out, and you go right back to carving him up. Recovery time is for wimps, tempo is everything. This also sows the seeds for a badass RP moment. The finest RP moments in raids are always the mid fight ones, not the ones that get handed to you just for pulling. I think part of it is because when they occur midfight, they have a built in tempo that prevents them from taking too long, and I think that having them occur mid fight keeps you from focusing too hard on them. It's like a Monet painting. It looks beautiful from a distance, but the closer you examine it, the more it looks like just a few colored blobs. For me, the coolest moment in the game is the phase two transition on Yogg-Saron, where Sara goes into a brief monologue, her voice warps into Yogg's, and Yogg emerges from the ooze laughing maniacally. Kil'Jaeden's eruption from the Sunwell is up there too. I think Deathwing clawing his way out of the Maelstrom could rival that if they didn't give us the nonchalant period of bitching over which trinket dropped before hand.

2: Scale back the repetition, scale up the individual mechanics.

Instead of three plates on Spine and four islands on Madness, I'd go one plate on the spine, leading into one island on Madness, which automatically breaks into phase two when you've cleared the Limb Tentacle. Increase the health on the Burning Tendon, so you force the group to pop two amalgams to proceed to the next phase, and once the tendons goes, Thrall blasts Deathwing, and you leap off right before he hits the Maelstrom. Token "Nothing could survive that..." from Green Jesus right before Deathwing rears up out of the Maelstrom and strikes down all four aspects, forcing the team to break his grip upon the island, and the Aspects. Increase the health on the Tentacle to force most groups to go through 3-4 impales, rather than 1-2, and it would make the tank swaps more interesting, as the tentacle will probable still be up when the Bloods come out. Extend the duration on Cataclysm by 50% to compensate for the decreased uptime and the lack of the spellweave buff when dropping blistering tendrils. Phase two remains pretty much unchanged, aside from the fact that it's now actually phase three.

I think that these changes would aleviate a lot of the major complaints about Deathwing. It would shorten the duration of the fight, although not dramatically. It would decrease the repetition, and it would completely remove the RNG Aspect of Derp deaths that infuriate people.

Lets Talk Numbers: Raid Kills, Difficulty, and Proper Interpretation.

2012-01-24T14:07:00.000-08:00

Ok, this has been something that I've been noticing in the recent storm of blog posts and comments about the Dragon Soul nerfs. It's been mostly happening in comments, but some of the more prominent bloggers have fallen into this trap as well. They don't know how to look at the raw data we've been given by sites like Wowprogress and MMO-champion, and turn that data into a usable analysis. From Matt Rossi:

Even if you just consider the 800,000 players who finished Firelands, only a quarter of them are done with normal Dragon Soul. This means when players make comments like "Dragon Soul is easier than Firelands," they're not at all supported by the statistics. As many people had completed Firelands pre-nerf as have now completed Dragon Soul. Pre-nerf Firelands was, statistically speaking, on par with and not harder than Dragon Soul is right now.

That's not only incorrect from an analytic perspective, it's also factually incorrect. Wowprogress shows us that there were 19,500 Deathwing normal kills by January 19th, the date that the article was published. That was 52 days after the instance was opened up on November 29th. On August 18th, 52 days after Firelands was released, there had still only been 9,500 Ragnaros kills. 10,000 more guilds have killed Deathwing than killed Ragnaros in the same time span, a 105% increase. This is an indication of Dragon Soul being significantly easier than Firelands was, not "on par", as Mr. Rossi claims.

I've spoken before about how raid groups will settle onto their appropriate place on the curve of raid kills. There's essentially three factors that decide if you're going to down a boss. There's skill, gear, and commitment. Skill is the combined ability of the members of your raid to know how to play their class and role, and their ability to learn and adapt to the mechanics of the encounter. Gear is just that, the quality of the gear that your raid has. This provides a buffer, stronger tanks are less likely to die, bigger healing throughput keeps the raid up, and more damage output shortens encounters. More gear means an easier encounter, which means less skill is required. Then there is commitment. All other things being equal, a guild that raids five days a week will progress further than a guild that raids five hours a week like Legacy. Skill x Gear x Commitment = the timeline upon which a group can expect to down bosses, assuming the difficulty is equivalent.

Many people measure the objective difficulty of encounters via commitment required to down the boss, either in number of pulls, or number of weeks spent learning a particular encounter. The reason for this is that within a raid group, skill and gear tend to be equivalent at equivalent points of progression in different tiers. A guild in 346 gear working on Halfus will take about the same amount of time as a guild in 359 gear working on Shannox. It's a rare occasion where Mr. McEatstheFloor suddenly becomes an amazing player. These things rarely change.

A guild that requires three months of farming gear in order to raise their SkillxGearxCommitment quotient high enough to down the final boss in the instance does not magically become skilled enough to clear the next instance on the first day, or in the first week, or in the first month. If you were not in the first 10K Ragnaros kills in T12, then you shouldn't expect to be done with normal mode Dragon Soul yet. However, 10k players beyond reasonable expectation have already cleared the instance. We can use this to establish just how much easier Dragon Soul is than Firelands, and through that assessment, we can build reasonable expectations for when a raid group that cleared Firelands should expect to be able to down Deathwing.

The 19,500th Ragnaros kill didn't occur until September 26th, 91 days after release. There's a 39 day disparity between hitting that benchmark in Dragon Soul, and hitting it in Firelands. You can either make the assumption that the lack of difficulty simply frontloaded guilds, that the guilds that downed Rag in the first month downed him the first week, and then things settled. You can also look at it as a compressed schedule, where every day spent in Firelands is equal to 60% of a day in Dragon Soul. It's more likely a combination of the two. However, this shows that it's reasonable to expect your group to reach a milestone in DS about three to five weeks earlier than it took them to hit that level in Firelands. It is not reasonable to expect kills to be rolling in three to five months sooner.

Nerfs Again: Blizzard Recognizes the Dangers of the Skill Gap.

2012-01-19T10:30:00.000-08:00

I've talked before about how dangerous having a profound skill gap in between bosses is harmful to the game. Blizzard has taken note of this, and has decied to implement a stacking debuff that reduces the health and damage of everything in Dragon Soul by 5% per stack, akin to the Strength of Wrynn buff in Icecrown Citadel. This debuff, called "Power of the Aspects", will apparently scale beyond the 30% that the ICC buff capped out at. When asked about the reasoning as to why they're nerfing normal and heroic modes, Bashiok spoke up:

Believe it or not there are actually guilds and raiding groups that are attempting to progress through Normal and Heroic raids, but are hitting a wall, and have been hitting a wall. We have actually statistical date we base our changes on, we know exactly how many people are clearing these raids each week, we know exactly how many people are able to down just a few bosses, and how many were only able to down a few bosses every week for weeks on end and then stopped raiding altogether.

The issue we're constantly trying to combat is the one where people feel like they're just out of options. One way this is an issue is the content is too easy, they blasted through it, have everything they could possibly want, and have nothing else to do. Ideally that's a small subset of very hardcore players. For everyone else it's a feeling of just being stuck with no possible way to progress. Very few players are willing to suit up, buff up, do all the necessary requirements to raid, jump in, and then do no better than they did last week for hours and hours, only to return next week and do the same.

This is the skill gap that I warned of. This is dangerous, especially in the year long wait that we're going to have to endure in this short tier. Running out of options this early is fatal. It's good to see Blizzard recognize this. However, in his later comments, and in the actions that Blizzard has decided to take in combating this problem, show that they don't really understand the problem and how it relates to the player base.

The first issue is the timing. From Bashiok:

We feel the content has been out for quite a while now, that most people who have progressed and downed Deathwing on Heroic have done so, they've had sufficient time to celebrate in their accomplishments, and these very small progressive alterations will only help guilds that are already doing well in the raid get over some hurdles they may be facing.

Bashiok, let's make this clear: The content will have barely been out for two months when you roll this nerf out. That's 1/3 of the normal six month life span of a raiding tier. Not only that, but one of those months was December. For those guilds that aren't commited enough to raid through Christmas and New Years, the content has only effectively been out for six weeks. Six weeks is not "quite a while".

Furthermore: "Most people who have progressed and downed Deathwing on Heroic have done so", huh? Most people with blonde hair have blonde hair. Obvious statement is obvious. This isn't about the Paragons and Vodkas of the world. This is about the other guilds. The guilds that would progress if given more than six weeks to down all current content that Blizzard also inexplicably expects to last us another eight months. Six weeks is not enough time for any guild with a reasonable amount of skill and who raid on a reasonable schedule to be hitting their limits. The insinuation here is that if you aren't in the 67 guilds that have cleared all content in the first two months of raiding, then you're toiling hopelessly and Blizzard needs to save you from your own incompetence. Not only is this insulting to the guilds who choose not to raid five+ days a week, it's also irreparably damaging. All kills from February onward will be tainted.

The second issue is the implementation. This is not the proper way to go about correcting the skill gap in content. Skill gaps exist because the content was not properly tuned. Each raiding tier should have equivilent difficulty when attempted at the appropriate level and gear. In properly tuned tiers, guilds will see similar progression on a similar timeline. A guild that cleared all heroic content in the first month should be able to clear all heroic content in the first month. A guild that takes six months to clear half the heroics should expect to clear half the heroics in about six months. A guild that struggles to clear normal mode in that six months should expect to take close to six months to clear all the normal content.

There should be a smooth distribution of difficulty across all the encounters. A guild that can clear one encounter should not find the next encounter hopelessly out of reach. Likewise, a guild that finds the previous encounter trivial should be able to clear the next encounter. The skill gap is created when there's significant jumps in difficulty. This is more likely to occur in stunted tiers like the seven boss Firelands and the eight boss Dragon Soul because fewer divisions means greater stratification between encounters if the end state remains the same as better developed tiers such as the 13 boss T11, 12 boss T10, and the 14 boss T8.

By implementing blanket nerfs, the gaps remain. All you've done is artificially lowered the end state. You've done nothing to remove the gap itself, which is the problem. You address the symptoms, but you allow the underlying cause to continue to fester, and that introduces new problems down the road. This is the equivalent of giving a person with an infected wound a shot of morphine and sending him home. He might feel better, but it's going to wear off, and he'll be in even more pain, and possibly have long term damage because of the short sighted approach to repair.

Blizzard, if you want to avoid running into these situations every tier, you have to bite the bullet, and actually balance the instance. Don't just throw some derpy blanket cut on the instance and call it good. Heroic Spine of Deathwing is an extremely poorly designed encounter. Forcing players to rely on short term burst on the only target that is beneficial to damage renders multiple classes completely useless. The solution to fixing Heroic Spine of Deathwing is not to nerf normal Ultraxion, it's to fix Heroic Spine of Deathwing. All that's happening with these blanket nerfs is that Blizzard is trading the long term health of the game in exchange for a little pain relief right now.

Everything I Need to Know About Playing My Shaman, I Learned From Thrall.

2011-12-29T16:55:00.001-08:00

Stand in all the Ice Tombs!

Pop Bloodlust 55 seconds into a one minute encounter.

Mounts are for chumps, real Shaman use Ghost Wolf.

AFK until the tank notices you.

One handed strength mace? Ele weapon!

Wear all the cloth!

"Lok'tar, Friend!" is orcish for LEEEEEEEEEROOOOOOYYYY!

Drop only one totem, any more and you're just being elitist.

Pull all the trash! Seriously, all of it, including that pack that's way across the room. I might drop my totem in there.

Melee attacks are crucial for elemental DPS.

When you drop your raid cooldown, it's important that you yourself do not stand in it. This might make you seem selfish. So stand away from your bubble, even if it means you get hit by the giant boss AoE and can't help in the second half of the fight.

Wind Shear is a brutal DPS loss. No matter how many mobs are casting, never wind shear, it's time that could be better spent meleeing.

See that hunter that just disengaged out of the tank's AoE? Full single target burn. The tank must want it dead, because he let it get out of the group.

Drop the melee DPS enhancing totem on the healer, otherwise how will they heal the melee?

AoE pull? Lava Burst! Single target pull? Chain Lightning!

The group only gets one bloodlust per instance.

The Flaw of Neutrality

2011-12-28T01:45:00.000-08:00

At least one of you read that in Sindragosa's voice, you have my condolences.

In a previous post, I mentioned that one of the reasons why there was such backlash against the idea of Thrall as a world character was the treatment of "Neutrality" in general in WoW, and the way that they altered it for Thrall in this particular instance.

There are two types of neutral characters in this game. There are characters who are born neutral, which is to say that they were designed from their inception in the game to be neutral, and there are characters who are naturalized into neutrality, which is to say that they existed as faction exclusive characters in game, but as the story line progressed, they moved into a position where they have to interact with both factions. A good example of the former would be Tirion Fordring, who's first appearance in game was as a neutral NPC in Eastern Plaguelands, who then proceeded to become the primary NPC for the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. The latter includes characters such as Malfurion, Thrall, Khagdar, and Bolvar Fordragon, all of whom made their first appearances in game tied to a faction, but have since found themselves turned neutral for various reasons.

A character who was born neutral might have affiliations with a faction in his back story, as Tirion had with Lordaeron in the short story Of Blood and Honor, but that's back story, it serves to set the table for the actions in the game's story arc. Well, at least for pre-Wrath stories. Tirion never raises arms against either faction, and it's believable because of the weight of experience that he had in his back story. He spent the Second War fighting against the Orcs, and then spent ten years exiled from Lordaeron, including the Third War, where he watched humanity tear itself to shreds in the throes of the Scourge. He's seen the worst both factions have to offer, and because of that, he is beholden to nothing beyond his own sense of justice. He holds no allegiance to the Alliance, because they abandoned him, and he holds no allegiance to the Horde because of their propensity for conquest. His neutrality made sense because that's how his character was designed.

On the other hand, there are the multitudes of Night Elf associated characters in Hyjal who went neutral. The two standouts were Cenarius and Malfurion, who began as characters in WCIII. Both were staunch defenders of the Night Elves. Malfurion's first words in game:

The horn has sounded, and I have come as promised. I smell the stench of decay and corruption in our land. That angers me greatly.

Malfurion felt the desecration of Ashenvale even in the depths of the Emerald Dream.

I felt our land being corrupted, just as if it were my own body. You were right to awaken me.

He feels the destruction visited upon ashenvale as if it were commited upon his own body. This is extremely strong language to use. Strong reactions mean strong emotions, and strong emotions mean lasting emotions. You can see similar reactions from Cenarius' in game text.

Who dares defile this ancient land? Who dares the wrath of Cenarius and the Night Elves?

Cenarius identifies with both Ashenvale and the Night Elves as a people. He was willing to fight for them, he was willing to die for them, and die he did. Both of these prominent heroes turn up in Mount Hyjal, where they distribute quests and aid heroes from both the Alliance and the Horde without a second glance.

On the other end of the spectrum is Thrall's turn to yellow text. He supposedly went neutral before the Cataclysm, and since his shift to neutrality, he flew under a Horde flag, slaughtered helpless Alliance sailors, inducted a new race into the Horde, and threatened to split the Throne of Stormwind in two. These are clearly not the actions of someone who's neutral in the conflict between the Alliance and the Horde. This is something that I think Blizzard did right. Thrall is the Horde, and even though he ostensibly needs the assistance of the Alliance to handle a greater problem, he shouldn't just instantly forget about those affiliations, it would be unnatural. Alliance players should feel some apprehension when it comes to working with Thrall. When you're going through the elemental bonds questline, an Alliance player should question weather by helping Thrall here you're simply trading one form of extinction for a slightly later form. They're making a choice between two enemies, and it should be a difficult choice, one that you dread making. The impact of this was compromised by Blizzard's incessant undermining of Deathwing as a truly credible villain, but the intent was there.

On the other hand, Blizzard completely failed at this in Mount Hyjal. Everyone was so happy go lucky in that zone that I secretly wondered if all the prominent lore characters had been given a prefrontal lobotomy. Horde characters resurrected a powerful Demigod that wanted to wipe them out the last time they met, for sins far less severe than they hard recently committed in the same place that they fought him at. They needed to surrender themselves back to the demonic corruption of the Burning Legion in order to even wound Cenarius. Bringing him back should be a terrifying prospect for Horde players, and one they only be considering because the situation is that dire. It should be the same with Malfurion, the most powerful druid in existence, who feels the wounds of the Night Elf homeland as his own, and the Horde just completely gutted Azshara and are working to do the same in Ashenvale. the Horde aren't their buddies, they're mortal enemies with whom their enmity should only be set aside because of the looming presence of the Firelord and the Destroyer. When a Horde player opens up that portal to bring Cenarius back, they should honestly be unsure as to weather he'll listen to them, or split their skull open on the spot. None of this happened, and that's a failure on Blizzard's part. Instead, Malfurion and Cenarius simply treated everyone equally. This undermines the story and it undermines the characters. It paints them as uncaring and impersonal at best, especially when put alongside the story of Leyara.

The transition of a character from faction specific to faction neutral is a treacherous road to walk, I think they got it right with Thrall, and they got it wrong with most everyone in Hyjal. Ultimately, they wind up with a cognitive dissonance between the way characters are described, and the way they are portrayed, and if you can't properly aknowledge and account for that gap, you're going to wind up gutting potentially interesting characters like they did with Malfurion and Cenarius.

Furtive Father Winter: How Karegina Got Her Groove Back

2011-12-24T16:06:00.000-08:00

Redcow, at Red Cow Rise, has done a fantastic job of orchestrating a complex series of post exchanges in the annual Furtive Father Winter. Thirty blogs participated this year, and I decided that as part of my renewed efforts in writing, it would be a good exercise for me to do so as well. On December 16th, I received my assignment, Gladly and Manners from The Ready Check, a blog that I had not read before, but I delved into post haste to make up for lost time. I recently sent them my guest post, and I pray they find it to their liking. It's a great blog, and you should check it out.

This morning, I received an early Christmas present. In my inbox was a guest post of my very own, delivered with perfect timing from Karegina, of The Reluctant Raider, whose blog I had actually begun reading recently. It certainly put an interesting perspective on her recent post about writing this guest post. I think she did a great job.

---

I was not around for the very first Winter Veil Festival. It happened shortly after game launch in 2004 so I can't say what it was like. However, I distinctly remember the 2^nd one. I logged in one day and BOOM, Father Winter and all his helpers. I did the quests, I gathered the Preserved Holly (I actually still have like 40+ pieces on my bank toon) and lo, when Christmas came, I ran to the tree on each of my toons and got my presents.

I was playing Alliance in 2005, so the only toons that did it that year were them. I don't remember any of my characters getting any of the special pets, except my night elf druid, Annanda. She got the mini reindeer. I loved that thing. I always had snowballs so I could pull it out at any time.

I didn't do any of the quests, as I had no max level characters. Well, I did the milk and cookies one, but really, does that even count?

As the years went by, I always looked forward to Winter's Veil. I love getting surprises and Father Winter always gave me something awesome on at least one of my many alts.

When I moved to the Horde full time back in 2007, I had max level toons so I did all the quests and helped my friends with the quests as well. Leaving my toons back on the Alliance side with my reindeer and my Winter's Helpers and all that, was hard. There wasn't any Faction Change service available back then and if you wanted a druid Horde side, you had to level up a whole new one. (I love the Faction Change service, even if I have never used it!)

However, something happened which soured me on the WoW Holidays. I can't remember exactly what it was but I I ended up so upset that I refused to participate in any of the planned WoW Events. My husband begged and pleaded but I was stubborn.

I managed to go a year or two without running any of the special holiday bosses, or doing any of the daily quests. But then Blizzard added Achievements and my husband went insane. People became fanatics about doing Achievements and the first day of any holiday was filled with Achievement spam. This soured me on it even more and honestly, watching my husband DO ALL THE THINGS was annoying as hell. And hearing him harp on me to do X Achievement with him made me want to put a pen through his eye.

Yes, I was the human (tauren?) version of the Greench.

However, Blizzard put something in the game that I couldn't resist. A fast flying mount that is pinkish-purple. (I do not believe it's violet like the tooltip says!) So, I sucked it up and started doing the Achievements, much to my husband's delight.

I got my proto-drake in June of 2010, during the Flamekeepers MidSummer event. I had started working on the Achievements in 2009. (I really wanted the Elder title for my druid, so I did that one the first time around. The rest I picked up the 2^nd time they came around.)

This year's revamp is pretty awesome. I like the changes they've made to the Greench. (And since that's the only part I've done so far, I like it!) I know many people are annoyed at having to go all the way to Alterac Mountains/Hillsbrad Foothills to do it, and that's it's not a queue-able boss, but I love it. I love having to fly out there and work as a team with others. I've tanked it, I've healed it, I've bounced it around as dps when there was no tank. It's good times. And it doesn't make my anxiety flare to go do it. I'm in IN a 5 man group or a raid, I'm on my own. Doing my own dps or my tanking or healing whoever happens to be in the line of sight of the Greench. I have died but who cares? No one is counting or relying on me to do anything. I love it!

And somewhere in the middle of all of this, my Holiday spirit has returned. I don't know what happened but I'm enjoying the festivities, I'm doing things with people and my heart has grown 3 sizes!

So, Happy Winter's Veil RenaissanceMan! I hope Father Winter brings you all sorts of goodies and many Horde to kill! (Even if I am Horde. But I don't PVP, unless a holiday requires me to. Or my priest gets bloodthirsty!)

Blizzard Writing Competition Entry 2011: The Last Letter of Captain Emmy Malin

2011-12-20T16:25:00.000-08:00

Well, like so many others, I placed entered into the Blizzard Global Writing Competition for 2011, and was found wanting. C'est la vie. The story pretty much consisted of me going "Deadline? Oh, shit!" and slamming in the story four hours before the submission deadline. I didn't get a chance to review it, and as a result, it's somewhat repetitive, and the dialogue gets a little hammy in places. I shotgunned the plot by drawing from the expansion I knew best, Wrath of the Lich King.

In Dragonblight, Alliance characters see a continuation of the nexus war quest line extending from Borean Tundra. One of those quests involves killing a high ranking mage hunter for the ring that controls the ley line foci that are feeding power to the Azure Dragonshrine. The NPC you kill has a name, as many do, and of course, the player cuts her down without a second thought, all because a magic hologram tells them to do so. When searching through the pockets of the victim, as players often do, they come across a letter. This in itself isn't unusual. The player always finds missives between villains and communications between overlords and their underlings. What was unusual was the contents of the letter. It was an apology to her father, another NPC back in Stormwind, explaining how she was working against her will, and in secret, trying to sabotage the efforts of the Blue Dragonflight. Way to go, hero.

Those quests served as a rare moment that humanized the nameless NPCs that you'd been slaughtering for over seventy levels at that point. I seized the opportunity to flesh out the circumstances that led to this tragedy.

So, following in the footsteps of Saz and Rades, I give you: The Last Letter of Captain Emmy Malin

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A cold wind blew across the waters of Lordamere Lake, past the abandoned keep on Fenris Isle, and south into the Alterac Mountains. In the lull between gusts, the sizzle of arcane energy being harnessed could be heard for a second, as though echoing across a great distance. As the sound faded, an image appeared in the air. A city became visible, with tall towers cut from quarried stone, and a great many people visible, going about the daily routines of their life. A man in dark red robes moved to the forefront of the image. The image shimmered and sparked as the man stepped through the planes, covering the distance between Stormwind and Alterac in a single stride. Once he was fully in Alterac, the portal collapsed behind him, leaving no evidence that the rend in space had ever been there.

Archmage Malin, the last of Stormwind’s secretive conjurors, took a deep breath, inhaling the cold mountain air. He adjusted a few cinches on his robes to better keep him warm, and upon feeling the wind pick up again, considered returning to Stormwind briefly to retrieve his hat. But as he looked up, the sight ahead reminded him of why he came all this way. He briskly began walking down the trail leading to Dalaran.

The slim white spires of the city of magic rose up underneath a shield of violet energy sustained by a dozen members of the Kirin Tor. Unlike the towers of Stormwind, which were constructed by the master masons of the southern regions, Dalaran was brought back from its devastation at the hands of the Eredar lord Archimonde through almost entirely magical means. The buildings were formed from seamless alabaster stone. They rose up in ways impossible to be replicated by scaffolding, brick, and mortar. Although it had taken several years, the renewed Dalaran was a perfect replica of the ideal city that existed in the mind of its architect. The constant glow of the arcane energy that lit the street, sheltered the city, and bent to the will of every mage within the city lent Dalaran an otherworldly glow unlike any other city on Azeroth, save the Draenei’s home in the wreckage of the Exodar.

As he neared the border of the protective dome, a pair of guards called him to a halt. As they approached him, their captain emerged from the guard post. She looked him over for a second, before an ear to ear grin appeared on her face.

“DADDY!” The guards looked quite surprised as their normally stern captain shrieked like a schoolgirl and hurled herself into the comforting embrace of her father, whom she hadn’t seen since she accepted her posting with the Kirin Tor Arcane Guard, over a year ago. Even through his thick robes, Emmy Malin could feel the scars that covered her father’s back, the legacy of an encounter with an orc warlock in the final, desperate hours of the fall of Stormwind in the First War. The fight that left her father wounded, and her mother dead; even now, years later, the memories of that day brought tears to Emmy’s eyes.

“You’ve missed me, I see.” The archmage said, with a bit of a chuckle. Emmy never changed, ever since they fled Stormwind for Dalaran, there was only one thing she loved more than her new city, and that was him, the only family she had left. He kissed her on the forehead, and the ever dutiful guards decided that they had more pressing concerns in matters that didn’t impinge upon their captain’s privacy.

Dalaran was exactly as Archmage Malin remembered it, in a manner of speaking. It was nothing like the pile of rubble he had left behind during the third war, but every facet of the city had been restored to the glory of the height of the Kirin Tor’s power. Whereas the Archmage had returned to his homeland of Elwynn to aid in the reconstruction of Stormwind, Emmy, who by then had become a full fledged member of the Kirin Tor, had stayed behind with her order. For the past several years, the Malin family worked hard to rebuild and secure both of their cities. The only things that they couldn’t bring back were the people lost to the wars that had defined the past decades. Misery, however, has no place at the table for a reunion such as this.

The two talked well into the night, dining on fine wine, bread, and sharp Dalaran cheddar cheese. They regaled each other with tales of their divergent lives. Emmy told her father about the guard who served in the first shift after her promotion to captain that, on a dare, drank a potion he found in the sewers underneath the city, and found himself transformed into an insect. It took 4 hours, and the intervention of Archmage Modera herself to unravel the effects that the arcane concoction had wrought upon the guard’s body. Archmage Malin countered with a story about a hero in service of Stormwind who was assigned to deliver a message to Jaina Proudmoore in Theramore. The Archmage had been tasked with sending the hero to Theramore, which he did, repeatedly. Every time he did, the hero returned with a new excuse for why he hadn’t delivered the message yet. The Firelord had erupted in Blackrock Mountain, the Black Dragonflight had infiltrated the House of Nobles, and once he started selling the Archmage tales of a race of insect men living in the sands of Kalimdor, Malin decided that his free teleport service needed to come to an end.

But as the sun set, and the moon climbed across the sky, the time came for them to sleep. The quarters of a captain of the Arcane Guard are not cramped, but as Emmy had not had a guest stay in quite a while, the house wasn’t well appointed for overnight visitors. It took some doing, but Emmy managed to convince her father to take her room, while she would sleep in the second bedroom that she had converted into her office. After a cursory inspection to ensure that the room was presentable, she ushered her father in and began to show him where the lights and facilities were. She gave the dimmer switch a little flick to demonstrate how it worked, but nothing happened, the room remained brightly lit by the flares of arcane energy.

“Oh no, the conduit’s jammed again. It took almost three days to get the maintenance crew to fix it last time. I’m sorry; I’ll get my sleeping mask for you.” Emmy began to rummage through her drawers trying to find the black piece of cloth.

“Are they still using enchanted thorium to run power to the lights directly from the ley line?” The Archmage inquired, rubbing his grey beard as he considered the situation.

“I think so,”

“Then I think I can fix this little problem without having to bother the good folks at maintenance.” He began tapping at the walls as if he was looking for a stud. Once he had found the position he was looking for, he placed his hand on the wall and focused. The room got colder as he poured a small amount of frost energy into the wall, and as the frost grew, the lights dimmed. “This is an old trick I was taught by Nielas Aran. If you channel frost directly into an arcane flow, you can suppress the flow of energy.”

“How come you never taught me that?”

“I have to keep some tricks a secret, otherwise how could I impress you?”

“You always impress me, daddy.”

“It warms my heart to hear that, Em. But it’s late, and I’m old and need my rest. Sleep well, and I’ll see you in the morning.” The Archmage gently prompted Emmy out, and as he climbed into bed, Emmy started to clean up her office to give her enough space to lay her cot out.

Emmy burst from slumber as the lights in her office came on. She sat up upon her cot, pushed her long brown hair out of her eyes, and looked for the source of the intrusion. An elf woman with blond hair cascading down her face, framing her blue eyes as she frantically searched Emmy’s office for something. “Telestra?” Emmy asked groggily. “What are you doing in my home?”

The head of the Sorcerer’s League looked up, startled. “Sleeping in your office? How very gauche of you, captain.” Telestra giggled, “Still, this isn’t an altogether unpleasant revelation. I have need of you. Malygos has awoken, and he is not pleased with the current state of affairs.”

“The Mad Aspect of Magic? Why do you need me for, I thought liaising with the blue dragonflight was strictly done at council level?”

The elf cocked her head, “Normally yes, but the Sorcerer’s League has found some disturbing information. Malygos has determined that the unchecked use of magic by the mortal races has endangered Azeroth to an unacceptable degree. Dalaran has been singled out as a particularly egregious offender, one that is to be made example of, immediately.” She sighed, and caught Emmy’s level gaze. “They seek to take advantage of a flaw in the protections of the Violet Hold, and turn the prisoners held there loose in the city. You of all people should know how devastating that will be; after all, you put most of those prisoners in there.”

Goosebumps ran up and down Emmy’s body. The Violet Hold was a magical prison designed to host the worst magical offenders that the Kirin Tor had arrested. Many of the most dangerous beings to come through the Dark Portal were secured there. Opportunists and scavengers that sought to use the chaos of the wars against the Horde to plunder the treasures and people of Azeroth for profit or pleasure. Any one of those prisoners could wreak havoc within the city; the thought of facing all of them terrified her. “Why not bring this to The Six? Surely they have the power to remedy this situation more effectively than I can.”

“Normally I would agree with you. But you surely remember Lord Krasus. His true name is Korialstraz. He is the prime consort of the Dragonqueen Alexstraza, and his influence upon the remaining members of The Six cannot be underestimated. Who knows how much of the information that goes to Rhonin and his lackeys winds up in Krasus’ hands, and through him, the aspects?” Telestra’s sapphire eyes narrowed. “We can not trust anyone with this information.”

“Breaking into my office helps this situation how?” Emmy asked, pointedly. “It’s not like I keep the security layouts on any old shelf in here.”

The briefest of frowns flickered across Telestra’s face. “You are correct of course. Perhaps I did not think this through, but as I said before, your unlikely choice of lodgings can work to our advantage.” She walked around the desk and kneeled down before Emmy’s cot. “We need to review the plans and find the flaw before the dragons decide to strike.”

Still somewhat resentful of being abruptly and rudely woken by the elf, Emmy stood up brushing Telestra aside and strode to her desk. The old oak desk was a gift given to her by the commander of the Arcane Guard when she was promoted to captain. Every captain had a similar desk in their office. Reaching under the first drawer, Emmy found a series of runes. Invoking a series of basic spells, she activated each rune in a specific order. Once she had completed the sequence, a compartment in the first drawer popped open, giving her access to all of the sensitive documents she had stored there. She reached in and withdrew the Violet Hold security plans, closing the compartment back up as soon as she could. She rolled the parchment out onto the desktop. It showed a layout of the Violet Hold, noting the location of the emergency containment crystals, which prisoners were the most dangerous, and what steps had been taken to secure them. It was a truly formidable prison, but like any other, it was not impregnable. Kael’thas had escaped from the Hold during the chaos after the third war, although the gaps in security that the naga had exploited had been closed and rigorously tested once the escape had ended.

Telestra slid in next to Emmy and began to review the document that lay before her. “You’ve caught an Ethereal? The Nexus Princes can’t be too happy about that.”

Emmy grimaced at the memory of the mission to capture the Ethereal, Xevozz. He had been attempting to harvest the ley lines around Dalaran in order to siphon the power back to the Ethereal’s projects in Outland. When they had confronted him, he tapped directly into that source of magical energy and used it to amplify his natural abilities for arcane manipulation. He attacked the mages with spells of such power and speed that no one in the Arcane Guard could match his ferocity. The power he had tapped coalesced into searing bright orbs that floated near him as he funneled their power into raw bolts of arcane force that tore through anything they impacted. It took the sacrifice of several courageous members of the Kirin Tor to lure him far enough away from the ley line that his access to its power was diminished enough to make a direct confrontation possible. The last man to give his life to make the capture possible was Emmy’s predecessor as captain. Even so, Xevozz’s last bolt had blistered Emmy’s skin, right through the frost energy that she had focused as a protective measure. Emmy used that same frost to entomb Zevozz in ice for long enough for him to be secured in the cells of the violet hold. As recognition for the bravery and aptitude for magical combat, she was promoted into the vacant captaincy.

Xevozz’s cell was designed specifically for his abilities; just as every other cell was tailored with its occupant in mind. It was double lined, course stone insulated him from a layer of arcanite laid down to divert any bursts of arcane energy, depriving him of any access to the confluence of ley lines that powered so much of the city, and the prison in which he was bound. As a further means of containment, Archmage Aethas Sunreaver carved confounding runes into the stones of the cell. Anyone who observed the dull glow of the seals would be unable to construct anything beyond the simplest thoughts. Spells of any sort were out of the picture, and the punishment held a special tone for an Ethereal, whose race always delighted in the intellectual aspects of their business. As long as he was within the cell, he wouldn’t even be able to understand that he was angry, much less give form to his rage. If he were to be broken out, however, he would have full command of his faculties, and unrestricted access to the ambient energy of the city of mages. The damage would be immense, and he was but one of the many beings of unfathomable power secured within the cells of the Violet Hold.

“I could care less what the Nexus Princes have to say about that. I’ll be damned if I’m going to let them, the blue dragonflight, or anyone else break out my prisoners.” Emmy growled. She immediately went back to inspecting the layout, searching for any flaw that could be used to break into the prison. Every enchantment in every cell, every ward, rune, and sigil, every arcane field was inspected, checked, and rechecked. Emmy and Telestra were two of the rising stars of the Kirin Tor, both had seen the worst magic could bring out of people when the Archlich Kel’Thuzad made Dalaran a warzone during the Third War. He summoned Archimonde through the twisting nether and the Kirin Tor was still picking up the pieces from the sympathetic magic the warlock used to level the city. Telestra’s Sorcerer’s League had born the brunt of the invasion, and the elf had seen first hand how an attacker would seek to undermine the Kirin Tor’s strength. Between the two of them, no mage outside of the Council of the Six could hope to do a better job in isolating a potential weakness. The sun began to break over the mountains of the Hinterlands to the east when they found what they were looking for.

Emmy spotted the flaw first. A subtle error; which would normally have gone unnoticed during standard inspections, it was a position within the dome of the Hold where the conduits that carried the energy for the field which prevented teleportation and the emergency purge system came within an inch of each other. Under normal conditions, this would be a perfectly acceptable arrangement, however, if a strong enough mage were to attempt to open a portal to just outside the dome the resultant warp would push the conduits closer together, and the feedback in the purge system would detonate. This detonation would not only crack open the dome, but allow the blue dragonflight to send agents directly into the hold. While the anti teleportation field would still function well enough to prevent an invasion en masse, it would allow a few people at a time to infiltrate into the prison. There were only a handful of mages in the world who had the power to open a portal large enough to cause such a distortion. The majority of them, unfortunately, were members of the blue dragonflight.

“If they’re going to get in, that’s their only chance. If we can fix that hole, then there’s no way anyone can get into the Hold without walking in through the front door.” Emmy said. “We’d have to shut down the purge system until the threat has passed, but that system’s a bit of overkill anyways. It’s really only useful if that damn water elemental ever got lose. As long as we can keep the dragonflight from breaking the prisoners out, the odds of needing the purge system is slim.”

“Excellent, now we just need to bring this information to my compatriots, and we can begin planning.” Telestra looked exceedingly pleased with herself. She had as big a smile on her face as Emmy had ever seen, but as it always does, Telestra’s smile had a hint of arrogant bemusement; it was as if there was a joke that only she was privy to the punch line. It unsettled Emmy. “Well, Captain, shall we go?”

“I can just have the guards shut down the purge system.” Emmy suggested.

“They’ll want to know why you’re giving the order. They’ll be curious, and you know what they say about curiosity.” Telestra said trenchantly. “Regardless of weather or not you indulge them in their inquisitiveness, sending such an order through standard channels will attract the attention of people in whom we cannot afford to trust with this information. Which is where my compatriots come in, they will determine when the attack will come, and ensure that everything is prepared.”

“Let’s make this quick. I have company over.”

“Your father knows his way around the city. I’m sure he doesn’t need you to make sure that he gets a hearty breakfast.” Telestra said caustically.

“I’ll just leave him a note letting him know that I’m out,” Emmy grabbed a quill and a piece of stationary from her desk.

The elf took hold of Emmy’s shoulder, and uttered an incantation. A string of arcane energy anchoring the stone in Telestra’s possession tightened, slinging both women through the ether to the fixed point that the stone was attuned to. It was common enough magic, and it did have a tendency to turn the stomach if subjected to without warning. Emmy’s disorientation distracted her from the pair’s new surroundings for a few precious seconds. Reality set in shortly there after, and sent Emmy reeling in shock.

They stood in what appeared to be an ancient caldera. It was cold, a cold that cut right through the robes Emmy wore. The snow piled high upon the ground. They couldn’t still be in near Dalaran; the skies were still dark in this strange place. Telestra held her arm up and sent a flare up, signaling their location to her allies. In the flickering light cast by the flare, Emmy could see another elf approaching them from the darkness. The first thing Emmy could make out clearly was her eyes. Unlike Telestra, who came to the Kirin Tor before the fall of Quel’Thelas, the stranger had the unmistakable green eyes of a blood elf. Emmy’s mind reeled. Had Telestra sought aid from the Horde? Had she taken them to Kalimdor? The stranger walked further into the light of the flare.

“Do you have the information we need?” The stranger asked. Telestra nodded, and pulled the diagram of the Violet Hold out of her robes. She opened it and showed it to the blood elf.

“There’s a structural weakness in the dome’s security systems. They haven’t shut it down yet.” Telestra pointed out the flaws that Emmy had found.

“Telestra, who exactly are you working with?” Emmy demanded, unsure of where the elf’s allegiances lay.

“Who exactly is this little mortal? Why have you brought her here?” The blood elf inquired.

“This is Emmy Malin, a captain in the Arcane Guard. She’ll be a valuable asset to our cause.” Telestra declared. She turned to Emmy. “Emmy, this is your new employer.”

“Telestra, who are you working for?” Emmy said, gritting her teeth. She was now feeling very out of her depth.

Telestra began to speak up, but the blood elf cut her off. “I am Cyanigosa, daughter of Malygos, leader of the Mage Hunters.” She grinned, and her smile was colder than the icy winds that buffeted them.

“You’re what? Telestra, what have you done? How could you do this?” Emmy panicked. Telestra was in league with the blue dragonflight, and had tricked Emmy into helping her sell out the Kirin Tor. Telestra grabbed her by the shoulders.

“Be thankful I needed your help! The blue dragonflight is going to purge all magic users who don’t help them here. The only way you can stay alive is to help them here. Think about yourself. Think about your father! He’ll die if you don’t help us. I’m giving you a chance to save the only family you have left.” Emmy calmed down at the thought of her father. The Kirin Tor could defend themselves. Her father’s injuries would be the death of him if he were to ever attract the ire of the blues.

Emmy’s shoulders slumped. Her head hung low. “What do you need from me?” she asked the dragon.

“You’ve made a wise decision. Come with me.” Cyanigosa turned and strode off into the dark. Telestra promptly followed, but Emmy lingered for a second, a last moment of doubt. She indulged in her uncertainty, but only for a moment. She followed, already thinking about what her next move should be. What her responsibilities as a captain of the Kirin Tor, and as her father’s daughter, demanded of her. It was a difficult burden, and one that she had to carry alone, in this strange land.

Emmy stood in the Nexus, the base of operations for the blue dragonflight, located in the Borean Tundra of the frozen continent of Northrend. Like Dalaran, the Nexus sits on a confluence of ley lines. The Nexus is built from ornately carved blocks of ice, harvested from the glaciers of Northrend. Each segment is covered in runes and inscriptions, holding them aloft in defiance of gravity. Unlike Dalaran, which was clearly built as a human city, the Nexus is designed with dragons in mind. Many of the platforms have no connections to their fellows, despite being suspended hundreds of meters in the air. Those that lacked the ability to fly would find it very difficult to move freely through the complex. This was a place where the arcane forces that boiled underneath the skin of the world were not merely harnessed, but allowed to erupt freely. It streamed upwards in a font of power that the dragons drank from with regularity, but to Emmy found the harsh glare to be distracting, and in some parts of the Nexus, downright painful to look at.

Emmy wasn’t quite sure how long she had been here. A month at the minimum, but without contact from the outside world it was difficult to gauge the passage of time. She spent most of her time helping empower constructs on the exterior of the nexus. It was tedious work, but relatively simple. It did leave her with little time to herself; she was constantly monitored by dragonkin and other mage hunters. She spent what little time she had to herself planning, trying to figure out what she could do to stymie the dragons’ efforts without compromising herself or her family.

Her chance came when she was summoned to meet with Telestra within the walls of the Nexus proper. Both women had given up the purple robes of Kirin Tor magi for the azure robes of the Mage Hunters, but Telestra reveled in the change. Her self aggrandizement had reached a whole new level since her defection. Now she presented herself as “Grand Magus” Telestra, after her meteoric rise through the ranks of the Mage Hunters. Telestra beckoned Emmy to enter the room. As Emmy entered the room, she noticed the runes shimmering along the walls of the great space. This was one of the renowned libraries that the blue dragonflight compiled, archiving the vast majority of the magical knowledge on Azeroth. This library was only rivaled by the Central Repository in the Violet Citadel and the Guardian’s Archives in Karazhan. The information contained in this room could make any mortal mage much more powerful. As much as Emmy wanted to take the time to read the books here, to draw upon their knowledge, she feared how much knowledge Telestra had gained here, and how much it had empowered the treasonous elf.

“Emmy, we’ve been watching you. You’ve done well in preparing the centrifuge constructs for their deployment. Now we have a task that’s more suitable to your specific talents.”

“How may I be of service, Grand Magus?” Emmy almost choked on the words. Telestra, however, smiled that mocking smile of hers, and held out her hand. A ring sat upon her palm, it was made from thick silver construction, and blue inscriptions ran along the outside of the ring. It was the language of the dragons, one that Emmy couldn’t decipher, but a language of great age and great power.

“This is a ley line focus control. We’re using them to reroute the ley lines across Northrend to places of power for the Spellweaver. You’re to take it, and travel to the Dragonblight. Once in the Dragonblight, you’ll take command of our forces at the Glittering Strand. Use this ring to monitor and adjust the ley line. We need to route it directly to the Azure Dragonshrine, so that our forces attacking the Wyrmrest Temple can use the energy in the upcoming assault.”

“As Malygos wills,” Emmy quipped. She took the ring from Telestra’s hand, and departed the library. This was her opportunity.

While the Nexus stood isolated from the horrors that had engulfed Northrend over the years, the Dragonblight had not. The freezing winds carried a cloying odor. The stench of decay was present throughout the continent. Even before the Scourge had taken over the continent, this was the place where every dragon came to die. Their bones still littered the snowy plains in unimaginable quantities. This continent was a place of death. No one would mistake it for anything else.

In the time that Emmy had been away from the mainland, war had come to Northrend, and the Dragonblight was at the heart of the conflicts. The Alliance and the Horde had struck out against the Scourge, and the other dragonflights had assembled in the Wyrmrest Temple in an attempt to sanction the rogue aspect Malygos. Even the Kirin Tor had marshaled for war. In spectacular fashion, the mages utilized the same spells that the blue dragonflight used to float portions of the Nexus to lift the entire city of Dalaran and bring it to Northrend. The Scarlet Crusade had established several enclaves nearby, and while the Horde and Alliance were preparing to break their way into Icecrown, the Scourge summoned the nerubian swarms of Azjol’Nerub and recalled the necropolis Naxxramas from its assault on Lordaeron. In the midst of all this chaos was Captain Emmy Malin.

She stood upon the gritty sands of the beach, inspecting the route the ley line was traveling. The salty sea air kept the stench down, making it a little more bearable for Emmy to breathe. The ley line focus was a scaled up version of the ring that Emmy had received from Telestra. They were attuned with each other, allowing a mage who was skilled at focusing arcane energy through the ring on their finger to duplicate those manipulations on the ley line that seethed with power through the focus. The ruins of an ancient night elf city were built upon an intersection of ley lines. The blue dragonflight used a monolithic device known as a surge needle to split the intersection, and channel it through these foci to empower the Azure Dragonshrine, their base of operations in the area. Emmy’s post on the beach at the Glittering Strand was the first in a series of three foci that supercharged the power before it was harnessed at by the dragons themselves.

This was wreaking havoc on the land around the ley line. Arcane energy ripped through the ground, corrupting and mutating the flora and fauna in the area that wasn’t already infected by the plagues that the Scourge had unleashed upon the land. The second focus, which had been placed in the middle of a Tuskarr village, had disastrous consequences. Anyone not killed by the energies was rendered mad. The length to which Malygos was willing to go to erase the threat posed by mortal mages was staggering. Here was her opportunity to sabotage their plans. With control of this focus, she could deny the Azure Dragonshrine access to their power. By the time they could attune a new control to the focus, the combined forces of the dragonflights and the Kirin Tor would drive them out of the Dragonblight. All she needed was something to distract the other mages who were patrolling the area.

Emmy wish was granted as chaos erupted amongst the patrols. The shouted about an unseen enemy attacking them, and began working in tandem to neutralize the threat. As they scrambled to defend themselves and the focus, Emmy turned her attention to the focus.

“Keep them away from the focus!” She yelled to the intruder. She focused frost energy into the focus control ring, shunting that power directly into the flow of the ley line. Pouring more and more power into the spell, she felt the energy beginning to play out around her. The water vapor from the sea spray began to freeze, creating a veritable blizzard around her. The arcane power flowing through the ley line began to constrict, waning away as the icy infusion dragged the energy to a crawl. The familiar chill of frost magic played across her hands as beheld the effects of her meddling. A little more time and the damage would be catastrophic to the offensive on the Wyrmrest Temple.

Emmy felt cold, colder than she had ever felt in Alterac. Colder than the depths of Icecrown Glacier. The assailant pulled his daggers from her back, and all the strength in her fled. Her spell diffused away into nothingness as the ley line roared back towards the Azure Dragonshrine. All her work was undone in a moment. Her legs could no longer support her, and she fell to her knees as her life’s blood hemorrhaged onto the cold sand. Struggling for breath, her voice had been stolen by her wounds. Her assassin began searching her for anything of value. The night elf’s amber eyes focused on the ring. With the last of her strength, Emmy reached into her robe, and withdrew a letter that she had written shortly after coming to Northrend. The elf looked at her curiously, saw the desperation in her eyes, and nodded. Despite millennia of immortality, it only took a few years of living in death’s shadow to impress upon him the significance of a dying wish, even when it remained unspoken. He took the ring and the letter from Emmy’s still hands, and then vanished into the snow and shadows.

Archmage Malin stood his usual post in the Mage Quarter of Stormwind. Ever since his daughter had vanished two months ago, he had been distracted. Everyone who worked with him could sense it. He was often lost in his thoughts and concerns. This time was no different. He didn’t notice as the portal opened in front of him. It wasn’t until a cold blast of Northrend air poured through the portal as a mage, dressed in the resplendent violet of the Arcane Guard stepped through onto Stormwind soil. The Archmage recognized the visitor, he was one of the guards who served under his daughter when he last visited Dalaran. The guard, once stern and steadfast, seemed diminished. He offered the Archmage an envelope, stained with blood and warped by water damage.

“A hero fighting in the Nexus War found this. It’s addressed to you, sir. It’s the Captain’s… your daughter’s last letter.” The Archmage opened the letter with trembling hands, his breath caught in his throat as he read it.

Father,

I'm sorry for disappearing on you. If you're reading this letter, then I'm dead.

I've been forced to work for Malygos’ armies under threat that our family would be killed if I didn't. I feel so ashamed.

If there's anything that you can do to fight them, don't worry about me. I have them fooled and I'm sabotaging them from the inside.

I love you, Daddy!

15 Days Through My Interface: Day 9

2011-12-19T03:01:00.000-08:00

This whole 15 days thing was the brainchild of Saz over at World of Saz, and it was the catalyst for my return to blogging. This stop, in particular, caught my imagination.

What's you character's hometown?

It's a simple enough question, but it really got the wheels turning in my head. Things have to fit together in a story, and carving out a home for a character isn't as easy as taking a screenshot of a pretty building and hanging your hat there. No, we're peeking into the origins of our characters. We're not just looking at a house, we're looking at the memories that are etched within its walls. We aren't just looking at where they live, we're looking at why they live, where they came from, and what they've overcome to reach this point. We've already seen where Dämmerung lives. What I'm going to tell you here is how he got there.

I generally have a feel for characters when I create them. I have their race, gender, class, and spec mapped out from the beginning. There's a certain feel for each one, and the name I select usually isn't your standard Azerothian fare. This presents a problem for creating a viable origin story. What kind of mother names their child Dämmerung? But ultimately, what is a name? An identifier. A title. So that's how I've come to look at the names I've chosen for my characters. They're an abstraction of the essence of the character. They might not be the name their parents gave them, but they are titles that they earned before they ever set out from their starting areas.

This is the story of a Boy. A Boy who was born at the cusp of extraordinary times, and whose childhood was defined by the events that enveloped the world.

He was born in the Summer of the Year of King Llane, 589, to the captain of the palace guard of Stormwind. Those were fearful times. The Boy can't remember a time before the invasion of the Orcish Horde. A climate of dread slowly grew as it became apparent that what had originally been believed to be a series of bandit raids was something much more dreadful. As the alien creatures marched upon Stormwind, The Boy saw firsthand the strain that the mere presence of the Horde placed upon the citizens of Stormwind. Rationing became tight. The luxuries and pleasures of the more peaceful age had been stripped away. While The Boy's family, being responsible for the security of the Royal Person, never lacked for anything essential, others were not so fortunate.

Things became worse when the siege began. The armies of Stormwind, pushed back to the very bastions that they were sworn to hold, fought tenaciously. War takes its toll, however, and when the war is on your doorstep, you pay the price in blood. For several months, the orcs, with their ogre allies, assaulted the walls each day, although never in the same place twice. Each night, the Horde turned their siege engines loose, lobbing rocks, plagued corpses, and strange boulders over the city walls, smashing into the shops and homes of the people. The boulders were the worst. They glowed with a strange green fire that no one had ever seen before. The first person to touch it was a woman who lived in a house not a hundred yards from the Boy's home. It smashed the walls to rubble, and collapsed the structure. The woman crawled out over the smoldering projectile, desperate for clean air. She died three days later, in agony. No one understood what foul magic permeated those missiles, but after watching the woman's hair fall out, and the way that she hemorrhaged, despite no apparent wounds, no one would go near them. So it was that every night The Boy would cower in the cellar of their home with his mother telling him that everything would be alright.

King Llane held the city together, almost through sheer force of will. Every day, when the sun had rose, and the relentless shelling had ceased, the King would walk among the streets of the city. His presence unified the people, it empowered them, and it gave them hope. When the city burned, the King and his son were out in the streets, fetching water from the canals to fight the blazes alongside every common man, woman, and child whose homes and livelihoods were caught in the conflagration. When dead citizens were pulled from the wreckage, or dead soldiers brought down from the battlements, the King mourned with his people. They were hard times, and the people feared where they would be if not for the strength of Wrynn.

Then the King was taken from them, felled by the dagger of an orc the King had trusted, had held up as an example that even among the throngs of monsters howling outside their walls, there was still the hope for decency. The people were shocked, and the Horde, sensing victory's proximity, launched the largest assault yet, overrunning the defenses. As the King fell, so did Stormwind.

That day holds the most vivid memories for The Boy. His mother dragged him by the hand through the streets of the city. The smell of burning timber and scorched stone was just beginning to reach their noses, heralding the fire that had been set which would consume the city. The Boy's father had told them to make for the harbor should the city be breached. There a ship awaited them. The remnants of the Royal Guard stood guard at the dock, shuttling refugees onto the vessel, and prepared to hold back the rampaging orcs for as long as was needed for the ship to cast off safely. Those orcs were hot on The Boy's heels as he ran for the ship, the air burning in his lungs. The disciplined guards opened a minute gap in their line to allow the pair to slip through to safety, before swiftly reforming and greeting the orcs with the strength of their shield wall. Events were blurry for The Boy. The sounds of the battle were deafening. The crack of a blade shivering, the clang of the plate armor of the warriors, and the meaty thock, followed by cries of pain, that signaled a blade finding its mark, hacking into unarmored flesh.

A powerfully built man, the white of his armor matching the color of his beard, dragged the last defender onto the ship as it pulled away from the harbor. Lothar knelt down, and cradled the man who he had pulled onto the boat. It was The Boy's father. He had stopped to cut the last line free that was tying the vessel to the dock, and an orcish grunt had used the opportunity to sink an axe into the man's stomach, leaving him desperately trying to keep his innards in place as blood flowed from between his trembling hands. His mother wailed, and rushed to his side. His father whispered something to Lothar, who nodded to him, and then beckoned his son to come to his side. As The Boy approached, he looked at his feet, trying to hide the tears in his eyes. His father's hands ceased their shaking for a few moments as he lifted his son's chin up to look him in the eyes. He brushed a few strands of The Boy's hair back, and spoke his last words to his son.

"Thank the Light, you're safe. Take care of your mother."

With that, Lothar led The Boy below decks, before returning to ensure that The Boy's mother could mourn in what came as close to privacy as was possible on the overloaded vessel. Below decks, The Boy sobbed, echoing the cries of his inconsolable mother above. Another young man, who was a few years older than The Boy, sought to comfort him. They both shared the pain of losing their fathers that day, and while in later meetings, King Varian Wrynn did not recognize The Boy, he always respected his king for those moments of solace on that fateful day.

The boat traveled north, towards the remaining human kingdoms. It made landfall in the town of Southshore, in the kingdom of Lordaeron. For a couple years, The Boy and his mother had an opportunity to attempt to rebuild something of their lives. But peace is ever elusive. Shortly after The Boy turned 10, it was announced that the Horde was marching through the dwarven territories, and would set upon Lordaeron soon. In response to this, a Grand Alliance was being formed between the human kingdoms, and an army would be raised to stop the Horde before they could reach the heart of Lordaeron.

An army on the march is a different beast than an army on the defensive. It is a beast of burden. For every soldier who fights, there are five people supporting him, from the workers who craft his armor, to the squires who care for and carry his equipment in the field. When the Horde marched to Southshore, rather than fleeing with his mother, a refugee once more, The Boy volunteered to join the army, led by Anduin Lothar. The Boy served as a squire for one of the warriors in Turalyon's division, usually removed from the actual line of battle. He spent most of the war in the camp, washing the blood off his master's armor, and leading his packmule by the bridle on long marches.

The army fought the Hillsbrad, dislodging them from their initial beachhead, and pursued them into the Hinterlands. It was there where Lothar realized the Horde's intentions, to use their superior numbers to split their attack on both Stromgarde and the elven kingdom of Quel'thelas. The generals met in Turalyon's tent, and The Boy discretely listened to Lothar's planning from the entrance. Some of the generals argued passionately for the Army to dedicate itself wholly to the defense of Stromgarde, a human kingdom, and to leave the elves, who had regarded the Horde as a strictly human concern, to their own devices.

Lothar disagreed, and decided to bifurcate the army, dispatching Turalyon to defend Quel'thelas, along with the small detatchement of rangers who had joined the army with Alleria Windrunner, despite orders to the contrary from the ruling council of Silvermoon City. As the generals departed, Lothar found The Boy, despite his best efforts to conceal himself. Fulfilling the last promise he made to a dying man, Lothar led The Boy to the main encampment, where he gave The Boy the shield that had belonged to The Boy's father, as per the man's dying wish. It was battered and scratched, and the leather straps that weren't rotted or torn were stained with blood, it was not fit for battle, but none of that mattered to The Boy, it was a cherished memento. That meeting would be the last time that he saw Anduin Lothar alive.

They marched across Lordaeron, into the forests of Quel'thelas. The Boy had been told by a few of the elves who marched with them that Quel'thelas was a magnificent sight, elegant, lush, verdant, and aglow in the glorious powers afforded them by the Sunwell. When they marched past Stratholme and entered through the mountain pass that kept the Elves separated from the humans, the sight of Quel'thelas gave the entire army pause. The forests were aglow, not with the power of the arcane, but from the fires that had been set by the orcs and the trolls that they had allied themselves with. The Boy has never seen Quel'thelas in the glory that the ranger had described it. No one has since the Horde left their indelible mark on the forests.

It wasn't until the orcs brought the war to the very gates of Silvermoon that the elven government realize the threat that the orcs represented to not only humans, but all life on Azeroth. Without Lothar's foresight, the orcs would have razed Silvermoon City, and taken possession of the Sunwell. After a few days spent camped outside the elven capitol, the army turned its focus back towards the south. Turalyon now marched with the full force of Quel'thelas at his back, and The Boy marched with him.

They marched through Alterac. The human kingdom had been completely destroyed in the fighting. Their King, Aiden Perenolde, had offered the Horde free passage through Alterac in exchange for being left alone. When a division of Lothar's army, under the command of Danath Trollbane, sealed the gap in the mountains, the battle that Perenolde had expected to be fought in the fields of Lordaeron, were instead fought in the heart of Alterac, and the fires of war consumed that kingdom, just as it had Stormwind.

With the help of the elven armada, the arrival of Turalyon's forces broke the back of the Horde's siege on the capitol of Lordaeron. Turalyon's division knew only victory, driving the Horde south, out of Lordaeron, liberating the Bronzebeard Dwarves who were under siege in Ironforge, shattering the Horde at Blackrock mountain, and finally driving most of the remnants back out of the Dark Portal. While it would take years to pick up the pieces, the war was, for all intents and purposes, over.

King Wrynn returned to Stormwind to attempt to rebuild the ruins of his kingdom, but King Menethil, the King of Lordaeron, offered a place in Lordaeron for any who served in the war. The Boy, reunited with his mother, took advantage of the offer, and they settled in small town not too far from the capital, called Andorhal.

Those were peaceful times, and The Boy grew into a man, devout in the ways of the light, and hard working. Over the course of fifteen years, he learned the secrets of smithing and metallurgy from the town's workers. He worked to restore his father's shield, not to be used again, for he had seen the terrors wreaked by war, but as a way to honor his father's sacrifice. He earned a living for himself and his mother through those skills, initially making farm implements and other tools, but he eventually branched out into the more precious metals, becoming an accomplished jeweler as well. There was no more rationing, no more dark nights spent in the celler, fearing that the next crash would be the cursed stone that would take his life, and no more days spent in the camp, away from home. Andorhal served as the breadbasket for Lordaeron, they shipped food to every corner of the kingdom, and there was always plenty on the table.

A ragged old man changed all that. Some of the more learned in the village claimed to recognize him as a mage from Dalaran who had visited Southshore years ago, but he looked more like a corpse than a distinguished mage. Strange events happened in those days, rumors of the dead rising from their graves, and clandestine meetings of black robed strangers. It wasn't until the Prince of Lordaeron arrived to investigate, finding the cult leader tampering with the grain shipments. A representative from Dalaran recognized him as Kel'thuzad, a former leader of the Kirin Tor. They burned down the grain silos, and struck down Kel'thuzad and his cultists.

Word came back later that the tainted grain had led to the destruction of the city of Stratholme, to the northeast. Fearing more cultist action, Prince Arthas raised an army to go to Northrend to finish the cult leaders once and for all. The Boy, now a man, declined to join, he had seen his fill of violence. But a few months later, Prince Arthas returned from Northrend, triumphant, or so it would seem. The Prince slew his father, and marched once again, this time at the head of an army of the same undead monstrosities that he had sworn to vanquish. They marched on Andorhal, where a group of paladins, led by Uther the Lightbringer, had retreated, carrying with them the ashes of their fallen king. Again, home was under attack for The Boy.

But Andorhal is not Stormwind. There are no strong stone walls that must be surmounted. The Scourge surrounded the town, and swiftly overran it. The only way to escape the onslaught was by water. The Boy, his mother, and a few others from the town boarded a small boat, and cast off, hoping to make their way south, towards a rebuilding Stormwind.

They didn't make it very far. As they passed the island that the old castle of Caer Darrow was built upon, great chains lashed themselves to the boat. From the lake emerged an abomination of startling size that set itself upon their craft, tearing planks away and threatening to drag them to a watery grave. Knowing that everyone on the boat were moments away from death, so long as the abomination stayed attached to the boat, The Boy picked up the one possession he had allowed himself to bring, his father's shield. Working his arm into the leather grips that he had reworked countless times in the intervening years, he said a prayer to the light, recalling his father's last words to him. He felt the Light empowering him as he smashed his father's shield into the abomination's skull, jarring the monstrosity loose as both he and it tumbled from the crippled craft.

He washed up, alone, on the banks of the Thondoril River. The patchwork creature was no where to be found, nor was his father's shield. He was beaten, bloodied, and damn near dead from his tangle with the behemoth. His memories are hazy here. Maybe it was the way that he nearly drowned, maybe it was the concussion he got from the abomination, but even to this day, all he can remember are bits and pieces.

He lay half submerged, hung up on the roots of a tree that protruded from the river bank. He watched the undead armies shamble across the bridge over the river, walking the same path he had walked fifteen years ago. The path to Quel'thelas. He wasn't the only one watching the horrors moving through. After the Scourge passed, an old man, wearing old brown leather clothes concealing his plate armor, crept down to the river bank, and dragged the wounded man North.

At the old man's shack, it took The Boy a week before he could speak again. The old man had some experience in the ways of the Light, and as he nursed The Boy back to health, he felt the empowerment that had allowed The Boy to survive the confrontation. That blessing was the only thing keeping him alive. The old man, unable to accertain The Boy's name until the swelling went down, he took to calling him Dämmerung. In the old Arathi tongue, it meant the Fading Light of Day. It was a bit grim, but Dämmerung didn't know what it meant at the time.

It was months before Dämmerung was well enough to set out on his own. During his convalescence, the old man taught him a few things about the use of the Light. He taught him how to heal the righteous, how to judge the unfaithful, and to unleash his wrath against the undead and the demonic. He replaced Dämmer's ragged and torn clothing, still stained with mud and ichor from his flight from Andorhal, and gave him a wooden hammer with which to defend himself. Dämmerung was anxious to find out what had happened to his town, to his friends, and to his mother. They would both be different men when they next met, years from now.

Lordaeron had changed in the months of Dämmerung's recovery. Wearing nothing but the clothes of a civilian, and arming with a mere wooden hammer, he cautiously worked his way south. Everywhere the undead horde had walked had been blighted. There were still patches of greenery here and there, but they were rapidly being encrouched upon by the sickly brown grasses of the neighboring spoiled earth. Ghouls were out in force, scouring the land for anything left alive in these plaguelands. Every once in a while, one of those abominations trundled down the road, the ground shaking at their every step. They were often flanked by bizzare spider-like monstrosities that Dämmerung had never seen before.

Dämmerung traveled carefully. The dark forces animating the Scourge forces made them odious to the Light, and through that distaste, he knew when one approached. Even without the light, the smell and constant groaning would give them away from a quarter mile. The patrols were thick enough that it took him fully three days to hike down the Thorandil River until he reached its mouth, where it fed into Darrowmere Lake, with Caer Darrow's decrepit ruins sticking up out of the water, a monument to the horrors of the present, realized through the neglect of the past. He hid himself underneath the bridge at the mouth of the river, and for a time, he stayed there, like some common troll. He scryed the surface of the water, scrutinizing it closely for any sign of any hidden attackers the like of which he met when he last braved these waters. Another one of the abominations patrolled over the bridge, coming from the west. As it stomped over the bridge, the stonework shook, freeing dust that had been trapped in the masonry for the long decades since the bridge had been built, during the reign of Terenas the First. Dämmerung feared that the bridge might collapse under the strain, and thought about making a run for it. Then something even more frightening occurred.

The abomination stopped, right over his head. It sniffed the air, trying to recapture that whiff of a scent that had called its attention. Dämmerung listened to the bridge creak and groan as the abomination leaned over the side to see if anything was hiding next to the bridge. Foul gore spilled from the behemoth's open chest cavity, splashing into the mud next to the terrified man. Dämmerung clamped a hand over his mouth, trying not to gag as the stench of undeath became overpowering. He pressed himself deeper into the soft mud of the river bank, letting the cold water flow over him, and hopefully conceal his scent from the monster's senses. Seconds stretched into years, the whole of the man's life hinged upon his complete anonymity.

Suspicious but unwilling to dawdle any longer, the abomination strode off the bridge, and east, towards Darrowshire. Dämmerung waited until it was out of sight, and then, without hesitation, dove into the icy waters of Darrowmere. He made for Caer Darrow, hoping to take a moment's respite there, before continuing his swim south. Looking to the west, he saw the smoke rising from the smoldering ruins of Andorhal, grain houses burned for a long time, and Andorhal had all the grain for the entire eastern half of the kingdom stored there. It must be like a charnel house there. The ashes of their King lay there, and the hope for his kingdom had burned down upon them. Hardening his heart against the horror of watching his adopted home in ashes, he hiked to the southern end of the island. There he found one horror more.

The craft lay on its side on the beach, water lapping up against it, rocking it gently as it dug itself deeper and deeper into the soft silt. The aft bulkhead had been ripped free, and the gunnels had savage pieces torn from them. It was clearly no longer seaworthy. A quick inspection confirmed his fears. The inscription carved into the bowsprit identified the wreck as the boat that he had tried so desperately to save. A deeper inspection, however, offered a glimmer of hope. The life preservers were missing, and the boat had clearly been deposited on the island by the currents, rather than beached by her crew. Perhaps they had survived, and made it to Southshore. Hope; hope still lived, even if it was only a glimmer. Dämmerung held onto that fading light as he once again braved the cold waters of Darrowmere Lake, leaving the unsettling ruins behind him.

When he reached the point where Darrowmere Lake channeled itself back into a river, he noticed a wondrous thing, well, it was wondrous in hindsight. As he dragged himself back upon the banks of the river, he heard a growl. He had pulled himself onto the green grass, directly between a mother mountain lion and her cubs. As the lion hurled itself at him in defense of her offspring, Dämmerung gave a desperate prayer to the Light. The Light answered, deflecting the angry beast as Dämmerung launched himself back into the river, letting the current drag him away from his sudden brush with life, after days of hiding from death.

He pulled himself back out of the river near Southshore, after ensuring that there were only horses and turtles nearby, nothing that could harm him in his exhausted state. The Light helps those who help themselves, and he doubted that it would answer him again so soon after his last request.

He trudged to Southshore, looking not too unlike one of the ghouls that ran rampant through the northern portion of Lordaeron. He stepped into the inn, and requested a room. The innkeeper made him walk back to the river and clean his clothes before he would let him touch a bed in the inn. Upon his return, looking just as haggard, although somewhat less filthy, he saw two brothers drinking at the table in the lobby. Recognition flashed in their eyes when they saw him, and they called out to him using his old name. They were from Andorhal, and had served as oarsmen on the boat that bloody night. They kicked out the chair next to them, and invited him to sit with them. They bought him a meal, and a drink, and paid for his room. He had saved their lives, and they intended to honor that debt as best they could.

Dämmerung couldn't remember a meal that tasted as good as that one did. Then again, the cook at the Cathedral in Stormwind isn't exactly the finest chef in town, and most of the time when he's not in Stormwind, he's eating field rations, or those bland mage cakes that taste like nothing, and always left him feeling hungry again fifteen minutes later. Perhaps he hasn't had a meal that tasted as good since. However, as enjoyable as the food was, as famished as he was, all those pleasures were secondary to his need for information.

When broached with the question of the disposition of the others on the boat, the brothers uneasily cast their gazes towards the stone floor. After Dämmerung had driven the patchwork beast back into the depths of the lake, the ship had sustained too much damage to remain afloat. The life preservers were given out, and the passengers began to jump into the water, making a desperate swim for the river bank to the south. The brothers had been among those who landed on the west bank, and Dämmerung's mother had been in those who landed on the east bank. Fearful that the abomination would return, the two groups hurried south. The group on the east bank were slowed down, several men were needed to restrain the panicked woman, in order to prevent her from diving back into the lake to search for her son. The group on the west bank rushed to Southshore, and raised the alarm. The eastern group wasn't seen for several days, and they began trickling in one by one, telling tales of splitting up to avoid the southernmost Scourge patrols. One brother cautiously offered that many of those who fled with them had continued south, making for the newly reinforced Northshire Abbey. The other brother mentioned a grimmer possibility that he had overheard from the necromancers during Andorhal's fall.

Once again, Dämmerung clung to the glimmer of hope, still glowing in the black sea of despair that threatened to consume him. He slept fitfully and sailed for Elywnn the next morning; his fare paid for by the brothers, who gathered the other survivors who decided to settle in the area together to see him off. He left Stormwind for Southshore after having lost his father, and now he retraced those steps, having lost his mother, but, the Light willing, she would be found. He looked back from the stern of the ship, at all the people waving gratefully to him. He had been able to protect all of them, surely he had protected her too.

He arrived in Northshire three days later, shortly after noon. The grand structure had been rebuilt grandly in the aftermath of its sacking by the Horde, as had the remainder of Stormwind. Things were almost as he remembered them. Almost. The little details nagged at him. The stones had crisply cut corners, rather than the worn edges of blocks that had seen hundreds of years of weathering. There was a bridge before the walls now, with statues dedicated to the heroes that he had served fifteen years ago. The city was more secure than ever.

The Abbey was no different, in addition to the rebuilding of the actual abbey, a huge wall had been built in front of the community, allowing it to be sealed off in the event of another attack, unlike in the First War, where the Twilight's Hammer clan had moved right in and set up shop. Rumors abounded that the masons who worked in Northshire demanded triple pay to clean up whatever it was that the Horde had left behind in there, and that the King had taken one look inside, and immediately agreed. The masons had outdone themselves here.

Dämmerung didn't find any of the survivors here. Any that had passed through these walls had long since dispersed themselves to the outlying communities, Goldshire, Redridge, Westfall, and Duskwood. Dämmerung prepared to travel once again. The Horde had taken his father, the Scourge had taken his shield, and possibly his mother too, the Light knows what it would do to them. He intended to find out, to keep holding on to that fading light for as long as he could.

The Problem With Thrall

2011-12-15T09:24:00.000-08:00

One problem that Blizz has somewhat on their radar is the irritation due to the overdose on Thrall in the current Cataclysm storyline. The Lead Quest Designer, Dave Kosak, posted a somewhat misguided developer blog, in which he touched upon the rising sentiments against the once and future Warchief of the Horde.

Blizzard feels that they made a mistake in assuming that Alliance players would enjoy the newly "neutral" Thrall, because he isn't a Horde character, he's a world character. That's part of the issue, although he doesn't understand the root cause of that particular sentiment, which stems from the treatment of other major lore figures who ostensibly went neutral, and how they compare to what happened with Thrall. That, however, is an issue that deserves its own post to lay out.

The majority of the backlash against Thrall in the recent expansion is, quite simply, because Thrall has been an incredibly poorly written character since the end of WCIII, and putting him in the brightest spotlight any previously defined lore character has ever stepped into put all those flaws on display.

Some of these flaws are incidental to concessions made by the story for gameplay purposes. One of the most dissonant experiences I had while exploring the Horde side of the game was taking my first Horde character, an undead warlock, over to Ogrimmar to get the quests for RFC. I embarked on a series of quest lines featuring Thrall trying to root out the warlocks from the midst of the city, and seemingly oblivious to the fact that he was employing one of those warlocks to do so. Despite the fact that from a lore perspective, Warlocks had nearly wiped out the orcish race, and condemned them to an existence of suffering, and as such were rightly banned from the Horde, people wanted to play as them, so in they went. These flaws are jarring, but they're ultimately a minor flaw, the pimple on the narrative that can be hidden with some discrete concealer, because the player character is but a single person in the narrative of the game, and not even a really important one anymore.

The flaws become much harder to conceal when they become part of major lore events. Thrall is not presented as a complex character. He's your standard feel good messiah stand in. He's wise, strong, capable, charismatic, fair, self sacrificing, and compassionate. There's not necessarily anything wrong with that. Not every character in a leading role has to be a morally ambigious Machiavellian schemer. It's OK to have the occasional character who's just a good guy. The problem is when you have the aforementioned good guy does something out of character, and no one calls him on his bullshit. At this point, you're not only undermining the character, you're undermining the characters who don't react, and the entirety of the story. If Aslan had given up Edmund in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, and none of the Pevensies spoke out against it, then C.S. Lewis probably wouldn't hold his revered place in the pantheon of storytellers. The story worked because Aslan is the Jesus Allegory Lion, and he did what Jesus Allegory Lions do.

This is where Thrall falls short. He's the Jesus Allegory Orc, savior of his people, able to walk on water, and return from the dead. But he doesn't act the way his backstory and characterization have set him up. The driving influence in Thrall's backstory was his time spent as a slave and gladiator in Durnholde. So, when he fufills his destiny and forges a reborn Horde, does he outlaw slavery, as a just ruler would do? Nope, because one of the driving forces in King Wrynn's backstory is that he was captured and held as a slave by Rehgar Earthfury, and forced to fight in the gladiator pits in Dire Maul. Blackmoore was an uncharacteristic human, operating far from the oversight of authority, and was a drunk and morose man who plotted against his fellows and no one in the Alliance speaks well of. Perhaps, King Wrynn ran into a similar situation? Perhaps Thrall did take steps to stamp out slavery in the Horde, but its insidious nature persisted in the dark corners far from his steely gaze? This would be a bit of a stretch, but it's one that could have worked. But is it what happens? No. In the comic, Jaina convinces Varian to attend a peace summit at Theramore to attempt to build a peaceful relationship with Thrall and the Horde. Varian brings Valeera, a Blood Elf who escaped slavery with Varian, and his son Anduin. Thrall brings Garrosh, who from a chronological perspective, made the first of his asshat moments, and Reghar Earthfury, the orc who kept two of the members of the Alliance delegation as slaves against their will. Not only does he tolerate slavery within the Horde, he thinks it's a good idea to make the slavemaster a trusted adviser on the peace process. No one brought up how immensely hypocritical and bone headed this is, and yet people wonder why Varian doesn't like Thrall. It's completely out of character for someone coming from the backstory Thrall has, and it's completely out of character for everyone around him to not notice. Have the races of Azeroth simply not discovered the most basic of social prudence?

This leads into what becomes Thrall's most damning problem. He's a storyline singularity. A black hole that warps those around him such that even the most basic literary laws simply don't hold anymore.

The most egregious flaw in Cataclysm was the 4.2 quest chain which unveiled Fandral Staghelm as a traitor, and set the stage for the Aggra/Thrall love story that culminated with the probability of little green/brown babies in upcoming expansions. Staghelm was one of the best characterized and well written characters introduced in World of Warcraft. He's a seething mass of complexes and hatred and old wounds that refuse to heal. He was one of Malfurion's finest students of druidism, and after Malfurion went to travel the Emerald Dream, it was Staghelm who led the night elf forces against the Qiraji in the War of the Shifting Sands. The forces of the Old God C'thun poured out of Silithus, and the Night Elves alone stood against them. Fandral led the army in a brutal war in the deserts of Silithus and Tanaris. This conflict is the event that more than any other defines Staghelm. His only son, Valstaan, served with him in that harsh conflict. Staghelm recognized the threat that the Qiraji posed, not only to Night Elves, but to Azeroth itself, and he beseeched the dragonflights to aid him in his efforts to keep the Qiraji in check. The dragons deferred their entry into the conflict until the Qiraji had pushed all the way to the Caverns of Time. In one battle in the months before the entry of the dragons into the war, Valstaan was captured by a mighty Qiraji general. In front of Fandral's eyes, his only son, his pride and joy, was ripped in half, and left to die on the scorching sands of the desert.

One of the first short stories, and in my opinion, one of the best, that Blizzard made was in preperation for the AQ40 raid, and the opening of the Gates of Ahn'Qiraj. It showed the true measure of the toll that the war had exacted on Fandral.

Fandral looked down, his face twisting in contempt. "I want nothing to do with Silithus, the Qiraji and least of all, any damned dragons!" With that Fandral swung the enchanted object into the magical gates — where it splintered in a shower of fragments — and walked away.

"Would you shatter our bond for the sake of pride?" the dragon asked.

Fandral turned. "My son's soul will find no comfort in this hollow victory, dragon. I will have him back. Though it takes millennia, I will have my son back!" Fandral then strode past Shiromar...

... who could see him in her mind even now, as if it were only yesterday and not a thousand years past.

Clearly, this is a man who has lost much, and harbors much resentment over that loss.

The time preceding the games themselves, Fandral spent clashing with Tyrande over the path that the Night Elves should take. It was Fandral who pushed for the creation of Teldrassil , and who eschewed the blessings from the dragons which had empowered its predecessor. He was arrogant. After all, he had fought the War alone. He knew what a threat the Qiraji were, even before the Bronze Dragonflight could scry it from myriad visions of the future. There were those who would take advantage of his wounds, and his pride.

Xavius, the first Satyr, condemned to live as a tree by Malfurion for 10,000 years after the Sundering of the World, saw Staghelm's flaws as a means by which he could exact his revenge upon Malfurion. He used his magic to plant the notion into Staghelm's mind that through certain actions, he could bring his son Valstaan back to him. This involved using large quantities of Morrowgrain to poison Malfurion, trapping him in the corruption of the Emerald Nightmare, where Xavius could torment him at his leisure. It also involved grafting the tree that Xavius had become onto Teldrassil, exposing the Night Elves home to the corruption of one of Sargeras' oldest servants on Azeroth.

During the events of the novel Stormrage, Malfurion broke free, and confronted Staghelm at the demonic graft on Teldrassil, which Staghelm had come to believe was his son reincarnated. In order to stem the corruption of the tree, Malfurion was forced to destroy Xavius, and the graft. Staghelm, however, was forced to relive the death of his only son. Watching Malfurion kill Valstaan broke Staghelm, and he was sent away to the caves in which Illidan had been imprisoned for thousands of years.

From there, during Ragnaros' assault on Hyjal, Staghelm was intended to be moved to a more secure area in Moonglade. The green dragon Alysra was charged with moving him. She instead defected to Ragnaros, who offered Staghelm a chance to strike back against those that wronged him. Against the dragons, who refused to aid him until his son had died. Against Nordrassil, which had succeeded where his project, Teldrassil, had failed. Against Malfurion, who took his son from him a second time. It's a compelling tale about how the indifference of the forces of good can break a good man, and how a good man can be brought low, despite great physical power, through the exploitation of the weaknesses of the mind. It was one of the stories that I respected most in the Warcraft Mythos.

I've talked a lot about Staghelm in a post that is ostensibly about Thrall, I promise there's a reason for this. Staghelm had a lot of lore behind him. More than most other characters that were introduced in WoW proper. More than even some of the characters brought over from previous games. He was well written, and well developed. The player knows what he's been through, who he hates, and who he serves. It all led up to his becoming Ragnaros' Majordomo, and a raid boss in Firelands, and most importantly, it did so in a manner that made sense, in as much as a story with dragons and giant ant people fighting elves can make sense.

Which brings us to the quest Elemental Bonds. One of the centerpieces of the 4.2 patch, Rage of the Firelands, this quest served as Staghelm's coming out party as an actual villain. Malfurion and the four Dragon Aspects unite to attempt to restore the World Tree. Five of Staghelm's most hated enemies, and Staghelm's hatred has brewed for millennia. Malfurion would go on to lead an assault into the heart of the Firelands, and eventually permanently destroys Ragnaros, Staghelm's new master. Not only does Staghelm hate Malfurion, but Malfurion is also a present threat to Staghelm's new employer. It's a two for one deal for vengeance, always a good move. So, with Staghelm's history, circumstance, and new found power, he crashes the ritual. His five most hated enemies, caught distracted and vulnerable. So what does he do? He attacks Thrall.

What?

A story that Blizzard has been brewing for seven years in real life, and spanning thousands of years in game, and they wreck the ending just to show how awesome Thrall is. That's how destructive Thrall has become to the fabric of the narrative of the game. He's creeping into story arcs that don't involve him, and ruining the endings. Characters are taking complete 180s to bow to the amazing Go'el.

There's a term for characters like this. They're called Mary Sues. They're generally reviled for being an extremely disruptive force in narratives. A lot of times, they serve as author inserts. A way for the writer to live out his story vicariously through the character. This isn't always the case, but they manifest as characters that lack depth. While this is OK for peripheral characters who don't impact the story greatly, when it's the main character, by dint of the amount of time the reader or player spends dealing with the character, they have to be believable. Familiarity breeds contempt. The more time you spend with a character the more the little flaws in the story irk you. It was fine back in Vanilla when Green Jesus could sit on his Throne in Ogrimmar and generally not bother anyone because the story at the time was about the player-character, and as such, it welded itself to the person playing that character quite well. It's the classic silent protagonist that worked so well for Link, Mario, and Crono in earlier games.

In the expansions, Blizzard moved away from the notion of the story really being about the player-character. They had to, because it was a persistent world, and having Bolvar greet me as the one who unmasked Onyxia when I did no such thing in game would be a jarring flaw in the game. As such, the players went from the driving force of events in game, to a more abstract ideal. They're "the adventurers". They're always there, but they're never the reason why the big events happen, because if your character didn't do a particular quest, or dungeon, or raid, some else did, and to keep the game on a single narrative track requires that those loose ends be tied up somehow. Blizzard opted to make NPCs drive the story. Illidan was defeated by Maive and Akama, with an assist from "the adventurers", Kil'Jaeden was banished by Kalecgos and Anveena, with an assist from "the adventurers". It continued into Lich King with Tirion, and Blizzard, in an effort to create a cohesive narrative, went as far as to retcon the Vanilla raids. Varian killed Onyxia, and Darion Mograine stormed Naxx. The players have been relegated to extras in the story that used to be about them.

This isn't a bad thing, per se. The problems have come to a head with Thrall in Cataclysm because Thrall is so poorly written. Thrall has been spoiled. The weight of the failures of the writers have ruined him as a character, and he is beyond redemption. He's been woven so tightly into the fabric of the game that a discrete retcon is impossible. Trying to continue Thrall's story will have ruinous consequences on the narrative, and trying to retcon the mess they've already published would be the most disruptive retcon in the history of the Warcraft Mythos. The time has come to give Thrall a good Wesley-ing. Well, the time came a while ago, but late is better than never. Retire him to Nagrand to raise his little green/brown kids. Kill him off. I don't care. But stop inflicting him on the story.

For $29.99, You Too Can Know Just What's Going On!

2011-12-08T14:10:00.000-08:00

Another massive complaint that's been coming out of the dissatisfaction on the forums is Blizzard's insistence on using out of game mediums to conduct the heavy lifting in this expansion. There's a large gap between what Blizzard allowed to be used in out of game mediums in BC, and what they began to allow in Wrath, and what they proliferated in Cataclysm.

The earliest attempts at out of game mediums for Blizzard consisted mostly of backstory and sidestory. The War of the Ancients Trilogy talked about history of the Night Elf heroes. Tides of Darkness just rehashed the cannon plot of Warcraft II, likewise Through the Dark Portal did the same for the expansion. The Sunwell Trilogy just gave the specific minutia of the Magister's Terrace and Sunwell instances. Arthas: Rise of the Lich King rehashed a lot of plot lines from WCIII, and gave some insight into Jaina and Arthas, but it wasn't anything that wasn't also apparent in the questing in Icecrown or the ICC 5 mans. The Death Knight Manga told us the specifics of the backstory that was covered in quests in both the DK starting zone, and in Northrend.

This is an example of what out of game materials should be: supplemental, optional, an enhancement to the plot already in the game. They should cover stories that are already portrayed in game, or stories that don't have enough significance in the major narrative plots in the game to be done justice in game. The Death Knight Manga was a particularly good example in my opinion. Playing through the game, I knew that Thassarian was a cool character. I knew he became a DK when he shipped over to Northrend with Arthas' expeditionary forces. I knew he had a skeleton buddy named Lurid. I knew Falric and Marwyn were captains under Arthas' expedition. This is enough to know in game to propel the plot. It's still nice to know the little details, but that's what the Manga was for. It was in the Manga that you find out that Falric went searching for Arthas after they defeated Mal'ganis, and when Falric failed to return with the prince, Thassarian went looking for both missing men. He found Falric in a cave, already turned to the Scourge. Falric turned on his former charge, and slew him, raising him as a Death Knight. It's a good story about the fall of a good man, but Thassarian isn't as important to the plot to warrant having such small details handled in game, at the expense of moving other, more important story arcs along.

Then came the WoW comic. A comic is a different animal than a book or omnibus manga. In order to produce a successful comic, it has to be something that people are willing to purchase every week. In order to get a fresh weekly comic off the ground, you need a killer story. So Blizzard took one of the biggest hanging threads from in game, and sold it out to the comic, The Missing Diplomat. The Missing Diplomat was an Alliance side quest chain that led the character in search of a diplomat who was kidnapped en route to a peace conference with the Horde. It served a pivotal function within the game, it was the primary means by which non night elf Alliance characters made the transition from Eastern Kingdoms to Kalimdor. It was also known for its abrupt ending. There were little things here and there that led people to believe that it would be picked up in the end game, most notably that the Missing Diplomat, who was actually the King of Stormwind, was rendered in game in the basement of a building on Alcaz Island. All of the opportunities to revisit that quest line were cast aside, and if players wanted to know what happened, they had to go buy the comic.

This began a new era of Blizzard expanded universe media. This is a problem because story arcs that are begun in the game should be wrapped up in game. Jumping the story across multiple formats creates a jarring narrative that will be incomplete for the majority of the people who experience it. Blizzard then began doing this for every incomplete story line that they had in the game. Malfurion's been asleep since WCIII, and Fandral's curiously asking for more and more Morrowgrain while the Emerald Dream corrupts itself and Teldrasil is seeded with that corruption. Green Dragons are rampaging through the world, and Ysera is trapped in the Emerald Dream. That was the status quo through Wrath, and suddenly in Cataclysm, all those threads just disappeared. What happened? Stormrage happened. Cataclysm gets released, and major faction leaders have suddenly shifted, or died, or turned into a giant diamond. What the hell happened? The Shattering happened. The Horde and Alliance are suddenly back at war in Kalimdor? What happened? Wolfheart happened.

Throughout Cataclysm, Blizzard has been outsourcing their lore to books and comics. There are a couple possible explanations for this. They might simply feel like their story is too big to be constrained within the confines of an MMO, which has specific leashes on what you can try and accomplish. They might have made their story too ambitious to implement in game on their budget. A raid into the Emerald Nightmare to rescue Malfurion would have been amazing. Having the fight between Garrosh and Cairne play out like the Duel between Thrall and Garrosh before Wrath would have given some weight to the extremely weak pre Cataclysm event. Perhaps the most insidious possibility is that Blizzard looked at the Arthas, and the success that that novel had, and saw the opportunity to made money at a higher profit margin. It costs much less to produce and publish a novel than it does to do the same for an MMO the size of WoW.

Ultimately, however, by outsourcing the story to these other mediums, it alienates a large portion of the playerbase who do not purchase them for whatever reason. Be it a lack of financial security (cue players calling out "This game discriminates against the poor!" in Commander Shepard's voice), a lack of interest in the other mediums (Books just aren't for everyone), or they're simply busy spending their reading time reading better books (I'd rather read American Gods for the 11th time than read Wolfheart again.).

By What Measure is an Exploit?

2011-12-06T12:50:00.000-08:00

There's been a bit of a Brouhaha occurring due to the exploitation of the Looking for Raid tool by many of the upper crust guilds, who utilized it to gain access to their 4pc bonuses much earlier than should normally be possible. This entailed one of several methods to circumvent the "one shot at loot per boss" rule which Blizzard had been extremely clear about. Some guilds simply traded items once they had been looted. Other guilds would zone out and zone back in once everyone had passed, and still other groups had their ineligible players DC before the loot was rolled out.

This has provoked a wide range of reactions, from those who blame Blizzard for launching a flawed patch, to those who believe that those who exploited should be permanently banned from the game. Blizzard's response fell in the middle. They stripped the offenders of all items gained through the exploit, and banned them for 3-8 days, dependent upon previous behavior.

I believe that Blizzard did the right thing here. My firm belief with regards to punishment of any sort, is consistency. Without the presence of precedence and consistency, any authority will break down into tyranny.

Of course, to establish consistency, one must have precedence, and one must have measures for the offences committed. In this case, Blizzard has employed the permaban before, and just as tellingly, they have opted to have limited suspensions or even no punishments before. However, Blizzard has been, for the most part, consistent in their punishments, and from that, we can draw conclusions as to what categories Blizzard views things.

Top guilds tend to be the most visible examples of glitches, exploits, and the dreaded "creative use of game mechanics". Ensidia, in particular, has had a laundry list of offences. They got the world first Lady Vashj kill when she unexpectedly died, despawned, and respawned with something like 5% health left. No one was quite sure what happened, but Ensidia, then Nihilum, received no punishment. Later, in Ulduar, in order to beat the insane two minute timer for Hodir Hard Mode, they kited mobs from Freya's room and had several mages spellstealing a damage buff from the mobs to deal obscene damage. The buff was hotfixed to prevent it from happening again, but Ensidia received no punishment. In ICC, on their first Lich King 25 kill, they used Saronite Bombs to rebuild the platform in Phase 2, rendering the Val'kyr mechanics moot. Ensidia had their achievement and loot stripped, and were given a three day suspension.

Of course, Ensidia does not hold the monopoly on questionable actions. In Ulduar, Exodus used a Holy Pally and Warlock to cause all the Immortal Guardians of Yogg-Saron to evade glitch, allowing them to kill Yogg+0 well before any other guild. They were stripped of loot, achievements, and given a three day suspension. Paragon, in addition to the current loot controversy, caught flak for their use of eleven feral druids on their world first kill of Heroic Nefarian. At the time, the buff worked differently, it only effected the next attack you made, so Paragon stacked feral druids, who, at the time, had the highest damage attack in the game, Rip. The buff was quickly hotfixed to not affect certain abilities, and was later changed entirely in favor of a simple +damage buff for a set duration. Paragon received no penalty for Nefarian, but it can be assumed that they have for the LFR debacle, considering that they issued an apology on their guild site.

Which brings us to the events that got Blizzard to hand down the permaban. Back in Vanilla, a guild called Overrated was the most progressed Horde guild in the world. They were farming AQ40 on a regular basis, and were rightfully sick of dealing with the stupid amount of trash and annoying bosses prior to C'thun, who was the only boss that they cared about. This led to them modifying the game files to remove a wall from behind the Prophet Skeram, alloying them to skip nearly the entire instance. Everyone who was there was permabanned. The other prominent permaban was back in Ulduar, where a disgruntled GM mailed a player an item call "Martin Fury", which had an on use which killed everything in 100 yards. It was an item that was never intended to fall into the hands of players, and he used it to one shot bosses throughout the raids available at the time. He was permabanned, and presumably the GM who gave him the item was fired.

From these examples, you can see that events such as these fall into three categories. "Creative use of game mechanics," these are acts where everything works the way it says it's supposed to work, but Blizzard didn't foresee the implications before the players did. These will be fixed, either through a hotfix or a patch, but those who used the technique will not be punished. Then there are exploits. These involve altering your behavior in some way that causes aspects of the game to break, be it resetting terrain constructs, evade glitching mobs, or circumventing loot rules. Exploits will be punished with a suspension, and the removal of all loot and achievements associated with the exploit. Then there are hacks. When you use something from outside the game to modify the working of the game, such as removing a wall, or getting an unobtainable item, then you will be permabanned. Those are the precedents, and there is no reason to break them now.

I laud Blizzard for sticking to their principles on the manner, and handing down a fair punishment to those who exploited the game. The guilds in question did not hack the game, everything they did was done through the game client, therefore, it is not a hack, and not something that warrants a permaban. They have had their loot removed, and they have lost their chance at multiple world firsts. That's punishment enough.

When Your Reach Exceeds Your Grasp: Rushed Development Hurts the Story

2011-12-03T12:24:00.000-08:00

One of the prominent points I made in my previous post was that the rushed development cycle of Cataclysm was extremely destructive to the cohesiveness of the Alliance story line. I listed two prominent examples, the Twilight Highlands and Worgen starting experience. There's a prominent disconnect between the story that you could see Blizzard trying to tell, and the story they wound up producing.

Twilight Highlands is especially egregious. The Alliance story in TH is disjointed, and incoherent at times. After the wacky ride with Fargo, you wake up in the unfinished Alliance base (which never actually gets finished) under attack by the Horde. After fighting the Horde off, you go to the shore where you are attacked by the Horde again. After defending yourself, you then proceed to spend the rest of your time in TH planning a Dwarf wedding, trying to save your alcohol from the Horde, and eventually making it to the Red Dragonflight, who are really angry at you for some reason.

The whole zone is spent pushing to Bastion of Twilight and Grim Batol in an offensive against the Twilight's Hammer. The Horde attacks are barely acknowledged. The closest Alliance players come to replying to the constant attacks is when they steal a bolt of cloth from a goblin zeppelin, which is used in the Dwarf wedding. There's also the puzzling problem with the Red Dragonflight being so pissed off at me. What did I ever do to them, besides assist them against the Mad Aspect of Magic in Northrend, and rescue Calen from that dank pit in Silithus?

The problem lies in unfinished content. This video has datamined sound files from the Cataclysm Beta client. The first half are lines from Thrall that eventually made it into the Goblin starting zone. The second half are lines from Varian in what was supposed to be the Alliance's Twilight Highland's intro.

Varian was supposed to uncover Benedictus as a traitor in a quest line that echoed of the old Great Masquerade quest. A high ranking traitor using their influence to spread dissatisfaction among the people of Stormwind? That links together most of the internal problems that were faced in the Human starting zones, in particular in Westfall. Furthermore, note the direct instructions to not engage the Horde. That fleshes out Varian as a character, and most importantly, it ties the entirety of the Alliance questing experience in TH together. You're not lashing out at the Horde because your King commanded you to focus on higher priorities. That little scene was the keystone for pretty much the entire human questing experience in Cataclysm, and Blizzard dropped it for a cheap reference to the lead quest designer. Way to go.

This still leaves the unusual welcome you get from the Red Dragonflight. I'm a hero to Alexstrasza, Exalted with the Wyrmrest Accord, and I get treated like I've been associating with someone who kills baby red dragons for fun and profit like the Dragonmaw Clan. The quest makes complete sense for the Horde players, who just spent the whole zone rampaging with a group of orcs best known for imprisoning the Dragonqueen against her will and using her children as weapons of war, to be used until broken, and then discarded. Blizzard just never got around to making an Alliance version, and the Alliance story suffers because of it.

Just as painful was the treatment of the Worgen experience. Everyone remembers the plans for the Worgen District in Stormwind, it was planned to be in the park. It made sense, because after the Gilneas set, then the Worgen players could quest in Duskwood, WPL, EPL, and the Blasted Lands, you know, the parts of the game that have Worgen involved quest lines? Instead, Blizzard deleted the park, and sent them off to Darnassus where they sit in a tree and get handed green and grey quests in Darkshore, where the quest givers call them Night Elves. That was how rushed the transition was for Worgen players. They didn't even code the race into the drop box for some of the quests in the zone they exiled that race to.

What I find most frustrating is that they had the tech to make it a compelling story. Hell, they had the story to make it a compelling story. Instead of blithely shipping the Worgen off to Kalimdor, what they should have done was make the Worgen's next questing zone another phase of Gilneas. Instead of the Night Elves showing up, have the 7th Legion show up. Leveling through Silverpine, one of the most chilling moments was during the phased incursion into Gilneas, when you find a field strewn with shattered Elite Abominations and the dismembered corpses of Deathguards, with one survivor left, who recounts the story of the men who came and destroyed them without mercy, and left him alive just to spread fear among the ranks. Through the magic of phasing, the worgen players could have been there, fighting the ugly war, the guerrilla war. Give them phased incursions into Silverpine, just as the Horde players got into Gilneas. While the Horde players rez Godfrey, Walden, and Ashbury and tear through the Alliance forces, the Alliance players should be stalking them with Crowely and Ivar, seeing the damage they wrought, and seeing the story out to its conclusion, the forced withdrawl of the GLF to Stormwind. It would have been great, it would have set the tone for the Alliance quests in Shadowfang Keep, and it would have put the Worgen in a position to experience what little questing they had outside of Gilneas. Just a couple more phases, and a few more quests. That's all that was needed. But they ran out of time.

These mistakes break down the fabric of the story. They break immersion, and make things much less interesting for the players who have to deal with these jarring, fractured, and frayed transitions. Perhaps more damaging than the damage to the story is the damage that things like this do to Blizzard's reputation. Cataclysm took a lot of luster off Blizzard's good name. There was a running joke when it came to Blizzard, Soon™. Much like Valve's "When it's done!", Soon™ meant that Blizzard wouldn't do this. They wouldn't rush an unfinished project out the door to make it in time for the Christmas rush. When players asked a question and got Soon™ for an answer, they knew that they were in for a wait, but they knew that the wait would be worth it (Except for Starcraft:Ghost, but what's a little vaporware between friends?). With Cataclysm, Blizzard has lost the trademark to Soon, and with it, they've lost the trust of the player base.

Patch 4.3: Dragon Soul - First Impressions

2011-12-02T17:17:00.000-08:00

So, Legacy took their first look at the new raid that we're presumably going to be spending the majority of our playing time in for the next eight to twelve months. I've got many thoughts on the instance. Blizzard did a lot of things here, some of them they did well, some things they did poorly, and some things seem to be ugly, but they work.

Let's start with the criticisms:

The big elephant in the room is the tuning. I can't speak for heroic modes yet, which is where my focus tends to go, but normal mode seems to be drastically undertuned. We walking in on our first night and one shot Morchak, one shot Yor'sahj, three shot Zon'ozz, one shot Hagara, three shot Ultraxion, and took three pulls on Blackhorn before running out of time. Seven wipes on the first six bosses. We wiped more than that on normal Halfus, normal Magmaw, and normal Shannox each. The instance feels like its on a level with the post nerf cataclysm raid instances in terms of difficulty, and closer to Raid Finder difficulty than it is to the pre nerf instances. I don't think this is a great move.

I fear that this will produce one of two scenarios when the transition to heroic comes up for most guilds in the coming months. Either heroic difficulty is akin to heroic difficulty in post nerf firelands, where it's six joke bosses and one brick wall, or its going to be like ToC, where 85% of guilds cleared the instance on normal, and less than 25% of guilds could take the next step in logical progression and defeat heroic Beasts of Northrend. Neither of these scenarios produce healthy tiers of raiding. T12 and T9 are pretty much universally reviled.

On lighter criticisms, the trash before Ultraxion is annoying, and the cinematic before Spine of Deathwing causes some annoyances, if someone cancels the cinematic early, the fight starts, which can be a problem if your tank, or all your healers are still watching Blizz recreate Point Break.

But all is not fail and anguish! Blizzard did some things well here:

I think that the instance itself is very well designed. I enjoy the multiple stages that it employs, and travel throughout the instance is quick and easy. Going across diferent thematic zones is very engaging, going from the war in Dragonblight, to the Eye of Eternity, to the Skies of Northrend, to the Maelstrom keeps the instance from falling prey to the orange on orange on brown malaise of Firelands.

Aside from the endless drake waves before Ultraxion, which I think is a decent concept, it's just twice as long as it needs to be, the trash in Dragon Soul is well done. It doesn't have the endless fields of trash we saw in Firelands. The trash is engaging, often informative about the boss it guards, and not excessively painful to two heal. I always thought it odd when the trash was routinely harder to heal than the bosses were.

All in all, I don't feel this instance is Blizzard's best work, and I think it would be a mistake to leave us here for an extended duration, it is a refreshing change of pace from Firelands.

Blizzard, Forum Angst, and the Confluence of Events

2011-12-01T13:58:00.000-08:00

So my previous post on the implications of Theramore's destruction with regards to the narrative path of World of Warcraft took off. I'd meant to follow up on it sooner, but NaNoWriMo's deadline was bearing down on me. So I put things off so that I could hit my mark on my Novel. But it's no longer National Novel Writing Month, so I'm back at the blog.

Since Blizzcon, the forums have been absolutely on fire with disgruntled Alliance players. Accusations of Horde Favoritism abound, and speculation into the future storyline of Mists of Pandaria have been prevalent. CMs have been summoned, and it's drawn the attention of at least the Lead Quest Designer in the developer's camp.

This is essentially "Occupy Azeroth". It's a disgruntled and disenfranchised mass of players attempting to make their concerns known. There's one problem. Like the Occupy Wall Street movements, they're complaining about a host of concerns, many of them legitimate, some of them not so legitimate, and it comes out in a dissonant cacophony that, while great for snaring attention, does a poor job of actually conveying what they're upset about. So I'm going to attempt to enumerate some of the more significant issues that people are taking up arms about., at a later date I'll explain each issue in a more in depth post for that issue.

1) Content for Alliance players is not as compelling as it is for Horde players.: Horde players get far more face time with their leaders in the new leveling experiences. Garrosh and Sylvannas in particular are all over the place, and their characterization is pushed along by the content. Baine is decently involved in the Tauren starting zone, and Vol'jin got a heavy spot with both sides in 4.1. The Alliance, not so much. Varian never leaves his throne room, the Council of Three Hammers takes one quest, Velen shows up for 12 seconds in Swamp of Sorrows, Geblin never never leaves the starting area, and Tyrande got a cameo in one instance which is designed to show people how badass she used to be. Alliance players spend more time questing for Vol'jin and Thrall in Cataclysm than they do questing for their own faction leaders.

2) Content for Alliance players was unfinished at launch: This was most evident in the Twilight Highlands intro and Worgen experience. There were a lot of things that were planned in beta that got cut. I don't think Blizzard realized how important what they were planning to communicate in the Twilight Highlands intro really was. It was the keystone for the entirety of the Cataclysm leveling experience for Alliance, and they abandoned it for a wacky ride with a drunk dwarf.

3) The current story line in not sustainable, and has already been pushed beyond what the writers can control: I already covered this in the previous post. Blizzard isn't going to destroy either side. So portraying total war is very amateurish storytelling, because they can't end it in a logical manner.

4) Too much Thrall: Fargo touched upon this in his dev blog. Thrall was particularly poorly written during this expansion, and it made it very difficult for Alliance players to relate, or care, about his end of the storyline.

5) Extremely unprofessional corporate communications on the part of Blizzard: I'm astounded by how bad Blizzard is at communicating with their player base at times. All too often they make unprofessional, and often counterproductive press releases. I'm not sure if it's because they don't know any better, or if they just don't care, but it's a serious problem. This came to a head with the Corpsegrinder fiasco at the 2011 Blizzcon. That video managed to offend all but a rather small subset of their client base.

6) Excessive Reliance on out of game mediums for story progression: Blizzard has taken the books and comics and manga from being a supplemental means of story development, that is to say that they would advance side plots too small to be given fair treatment in game, to a seat of primary story development, which is to say that they are now covering aspects of story development that should be covered in the game, and it is diminishing the game's immersive quality in the process.

All of this has come to a head, and combined into a firestorm that's burning the forums to the ground. I find it interesting because it's not about numbers this time. It's not about content being too hard or too easy, or something being unbalanced in PvP. This is the first time that players are outright unhappy with the product being put out by Blizzard, rather than harping on minor tweaks to numbers within the game. This has been the biggest conflagration on the Forums since the RealID Fiasco, and it would behoove Blizzard to take a hard look at the product they're releasing, and the manner in which they're communicating with their player base.

NANOWRIMO!

2011-11-15T13:05:00.000-08:00

So, like many other in the Blogosphere, I've been participating in NaNoWriMo. I've fallen a bit off the pace, floundering at about 17k words, but I'm confident that I can catch up. If any of my readers would like to read an excerpt, or buddy me on the incredibly counter-intuitive NaNoWriMo site, here's the link.

http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/participants/the-renaissance-man/novels/a-soldier-s-tarot

Shared Topic: What Would You Bring Back?

2011-11-14T16:02:00.001-08:00

The only constant is change. This week's shared topic at Blog Azeroth has been put forward by Mia, of the Chronicles of Mia. She's wondering what changes have been made to the game that you'd like to see rolled back.

World of Warcraft is a persistant world, it goes through constant changes, abilities are changes, or removed entirely. Bosses are arbitrarily adjusted to be harder or easier. The technology of creating a ring to put keys on is suddenly lost to the world, like very mundane greek fire.

I thought about writing about some of the many changes that Blizzard made that I didn't quite agree with. The overhaul to Prot Pally AoE in Cataclysm, the loss of some great quest lines like the Scepter of the Shifting Sands, or Battle for Undercity, the aforementioned Keychain. There's a lot of things that Blizzard has changed over the years that diminshed the game somewhat in my eyes. It's tough to narrow it down to one thing. So I began to really look at why I played the game.

I raid, almost exclusively these days, but there really isn't enough going on in the raid game these days to keep me interested. I'm really not a fan of where the story's going these days, so that's not what's keepig me around. So it's neither the gameplay, nor the story that has me playing. It's the people. It's my raiders, my guildies, my friends, who keep me anchored to Azeroth.

Just as much as Blizzard's changes to the physical constraints of the game changes Azeroth, so too do the decisions of the player change the social landscape. I once wrote about what I sacrificed to get Legacy from a lousy trade chat guild to one of the best ten man raid teams on the server. If there's one change I could get, it wouldn't be bringing back quests, or Naxx40, or rolling back the Firelands nerfs. I would bring back all my friends who raided for me in the past and for some reason or another, can't do so anymore.

I want my best friend back in Azeroth, I was the best man at his wedding, and we still talk about the game and the guild when we get together. It's not the same without him.

I want the Illinois Trio back, who formed the backbone of both my ranged DPS and my tank healing team for almost the entirety of Wrath, and into T11.

I want Jenny and the Exiles back, who always gave the raid a youthful exuberance and always pulled their weight.

I want my Co-Tank from Wrath back, one of a very small number of tanks whom I trusted to handle the heavy lifting.

I want our slightly crazy feral druid back, he put up great numbers, but apparently can't open a pack of Hot Dogs without ending up in a psyche ward.

I want Heather, my mage, my confidant back.

I want the quiet DK who once topped the meters in naxx after getting hacked; he was nearly completely naked and was wielding a Runeblade of Demonstratable Power from the rep vendor, and he still pulled 3K DPS.

I want my silent canadian priest back, no matter how much I yo-yoed her between holy and shadow, she was always ready, willing, and able.

I want the guild drunk back, regardless of weather he was on his paladin, priest, warrior, or druid, his boistrousness in vent always brightened my day.

I want my original hunter back, who came with me from GDiR, to Mean Machine, to Legacy.

I want my DK Bro back. He reminded me of my college days.

I want them all back. They mean more to me than anything Blizzard could ever do to change this game.

Through My Interface: Day 8

2011-11-14T15:35:00.000-08:00

The next topic is Vacation Spots, this is another one of those kind of meta topics where the answer is not from a character's perspective, but the players. To be perfectly honest, it's kinda a placeholder because the next one is the one that really caught my attention. But that one's gonna have to wait for a while.

For me, personally, I'm a tropical person. It's the consequence of my Brazillian heritage. I'm a beast who thrives in the heat and humidity. At times I feel utterly out of place in the constant drizzle here in the Northwest. But at the same time, I'm much more urban than rural. I love being in the city, and all the opportunities it affords. I loved it when I lived in New Orleans, and I prefer to go to Seattle than stay on the Peninsula. So for me, the perfect place to vacation would be the Cape of Stranglethorn Vale. Beautiful beaches, beautiful weather, and a city right nearby. I always preferred Oahu to Maui for that exact reason. Maui might have the best snorkeling and hiking, but you just can't beat going from Waikiki to the heart of Honolulu in 15 minutes.

SSDD

2011-11-08T12:42:00.000-08:00

So, we're five months late on this particular bandwagon, but so what? It's an engaging fight, and it gives a cool title. With 6/7 heroic being a joke, and heroic rag being a monster, we decided to work on the fights in appropriate order of their difficulty. Which meant that we're back in T11 heroics looking for a challenge because the T12 heroics are too easy now. Good work on the tuning there, Blizz.

Anyways, it took us about a dozen pulls to get Heroic Nefarian down. The majority of them were wipes in phase two to various stuff. The first one was finding out that the cast time for blast nova is a lot quicker on heroic. We had one where someone only jumped nine yards out with explosive cinders. We had one where two DPS got behind on their prototype so when the first one died, they couldn't kill theirs before Nefarian killed them. We had four wipes where the melee DPS on a pillar got targeted with explosive cinders twice in a row, and we didn't have backup interrupters to deal with that because of our raid comp. While dealing with all those issues, we got into phase three a few times. The first time we got into phase three, two healers got MCed, and thought it would be a good idea to wait out the crackle because the raid was topped off. We lost the Nefarian tank to a crackle, melee, breath combo before the healers could catch back up. We had another wipe where the Nefarian tank didn't turn Nefarian at the right time, and my healer got breathed on.

Which brings us to the kill. As some of you may notice, there's some amazing parallels between the circumstances of this kill, and our first normal Nefarian kill. Unlike that fight, where the requirements of the fight simply taxed us to the limit, I have to take full responsibility for the near wipe here. In phase three, the bulk of the responsibility is on the off tank, if you kite correctly, then phase three is infinitely sustainable, but an offtank who fails at the kite will wipe the raid. The pattern of shadowblaze sparks hasn't been nerfed, like it was in normal so, so it very quickly devolves into a 5 second per spark frenzy of near constant movement and CD rotations. If you move too early, you'll use too much terrain in the kite and you'll run out of room before the old fire despawns. If you move to late you'll let the adds refill their energy and make life hell for your healer. This is something that I'm very good at. There's lots of little tricks to doing this well, not the least of which is learning how to leverage the Holy Wrath stun to give your healer some breathing room without leaving the adds in a position where they can be hit by fire. This was were I screwed up.

With Nefarian at about 14% health, we had things going swimmingly. I had reset the adds at every possible opportunity, and with them at 10 energy, I was perfectly positioned to do it again. The healers constantly chatter about weather or not they need to shift responsibilities, and our Holy Paladin asked the Shaman healing me if he needed to push over. The Shaman replied that everything was going fine and the adds were going to reset. I was pretty proud of myself because the shaman healing me was operating with his off spec, so if I was making it easy for him, than I was doing a great job. Then it happened. I accidently hit Holy Wrath instead of judgement. One misclick in an otherwise superb attempt. As soon as I hit it, I knew I had just screwed the raid. The adds were stunned just long enough for the shadowflame spark to land on them right before they would have reset. Their energy refilled, and they came right after me. I immediately called out in vent for additional healing as the last crackle went out. I survived the crackle, but the holy paladin had to prioritize the nefarian tank at that point, and as the stacks on the constructs mounted, the damage because unhealable for my shaman. I died with Nefarian at about 6% health, and things played out much as they did with our normal kill. Frost Rings and Earth Elementals held the adds at bay while the DPS finished the boss off, to my profound relief.

It really illustrates how much pressure is put on certain players within the raid on encounters. One misclick killed me, and damn near killed the raid. If I had pressed it 2 seconds earlier or later, pretty much one GCD, I would have been fine. This is something that's been around for a while. Magtheridon Cube clickers, Vashj Core chuckers, Kael'thas shield tanks, dispellers on Mu'ru, it's part of life as a raider, even on the somewhat less than bleeding edge.

Stat Inflation: The Consequences of the "Squish" and How to Avoid It

2011-11-04T18:25:00.000-07:00

Ghostcrawler just released another blog post. This time it was concerned with stat inflation on gear. The stats on gear have been growing exponentially, players are now doing 15X the DPS they were doing at the end of BC. Item levels have virtually exploded, and Ghostcrawler was kind enough to provide us with a graph displaying the problem.

Ghostcrawler has proposed two solutions to this problem. The first would be pretty much hacking a couple zeros off everything. I'll call this the "Metric Solution", instead of 20,000 DPS, you're doing 20 kilodeeps. This is pretty much already being done by players, hell, we make it even shorter, it's just 20k DPS in the vernacular of the player.

The second solution proposed is a "squish" of item levels. Essentially readjusting every item in the game to work within a truncated scale, and adjusting every mob in the game based on the now reduced power of the player. The crab even blessed us with a graph showing how that ideal might look.

Personally, I find the fact that on the squish scale Sunwell items would be worse than Naxx40 gear, to be a hilarious example of why the proposed squish is a bad idea.

A lot of people blame the advent of Hard Modes in Wrath to be a major cause of the inflation. But that's not true. The problem has been a design flaw that's been Incorporated into the game since at least the leveling of Wrath. This is not a problem created by the Raiders, it is a problem created by the levelers. Progress between tiers in an expansion has been pretty even. That's not to say that it's been perfect, it could be tuned slightly better, but the overwhelming problem is in the jumps across the leveling between expansions. Molten Core T1 was ilevel 66, BWL T2 was 76, Naxx40 T3 was 92. That's an average of 13 ilevels between upgrades, and 26 ilevels across 3 tiers. T4 was ilevel 120, T5 was 133, T6 was 146 with some Sunwell peices reaching 154. Once again, 13 ilevels between upgrades with an 8 ilevel jump to Sunwell, which could be argued acted as a precursor to the idea of Hard Modes. This amounted to a 34 ilevel jump. Enter Wrath, and 25 man T7 was 213, T8 was 226, T9 25 normal was 245, T10 normal was 264. The gap between the first two tiers was again the standard 13 ilevels, the last two tiers took 19 point jumps, which was a tier and a half, and that could be attributed by the advent of hard modes proper. Going to the max of 284 for HLK25 gear, and 25 man raiders were looking at a gear span of 71 ilevels across 4 tiers. Come Cataclysm, the entry level raids were dropping 359 gear, and Deathwing Heroic looks to be dropping 404 gear, a 45 ilevel span across three tiers.

Combining the ilevel spans hit at the endgame, and you get 176 ilevels dedicated to the endgame which is the overwhelming majority of the time spent in the game. Less than half of the item levels in the game are dedicated to the content that players spend close to 90% of their game time playing.

The flaws in this line of thinking becomes apparent when you look at the ilevel distribution in Cataclysm gear. Players wearing HICC gear went from ilevel 277 in ICC to ilevel 359 in Normal T11. That's a 82 ilevel jump. That's a bigger jump than a player going from Naxx 10 to ICC 25H. Here's the rub though, people spent the better part of two years going from T7 to T10. They spent the better part of 3 days going from ICC 25H to T11 normals. Think about that for a moment. Blizzard took the statistical equivalent of the ENTIRE WRATH RAIDING PROGRESSION into the cataclysm leveling content. This creates several problems, not the least of which is stat inflation. Another design flaw apparent in the first graph is the launch point of Cataclysm. It picks up right where ICC heroic raiding left off. This creates several problems. People get upset about "Green becoming the new Purple", which has been a complaint since the inception of BC. Stat inflation becomes much more pronounced. The third is that the quality of the leveling experience for players who weren't raiding heavily at the end of the expansion drops off because they face a massive gulf in between the gear they were able to attain while leveling in the previous expansion, and the gear that the new expansion presumes you have. A friend of mine actually wrote a fairly prescient article for WoW insider detailing his struggles to level his rogue into Cataclysm content due to it not having the high levels of gear that his shaman main had.

This is what Blizzard needs to do to address the problem. They need to accept that high end raid gear will last until the level cap of the next expansion. The player who possesses 277 gear going into Cataclysm didn't care what kind of clown suit the designers had thrown together for levelers. They wanted to get into raiding, and quickly. Raiders took their T3 into Kara, they took their T6 into Naxx, but their T10 didn't make it out of Deepholme. I don't know what possessed the devs to break with the tried and true formula, but, like many things in Cataclysm, they took a gamble and they lost. What they need to do is to focus on keeping future expansions clean. Level 90 heroics shouldn't offer anything more than 6 ilevels higher than Heroic Deathwing gear, and T14 normals shouldn't be more than 20 ilevels higher. MoP quest rewards should begin in the vicinity of 333, and push up to the high 390s. That way players who are leveling characters clean through will find an undiminished leveling experience going from one expansion to the other, and Raiders find an undiminished experience going from one raid teir to the next. By following a strict formula for ilevel expansion across tiers and across expansions, they prevent the issues that have arisen from letting things get away from them. What Blizzard really needs, more than anything else, is self restraint.

Through My Interface: Day 7

2011-10-31T02:08:00.000-07:00

Today's topic is "Screenshot of the Year". Saz posted an esoteric shot of multiple Ancients in Darkshore. I don't think I have anything that really stands on it's own as an artistic piece, what I do have is a screenshot that frames a story quite well.

Legacy raids with a quiet desperation at times. We've made a history forged in enrage timers and dead tanks. I used to have a screenshot from our first Algalon kill that shows that if you kill him after his enrage, even his loot chest turns red. But in the last year, nothing shows our typical progression mindset like Nefarian. We had been working on Nefarian in earnest for about two and a half raid nights, probably close to seven hours of progression.

One of the things about learning Nef is that it's a classic end tier fight in terms of learning. You wipe, wipe, wipe in phase one. Tanks learn their positioning, your DPS learns how to handle the constructs, the healers learn how to adjust to the tail lash, and eventually you get that down, and you get to enter phase two. After a few wipes where you get the pleasure of figuring out who can't find water collision in their settings, you actually get to see phase two, and your healers cry tears of blood, and everyone curses the latency of the melee DPS responsible for interrupts. Eventually you cut your way into phase three, and here comes the fun part, the add tank (read: Me) becomes almost solely responsible for a groups success or failure. The spotlight can be a harsh mistress, and every time that you fail to drop the stacks of the ravenous pack of constructs, the disappointment in the air becomes every bit as palpable as the excitement people feel about being this close to a kill.

Eventually things start to click, and you start to get closer and closer to the prize. 25%, 15%, 8% past the last crackle, and then you wipe in phase two again. But the attempt after that, the 20% crackle kills my healer, panic ensues. We don't have time for another pull, and it's the last day of the lockout. Some want to farm another week of gear, others want to get it over with, but everyone dreads another night grinding away with Nefarian's mocking laughter echoing in our ears. We'd spent our entire raid week working on him, and the very notion of coming away from that week with nothing is humiliating. With no healer on the add tank, and no chance for a reset before the next crackle, The CD I was saving to keep me alive through the next crackle gets blown just to keep me alive to get there. As a placid voice from DBM counts down to the next crackle, I know that the voice is marking the moments to my death with infuriating calm. 3... 2...1... I throw up my raid wall, one last gift to my raid, the last full measure of protection I can give them. The crackle rips the life from my paladin and sets the constructs I had been occupying upon my raid.

Never have I been prouder of my raid than in those final moments. Everyone gave everything they could. Earth Elementals came out, traps, rings of frost. Our Holy Paladin, knowing the stakes, taunted four of the constructs and led them away from the raid while the resto shaman burned through his mana like the world was ending.

9%. The Earth Elementals are killed, and ring of frost ends.

8%. The holy paladin's game of keep away ends poorly for him.

7%. The resto shaman gets mauled.

6%. The Feral Druid tanking Nef takes a breath/melee combo and is put to rest.

5%. burn, Burn, BURN!

4%. Our hunter's deterrence wears off, and with a flash of the dragon's claws, he's sent to the ground.

3%. The ret paladin bubble taunts Nef to buy a few more seconds, once the fixate wears off the dragon turns his baleful breath upon the mage, before turning back to the now vulnerable paladin.

2%. Snicker-snack goes the dragon's sharp claws. Two little raiders left.

1%. Our professional hunter flies across the room on wings of flame. He always said that engineering would save the raid one day. As Nefarian gives chase, our Enhance Shaman tears into his flanks with unrelenting desperation, marching through fires and flames, heedless of his own health. Nefarian catches up to the hunter, who throws up his deterrence. Nefarian rages against the hunter's defenses, waiting for a gap to open. 3... 2...

0%. The dragon gives up the ghost with the two remaining raiders left at under 20% health. There's exultation in vent, there's happiness, of course. Underneath it all, though, is relief, and a measure of disbelief. Did we just pull it out again? Why, yes. Yes, we did.

The Cake is a Lie, The Dance is a Cake.

2011-10-28T00:03:00.000-07:00

Therefore, the dance is a lie. One of the complaints that's been going around the blogosphere of Azeroth the past few weeks has been the notion of the difficulty in the firelands tier being due to this new breed of "Dance" style bosses. Bosses which mercilessly rewarded a step out of line, a strike out of rhythm, with a dirt nap, and dire consequences for your raid. One of the foremost proponents of the Dance Theory has been Gevlon, of the Greedy Goblin. In a post he made a week ago, he railed against the Dance as "Inaccessible" and not "Friendly to Casuals". He brings up Shannox as an example.

I've yet to see a player who finishes Shannox alive in the first few times he sees it. I've yet to see a new tank who doesn't do atrocious movement on Shannox wiping the raid. And it's just damn Shannox, the first boss available in Firelands.

This is what got me looking at the complaints with a much more critical eye. When someone mentions tanks, it attracts my gaze like Frodo donning The One Ring invites the gaze of the dark lord of Mordor. A new tank making a mistake that wipes the raid? Ummmm... that's "new"? Pretty much every raid encounter in the game, if the tank makes a catastrophic mistake, it's a wipe. Can't stance dance on Nightbane? You're dead. Didn't Shield Block Shear? You're a corpse. Missed the CD on Plasma Blast? Taste the floor! Didn't manage orbs on Blood Council? The floor is a dish best served cold. Can't drop your stack on Shannox! At least the floor is warm there. Sometimes you can pull of a miraculous deterrence while a battlerez gets the tank back into the fight. But most of the time you're going to be listening to the shrill voices of your mages trying to convince everyone to die before their invisibility gets broken. If the tank fucks up, it's a wipe. This is not new. This is not Sparta. This is raiding!

Having deconstructed that aspect of his anecdote, I looked at the others. Gevlon has yet to see a player finish Shannox without dying on their first several pulls of the boss. Really? A non tank in that fight has only two ways that they can get themselves killed on that fight. They stood in a trap, which takes 5 seconds to arm, and DBM howls like a banshee when one gets dropped within 10 yards of you. The other way is that they someone wandered off to Buttfuck (It's pronounced byoot-fick), Egypt and got hit with face rage. These are not mechanical problems. They are not anything that is new to raiding. There are two things that cause these errors. You either have a bad player, one who lacks situational awareness to avoid placing themselves in that situation. The other possibility is you have a bad raid leader. One who does not properly explain their strategy in a clear and concise manner. On normal mode for a DPS player, Shannox boils down to: Kill Mob A, Kill Mob B, Kill Mob C, don't stand in the fire. We're talking about a veritable two step in terms of raiding complexity. I shudder at the thought of what happens when his raid attempts Cuban Salsa.

The claim is that every encounter in firelands requires some sort of esoteric ballroom skill. Two Step on Shannox, a stately waltz on Rhyolith, Meringue on Baleroc, Charleston on Beth'tilac, Swing on Alysrazor, the Majordomo Mambo, and the Ragnaros Tango. Without a complete mastery of all these disparate techniques, which have never been required in the game before, you will wipe, and wipe, and wipe, until your second left foot gets loose and your raid gets funky.

This is not the case. Lets look at the primary mechanics on each encounter.

Shannox: Traps. They arm in five seconds, and either do a good amount of damage or freeze you and force your raid to break you out. Mimiron mines, initially armed immediately, one shot clothies, and blended in with the floor. Hodir Flash Freeze, stand on the snow within a 4 second warning, or be frozen and force your raid to break you out.

Beth'Tilac: Split the raid between topside and bottomside. Happened in Kalecgos and Yogg. Jump through a small opening to change position, or die. It was worse on Yogg, make it to the portal, or get mind control, and actively harm your raid, and force them to kill you. No battlerez, only lunacy. Algalon did it too, only the other side was filled with untanked monsters that wanted to eat you. Admitidly, that could happen on Beth too. Meteors. Every void zone ever.

Rhyolith: Designate DPS to judiciously split DPS between multiple targets so as to ensure that raid damage is manageable. That's the Algalon star wrangler's job description.

Alysrazor: Tank DPS matters! Tank DPS always matters, tell your tanks to stop being lazy motherfuckers. Flying! Chasing small spell effects in a 3D environment, good old Valithria! Tornadoes! Spell effects that travel in predictable concentric circles, phase one yogg.

Baleroc: Soaking a debuff that does more damage the longer you have it? Wrack, Burn, that plague on putricide.

Majordomo: Soaking orbs, see Baleroc shards. Countdown debuff that blows up everyone near you? All the way back to molten core, Baron Geddon's Living Bomb. Forcing phase changes through player movement? That's actually a new one, but it boils down to stacking and spreading, which is a staple of many boss encounters. The difficulty of the mechanic actually falls solely on the head of the raid leader, determining when the switches need to be made.

Rag: Magma traps. Knocked up and need to mitigate fall damage? Conclave of the Wind brown platform ultimate. Adds need to be stopped before reaching a certain point? Jegoda Shadowseeker, too bad everyone skips her. Ground catches on fire? Every boss has fire on the ground. Wave of fire emanating from a central point? Kilnara's black wave of fail. Adds that need to be AoE'd down. Freya lashers, Maloriak Aberrations. Adds that need to be kited and explode if they catch you? Mimiron Bomb Bots.

Aside from the very cool phase transition mechanics on Majordomo, there really
aren't any new mechanics on any of the fights in firelands. The "Dance" is something that has been around since the beginning of raiding. Sometimes counter intuitive mechanics have been included. Who remembers the Shade of Aran chant? It's before my time, but I've heard it before. "I will not move when the flame wreath is cast or the raid blows up." This shit is older than BC. Hell, the term "Dance" was first applied to Heigan the Unclean in Naxx40, and he was considered one of the easiest bosses in the instance. Level 60 bosses required dancing skills. Why is this tier suddenly different?

Failure to dance is caused by two things. Chronic failure is indicative of a bad player. One who lacks the situational awareness to note the a portal to the gaping maw of hell is opening under his feet, and he should probably move elsewhere. However, the persistent failure of every new player in a raid is indicative of a poor raid leader. If you cannot articulate the strategy that you want to implement, then obviously the raid will struggle to realize your ill defined vision.

There are three steps to making a clean entry into a raid. The individual must do a little research on the encounter. Go to Learn2raid.com and watch the video for the encounter, or even just read the dungeon journal that Blizz has kindly handed to every player. The raid leader must then come up with a viable strategy, and clearly communicate everyone's roles and responsibilities. It is then back on the individuals to execute the raid leader's instructions. These have been the steps that every raider has taken as they entered raiding.

I took those steps, and chronicled them on my first organized raid outside of
Vault of Archavon. Without ever having raided anything beyond the original earth watcher, I went and watched the videos on all 13 bosses in Naxxramas, my raid leader did a good job of explaining what he needed me to do (except he initially told me not to taunt on Gluth, but nobody's perfect.), and I executed what he needed me to do. Did we one shot every boss? No, but we one shot most of them, and we didn't wipe more than twice on any of them. The kicker, over half the raid got the achievement for clearing naxx when we downed KT. It can be done. I know, because I did it. I saw a raid leader lead a raid that he had never cleared before, and do it flawlessly. Did we catch lightning in a bottle? Perhaps. But there's no reason why a pug shouldn't be able to jump into a run that has a boss on farm and not screw up if we could tank a mostly fresh raid and do a full clear.

Through My Interface: Day 6

2011-10-27T23:44:00.000-07:00

Day six instructs me to find a lyric/line/poem that best describes my character.

STAND TALL AND SHAKE THE HEAVENS!

It doesn't matter how big you are or how hard you hit, Dämmerung will stop you. You will break yourself upon his defenses as a wave breaks upon the rocky shore, and when you fall and recede, Dämmerung will still be standing.

Missteps in Cataclysm: Misfired Story Arcs, Blizzard's Failures at Understanding the Medium of a Narrative

2011-10-27T00:32:00.000-07:00

A recent interview with Tom Chilton has revealed Blizzard's intentions for the opening event for the Mists of Pandaria expansion. The Horde is going to destroy Theramore. This will be the next in a long line of defeats for the Alliance at the hands of the Horde, dating back the very first zone of Wrath of the Lich King. This has created a significant uproar on the official forums, with over 150 pages of posts debating the merits of this choice of action. Many players, and the CM Zarhym, have begged the players understanding to allow blizzard to tell their story in what they feel is the most effective manner. I feel that this choice of action is the next step in a line of missteps that dates back to Cataclysm Beta that shows a fundamentally flawed understanding of the requirements of storytelling within the constraints of the WoW model.

In any immersive model of story telling there are three fundamental rules, while there are niche games that flaunt some of these rules, WoW is not one of them. You don't build 13 million subscribers by aiming at niches.

Rule 1: The majority of people do not like playing the villain.

This is evidenced by the outcry from Horde players over their sudden turn towards Saturday morning cartoon style villainy. The torture quests, pretty much the entirety of the new storylines for the Forsaken, and major horde questlines in stonetalon have caused quite the uproar, and while there are some players who revel in the role of the villain, most players who have commented on the change have found the Horde's turn to an unabashedly evil faction to be disturbing.

Rule 2: The majority of people do not like playing the victim.

This is evidenced by the amount of rage that's been emanating from the Alliance players in the aftermath of Blizzcon. The Horde has inflicted a chain of atrocities on the Alliance dating back to Howling Fjord. Alliance players have too often wound up the designated losers and through no choice of their own get handed defeat after defeat. With the leaked plans to raze the Alliance's non capital portal city, and primary port to the continent of Kalimdor, there doesn't seem to be an end in sight for their suffering.

Rule 3: No one likes inconclusive endings.

Cliffhangers and Bolivian Army endings are all well and good in passive media such as movies and books. It's a legitimate tool to craft the narrative. However, in immersive media, the hero is you, and when they're dissatisfied, you're dissatisfied. Dissatisfaction is not a good emotion to try and elicit from people you're trying to get to play the game. This can easily be seen from the frustration that stemmed from the ending of the Throne of the Tides instance. Neptulon gets kidnapped by the Kraken, and when pressed on the issue at Blizzcon, Chris Metzen merely remarked "What happens in Throne stays in Throne. There are no plans to continue that storyline." No one was satisfied with that answer.

These rules apply to the overwhelming majority of games. There are also a three rules that apply to persistent story driven dual faction worlds like World of Warcraft.

Rule 1: Victories over player characters cannot be final.

The day either the Horde or the Alliance actually win the war is the day WoW dies. Everyone knows this. All storylines must be sustainable. The player might wipe, but the boss is still there waiting for him, the lockouts always reset. Likewise, aside from the inconclusive end to Throne of the Tides, even on the quests where the player is duped into helping the enemy, you still come out on top. You help Gorefiend break out? Kill him in BT. You help Loken capture Thorim? Kill Loken in HoL, Kill Thorim's mount and free Thorim in Ulduar. You helped Drakuru enslave DTK? Kill him in Zul'Drak. Play directly into the Lich Kings hands? Deliver 25 champions to become his strongest warriors in history? A dead king will return to break the grip of final death upon you. That's how far the story will go to protect you. The story always has you win in the end.

Rule 2: Both factions must be interesting and engaging to play.

Zarhym mentioned this specifically in his commentary about the debacle surrounding Theramore. The player base generally splits down between faction lines fairly close to 50/50 overall in terms of total population. Alienating a significant portion of either faction would be a catastrophic loss on Blizzard's part.

Rule 3: The story must unfold in a manner that is possible within the budgetary constraints of the project.

This is the one that a lot of players forget about when they make outlandish demands of where they think the story should go. Zones that were just recently updated will not be overhauled again to update the conflict in real time. Unfortunately, this does lead to a lot of situations like the Wolfheart novel, where the Alliance breaks the back of the Horde assault into Ashenvale. This, unfortunately, is completely invisible within the game world. It will probably never be seen, and as such, it doesn't motivate the majority of players.

Thus far, Blizzard has made several major mistakes with the direction of the narrative. They have failed to make the Alliance a very compelling faction to play. A lot of effort went into the horde storylines in cataclysm. Noticeably less effort went into the Alliance storylines. Goblins get a cool starting area, and once they leave it, they go to Azshara, a zone custom built to continue the goblin experience. Worgen players get a cool starting area, and once they leave it, they're shunted off to Darnasus where they follow the same story pattern as the Night Elf players, aside from a couple minor quests, there's no Worgen designed content in the main game at all. Even where the Alliance has new content, it's a drastically different tone that those the Horde enjoy. A new undead player moving into Silverpine Forest will enter a phased Gilneas and get to go toe to toe with the 7th Legion, the Elite soldiers of the Alliance, and win. A new human player goes to Westfall and gets to see five years of work on Sentinel Hill get burned to the ground by a homeless mob in five minutes. It's a well done storyline, and it does a good job introducing the new Deadmines, although it doesn't actually give you any quests to go into Deadmines, strangely. But at the same time, where the Forsaken player gets a very empowering storyline, Human players get a very demoralizing storyline.

The Horde gets two new storylines where they win WSG by capturing Silverwing Post, and win AV by nuking the Stormpike Brigade. The Alliance gets a new storyline about how they lost WSG. In Twilight Highlands the Horde get several storylines about taking the fight to the Alliance in the new region. The Alliance gets quests about the Horde trying to steal, or in some cases, simply burn, our beer. Even in the new region where the Alliance was supposed to be taking the fight to the Horde, in South Barrens, the Alliance players arive to find Camp Turajo in flames, and we get quests explaining about how the General didn't intend for it to be such a bloodbath, and then we go arrest criminals trying to loot the ruins. This is framed by a run in with a Horde general who wears Alliance Worgen scalps as a hat, and the Horde assassinating the general who tried to help them and blowing up the oldest Dwarf settlement on the continent. Even when the Alliance is supposed to win, they wind up getting guilt tripped and defeated.

This train of events makes the Alliance perspective a very dull one to play through, and is a problem via rule 2 of persistent game narratives. Blizzard has lost nearly a million subscriptions since Cataclysm came out, and I'd be willing to bet a good chunk of those subscriptions were Alliance players who simply didn't like the leveling experience.

This leads into the second major mistake that Blizzard has made with the narrative. Rather than focusing the story on a villain, which has been the standard throughout the game thus far, they have decided to make the conflict between the Alliance and Horde the focus of the upcoming expansion. This is a mistake for several reasons. First a faction conflict centered story is a model that has been tried before, and failed many times. Warhammer online tried it, and their subscription numbers plummeted to the point where the game had to go free to play. All Points Bulletin tried it, and the game folded completely within 6 months. That's because making the focus on the conflict between two player factions becomes a lame duck due to rules 1 and 2. Niether faction can actually lose the war. The Horde isn't going to burn Stormwind down like they did in WC1, nor are the Alliance going to wipe the Horde out like they did in WCII. It's going to end in a stalemate. That's not a major issue when people are focused on the Burning Legion invasion, or the war on the Lich King, or the fact that Deathwing just rearranged the face of Azeroth. But when you put it front and center, it's like watching a show in HD TV, you can see every crack and flaw in the actor's face.

The razing of Theramore will exacerbate this problem because of the way it interacts with several missteps that Blizzard made in the Cataclysm Beta. There were three ways that a faction could lose territory in the Cataclysm. It could be destroyed in cataclysm, like Kargath or Auberdine. It could be seized by a third party, like the Defias in Westfall, or the Grimtotem in Stonetalon. The final method was it could be destroyed by the opposing faction, like Southshore, or Camp Turajo. Southshore in particular is important because all the way through the Alpha and most of Beta, the story was that Southshore was taken out by a tidal wave in the Catalysm. Come release, it turns out that that was changed in favor of the Horde and their penchant for biological weapons. Instead of losing something to Deathwing, the villain we all know we get to kill, they lost it to the Horde, whom we all know we won't get to wipe out. That became one more notch in the Horde's belt for things that they've siezed from the Alliance. It's become a very long list, and the list of things the Alliance took from the Horde is a very short one. This gives the Horde a lot of momentum going into MoP.

Zarhym has asked players to look at the Razing of Theramore as the opening move of the war, and many players have likened it to the Alliance's Pearl Harbor. It's supposed to fit in the context of the story as the impetus for the Alliance to go to war. The problem with that is that the War has been here for going on 4 years and 3 expansions now. This isn't so much Pearl Harbor as it is Dunkirk.

The WWII references being thrown around within the thread are very telling. A lot of games are set in WWII. It's a very compelling story. It is however, a story that cannot be replicated in WoW. In WWII, the US turned the tide after Pearl Harbor at the Battle of Midway, and pushed on to purge the Japanese home islands with nuclear fire. Japan was disarmed, occupied for years, and has American soldiers stationed there almost 70 years after the fact. Likewise, in Europe, after being pushed out of Europe at Dunkirk, the British held on for two years until the 2nd Battle of El-Alamein and the entry of the US and USSR into the war allowed them to turn the tide on the german war machine. Germany was literally hung, drawn, and quartered. The leadership of the government was tried and executed, the infrastructure of the nation was gutted to the point where tens of thousands of Germans starved in 1946 because the country couldn't feed itself, and the nation itself was partitioned into 4 quarters that were each given to a different allied power to rule over. In both theaters, WWII is the story of the heros being pushed to the brink by unadulterated villains, and overcoming all odds to win a complete victory. People eat stories like that up.

The problem with ramping the stakes in the Alliance/Horde conflict up to WWII levels is rule 1. Because neither faction can actually lose the conflict, a WWII ending is impossible. The orcs aren't going back to internment camps, and the humans aren't fleeing the remains of SW again. It'd be the death of the game. So ultimately, the best we can hope for is a WWI armistice style ending. Do you ever wonder why there are so few games set in WWI? Because it's a terrible story. Millions dead in a futile effort that left no winner, just Germany sulking for 20 years, and the allied powers becoming complacent. No one was happy at the end of WWI. As such it's a weak model to emulate.

This leaves Blizzard in a very rough position. Right now the Alliance looks uninspired and defeated, and the Horde looks unstoppable. Because we know the Alliance can't actually lose, they're going to have to turn the tables. Because Blizzard needs to make the Alliance look interesting, it can't be the result of the internal strife storylines that have been running through the Horde as of late. If the Alliance gets saved by Vol'jin assassinating Garrosh, or Thrall returning to demote the rash warchief, the Alliance is pretty much permanently emasculated. So the Alliance has to come up with a legitimate military strategy that will allow them to overcome the momentum built up by the Horde. This in and of itself presents another challenge. While the British went from the brink of Annihilation during the Battle of Britain to breaking the German line at El-Alamein, once El-Alamein took place, the Allies used their new found momentum to crush the German nation. Obviously, this can't happen, so something is going to have to happen to stop the Alliance who will be even more unstoppable than the Horde is now. At this point, we're going to be treading into rediculous Deus Ex Machina territory. Like Rhonin riding on sentient raptors or Varian having a repeat of his unfortunate bout with mercy at the end of the second war levels of unlikeliness. Maybe Thrall shows up in a giant robot forged from the remaining scales of Deathwing and the Shards of Frostmourne? I don't know what it'll be, I just know that it'll be hackneyed, unconvincing, and a complete ass-pull on Blizz's part.

Blizzard already missed the timing to make an actual compelling story out of the conflict. They were setting it up all throughout Wrath, and if they had made a straight up open war, rather than this one sided beating, then they could limit the momentum of either side, and ensure that any actions taken were beleivable. Both sides would be convinced they could win, and both sides would be afraid they might suffer a strategic loss. The Forsaken push through Hillsbrad and into the Arathi Highlands, Danath Trollbane returns, and with help from the Wildhammer Dwarve from the Hinterlands, he reestablishes control of Stromguard, pushes the Horde back into Hillsbrad, and holds the line at Thoradin's wall. While the Alliance would be taking the worse of it in the grand scheme of things, but they'd have a heroic defense to point to. The Horde would be asking just how they were going to break through the defense, rather than their current situation where the big question they're asking is why exactly they stopped at Arathi. Most importantly, it would leave Blizzard in a stable position. There isn't any need for topping things. It's believable that the war bogs down on those lines. The Horde feels good for having taken territory in Hillsbrad, The Alliance feels good about having their hero return and securing Arathi.

It's not too late for Blizzard to repair their flawed course of action. Throw us a Sunwell style emergency tier to tide us over after 4.3, and build an actual villain for MoP, write an opener that doesn't impart more momentum to runaway characters, and work hard to ensure that they don't leave one faction in the dust again.

15 Days Through My Interface: Day 5

2011-09-24T00:08:00.000-07:00

So, day five brings us to titles. What's my favorite title?

I use The Argent Defender for several reasons. First, it matches a prot paladin perfectly. Second, it's the only tier thus far where we finished first on the server, even if it was a pretty mediocre tier. Third, it's extremely rare. Not server first rare, certainly not Scarab Lord rare, but it's rare enough that people ask me where I got it.

Starcaller holds a special place in my heart as well, but it doesn't work as well as Argent Defender does.

Difficulty, the Skill Gap, Blanket Nerfs, and the Exodus of Players.

2011-09-17T17:03:00.001-07:00

About a week ago, Blizzard unleashed a one week warning that the Firelands was going to be hit with a nerf akin to the 20% nerf that rendered all T11 normal content completely trivial. This has erupted into a bit of a fireball in the blogging world. People are drawing lines on all sides. Some are saying that nothing should be nerfed, some are saying that everything should be nerfed, some are saying that heroics should be left alone but normals nerfed. It's kind of a mess.

Personally, I'm looking at the long game here. Consistency should be Blizzards watchword. For the most part since T8, Blizzard has done a good job of putting out content that has been fairly even in terms of difficulty. Difficulty at the bottom of the instance, and difficulty at the top has been fairly consistent; the major tuning factor is one of throughput. Going from Flame Leviathan in 213 gear, to Beasts of Northrend in 226 gear, to Lord Marrowgar in 245 gear, to Halfus Wyrmbreaker in 346 gear, to Shannox in 359 gear isn't a serious step up in difficulty anywhere along the line. Likewise, Yogg+0 in 239 gear, H Anub in 258 gear, HLK in 277 gear, Sinestra in 372 gear, and H Rag in 392 gear, despite more stratification than the opening bosses, doesn't include any ridiculous outliers in terms of difficulty. Content is not getting more difficulty, nor is is getting easier. They're remaining fairly constant. This is a good thing, because it gives people realistic impressions of the progression that they can expect across tiers.

In the same vein as consistency is avoiding creating major skill gaps. Encounters that exist as progression bottlenecks by being significantly more difficult than any of the encounters previous hurt the morale of a group. Going from clearing a new boss each week to be stuck on a single encounter for over a month is a recipe for destroying a raid group. This is one of the reasons why Blackwing Lair was a terribly designed instance. Going from Molten Core where the majority of the bosses were simpler than any five man boss in Cataclysm to Razorgore and Vaelestraz, who were as difficult as Ragnaros, was a huge skill gap. Further exacerbating the issue was that Razorgore and Vael weren't only the first two bosses in BWL, they were the first two encounters. There wasn't even trash you could farm. Because of this, even after the release of BWL, groups that couldn't down Rag had nowhere to go. Vaelestraz got the reputation as the game's first "Guild Breaker" boss. this is the hazard of encounters like Lady Vashj, Kael'thas, Bruttalus, Mu'ru, and Heroic Beasts of Northrend. These bosses all represented significant skill gaps, and raid groups died trying to surmount these obstacles.

Blizzard has also experimented recently with blanket nerfs. Rather than targeted adjustments to bring a specific encounters to the degree of difficulty they intend and letting groups progress at their own rate, blizzard has simply chopped the whole instance down a peg. This began with an adjustment during patch 3.0.2 to all BC raid content, which was justified in that changes to mechanics, specifically group dancing, and multiple potions, made a significant dent in a group's throughput. Perhaps they went a little overboard, but the intent was to counterbalance nerfs to all players. The first true blanket nerf came in ICC with the Strength of Wrynn buff. Starting at 5%, and eventually cranking it's way to 30%, it was built as a means to keep guilds interested in ICC during the longest year in raiding history. The next blanket nerf came when 4.2 dropped, and Blizzard emasculated T11 normal content. Now blizzard has announced it's intentions to conduct another blanket nerf, this time on all T12 content, before the next patch is even on the PTR.

These blanket nerfs give short term progression to groups. However, that progression comes at a cost to the long term health of the game. As I said earlier, consistency should be Blizzard's goal. These blanket nerfs destroy that consistency. Even worse, in destroying that consistency, they create nightmarish skill gaps in between tiers. By the time the 30% buff rolled around in ICC, any competent group could roll into ICC, and push fairly deep into heroics. When T11 rolled around, these same groups expected to make similar process in T11, only to find that without the 30% buff, they're languishing in normal mode for months. This wasn't consistent with the progress they came to expect in T10 content. This frustrated them, and the fireworks flew. Guilds across servers exploded as T11 held a cruel mirror up to their actual ability. Many of these guilds were decent groups that in previous tiers had cleared the instance on normal and pushed into the easier heroics while content was current. However, the time spent in ICC warped their expectations, and destroyed their enjoyment of the game. Because of this, the game hemorrhaged subscriptions a few few months into T11. Blizzard didn't learn from this design failure, and is planning to repeat it again with T12 content.

Inevitably, not everyone will be able to clear raid content when it's current. It takes both skill and commitment, to one degree or another. A less skilled guild that raids for 6 nights a week might progress further than a skilled group that raids, 2 nights a week. But that's because their commitment is much greater. However, the distribution of skill in this game varies heavily, and anyone who spends any sort of time running random pugs in LFD will notice that there are people at level 85 who do DPS that's low by Burning Crusade standards. It's impossible to create content that's capable of being cleared by people that bad, that remains marginally challenging to the current group of raiders. A realistic appraisal of your groups skill and commitment is vital in creating realistic expectations, and realistic expectations are vital for the long term enjoyment of the game. If it took you four months to down nefarian, you should expect a commensurate amount of time to down Rag.

Perhaps Blizzard thinks that the new "Derp" mode, as some of my guildies are taking to calling the new LFR tool scheduled for 4.3, will offset the skill gap. That guilds that made it to 7/7 normal in firelands and 1/7 heroic would be satisfied with being 7/7 derp mode and 5/7 normal. I doubt this is true. Getting inferior gear and no achievements will simply leave them feeling inferior, and still thinking that they're a group that should be raiding in heroic mode. Inconsistency will wound this game.

Through My Interface: Day 4

2011-09-16T17:38:00.000-07:00

Today's the Greatest Accomplishment. It's more of a meta topic, than an RP topic. As always, my accomplishments in game are defined by raiding.

Downing Firefighter was the first brutal welcome to raiding moment. It became the moment that calcified my group into progression raiders, rather than people who give up after the first 200 wipes. To this day I still hear Mimiron screaming "Medic" when I see someone die on my raid frames.

The PvE TO&E

2011-09-05T00:34:00.000-07:00

My previous post about why tanks are in such short supply got me thinking about the organization of PvE activities in World of Warcraft. I see a lot of parallels between the way people approach WoW, and my army company. The Army uses a document called a Table of Organization and Equipment to show how many men, trained in what skills, and with what equipment, are needed for a unit of any given tasking. I've used a similar document in my time as a raid leader to map out what the guild needed to field a functioning raid group. X main spec tanks, Y main spec healers, Z melee DPS, so on, and so forth. But looking at the parallels between the TO&E for PvE content, and the TO&E for an infantry company yield's some interesting results.

DPS> The Private: They are the rank and file which make up the bulk of every unit, think of them like pawns in chess, every one in a while they do something spectacular, but most of the time they're just there.

Healers> The Support Element: These are the medics, FiSTers, the Truck Drivers, and the other support elements that make it possible for the combat arms (Read DPS and Tanks) to do their jobs correctly. Their goals are defined by the combat arms' execution of the mission, rather than the mission itself. While tanks and DPS have scripted goals and tasks that need to be completed during an encounter, healers are constantly reacting to the human factor. Healing the same encounter between two different groups can be an entirely different experience. I've run BHs where the tank took less damage than anyone else in the raid, and it threw the healers for a loop.

Tanks> the NCOs: Tanks, as I mentioned earlier, are the leaders in the PvE community. They set the tactical pace of a group, and determine how to attack each pull.

The Raid Leader> The Company Commander: The raid leader is ultimately responsible for the tactical elements of the largest scale PvE to be found in the game. Far more complex than those found in 5 mans, raid content requires careful planning and execution, just as company missions require more planning than squad level operations.

The Guild Leader> The Flag Officer: The Guild Leader is responsible for the strategic goals of the guild, of which the raid team is a subset. He might be directing the goals of multiple raid leaders while wearing the GM hat.

Guild Officers> The S shops: Every unit has support officers who handle things ranging from supply issues to intelligence assets. Just as they have needs beyond the purview of their mission, each guild has needs it needs to fulfill outside the confines of the raid instance. Recruitment, flasks, repairs, financials, and loot policies are all among the issues that guilds will often designate officers to handle.

The tanks are NCOs at every level. They are the backbone of the game. In five man content, the tank fills the role of the junior NCO, the team leader or squad leader, who is responsible for both tactical planning and leadership for their unit. Likewise, the five man tank is expected to know how to best handle each pull in the instance, where's the best place to tank each boss, and how to optimize things for the DPS and healers in his group.

On the other hand, raid tanks act more like senior staff NCOs. A raid tank is the First Sergeant of WoW. They are responsible for tactical leadership; but not planning, that's the purview of the Raid leader. While it is the Raid Leader's decision where Shannox should be tanked, it's up to the tank to make sure that reality lines up with the raid leader's plan. The tank is where the proverbial rubber meets the road.

The gulf between a good NCO and a bad one is enormous. A good NCO will be someone you remember for the rest of your life, but a bad NCO will get you killed. While the stakes aren't nearly so high for tanks, we should always strive for excellence. Always try to be that tanks that people remember for being the best they could ask for. Never be the tank they had to carry, or worse, the tank that caused the group to fail. When you choose to tank, you need to hold yourself to a higher standard than other roles do. Be perfect. You owe it to your group, and you owe it to yourself.

15 Days Through My Interface: Day 3

2011-09-02T02:19:00.000-07:00

Here we are at Day 3. The topic is to find a screen shot representing who you are.

Inevitably, Dämmer is a leader. He has traded blows with a 13 Dragons, half a dozen Eredar Lords (and ladies) of the Burning Legion, four titanic watchers, a trio of liches, and 2 certified gods. He has always done so willingly, but he has never done so alone. When the call comes for Dämmer to face the latest threat to the peace of Azeroth and the Alliance, his comrades, his friends, have always been there to keep him safe. Though some have come and gone, while others have remained, Dämmer would have been reduced to a bloody stain on the floor of some far away land without them.

15 Days Through My Interface: Day 2

2011-09-01T00:46:00.000-07:00

Ok, we're on to day 2. The subject is player housing. I'm not really a fan of trying to cram into some space to make it a character's home. There's not enough housing present in game to house all the NPCs, much less the millions of players. But the assignment is to find a home for Dämmer, so I did.

Dämmer spends his resting moments in the Cathedral of Light, studying with, and teaching, his fellow Paladins. Since returning from the war in Northrend, and witnessing Deathwing's assault on Stormwind, he's realized that the odds of him being able to live his life in peace is becoming an increasingly slim chance. So he spends his free time preparing the next generation to defend themselves, demonstrating which of the three lungs of an abomination is vital, what frequency of light is needed to disrupt an elemental's hold on the material plane, or the best angle to hold one's shield to deflect the Black Dragonflight's shadowflame breaths, and how to swing the hammer so as to render an attacking orc into a dazed target. He lives with the expectation that his teachings will one day save the lives of some of his proteges. He lives in hope that his techniques will die with him.

15 Days Through My Interface

2011-08-30T17:58:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm starting to get back into writing again, so the blog is a good way to stay sharp. World of Saz posted a blogging challenge a few months ago, and I think it's a good way to get things rolling. It consists of using screenshots to show certain aspects of your character. I'll focus on Dämmerung first, and if it works well, I might revisit some of the more entertaining topics for my other characters.

1. Favorite Hangout.

This is where Dämmer logs out each night. While I'm not really that big on the whole in game RP thing, I do have a spot where each of my characters log out. For Dämmer, it's perched on the back of a mount, in between the spires of the Stormwind Cathedral. When he was leveling, the Zombie Invasion prior to Wrath struck, making moving through major cities hellish for lower level characters. Several players at the then level cap of 70, sealed off the Cathedral, and made it a sanctuary for players who needed respite from the onslaught. Dämmer now holds his turn at the guard, in the event that something tries to violate the sanctity of the city again.

We Hate Rogue Loot.

2011-08-30T01:18:00.000-07:00

In a guild with no rogues, there are only 391 Agility Daggers...

And cloth, for the mages to fight over. Still a dissapointing lack of tanking gear for me in firelands.

Dropping heroic Shannox only took about 4 pulls today, as opposed to the hour and a half of brutal wipes on Wednesday. Part of that was because we had an actual plan today, we weren't just trying to wing it. That's entirely my fault, as raid leader I should have been far more analytical than I was. Part of it stems from missing every progression fight in normal mode Firelands with the exception of Rag due to my military training. Having pretty much the whole instance spoon fed to me probably set me back weeks in terms of my knowledge and acumen in the instance. It's a mistake that I will rectify for future encounters.

In Which Dämmer Throws Down with The Beard.

2011-08-27T23:25:00.000-07:00

So, I read this article on WoW Insider a few days ago. This article, by Mathew Rossi, attempts to make the case for removing tanking from WoW entirely. While I feel this is the journalistic equivalent burning down a bar for the insurance money, I still find myself drawn to the argument, in a manner that can't be properly satisfied in a manner so transient as WoW Insider's woefully inadequate commenting system. So, I'm back at the blog. Maybe people still read me, maybe not.

The fundamental crux of the issue is, and has always been, the paucity of tanks relative to DPS, and even healers. This became almost mathematically measurable thanks to the dungeon finder tool. Tanks are in demand, and they get instant queues. DPS are in abundance and they have to wait. Those are the facts. There are, however, two things which need to determined with those facts. The first being what is causing this population imbalance, the second being what can be done to correct the problem. For the most part, Mr. Rossi's article focused on the former; because of this, so will I. The later is a tale for another day.

There are fewer tanks required in 25 man raids compared to 5 mans.
This is irrelevant to the concerns of the dungeon finder queue times. The overwhelming majority of raiding is currently being done at the ten man level, where the ratio is actually working against the DPS in that respect, and furthermore, this stratification insulates the dungeon finder from the problems of 25 man raids. A small portion of the level 85 player base raids. A fraction of that small portion runs 25 man raids. The notion that all 85 content acts as a feeder to the few 25 man guilds that still exist is laughable. I'd be willing to bet that the majority of level 85 players in the dungeon finder couldn't tell you which guilds on their server raid 25 man content. There's a reason why there is so much complaining about the imbalances in the dungeon finder versus complaints about problems with leveling content. This is because for the majority of the players in this game, 5 man heroic dungeons are their endgame.

There'd be more tanks if Shamen, Hunters, Warlocks, Mages, or whatever could tank.
Now, here's a fun argument, but ultimately one that's already been proven wrong on multiple levels. People claim that only having 40% of the classes capable of tanking is contributing to the lack of tanks. Blizzard introduced a new class in Wrath of the Lich King, which was capable of tanking on three different specs. It was brutally overpowered, and it didn't make a dent in the imbalance. If this weren't evidence enough that this isn't the cause, in the past few months, we've been blessed with new evidence. Rift. For those who don't know, Rift is a competing MMO that acts as more or less a complete clone of WoW. It has the same group build as WoW, 1 tank, 3 DPS, 1 healer. It has over a million active accounts, which is enough for an acceptable sample size. It also has a dungeon finder tool that acts just as WoW's does. What it has that WoW doesn't is 100% hybrid representation. Fully 75% of their classes can tank, and their Mages can heal. And yet queue times for DPS are very similar to the times found in WoW.

Do you want to know why tanks are a rarity, particularly in 5 man content?
Because it's a difficult position. It's more than what most people sign up for. Consider the blurbs written by Blizzard for their Role Forums.

Damage Dealing: A slash of the sword, a flick of the wand. Stow your weapons and discuss the strategy of damage dealing.

Healing: To aid your companions is to see success. Kneel and meditate on the art of healing.

Tanking: A wall unwavering, a leader unshaken. Gather and confer on the craft of tanking.

While DPSers cut and burn things, and healers help people, what do tanks do? They lead. While a good player can lead from any position in a party, most groups, and especially the groups thrown together anonymously by the LFG tool, the position of leadership falls upon the tank. It takes a special kind of person to take on the burden of leader by default. Most people log onto a game to relax, to enjoy themselves. They don't want to have to take care of other people. It's not fun for most people to have 4 lost souls looking at you to set them up for success. The majority of people don't have it in them to get dropped into a hostile environment with 4 other people they don't know, and look at those people and say "Follow Me."

Further making the tanking position unattractive to the majority is the complexity of it. While the complexity for DPS and healers ramps up heavily as they ascend into normal raid content, and even more so into heroic raids, in five man content, the tank is the star of the show. A tank has to do everything a DPS does, maintain a tight rotation, properly manage offensive CDs, avoid the omnipresent fire on the ground, and interrupt on the spot. While juggling all that, they have to do it while walking backwards, positioning the mobs, monitoring the healer's mana, picking up adds, and managing defensive CDs. While no individual position in 5 man content is particularly hard, anyone who doesn't think that tanking is the most complex is ignoring an important aspect of tanking.

Ultimately, the tank is a neccesity.
They are the glue which allows the player group a limited degree of control over mobs, and allows developers to include encounters with a high degree of complexity, while still retaining the complex class design. Almost every attempt at tankless content in WoW has fallen flat on its face. When looking at the PvE content of tankless MMOs such as EVE online, the differential in complexity becomes blatantly apparent.

At What Price, Victory?

2010-03-18T01:37:00.000-07:00

It's been a hectic month. But as things calmed down, I had a chance to chill out with my shaman officer. We spent a while talking about the old Legacy. It was an interesting and enlightening conversation, that dragged on entirely too late at a night, but all the same, was worth every second.

Last night, Legacy lost a long time member. One of our arcane mages left the server. Wound up in a guild on Firetree horde-side that just got their first kill of Deathbringer Saurfang last week. I kind of feel like the QB who got dumped for the fat guy... This departure kinda stung, because she was one of the few remaining members of the guild who remember the simpler times. Back when I wasn't the GM, I was just another member of a guild struggling to down Thaddius. There was a dynamic to the relationship that simply can't be found with the newer members, as they've only experienced me as their guild and raid leader. There are really very few members of the guild still running with us who remember those times.

Members of Legacy who predate my GMship: 7
Members of Legacy who predate my membership: 4
Members of Legacy who were there for the first raid: 2
Members of Legacy who were there on the first day: 1

Spinks had a recent post asking what you were willing to sacrifice on the altar of progression. This got me thinking about the Mage leaving, and tied back to the conversation with the Shaman. Legacy has made progress. I've built a guild that went from being ranked in the mid 60s on the server to the top 10. What have I sacrificed? We don't raid any more hours than we did back then, fewer actually. So I didn't give up time. Of my real life friends who play, they're all in the guild, so I didn't give them up. I didn't have to give up tanking. I didn't have to compromise my schedule. What have I sacrificed?

Then it hit me. Between the Shaman and I, we remembered most of the member of the guild, past and present. We remember why they left, and what they did afterwords. What guilds they came from, and what guilds they went to. I started checking back. Legacy made a lot of changes to get where we are. I took over as GM, we built a website, we switched to a dkp system, we changed the raid attendance criteria, and changed the raid schedule. Each step of the way, people left. Some people continued playing, some did not. But in every case, someone who was at the time completely happy with their guild, found it so far changed that they couldn't stay in it. For the 8 of us who are happy with all the changes made, there are at least 54 people that we know of who either quit raiding, or quit wow altogether due to those choices. There's another 70 or so who still raid with other guilds.

That's what I've sacrificed to get the progression I desired, other people's happiness. It's a sobering thought, and one that kind of eats at me from time to time. Every time that one of those people who thought they found a place that suits them leaves, it bleeds a little bit of the color out of the game for me. Every time one of them leaves, it isolates me a little bit more from the time when I was just another player. At times, I hate it, but in retrospect, if I could, I think I'd make every one of those choices the same way again.

They Say Clothes Make the Man...

2010-02-25T01:44:00.000-08:00

And if so, I am the best paladin in the world.

When you look this good, you don't care that you only have 21k armor and 484 defense. You feel like you could tank the Lich King on heroic.

The Nature of Raiding in Wrath: Gear Resets

2010-02-18T18:20:00.000-08:00

When patch 3.2 was released, it included one line that created a maelstrom of rage and frustration from a lot of people.

All instances aside from Trial of the Crusader and Trial of the Grand Crusader
will now drop conquest badges.

And the waves of QQ were unleashed. Combined with the daily dungeon quest now awarding two emblems of triumph, and full sets of baseline T9 available with those triumph badges the perception of welfare loot came straight to the forefront of the community consciousness. This was repeated with the release of patch 3.3, when all instances, save ICC, now drop triumph badges. The reality of the situation was that people could now gain raid quality gear without actually having to raid.

The assumption that people came to was that noobs were facerolling their way through heroics, and walking out with full T9/T10 a week later, while we raiders labored for weeks to get our loot from our kills. But the reality of the situation was this. In order to get full baseline T9 in patch 3.2 from heroics, one had to run the daily dungeon every day for 105 days, or over 4 months. In that time frame, a basic raider who simply ran ToC 10 for a full clear each week would earn 255 badges. Throw in ToC 25, and the ToGCs, and a raider in a good guild was pretty much drowning in emblems, not to mention the actual drops from the instance. But people didn't see that, all they saw was Blizzard giving out signature raid gear in 5 man instances. They didn't see what the idea truly was, a gear reset.

The first gear reset players saw was at the start of BC. This was a gear reset at it's most literal. People traded in epics for greens, and the greens were better. In Burning Crusade, blizzard implemented the Badge system to allow for normalized loot distribution, correcting a significant issue with the vanilla loot model. They toyed with it a bit by releasing BT level badge gear with patch 2.4. The gear was high quality, however, it was only a few select pieces. Nevertheless, it had people dragging their asses through Karazahn for its 22 badges, just to patch the last few holes in their BT or even Sunwell gear sets.

The release of Wrath saw another hard gear reset, and the advent of a new badge system. This one was tiered, with Emblems of Heroism dropping in 5 and 10 mans, and Emblems of Valor dropping in 25 mans. This was well and good, and worked well with the then current content. Then Ulduar was released, and with it, another tier of badges, Emblems of Conquest. Now there were three tiers of badges, and people asked the question of just how far was blizzard going to go with the badge system. Patches 3.2 and 3.3 saw the release of emblems of triumph and frost, respectively, and solidified Blizzard's stance on the matter.

Heroic content will remain one tier behind raid level content. People can obtain a complete set of gear equivalent to the previous tier's ten man level through grinding heroics. The only exception is a weapon, and those can be found in the current tier's new 5 man. The Ulduar 5 man Halls of Lightning dropped the only naxx 10 equivalent 2H axe. The ToC 5 man, Trial of the Champion, dropped an uld 10 equivalent 2H axe. The ICC 5 man instance, Pit of Saron, dropped a ToC 10 equivalent 2H axe. So, by grinding heroics, and running the current teir 5 mans religiously, a player could become raid capable for the current tier without actually needing to go through the trouble of raiding previous content.

This is actually a godsend for raiding guilds. Turnover is a fact of life for raiding guilds. Every time a raider leaves, they take their character, and their gear with them, and the odds of finding an equivalently geared player in previous expansions was just about nil. Back in Vanilla, losing a couple of raiders could completely shatter a guild in AQ40, because the pool of raiders available with the requisite gear level to actually compete in AQ40 was non existent. So, instead of the guild wasting time running defunct instances to grind up gear for the new recruit, a player who is serious about entering the raiding business can work for his gear on his own. This will both show his commitment to putting in the work needed to compete, but it also spares the guild a massive time suck.

The current tier's emblems drop two a day from a daily quest. This is deliberate. This is not so that casual non raiders can obtain cutting edge raid gear. No, those emblems are there to inflate the pool of capable players running heroics. This is particularly important with regards to the new LFG tool, where being paired up randomly has the potential to put together some really poorly geared groups. But by enticing progression raiders to queue up for a heroic a day, then it becomes simple to each group has at least on well geared player, be it a tank who simply doesn't take damage in heroics, a healer who can heal someone to full with a single flash heal, or a DPSer who evaporates mobs at a disturbing rate. This ensures a relatively stable flow of badges to the people who need them.

This system works. I now have two level capped alts with less than 10 days played on either of them, yet both of them can, and have stepped into ICC 10 runs for my guildies when needed, and made a respectable showing. This was unthinkable in Vanilla, and a huge amount of effort in BC, but in Wrath, every level capped toon is now capable of being a competent raider. It makes recruiting easier, and as bleeding edge guilds have shown, it helps cut around the mistakes Blizzard made in implementing limited attempts on content. It also allows guilds the freedom to focus on the instance that they want to run, rather than having to farm old content on guild time. This was an incredibly smart move on Blizzard's part.

Leading Icecrown Citadel: Deathbringer Saurfang

2010-02-10T06:54:00.000-08:00

Well, WoL considers Gunship Battle as an extended trash pull that drops an unusually high percentage of purples. I'm inclined to agree. Hard mode might be different, but as it stands, Gunship, while extremely awesome, is also ridiculously easy. So I'm going to jump ahead to Deathbringer Saurfang, who typically becomes the first roadblock emerging guilds face.

Deathbringer Saurfang is the 4th, and final boss of the Lower Spire of Icecrown Citadel.

The Fight: Deathbringer Saurfang is a single phase fight with an exponential soft enrage, and a hard enrage to prevent cheesing. Saurfang begins the encounter by attempting to bore you with RP. It's cool the first few times, but after a while, it winds up like CoS, and just disrupts the timing of your pre pull preparations. Keep this in mind, combat begins 4 seconds after he deathgrips the NPCs into the air, that's the best marker to start pre hotting, pre consecrating, or popping any other buff that requires you to be in combat for maximum effect. It is also worth noting that ALL damage in this fight is physical, so amplify magic is only helpful.

Saurfang will use several abilities. He will cast Boiling Blood on a random member of the raid (3 in 25), this will act as a DoT, doing damage every three seconds for 24 seconds. He will cast Blood Nova, which will do a burst of damage on a random player, and all players within 12 yards. This will not be cast on melee as long as there are 4 (7) people outside of melee range. He will cast Rune of Blood on the tanks, causing them to take more damage, and heal Saurfang every time they take are hit by him. He will also summon 2 (5) Blood Beasts every 40 seconds. These Blood Beasts will need to be killed.

What governs this encounter is Blood Power. Every time Saurfang deals damage to a player using one of those abilities, he gains Blood Power. For each point of blood power he gains, he becomes 1% larger, and deals 1% more damage. When he reaches 100 blood power, he uses it all to cast Mark of the Fallen Champion on a random member of the raid. What this mark does is essentially transfer all the damage the tank takes to the marked raider. Taking damage from the mark will cause Saurfang to gain more Blood Power. Also, if a player with Mark of the Fallen Champion dies, he heals Saurfang for 5% of his health.

Tank Saurfang on the pedestal where he comes out. Swap tanks whenever Rune of Blood is cast. 2 tanks are sufficient for both 10 and 25. Keep all non kiting ranged DPS in with the melee to maximize available space for both the kiting of blood beasts and to prevent splashes from blood novas. Make sure that both melee and tanks refrain from casting any heavy AoEs when the blood beasts spawn, waiting until they are out of range.

Have a plan for each mark that comes out. The amount of damage that the mark victim takes is the same as the tank, so you need to have an equivalent level healing plan set up. A designated holy paladin beacon, or a designated healer.

At 30%, Saurfang will Frenzy. This will last until the end of the fight, and will increase his attack speed by 30%. Saurfang has a base attack speed of 1 second, which makes an attack speed debuff mandatory for this fight.

Look, He Brought Friends!: There is one type of add in this encounter, the Blood Beasts. They spawn in the same locations each time. One left and one right in 10 man, and in a star shape in 25 man, with two left, two right, and one in the middle. The key to handling these adds is to minimize the chance of them actually hitting anyone. They are snareable, rootable, and stunnable. On ten man, I usually assign one ranged DPS with a slow to each beast. On 25 man, with the increased health pool, it becomes a little more complicated. I assign two ranged DPS each to the two spawns in the back, and one each to the ones in the middle and the two front spawns. I usually assign the most competent ranged DPS to the one in the middle, and assign a stun rotation to buy the other solo DPSers some time to nuke their beast.

Other viable, albeit more risky plans include having the OT taunt the beasts as they get far away to buy more time to kite them, or having the melee nuke them over the course of a hard stun, such as a paladin Hammer of Justice, or funneling them all into the middle where a ranged DPS class with a knockback can reset the kite.

Tanks: Two tanks are required for this fight, and at its most simple, is a stationary tanks swap fight. Blood beast management might make it a little more complicated, but it's not very difficult.
Establishing Dominance: Ensure that the melee start out a little bit farther back from the boss, to avoid one of those embarrassing insta gibs at the start of the fight. After relinquishing aggro to the other tank, it is important to ensure that you do not accidentally grab aggro back until it is time for you to taunt. When it is your turn to take aggro, do not be afraid to double clutch your taunts, because a missed taunt screws things up royally. For the ranged kiters, it is vital to know which spawn you're responsible for and be ready to hit it the moment it comes out to prevent them from aggroing onto a healer.

Gearing Philosophy: The majority of the tank's damage is mitigatable by armor and avoidance, so maximizing itemization is the best idea. Avoidance might also help mitigate damage to mark victims, however, there have been conflicting reports on this from log parses. As the damage is pretty low in this fight, this is also a decent fight to bring out your threat set to maximize your damage contribution.

Tank Death Scenario: There really isn't a whole lot of potential threats to the tank in this fight. The worst case scenario is that a tank gets marked, and is afflicted with the Rune of Blood during the frenzy, and the OT fails to taunt back. This is prevented through attentiveness, and being prepare to double up your taunts to ensure aggro. Warrior tanks might want to consider placing Vigilance on the other tank, to ensure that they have another taunt ready to go in the event that they miss.

The Raid: On all difficulties, the raid needs a plan for how to handle the blood beasts, with specific assignments handed out in advance. Keep in mind the minimum number of people needed at range, and try not to expose people to unnecessary risk. The number of healers you'll need depends heavily on the number of marks you expect to have to deal with. Baseline rule of thumb is one healer per mark on 25 man. On 10 man, you should probably try to two heal it.

Outrun or Outlast?: Outrun. Outrun this guy like Indiana Jones outruns a rolling boulder, because if it catches up to you, you'll be a smear on the floor. This fight is heavily backloaded in terms of damage. More marks means more blood power, which means even more marks, which means even more blood power. This fight will hit the fan in a hurry, typically between the 5th and 6th marks. Therefore, it is in the best interest of the raid to end this fight as quickly as possible. Run with as few healers as you can get away with, Legacy now runs this fight in 25 man with 3 healers, and got our initial kill with 5. Blow heroism as soon as the tank has aggro, in order to maximize uptime with other offensive cooldowns. If your DKS want to use army, have them pop army about 15 seconds before combat begins, so that the ghouls die before the first wave of blood beasts. Every second that you stretch this fight out makes it exponentially less likely for you to kill him.

Wipe Scenario: Wipes in this encounter start out due to little things, but once it's assured to be a wipe, the process is quick and harsh. Marks will come out very rapidly towards the end of the fight, and will quickly outstrip the raid's capacity to heal through them. Each mark that goes out with generate more blood power, and make the next one come out faster. In short order, people will start dying. A fight with everyone up, and five marks out with the boss at 15% will find itself, a minute later, with a half dozen more marks out, several players dead, and the boss back above 20% health. The only way to prevent this is to stay ahead of the soft enrage.

Shift Fire: It is imperative that the people assigned to handle blood beasts make their switches quickly and cleanly.

Heroism: Right off the bat to maximize damage output and shorten the fight as much as possible. Some people would council saving it for the frenzy, but if the frenzy is a game breaking issue, then you've got worse problems than when to use heroism. Sitting on hero and other offensive cooldowns just drags the fight out longer.

The Fire: In this fight, the fire is other people outside of melee range. Don't stand in the fire.

Fail of the Lich King

2010-02-04T06:56:00.000-08:00

Well, less than 24 hours after receiving the patch, Ensidia downed the Lich King on 25 man. Less than 8 hours after killing the Lich King, Ensidia was banned, stripped of their loot, titles, achievements, and most importantly, their Heroic Attunement. Chaos ensues. One of Ensidia's shadow priests, Muqq, posted a profanity laden ragequit blog post. Hilarity ensues.

The root of the problem stems from a mechanic in the Lich King encounter in which he blows the outer rim of the platform away, leaving you with a much smaller area to work with. This creates problems due to a spell he casts called Defile, which is an persistent AoE akin to the slime puddles on Professor Putricide. This AoE grows larger anytime it damages someone, and if one watches Blood Legion's 10 man kill vid, you can see that it can eat up a huge chunk of space. In addition to being awesome, the Lich King's removal of the rim forces dealing with the defile to become much more urgent. Furthermore, he occasionally spawns Valkyr that grab raid members, and throw them off the side of the platform if they are not killed quickly.

The manner in which this is accomplished is similar to how the coding manages the walls and towers in WG. They're constructs, immune to all but a single type of damage, siege damage. Siege damage is only provided by vehicle abilities, and certain explosive items. The Lich King triggers a toggle which shifts the construct's animation state, causing the floor to fall out. What made things interesting was that apparently, further siege damage caused the toggle to pop again, making the lost space magically reappear. Suddenly, defile becomes much less of a problem, and even more importantly, the valkyr now simply drop their victims onto the outer ring, eliminating the need to burn them down.

There was a similar issue in Ulduar where a few guilds managed to steamroll Yogg by dropping the Vehicles from the Flame Leviathan fight through the floor, and into Yogg's room. So, now the question becomes, where did the siege damage come from? There's one vehicle source of siege damage in ICC, the cannons in the gunship encounter. However, those are mounted on rails, and cannot be moved. The other method is from the engineering profession. Saronite Bombs deal siege damage, and can be thrown often during a fight by anyone with engineering over 410.

So there's how it happened, the next question is what exactly did Ensidia do take advantage of this exploit. Some people have claimed that the Armory shows that multiple members of the raid group powerleveled engineering in the gap between the ten man kill, and the 25 man. There's also the fact that their 10 man kill shot was very oddly cropped, with basically an eighth of the screen blacked out. They also claimed that it was not anything that affected any of the difficult portions of the fight. These kinda sent warning flags up.

Further damning the raid was the fact that Blizzard, in the email sent to muqq, specifically cited that they were bugging the encounter with intent to make the fight easier. Given the black out of the chat log, the refusal to give out a fraps, and the fact that Blizz can monitor anything said in the game client, it seems reasonable to believe that Ensidia slipped up and broadcast their knowledge within the client. Throw in their history of glitching cutting edge encounters, C'thun, Vashj, Eredar Twins, Hodir Hard, Mimiron Hard, among others, and Ensidia faces a tough road trying to ask for the benefit of the doubt.

Regardless of weather or not their glitching of the encounter was intentional, their behavior under scrutiny is very reminiscent of Exodus, the guild that exploited their way to a world first Alone in the Dark kill. With that fresh in the communities memory, including Ensidia's own push to damn Exodus for their crimes, it's very difficult not to apply the same standard to Ensida.

The effect that this will have in the long run will be minimal. If Blizz has their shit straight this time, the hardest fight will be the Lich King on heroic, which is the fight that everyone is fixated upon progression-wise. This is in contrast to Ulduar where everyone was staring at Algalon, only to realize that Alone in the Dark was exponentially more difficult. Assuming that Ensida regroups and drops the Lich King next week, they'll only be one week behind the 3 or so other guilds that have downed him so far. I would be shocked if guilds even managed to get past the gear check that Heroic Blood Queen will be the first week it's unlocked. Ensidia will have the chance to catch up.

The Sordid History of Legacy: Intro to Raiding

2010-02-02T03:27:00.000-08:00

3.1 dropped, and Legacy was ranked in the lower 40s by most ranking sites. We were capable of a fairly quick Naxx 25 clear, and could down Maly 25 and OS252D every week. Most of us were new to raiding, if not WoW in general, and we were eager to prove ourselves in the first major content patch of Wrath, The Secrets of Ulduar.

We were raiding on a Friday-Saturday schedule, so on patch day, we cobbled together two ten mans and charged into ulduar. We made very little progress, downing the Flame Leviathan with ease, and getting one, oh so painful pull on pre nerf ignis trash. We also discovered the greatest glitch ever. After much pain, we managed to claw our way through XT in the ten man, and on Friday awaited our triumphant introduction to the 25 man version.

On Friday, Legacy was introduced to what happens when you leave Naxx behind. We managed to three shot Flame Leviathan, and I got my crash course in loot drama. A fragment dropped, and we were not prepared. I had brought up the issue before to the GM, but we figured that it would be something that dropped off the later bosses, not the very first kill in there. We decided to give it to the GM, who was our primary healer at the time. This really pissed off one of our holy priests, who declared that her last goal in WoW was to get a legendary weapon, and we had taken that from her. Ragequit, gquit, and we never saw her again.

Oh well, in true Legacy form, we pugged another healer, and were faced with the choice of which boss we were going to tackle next. Still smarting from our run in with Ignis trash in ten man, we opted to try Razorscale. We managed to get into phase two after a couple tries, and found out what real bosses hit like. I got rocked, and our other, lesser geared tanks were getting straight up one shot. After pulling back, we decided to farm Naxx and Uld 10 for a few more weeks before making any more serious attempts at Uld 25. We kept Loot Leviathan on farm as basically another KT/Maly 226 farm boss.

The next week, the GM introduced me to two more players who would eventually play a key role in the development of Legacy. The first was a brash Warlock who somehow fell to us. Still not sure quite how that happened, he was pulling 5k DPS in mostly 219 gear, and eventually became an officer in the guild.

The second was a warrior tank. The GM, being one of those healing types, didn't have too good a grasp of tanks, so he asked me to take a look at this tank that he was trying to bring into the guild. I knew nothing about warrior tanks, but he was defense capped, had 30k health, and wasn't doing anything stupid like gemming for spirit.

According to the warrior, our first conversation went something like this...

Him: "Hi, I'm thinking about joining your guild!"

Me: "Sup?"

Him: "So, are you better than me?"

Me: "Well, I've never raided with you before, but... yes, yes I am."

I don't remember being that harsh, but I did kind of keep him at a arms length at times. Truth be told, I was still fairly new to raiding, and the only thing that I really knew was that I wanted to tank. I was far and away the best tank in the guild, but for some reason, the GM had started pushing me to build an offspec set, which I had been notorious for refusing to take any OS gear during T7. This combined with him suddenly bringing in a new, decently geared tank that he had previous experience raiding with left me feeling somewhat threatened. Fortunately, the warrior, who had been playing longer than I had, took things in stride, and found Legacy a comfortable enough place to bring his friends to. We found ourselves with a new rogue, resto druid, and DPS DK, who would all become core raiders for us. We've talked about them before on this blog.

We began to make some progress in Uld 10 a couple of weeks into the patch cycle, and the GM approached me with an idea. He thought it would help our 25 man progression if, instead of throwing together random half pugs for 10 mans, we put together a group, comprised of the best the guild had to offer, to push as far into Ulduar 10 as we could, picking up as much gear and experience as we could along the way. This was the beginning of Legacy's accent out of the pit of pug-dom.

Leading Icecrown Citadel: Lady Deathwhisper

2010-01-29T17:19:00.000-08:00

Lady Deathwhisper is the second encounter in the Lower Spire of Icecrown Citadel.

Phase One: (10 man) Lady Deathwhisper will remain stationary, casting shadowbolts at random raid members, and throwing out green death and decays. She will spawn adds. These come three at a time. The first spawn will be on the left hand side, and have two Fanatics (melee), and one Adherant (Caster) in the middle. The next spawn will be on the righ side, and consist of two Adherants, with a fanatic in the middle. Spawns will alternate sides. She will occasionally reanimate, empower, or transform these adds. You will need to tank and kill these adds, while DPSing through her mana shield to enter phase two.

(25 Man) The gist of the fight is similar. The major differences is that there are now seven adds spawning, the three on the left, the three on the right, plus one random add in the back. She will also occasionally mind control a player, requiring you to CC them.

Phase Two: Phase two begins with a complete aggro drop, she ceases spawning adds, becomes mobile, and begins using a melee attack and a powerful frostbolt on her main aggro target, in addition to her abilities from the previous phase. She will no longer MC players. She begins applying a debuff on her main aggro target called Touch of Insignificance, which reduces their threat generation by 20%, and stacks up to five times. This will neccesitate tank swaps, unless your DPS can do magical things with their threat generation. The frostbolt should be interrupted, lest it do a large quantity of irressistable frost damage to the tank. A rotation will be needed in 25 man, however, any competent warrior, rogue, shaman, or DK can do it in ten man. She will also spawn ghosts, that pick a target, and explode after a time interval. they need to be kited away from the raid during that interval.

Look, She Brought Friends!: There are many adds in this fight.

Fanatics: These are melee mobs. They hit hard enough to one shot most clothies, and feature a cleave, so face them away. If they become reanimated, they gain a shield that makes them immune to physical damage, thus ranged DPS need to burn them down. If they become Deformed, they start hitting like a freight train. 35K+ on a well geared tank. However, they move slowly, and can be strafe kited with ease.

Adherants: These are caster mobs. They cast shadowbolts which hit for about 10k. If need be, they can be tanked by a melee DPS. If they become reanimated, they put up a shield that reflects all spells. It does not however, reflect weapons, so have your melee DPS lodge theirs in it's skull. If the become empowered, they immediately begin spamming AoE spells, and inflict significant damage. Empowered Adherants should always be a priority.

Tanks: Two tanks will be required to allow for the switches in phase two. One tank will be needed to tank each side in 25 man. A third tank can be helpful to pick up the add in the back, but is not needed.

Establishing Dominance: The pickups in phase one can be a little sticky. The adds spawn far enough away from each other that cleaves and other multi mob pickups are ineffective. DPS need to be disciplined, and wait for the tank to complete the pickups. A hunter for misdirects is a godsend. The mobs drop aggro if they become deformed, empowered, or reanimated, and must be reaqquired ASAP. When you enter phase two, you need to have a tank ready to taunt as soon as the barrier drops, otherwise she'll start attacking the DPSers who weren't smart enough to pull out. When you reach the tank transition, if you are the tank taking her, it's important to build as much threat as possible during the first stack, so you aren't gimped when you get two or more stacks. If you're the tank switching off, you don't need to worry about threat management as much as you would on say, Festergut, because the debuff will ensure you don't take it back.

Gearing Philosophy: The actually difficult part of the fight in terms of tank damage is usually phase two, and most of that is magic damage. Feel free to go straight stam for this fight, as armor and avoidance won't serve you too well.

Tank Death Scenario: There's two potential points of tank death. A careless tank who does not pay attention to the adds once secured, might accidently find himself tanking, rather than kiting, a deformed fanatic. 35k melee hits plus other incidental damage can be painful. Keep in mind that if a Fury Warrior or Feral Druid is MCed, the tanks will be crittable, and in this case, instagibbed. Always kite the deformed fanatic immediately. The second scenario is an uninterrupted frostbolt, typically combined with a melee hit and splash damage from a ghost or D&D. This is preventable by having a skilled interrupt cycle set up.

The Raid: The raid should have prexisting assignments for which adds they DPS, and who CCs the MC target on 25 man. In ten man, a coordinated quasi zerg is sufficient. All DPS on adds, then all DPS on boss, then back on adds, then back on the boss. However, in 25 man, the increased number of adds, and increased mana pool typically sees this strat ending in failure. I've found it better to assign a group to each side, and then setting up the remaining DPSers as full time on the boss. The number of DPSers you leave on deathwhisper depends on how well your raid can handle the adds. We began with 2 on our first kill, but now we leave seven on her to push out of phase one ASAP. The fight is easily healed with five healers, so long as your DPS doesn't camp in the fire.

Outrun or Outlast?: Outlast. While the enrage isn't as relaxed as Marrowgar's, you've got plenty of time. The important thing in this fight is to make sure that adds are dealt with properly.

Wipe Scenario: Most wipes on this encounter occur in phase one. An add isn't picked up, or is pulled off carelessly, and winds up eating a healer or two. If you fall behind on the adds in particular, the pickup becomes very difficult. Makes sure your tanks are tanking their assignments, and make the the DPS are watching omen. Also, ensure you have enough DPS assigned to adds that they all die before the next wave spawns.

Shift Fire: This fight will involve a lot a changing targets in phase one. Every add wave needs to be dealt with. Any spare time between waves should be spent burning the mana shield down. As she mutates adds, it's important to shift your DPS accordingly. Kill order should be Deformed>Empowered>Reanimated Caster>Reanimated Melee>Melee>Caster.

Heroism: There's two optimal points for Heroism, either right before, or right after the phase two transition. Use it before phase two if you have trouble hitting phase two before the next add wave spawns, this gives you a lot of breathing room on the enrage timer. If you're clean about the adds, then it would be optimal to save it for after phase two starts, so that the bulk of it is spent with the most DPS possible on the boss.

The Fire: In this fight, the fire is green bubbly runes and blueish green ghosts. It may also be any AoE that your MCed players can use. Don't stand in the fire.

Leading Icecrown Citadel: Lord Marrowgar

2010-01-27T07:28:00.000-08:00

I have a certain perspective on encounters. I operate both as a tank, and as a raid leader. Most guides that I have seen in the blogosphere have been written from the perspective of a healer. Not sure why, perhaps the same personality that's inclined to write a guide is inclined to play a healer. But as I read these guides from the perspective of both a tank and a raid leader, there's a lot of information that I wind up having to sort out on my own, because my perspective, and the perspective of the people who write the guides often do not concern all of the same issues. At the same time, I read a lot of post from bloggers who are looking for that same information that I had to figure out on my own. So, I guess it's time that I share some of that information.

Lord Marrowgar is the first encounter in Icecrown Citadel. It is a two phase encounter.

Phase One: Begins at the pull. Marrowgar will be picked up by the tanks, while the DPS attack. Twice per phase 1, Marrowgar will cast Bone Spike Graveyard, impaling 3 players on 25 man, one on ten man. These bone spikes have health, and must be DPSed down to free the impaled player before he dies. He also launches out a path of Coldflame which is aimed at a raid member farthest from melee range. This may occasionally be the tanks if your raid stacks within Marrowgar's obese hit box. After two Bone Spike Graveyards, he will transition to phase two.

Phase Two: Marrowgar will initiate a whirlwind, and spin about the room like an arms warrior on crack. He will move to a random spot in the room, launch Coldfire in four directions, and then spin to another location. He will repeat that process several times before dropping aggro and transitioning back to phase one.

Tanks: You will need three tanks on 25, two on ten. The major mechanic that governs the tanks is Saber Lash. All this requires is that the tanks stack together to split the damage. Imagine it as a cleave on steroids.

Establishing dominance: At the beginning of each repetition of phase one, there is a full aggro drop. Marrowgar is now tauntable, however, it is still advised to move towards his final whirlwind destination, and the damage from the whirlwind is somewhat negligible, and it is much more advantageous to have some additional time to build threat before some overzealous DPSer decides to get himself killed.

Gearing philosophy: Given that the only non physical damage is the Coldflame, which you shouldn't be standing in, and saber lashes are avoidable, and mitigatable, pretty much everything works to one degree or another. Armor, Stam, Avoidance, it's all great for this fight.

Tank Death Scenario: The risk of tank death in this fight primarily occurs at the transition between phase two and one. As the tanks pick aggro back up, if they are not stacked correctly, this may lead to the primary tank taking an additional 50%-200% damage from a saber lash being not properly shared. He doesn't hit that hard in easy mode, but you'd still be talking about a hit in the 40k range on 25 man on a well geared tank.

The Raid: Positioning in phase one is not extremely important, so long as no one is moronic enough to stand next to the tanks. Generally you want to keep people fairly close together in phase one, so that bone spikes can be downed quickly. In phase two, it's pretty much just run for your life, and don't stand in the fire.

Outrun or Outlast?: Definitely outlast. The fight can be controlled. The enrage timer is absurdly generous. If your tanks have got glass jaws, and you need to bring 9 healers to keep them alive, you can get away with that. At the same time, the majority of the non tank damage is avoidable, so as long as you've got decently geared tanks, you could get away with as few as four healers.

Wipe Scenario: It's a slow death in this encounter. It'll typically begin with a healer getting either saber lashed during the transition back to phase one, or bone spike in the coldflame right before the start of phase two. The tank healing becomes strained, and eventually you lose a tank. When one tank goes down, it greatly increases the incoming damage on the other tanks, and they wind up dropping. The key to avoiding this is quick downing of bone spikes, and personal awareness of positioning.

Shift Fire: The only meaningful DPS shift in this fight is jumping from the boss to the bone spikes, and back onto the boss. In 25 man, to optimize speed, you may wish to use a program like DBM, that will place raid marks on the spikes, and assign a group to free each mark.

Heroism: Heroism is best used as soon as the tanks have enough aggro. It promotes synergy with offensive cooldowns, and the initial phase one provides the longest time on target. There are no frenzies or soft enrages to deal with.

The Fire: In this fight, the fire is blue moving fire on the ground. The fire is also a giant screaming whirlwinding skeleton. Don't stand in the fire.

Blood and Glory in the Crimson Halls.

2010-01-22T06:33:00.000-08:00

Well, the new wing of ICC, the Crimson Halls opened up on Tuesday. As Legacy is wont to do, I mustered up my ten man team and ventured forth. We bored our way through the first seven bosses, including a one shot of Puticide which was executed to perfection. Nothing of any real interest to me dropped, although I won a pair of shoulders for my retribution set.

With our previous conquests behind us, we strode confidently into the Crimson Halls. After AoEing down the trash, we moved into the central hall, and prepared to face down the bosses. The Blood Queen's long winded speech prompted me to remark, in jest, that it was Kael'thas all over again. Our feral druid, who was in Get of Fenris during BC, and was intimately familiar with the pain of pre nerf Kael'thas remarked that this was nothing like Kael'thas.

"NAXXANAR WAS MERELY A SETBACK!"

My druid friend was swiftly laughing his ass off in vent and admitted that, yes, it was just like Kael.

And just like Kael did, the Blood Princes kicked our tails out through our teeth. We didn't have a pull that broke the two minute mark. We started out trying to have the Professional Hunter tank Keleseth. But he wound up getting nuked into the ground in record time. So we broke out the feral druid's pvp resto set, so the Hunter could have a dedicated healer. That didn't work. So we had the fury warrior switch to prot and try to tank Keleseth. It turns out that Keleseth hits really hard. Like 24k melee hits hard. So, as the optimally geared EH tank, I switched off Valanar and onto Keleseth.

At this point we managed to sustain the pull for longer than 30 seconds. I was getting trucked, but by popping a cooldown when Keleseth became empowered, I managed to survive, and we managed to find new and interesting ways to die. We found out about kinetic bombs the hard way. After assigning the Hunter to manage them, we found out that up to three of them could spawn at a time, also the hard way. When we had the Mage and Hunter managing bombs, with only the Shaman and Death Knight still actually DPSing, we found out that while a cooldown would keep me alive through the empowered shadow lances, it left me high and dry when Taldaram threw an empowered flame orb that hits me for 60k.

At that point I made the decision that there was no chance in hell that Blizzard intended for us to run with 3 tanks, 3 healers, two controls, and only two DPS. We still really didn't have a very good picture of what the fight actually looked like, so I decided to call it for the night. Truly humbled for the first time in ICC.

The next day, we marched through ICC 25. One shot every boss from Marrowgar to Rotface. Then we diverted through the Crimson Halls, and ran into a similar issue on the 25 man princes. Our Warlock was getting obliterated. However, one thing that the 25 man forced us to do was confront our positioning issues. We refined the spacing of the mobs, and began to use all of the space available to us. With the information we gathered in the 25 man, we began to put together the picture. Information is ammunition, and my ten man was now armed to the teeth.

We rode back in, cleared trash again, and threw down with the KTs three. Our hunter grabbed his PvP gear, and with a couple of stamina trinkets was sitting at over 40k health when we pulled. This prevented the instagib factor while he tanked Keleseth. He spent the initial phase spamming killshot to build threat, and collecting orbs. We determined that the initial invocation shift took place when the health pool dropped to 85%, so we kept DPS slow enough to allow him to collect three orbs before the shift. The Mage was tasked with juggling kinetic bombs. I found out something very useful while tanking Valanar. The kinetic bombs can get bounced back by my AoE. Avenger's Shield, HotR, and even Consecrate all kept them from hitting the ground, so in order to streamline positioning, when Valanar was not empowered, I took responsibility for a bomb that spawns on the dais. When Valanar was empowered, I tanked him essentially right where he began the fight. The Co Tank tanked Taldaram off to the right. Whenever Taldaram launched an empowered flame sphere, with my handling the bomb on the dais, this allowed the melee to run with it as the target kited it, so we stripped the stacks off. If it targeted me, I just popped a cooldown to eat it.

After several attempts, we got our coordination timed right, and finally downed them. It was getting late, so I put up a vote as to weather we wanted to go on to blood queen, or take here the next night. The vote was 6/4 in favor of waiting, but the Hunter needed another 2k rep to hit exalted, so we all agreed to kill the trash.

Once we cleared to her, we mulled over the strat, and concluded that it was a gear check more than anything. We decided to pull her, once and only once, to see just what we were in for. After all, she was right there. So we pulled her, and she bit our fury warrior, who promptly began to pull 18k DPS. Fifty seconds later, he stopped attacking. Ten seconds later, he started attacking again, although he was attacking me. Well, it seems like we'd have the DPS. If only we could figure out how to bite someone.

We found out that he, like most of our raid, uses Bartender4. So we began trouble shooting. We reworked his vehicle bar, his pet bar, and his stance bar. I thought about similar mechanics, and the best comparison I could come up with was Eadric the Pure in ToC five. I never remembered a vehicle bar coming up, and my pet bar was disabled. I thought about how the hammer just popped up on my first bar. As I was describing it on vent, our warrior commented, "Oh, I don't use the first bar, I use 2, 3, and 4," Well, that's... odd, but whatever. So we had him activate his first bar, and lo and behold, he could bite with the best of them.

So, Protip: Make sure your raiders have Bar 1 active for Blood Queen.

After that we wiped a few times to stupid things, mostly involving the shadowflame. People didn't see the shadowflame when they got it. People died after being feared into the shadowflame. People got the shadowflame and the blood link. I forgot to turn on Righteous Fury and the Blood Mirror jumped to a melee DPS... those sort of things.

Just before midnight, we got a nearly perfect pull. We didn't lose anybody, and our DPS was cracking down hard. Then we hit the four minute mark. The four minute mark, on ten man, is where you begin to run out of people to bite, and thus, people begin to go insane. Also, the raid damage from the Shroud of Sorrows jumps up to a painful 6,750 damage every two seconds. We had her at 10%, and all of a sudden she fears the raid, and flies off. Well, shit. With people in vent reporting less than 5 seconds before they go insane, we decided to throw our precise formations for avoiding splash damage out the window. We opted for the less organized plan of the Co-Tank, who cried out in vent "Throw things at her!" And so we did. Wand bolts, Hammers, Heroic Weapons, Lightning bolts, and Arrows. The sky was darkened with them. Right before people began to go insane, the Blood Queen let out a shriek, and died. And thankfully, unlike Sapphiron, gravity brought her corpse, and more importantly, our loot, back down to us.

I'm really proud of the work that my group has done. Along with the server first Putricide kill, Guildox is reporting our Blood Queen kill as another server first. Wowprogress has us listed as the best ten man team on the server for two tiers running now. Later this week, we plan to go back to Ulduar to down Yogg with no keepers, in order to solidify the number one ten man slot for the expansion thus far on guildox. While the guild's 25 man runs haven't had the same impetus as my ten man, they have become much more focused, and are a far cry from the clusterfucks that saw us ranked in the mid 40s on the server. With a week to go before the next wing opens, we are ready.

And the Devil Makes Three.

2010-01-21T03:48:00.000-08:00

Meet Claíomh. He continues in my fine tradition of plate classes with foreign names with accented letters to keep the gold spammers at bay.
He's a fresh 80 fury warrior whom the guild was kindly enough to run through all the new ICC 5 mans in hopes of getting him some gear. Unfortunately, pretty much all the shaman/hunter/rogue gear dropped. To my great embarrassment, most of that gear was superior to the quest blues I rode into town on. So, dual wielding his 2H mace and 2H axe, he looks like some sort of hulked out enhance shaman. Hopefully, through diligent running of daily randoms, he will eventually become a decent contribute to whatever guild members need my expertise on something that I've already saved my main to. It's amazing how easy it is to diagnose a group's flaws when you can tank three of them a week.

Terrible New Everyone!

2010-01-12T11:24:00.002-08:00

Rotface 25 is dead. Took 3 attempts last night. We found that the secret to killing him efficiently was to abuse the Rotface tank (me), magnificently.

We ran in to the issue that rotface would begin to cast slime spray when everyone scattered for volatile ooze explosion. Because of the long range on the spray, and the fact that I had taken Rotface to the side, this lead to upwards of 50% of the raid finding themselves in the blast radius. After two wipes to this, I got kinda frustrated. So as the next ooze explosion went off, I just popped Divine Protection and stood there. And took no damage. Every ooze missed me.

I wasn't so lucky the second explosion, and when I reached for my cooldown, I realized that I had traded in my 4 piece t9, and it was on cooldown. So I quickly took stock of options, and hit the only defensive cooldown I had up. My Corroded Skeleton Key. This time I was not so lucky, I took about 7 slimes to the crown, and barely walked away, thanks to some pretty amazing heals.

The third explosion was much less harrowing, as Divine Protection was available again. At that point, we had entered the 6 second infection "oh shit" zone. At that point somehow a second big ooze spawned, and took out the Co-Tank. The Professional Hunter and Shameless Boomkin immediately started attempting to kite them as we blew hero and tried to outrun the fact that the bottom was falling out beneath our feet. With about 5 people down, Rotface hit the ground. There was no tanking loot to be had, but we did get the blood out to our Charter Ret Pally, who made the first Shadow's Edge in the guild.

We proceeded to go and attempt Professor Putricide. We lost one attempt to the Co-Tank, using a completely stock ui for this fight, not having bars spawn for the abom. We lost two attempts to glitched oozes trying to target the Co-Tank in the abom, and thus burning all their snare time trying to pick a target. The most annoying however, was the attempt we lost to our resto shaman who DCed while autorunning up the hall. Grrrrr...

Anyways, in the six non fucked attempts we got in, we got him into phase three twice, with our best attempt hitting the hard enrage at 28%. I feel confident that we'll down him next week.

Sorry Rhidach, but... GREAT NEWS EVERYBODY!

2010-01-07T11:20:00.000-08:00

I took a vacation, along the way, I met up with several guild members and former guild members while in the Orange County area, this caused my raid schedule to be a little eclectic. However, the raiding the past week has been awesome.

I flew out on Friday, and hung out with some friends and family in the bay area. Then on Monday, I flew to LA, and was greeted by the shaman officer in my guild who was kind enough to not only put a roof over my head for the night, but also let me ride along on his Internet connection for the raid that night.

Monday is the night we clean up progression objectives. Because we had already facerolled all of ICC 25 on Wednesday, we were cleaning up progression objectives that had escaped our grasp back when the content was relevant. On Monday, we cleaned up Yogg-Saron, probably the source of the most bitching and gquits in our guild's history. We had about half of the raid that had never seen Yogg on any difficulty. We two shotted it, and the one wipe was due to a hunter not having his particle effects turned up, and hitting about all the clouds within 20 seconds of pulling.

It felt good to finally drop something that had been bedeviling the guild for so long. Although part of me was disappointed it was so easy. We probably could have done it a long time ago.

We rolled through some ToGC 25 to finish up the raid period, we downed Jaraxxus right before we ran out of time, and he dropped a nice pair of 258 tanking pants. Because I've missed out on most of our marrowgar kills due to various issues, the other tanks all had the 264 tanking pants already, so I got it uncontested.

Then we put together a slapdash ToGC 10 group. Decked out in oddball items like Nexus War Champion Beads and Black Spire Sabatons, we decided to go for Dedicated Insanity. It was kinda an oddball thing to attempt, considering some of the hoops we had to go through, like having our fury warrior respec arms because he only had one weapon that met the criteria, having our feral druid who goes resto for CC on faction champs do so without gear in like 4 slots because his resto set is his relentless gladiator set. Somehow, we made it to Anub'arak without any wipes. Because we didn't want to deal with trying a new comp, we went ahead and did what we always do, we two healing it. With a resto shaman and a disc priest. I can't imagine what that must have felt like for them. We got him into phase three cleanly, but also with a couple adds up, which meant that the OT was going to be on a pair that won't be killed pretty early in the fight. The healing was intense. We wound up losing our feral druid pretty early on as the healers triaged, and the DPS took us through 4 freezing slashes, which is a nightmare for me, because all I can do is take everything on the chin during those. However, we managed to pull it off. We are now the only ten people on the server who have the Argent Defender title. I think I'm gonna keep wearing Starcaller for a while, but it's nice to have options.

On Tuesday, the Shaman and I went to go visit the Prodigal Resto Druid, and by extension, the rest of the exiles. As such we missed the ten man ICC 10. They two shotted Festergut, and then proceeded to painfully claw their way past Rotface. Having our Professional Hunter tanking on his DK, and our Utility Man stepping in on his undergeared hunter made things more difficult than they needed to be, and for that I feel kinda bad. But the food at Marie Callender's was so good. Anyways, they opted to not attempt Putricide until a better raid group showed up.

I missed most of Wednesday's raid due to travelling back home. They facerolled their way through the first four bosses, but then wiped for about two hours on Festergut. Meanwhile, I was cramming my 6'8" frame into a middle seat in coach on a 737, in between two fat guys who snored. Then I was waiting for my backpack to get unloaded off the plane, which apparently requires a crew of 12 to find. Then I got to play dodge the drunk homeless guy on the Link Light Rail. Then I had to suffer through the aural torture of bad guitar guy on the ferry. Then I had to drive home behind mister "I drive 10 miles under the speed limit in no passing zones!"

I arrived online about an hour before the end of raid time. They were struggling on Festergut, and asked me to step in the place of the lowest DPS so that Super Priest could come on his priest, and not his prot pally. I came in, and we wiped about two more times. Exhausted from my trip, and having traumatic flashbacks to Thaddius 25, and I just kinda snapped in vent. Angy Dammer was in full force. But something miraculous happened. Suddenly, it seemed as if every DPSer seemed to find an extra thousand DPS in them. Not having to rotate 5 cooldowns to have a tank survive the 3 inhale blitz probably helped too. Festergut went down, and we took a few exploratory pulls on Rotface, only fitting in three pulls, each with a different set of trash respawning in between them, we managed to get him down to about 18%. I'm confident we'll be able to down him on Monday. I apologized for my mass transit induced bloodlust, and formed up the ten man group. This time with the Professional Hunter on his hunter.

We walked into Putricide's lab with full Algalon protocols in effect. We were hermetically sealed within a vent channel that only I know the password to, stocked with full flasks and fish feasts. All non essential chat channels were left, and we went to work.

Putricide was unbelievably bugged on the PTR. It wasn't so bad on live, but we still lost 3 attempts to bugs. We had one attempt where the mutated abomination registered as a mount, and as such didn't have an independent action bar, we lost a couple of attempts to Putricide only spawning one slime pool at a time, which meant that the abom couldn't get enough ooze power to actually do anything of value. We lost one attempt to our resto shaman accidentally dropping a cleansing totem, which meant that every time that our abom came near the totem, the abom was cleansed off of him. It took some hard looking at the parses to figure that one out. Finally, we managed to get a clean pull, that pushed him into phase three. Phase three got a little weird, and I fucked up the tank taunting, so we wound up with much more raid damage than we needed to. We cut it to the razor's edge, with the bottom falling out at about one percent, when everyone else in the raid was killed off by the AoE, and the slime pools were everywhere. Only my co-tank and I were still alive, and we managed to burn the last 120k off of him for the kill.

Some crappy leather dropped, but so did the Unidentifiable Organ. I beat out the co-tank on the roll, and it's definitely going to replace the Heart of Iron on my Marrowgar/Festergut set.

During 3.2, after we had downed Algalon and Tribute to Insanity and just before the Exiles left, the Professional Hunter had a chat with me. He said he wanted our group to compete for server firsts in 3.3, which even on ten man had previously been the realm of guilds like Awaken, Crisis, and CSM. Well, we aren't competing for server firsts, we're taking them.

Thoughts on Gearscore, and how it can be done correctly.

2010-01-05T23:19:00.000-08:00

Gearscore has infected Destromath. First running rampant on the horde side, people have begun to treat it as the gospel on alliance side too.

This is my opinion on gearscore. It should be thrown in a sack. The sack should then be thrown into a river, and the river hurled into the sun. The idea of rejecting people based on what is essentially a summation of their item levels is moronic, given the amount of data it doesn't include. The whole notion of the addon is to cause people to forgo actually looking at someones spec and gear. Which is why it fails. It's an abacus, not an audit.

However, the concept of an addon which does the work of inspecting a players gear is not without merit. Sites such as Wow-Heroes and Be.Imba.Hu have been doing so successfully for years, and without the flaws of Gearscore. This is because they run a full audit which takes into account specs, gems, and enchants. The DK with spellpower gear is properly called out for being a tool, not rewarded with a bigger e-peen to flex.

There is an addon that does this correctly. It is new, and it will hopefully displace gearscore. It is Elitist Group. What elitist group does is present a rudimentary audit to any player who is in your group. This is most effective in the LFD pugs. Upon opening the summary screen, you're presented with a panel that shows you each item they're equipped with, their item level, gems and enchants, and if each is appropriate for their spec. It also points out if they're missing any talent points, and how much of each teir of content they've cleared. At the end of a five man, or on command in a raid, a window comes up that allows you to rate a player 1-5, and write a short note about them. These can be shared with other players running the addon, creating a kind of reputation system.

The system is not perfect. It flagged me for using the 30 stam to shoulders PvP enchant. However, it's leaps and bounds better than gearscore, and something that I'm not afraid to endorse.

The Sordid History of Legacy: The Origin

2010-01-03T21:47:00.000-08:00

This is my guild. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

Legacy was founded in March of 2009 by a resto druid who believed that all content could eventually be downed with enough determination. Through sheer willpower, he managed to construct a guild that had Malygos 25 on farm before anyone actually in the guild had ever downed Sapphiron. His "LF1M Maly 25, must have key!" spam has become somewhat legendary in trade chat. Legacy began as one of "those" guilds.

About two weeks after Legacy was founded. I found the current guild I was in, Mean Machine, dismantled when the pressures in the officer corps built up too much. Looking back, I probably wouldn't have joined a guild like Legacy if I were to be put back on the market. But they offered me a chance, and very quickly, a level of control that I would be unlikely to find in other guilds. I was installed directly into the officer corps of Legacy, joining the resto druid GM, a young rogue, and another protection paladin.

Together, we slogged our way through 3.0 raiding. Thaddius 25 was the bane of my existance for several weeks, as apparently for some guild members, and far too many pugs, charges was something far to complicated for them to wrap their heads around. Clearing up to Thaddius in less than 2 hours was not uncommon, and spending 4 hours on that damned flesh giant was about an equally common occurrence. I rapidly displaced the other tanks in the guild. The prot pally officer became a skilled holy paladin, and the other prot pally became a solid ret pally.

Once we overcame the Thaddius hump, and began to smoothly clear Naxx, I put out feelers to fill in some of the holes in the guild. I brought in one of the DK tanks and hunter officers from Mean Machine. Clearing Naxx with regularity brought an end to the legendary Maly spam, seeing as several members of the guild now had their own Keys to the Focusing Iris. We were clearing Naxx and Maly 25 weekly. However, we were still pugging about 8-10 raiders for every raid. About half of those were vetted pugs who ran with us weekly, and a few of them later went on to become guild members.

However, there was still a good measure of instability within the guild. Which caused us to ultimately fail to down the marquee encounter of 3.0, The Twilight Zone. While we were able to kill 2 drake sarth with impunity, the addition of Shadron to the mix created just enough chaos that the raiders who were pugged in couldn't adapt quickly enough. It also didn't help that our primary tanking corps consisted of two prot paladins and a warrior.

3.0 was not without it's fair share of drama. The young rogue I mentioned eventually wore out his welcome with the guild. His constant throwing of party grenades at the raid when they were attempting to eat great feasts, his constant chatter in vent, and his outbursts in gchat eventually wore on the GM to the point where he was given an ultimatum, gquit, or be gkicked. He chose the former, and would up spending an unfortunate amount of time bashing Legacy at any opportunity.

With a core of about 10 consistent raiders, with an outer orbit of causal members, Legacy had managed to entrench itself enough to prepare for the rigors of the first content patch of Wrath. Boldly we walked forward to plumb the Secrets of Ulduar.

The Nature of Raiding in Wrath: Limited Attempts

2009-12-29T01:26:00.000-08:00

Earlier I wrote a post about one of the fundamental changes that occured in Wrath of the Lich King. I spoke about how the Easy Mode/Hard Mode dichotomy in raiding was a good, if misunderstood, thing, because it promoted both choice, and accessability. Both of which are good for the game, even if the forum goers don't think so. However, today I'm going to talk about another change that Blizzard made, one which I feel was not a good idea.

Limited attempts was not something Blizzard really looked at prior to Wrath of the Lich King. One could argue that 45 minute Baron runs and Amani War Bear runs were precursors to the concept, but in both cases the entirety of the instance is available, and the only thing you lose out on is an upgraded loot table. The first instance of lost content occured in the 5 man heroic, the Culling of Stratholme, which was initially seen as a spiritual succesor to the 45 minute Baron run. The primary difference being that if you didn't beat the timer, the optional boss despawned, and could not be attempted that lock out. Due to the one day lock out, and relative ease of the requirements, pretty much everyone overlooked the ramifications of having content that would despawn of it's own accord.

The next patch brought Ulduar, and with it, Algalon the Observer. A boss which, while unforgiving, is not really all that difficult. Touted as "The Raid Destroyer", what made killing Algalon such a rarity, was that a raid only had one hour to work on him per lock out, before he despawned in a blaze of glory. And trust me, Algalon's spawn/despawn is one of the more impressive ones out there. Algalon came with a sexy title, a realm first spam, and the best loot in the game. He was also killed two weeks after he was unlocked. Which means he was killed less than two hours after he was unlocked. The true difficulty in downing Algalon, aside from getting past Firefighter, was getting one hour of continuous and quick pull time. No ninja afks, no poorly timed disconnects, or any other of the oddball things that delay the usual raid could be accepted, because any time spent waiting for your healer to reconnect was time that could never be regained. This became the cause of a lot of frustration with some otherwise well liked members of guilds.

But one boss which was explicitly cited as the "Omega WEAPON" of WoW was one thing. Blizzard took it a step further the next patch, by placing limited attempts upon the entirety of ToGC. 50 attempts to get through all of the hard mode version of the instance. If you used those up, you were condemned to the darkness of facerolling easy mode for the rest of the week. This created an almost fundamental shift in the mindset of many progression guilds. With each accidental DC or lag spike potentially burning up one of those precious attempts in vain, some guild took drastic steps. Many changed their raid times to off peak hours, benched players with questionable internet connections, and in the most extreme case, Ensidia actually transferred servers to a lower population server to avoid excessive server lag.

That was merely the Hard Mode bosses though. However, with Icecrown Citadel, Blizzard has extended this concept even into the Easy Mode version of the instance. The version that's supposed to be easily accessible to the common player is now demanded that players be able to adapt to the patterns of certain bosses within 5 attempts, or go home for the week.

The problem comes with the subversion of the gains made through the implementation of the Easy Mode/Hard Mode Dichotomy. While those changes engendered choice and accessibility, the restrictions of limited attempts remove them. A guild that might decide to put it's nose to the grindstone to down Proffessor Putricide might find itself sitting out quickly after losing attempts to poor connections, server instability, or even a bugged encounter. Their resolve to put in the effort to down the boss has been stripped away from them because Blizzard has decided to place limitations on just how much effort one is able to put into their raiding. When your raid once faced the choice to put in one more attempt, or throw in the towel, that choice will already be made for you, which is never good for the game.

Blizzard has slowly backslid towards the old BC model of raiding, in a rather perverse model. Instead of tuning the fights to the intended difficulty, they're simply going to wait for raiders to get enough extra attempts and buffs to down the fights in their "Self-Basting" raid instance, which, to me at least, smacks of lazy design strategy. Ulduar has proven to be, thus far, the zenith of raid design. Hopefully, Blizzard can get back to the ideals that made that instance so great.

Merry Christmas!

2009-12-24T13:26:00.001-08:00

The posting will resume shortly after the holidays have concluded.

Gearing with Badges in Icecrown

2009-12-18T17:31:00.000-08:00

A lot of people have been taking a hard look at how their going to utilize their badges for upgrades. Some have decided to go straight for the tier gear, others love those offspec pieces, still other are considering buying primordial saronite for crafted gear.

I, personally, am of the philosophy that you build your gear set plans around the fights you are going to be fighting, not the fights you have on farm. Avoidance, and things like 4 piece T10 will be magical for Gunship Battle and Deathbringer, but until I decide to go for the meta achievements, those fights are on farm, and I don't mind making my healers and DPSers work a little harder if it means having an inside track on the future fights.

I've toyed around on the PTR, and have seen what lies ahead. Festergut is going to be akin to Anub'arak phase 3 or Sapphiron, heavy physical damage with a constant magic DoT with periods of burst damage. Rotface is somewhat akin to Grobbulus, only the nature damage going out to the kiting tank is much more severe, and the potential for heavy nature damage with middling physical damage on the Rotface tank. Professor Putricide has more nature damage going everywhere, including to the tank.

In the Crimson Halls, the Blood Prince Council is throwing around heavy shadow and fire damage. Blood-Queen Lana'thael stacks bleeds on the tank, has a raid wide shadow damage aura that increases as the fight goes on.

The Frostwing halls has a lot of AoE fire damage from adds on Valithria Dreamwalker, and Sindragosa is Sapphiron 2.0, with even more frost damage.

There are no Gormak/Patchwerk/Ignis style fights where the tank gets punched in the face with little magic damage. The relative value of avoidance in terms of damage reduction is going to plummet, which means that we need to adapt to that.

So, let's look at what our options are to prepare ourselves for these encounters with our Emblems of Frost.

I've already made my first emblem purchase, taking the Corroded Skeleton Key to replace my brewfest trinket. I've had terrible luck on tanking trinkets. I've never seen the Royal Seal of King Llane drop, never seen the General's Heart, never seen Satrina's Impeding Scarab, and only saw the Furnace Stone drop once and lost it. You know what's dropped at least six times? Fervor of the Frostborn, which is terrible. I can live with the Heart of Iron and the Skeleton Key, however.

Beyond that, my philosophy is to take the most effective upgrades first, and when dealing with items of equal superiority, I take the cheaper one first. There are high stam, high armor pieces available at the chest, gloves, belt, and cloak slots. The other options are the 251 tier pieces. One of the things that needs to be taken into account is, as Wrathy pointed out, that some of the EH pieces have little defense on them. We've all seen the vid of Ciderhelm getting one shot crit by XT-002, so we all know what's at stake with the defense cap.

I currently 831 defense rating from my gear. That's not terrible, as defense does yield more avoidance, but due to diminishing returns, those itemization points could be better spent elsewhere. What this means is that I've got 168 defense rating between me and the cap.

My next step will be to replace my Pride of the Eredar with the Sentinel's Winter Cloak for 50 badges. I lose 2 defense rating in the change, but gain 571 armor and 10 stamina. The additional yellow socket allows me some flexibility, possibly grabbing more defense if needed to make up for losses elsewhere, or otherwise becoming another 30 stam.

After that, some options branch open. I'm currently planning on taking the Gauntlets of the Kraken to replace my T9.45 gloves. This transition will actually be a net gain of 10 defense rating, along with 763 armor and 18 stamina, with an extra gem slot.

Next on the agenda will be swapping in the Verdigris Chain Belt in the place of the Girdle of the Nether Champion. In the process, I will gain another 14 defense rating, 752 armor, 18 stamina, and an extra socket.

Then I plan on buying the Cataclysmic Chestguard to replace my T9.45 chest, netting me 37 more defense rating, 1,344 armor, 27 stamina, and another socket.

During the transition this far, I'll have gained 59 defense rating, 3,430 armor, 73 stamina, and 4 gem sockets. This comes at the cost of about 6% avoidance.

This is where the road becomes somewhat hazy. These purchases will require 265 badges. Assuming that new wings get released at a two week clip after the holidays, and that Legacy can clear all bosses each week, we're projecting about six weeks into the future. Now, I have two roads left to explore with my badges, crafted gear, and tier gear. Seeing as I already have 264 off set pieces for my head and shoulder slots, the 251 tier doesn't really interest me. I won't be investing in T10 until I win a mark of sanctification to jump to the 264 tier.

The crafted gear, however, is ilevel 264, and extremely well itemized. However, it costs 8 Primordial Saronite per piece. At 23 badges for a single PS, these become extremely expensive, either through gold on the AH, or through badges. Hopefully once I've reached this point, the AH price will have come down to something more reasonable.

Taking the Boots of Kingly Upheaval over the Dawnbreaker Greaves will be costly in several ways. In exchange for gaining, 18 stamina, 115 armor, 1.1% avoidance, and an extra socket, I'll be sacrificing 53 defense rating. Just changing my boots alone wipes out nearly the entirety of the defense gains from all the previous badge purchases.

However, the pants are the real prize for me. Equipping the Pillars of Might in the place of my T9.45 pants gains me 27 stamina, 1,336 armor, 2.25% avoidance, an extra gem socket, and the right not to look like the Belle of the Ball. But it comes at a 90 defense rating hit.

So getting the crafted gear will offset about half of the avoidance loss of the badge gear, while converting my excess defense rating to armor, stamina, and sockets. This ends up leaving me with a lean 747 defense.

Finally, the T10 comes into play. I have two slots currently occupied by dropped 264 gear. Taking up the T10 helm will net me 1% more avoidance and 4 more stamina, at the cost of 23 defense rating. The T10 shoulders will net me the 2pc bonus, and a little more base stam, at the cost of a gem slot. I'm not too sure about this upgrade, I'm leaning more towards keeping my current shoulders.

If I take all of these upgrades, I'll gain 4,881 armor, 122 stamina, and six gem sockets. This will come at the expense of about 2% avoidance, which the armor gain will more than offset. After assembling that set, I'll probably grab the rest of the T10 to build an avoidance heavy set for some of the achievements, and possibly gunship/deathbringer heroic.

My general plans are subject to change, if I get lucky with a drop, or a hotfix comes down on some of these items, but I think that the overall design of this gear set will carry me through the later bosses of easy mode in style, and give me a good footing to work with when hard mode begins to demand more specialized gear sets.

The Year in Review

2009-12-16T17:58:00.000-08:00

This was something I found at Taha's blog. Seemed like a little introspection would be good right now.

What did you do in the World of Warcraft in 2009 that you’d never done before?

Pretty much everything. I started playing WoW in October of 08. So, let's see here...

Hit 80.
Got an alt to 80.
Started Raiding.
Led a raid.
OTed a raid.
MTed a raid.
DPSed a raid.
Earned a title.
Joined a raiding guild.
Led a raiding guild.
Got epic flying.
Got a 310 mount.
Got my professions to max level.

Those are just the notable ones.

What was your favorite new place that you visited?

Ulduar was amazing. Best instance Blizzard ever made. From the first encounter to the last, Ulduar was never boring. Often frustrating, but never boring.

What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?

I'd like to get Legacy firmly entrenched as a respectable guild on Destromath.

What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Leading my ten man crew to Starcaller titles and Rusted Proto Drakes.

What was your biggest failure?

Not convincing some of my friends to stick with us.

What did you get really, really, really excited about?

Patch 3.2 making Paladins an acceptable choice for a progression main tank. I got sick of watching the DKs and Druids get all the glory.

What do you wish you’d done less of?

I wish I had pushed the 25 man group harder, earlier. Not getting 3D down in 3.0, No hard modes and no yogg in 3.1, and only breaking into ToGC 25 in the last two weeks of 3.2 kind of smacks of wasted potential.

What was your favorite WoW blog or podcast?

I've really got 4 blogs that I really enjoy reading equally. Righteous Defense, Pwnwear.com, Avenging Wrathy, and Altadin. I read many others, but those four are kind of the backbone of my blogroll.

Tell us a valuable WoW lesson you learned in 2009

Jump in. Figure out what your goal is, and then make it happen. If you want to raid, then RAID. If you want to be the best player on the field in any given AV, then start queueing. If you wait for the stars to align just right, then you'll miss out.

Rage and Grace

2009-12-16T02:57:00.000-08:00

Well, raiding comprises a lot of ups and downs. Doubly so if you're a raid leader. The past week has had a lot of them.

I missed out on the guild's first run into ICC 25. They one shotted Lord Marrowgar, but then proceeded to spend nearly 2 hours wiping to Lady Deathwhisper. Mainly due to trouble getting the adds under control in phase one. Which would have been my job, had I been there. Which made me feel pretty miserable. Making me feel even worse was that my latency dropped down to a manageable 800ms immediately afterwards. Touche, Murphy.

Once my connection had stabilized, I gathered up my ten man, and rolled into ToGC10. There, our superhuman Disc/Holy priest suddenly contracted my connection issues. Ever see a Resto Shaman try to solo heal Heroic Jaraxxus? It's not pretty. So the priest stepped out, and I grabbed one of our other priests, who, while being a skilled and effective healer, had never done ToGC 10 before. ToGC is still tuned tight enough that you can carry a DPSer, but not a tank or Healer, especially since we two heal the whole thing, save faction champs. So there was basically a training wipe for each fight as the new priest adjusted to the unhealthy demands we placed on the old priest. We still picked up Mad Skill for the new priest, who adapted as quickly as I could ask him to, however, it was a little disappointing not to get insanity.

We had a lull until our monday raid, which would polish off ICC 25, during which, my mic broke. Have you ever tried to coordinate first attempts on a new boss without a microphone? Not fun. With all the spam from people's addons and DBM in particular, raid warnings just don't have the same attention grabbing qualities as the giant voice roaring into your ear.

To make matters worse, for some reason, my combat log stopped working. That meant that all my addons which depended on the combat log gave me nothing. Nothing on parrot, half of DBM didn't work, and most frustrating, recount didn't work. I use recount for analysis purposes. I can quickly find out who has been targeting the proper targets, who got hit by the wrong attacks, and most importantly, why someone died. I had none of that. I was essentially flying blind, relying on my officers for information. It was quite disconcerting.

All of this leads up to the raid on Monday. We walk in, and smoothly one shot the gunship battle. It was even more epic on 25 man than it was on ten man. I took the role of the jump tank this time, and spent the fight crossing blades with THE High Overlord Saurfang. A privilege I have not had, save the one time my guild blew up Warsong Hold for the sole purpose of killing Garrosh Hellscream. Jet packs are fun. I mean really fun. Despite being an extremely easy encounter, this is probably one of my favorites in the game. I also picked up a sexy pair of tanking shoulders. They do however, make me look like one of those oddball warrior tanks. Hopefully I can pick up a nice set of tier 10 shoulders soon, seeing as the pally T10 looks pretty good this tier.

Which brings us to the younger Saurfang. Deathbringer got a little crazy. It took us five tries to get him down. And even then, the rate of accumulation of blood power was unacceptable. I'm not exactly sure of what exactly was going wrong because all my tools for analysis depend on the combat log, but do know at one point I panned my camera around and saw our demo lock tanking two blood beasts in illidan-form. /facepalm. Angry Dammer boiled to the surface, but angry raid warnings don't really carry the satisfaction of being able to actually talk to someone. I think they got the message though, as the next attempt, we dropped Deathbringer, and collected purples. Double vanquisher dropped, and we moved on.

One of my goals, now that the guild has begun properly raiding 25 mans, is to clean up the old progression objectives that we failed to down when the content was current. So we started with Sartharion with three drakes. OS3D was a fight that we attempted many times in T7, and it kicked our ass. It didn't help that our tanking corps at the time consisted of three prot paladins, who were utterly gimped prior to patch 3.2, but well, we just weren't that good back then. This time, we came in a rolled it. It was satisfying. The group walked off with new titles, and I walked off with a new flying mount that I won't use, despite the amount of DKP I dropped on it. It's very pretty, but my rusted proto drake flies circles around it. I'm planning on the Ulduar Hard Modes next. Maybe not Firefighter, that was hellish on 10 man.

Next up was Tuesday's ten man night. With my combat log repaired, we dove into Icecrown, and aside from still puzzling out the traps on the pre marrowgar trash, we were textbook in there. Every boss was smoothly one shot. Deathbringer Saurfang didn't get a single Mark out. It was beautiful. I picked up a mace from Marrowgar that I'll probably only use in a farm set, and even then, that's assuming that I don't get a 245 DPS weapon out of ToGC 10 by then. Crusader's Glory just has way too much survivability tied into it for me to surrender it for some more hit and DPS.

Right before the Deathbringer pull, we were inspired by our fellow alliance raiders. Crisis, the top alliance guild spammed the server with their realm first Tribute to Insanity 25 man. Congratulations guys. Sorry Wrathy, I'm sure you'll get Insanity this week too.

We then proceeded to ToGC 10, where the exact opposite happened. Things got sloppy. Ranged DPS got murdered on beasts by standing in the path of the kited worm. DPS didn't switch to the last volcano on Jaraxxus, leading to a kill with only 4 members of the raid left standing. Control was almost non existant on Faction Champions. I wound up having to replace the DK assigned to kite the warrior in order to get them down. That was a bit of a wake up call, and the group rallied to one shot twins and Anub to salvage Mad Skill. I got a trophy that bought me a nice new chest piece for my ret set.

The ups and downs of raiding were ever present. Combined with whatever electromagnetic field of fail I've been projecting lately, it made raiding quite the game of chutes and ladders. But that's part of what makes things so much fun.

A Brief Aside

2009-12-15T02:42:00.000-08:00

You can expect a raging, ranting, raiding post tomorrow, but tonight, I'd just like to cover a topic that's been kind of bothering me for the past week.

Other servers of the Rampage battlegroup, know this: Destromath Alliance rolls need on Frozen Orbs. We do so because all characters who have 450 professions get equal utility out of them. We do so because it's easier than fighting over who actually gets that extra half ounce of use out of them. We do so because it prevents drama. We will not stop. Eventually you will adapt. Thank you for your time.

Patch 3.3: The Agony and the Ecstasy

2009-12-09T18:55:00.000-08:00

Well, we're now in the age of 3.3, and the launch wasn't as buggy as the patches I've mentioned previously. There was the usual 3 hours of being unable to connect to the server, and there's the matter of the floor of the airship at the end of the Halls of Reflection frying people's connections, and the return of "Additional Instances Cannot Be Launched", and the flaws in the new LFG... well, it wasn't perfect, but it really wasn't THAT bad. All of my addons held up, contrary to the predictions of the Yogscast boys.

The new five mans are actually very well put together, and quite fun. I ran it with some guild members, and we cleared all of them, sharded almost everything, and picked up a couple of achievements. Then we got DCed at the end, and a few of us, myself included got locked into a loading screen for the better part of an hour. Thankfully, I was prepared for such an occurrence, and had purchased Dragon Age Origins.

After a few hours, we managed to haul ourselves online, and bludgeon our way into Icecrown for my exploratory 10 man run. I thoroughly enoyed exploring the new content. The fights were more difficult than ToC, but not as difficult as ToGC, and it was no where near as buggy as Ulduar's release. Alas, I did not get the opportunity to crash the Skybreaker into some poor horde guild's ToC run.

We rolled through Lord Marrowgar after deciding to three heal it. We switched back to two healers for Lady Deathwhisper, and after two wipes sorting out the proper kill order for the adds, we knocked her down. We rolled around slaughtering horde and scourge before the gunship battle while we waited for our DCed feral druid to log back on. Then came the real fun on the boat. It was kind of late, and I was somewhat disoriented, and instead of grabbing a rocket shirt, I talked to the other NPC. Yeah, the one who starts the fight. Fortunately, everyone was on board, although not everyone had their shirts. Thus began a frantic scramble to figure out who was supposed to go where and do what, and explain to them their roles as the horde began to pour out onto our vessel. Forget pulling blind, salvaging blind surprise pulls are the most exciting thing in raiding. We had another surprise pull on Deathbringer Saurfang. We didn't see him, and we weren't sure what to do, so we talked to Muradin Bronzebeard, and out rolls Saurfang Junior. After Saurfang's disparaging racist comments, we found ourselves in combat, without a comprehensive plan, again. Unfortunately, this time, as I was barking out orders frantically in vent, my mic decided to stop working. The melee DPS didn't realize to stop AoE when the beasts spawned, and we wound up tanking the first two sets that came out. This provided Saurfang with a healthy Blood Power boost, and wound up wiping us. We returned again, with a working microphone, and a plan, and destroyed Saurfang in short order.

Lore ensued, with High Overlord Saurfang showing his paternal side, and reminding me of why he's one of, well... one horde NPCs who get any serious amount of respect from me from a lore perspective. Meanwhile, while Jaina cried about how great King Wyrnn is, we quietly stood the side.

"That's great, where's our epics?"

Then King Wrynn began to make battle plans, and dispatched peasants who promptly went and began building something.

"Are they building our purples?"

Alas, no, they did build a reagent vendor and repairman though, which was nice. We began to search frantically for our loot, until our healer lets out a holler on vent.

"I found it! It's over here!"

The Deathbringer's Cache is shoved in a corner, behind a pillar, and is painted gunmetal gray, just like the walls around it. GG Blizz.

Only one piece of tanking loot dropped, the mace from Lord Marrowgar, which I passed to the other tank, because I didn't think the loss of stam and armor made up for the gain in hit and DPS. Other than that, our feral druid made out like a bandit, and so did our holy/shadow priest.

All in all, I'm quite proud of how the ten man team acquitted themselves. It feels good to have built something that works.

However, here comes the pain. I logged on today, and stumbled through a random H Gundrak with 17k latency in order to pick up my two frost emblems. I was basically tanking the instance through memory and anticipation, with updates on where everything was standing every 15 seconds or so. It worked fine until the room after Sladran, where the warlock got too big for his britches, and decided to pull two packs for me. Normally, I pride myself on my ability to salvage DPS from their own stupidity, but watching this group crash and burn in slide show format was frustrating. So I let the trash kill everyone else before I AoEed it down, as I rezzed the rest of the party, I warned them to not pull for me. The rest of the instance was pretty much forgettable, if a little disjointed.

With my two frost emblems in hand, I logged off, and prayed that the latency issues would solve themselves by raid time. This was not the case. I logged on to a red bar in the 16k range. I started assembling the raid, and dashed towards the raid instance, hanging my last hopes that it would stabilize when I entered the raid instance. My latency did drop, all the way down to 13.7k ms. I'm used to handling things in the 600-800 ms, and I've muddled through raids with as high as 1.3k, but this was ten times worse than the worst I've ever handled. I can't raid with that level of lag. So I told the our utility player to log off his Hunter, and onto his Paladin, and gave him my spot in the raid. I handed raid lead off to one of my officers, and stepped out of the instance, out of WoW, and out of Vent.

As enjoyable as it was crushing ICC 10 with my handpicked crew on Tuesday, it was just as painful to miss out on my guild's first push into ICC 25. They're in there right now, hopefully dominating the scourge. Good luck, guys.

My Cluttered UI

2009-12-08T01:01:00.000-08:00

My UI is a bit of a mess.
As you can see, I've got quite the clutter going on. A lot of people who post about their UIs talk about how they wanted a clean UI, a functional UI, a UI worthy of posting about. I had none of those ideals in mind when I built my UI. It was put together, piece by piece, like some sort of Frankenstein's Monster. It evolved as my needs evolved. And now, like any end result of evolution, has many vestigial organs that I can certainly live without.

I used the default UI until I was almost level 80. I had no idea what addons were, or how useful they could be. As I took a more and more involved role in the endgame, I picked up addons here and there as issues arised, and never really took the time to do any pruning. So here's a list of what addons I use, what purpose they serve, and what drove me to take them.

Omen: Threat Meter was required to raid by my first guild, which exploded a week before I was ready to start raiding. But hey, at least I got Omen out of it!
DBM: Same as Omen.
Bartender4: Very quickly after hitting level 80 did I come to the realization that 10 abilities just wasn't going to cut it. Now I have over 40 available, and I use almost all of them.
Pallypower: I got sick of spending 20 minutes sorting out which pally was buffing what.
Recount: I couldn't figure out why Thaddius wasn't dying, I picked this up to find out who was only pulling 2k.
Sexymap: Wanted coordinates to track down a quest obective in Icecrown.
Icehud: Got sick of looking at the corner to check on health and mana, so I got it setup right by my character.
Parrot: Gives me a feel for the pacing of the fight, and net heals without having to sift through recount.
Pitbull: As I became more experienced as a raid leader, I realized that raid frames have their uses. I have mousover macros tied into all my hand spells and cleanse on pitbull. Plus it lets me track who's dead, who's dying, and who's dangerously oom.
Tanktotals: it's hidden above recount, but it gives me a mouseover log on some of my more important survival and mitigation numbers whenever I want to check them.

There's a lot of things that I plan on eventually cleaning up with my UI. But right now, it's functional, if ugly. I've got all the information I need to make informed decisions as a raid leader, and as a tank. In some cases three times over...

Alliance Pride

2009-12-08T00:10:00.000-08:00

Everyone's favorite gnome, Larisa, recently posted about the lack of so called "Alliance Pride". I take extreme pride in my being part of the Alliance, because while we may have pompous, boisterous, and balding leaders, at least we aren't evil. And make no mistake about it, the Horde is seriously shady. When Blizzard describes one of your capital cities as a "Sprawling Bastion of Evil", well, that about sums it up.

You can tell the ideology of a society by the examples they venerate. 90% of everything the Horde builds is named after either Ogrim Doomhammer, or Grom Hellscream. Ogrim was a brutal dictator who enjoyed torturing refugees and wound up condemning nearly the entire orcish race to death through his poor decisions in the second war. And Grom, well, despite the rose colored glasses people seem to remember him through, to say that the apple didn't fall far from the tree is an understatement. Garrosh is following exactly in dear daddy's footsteps. And let's not forget about the places named after Kargath Bladefist. What are they gonna call their next territory? Gul'danistan?

Not to mention all the flaws in the Horde races themselves.
Orcs: Have been trying to ride their one good deed to a get out of jail free card for genocide and warmongering.
Trolls: I could go on for hours about all the screwed up things the trolls have done, except that the Horde didn't get any of those cool trolls from ZA or ZG. No, they got the Darkspear Trolls, who were nearly wiped out... by murlocs. Mrglrghlrghl!
Forsaken: Death to the Living! Need I say more?
Blood Elves: You drained the light out of Mu'ru, and nearly ushered in Kil'Jaeden himself to Azeroth... and to top it all off, you all act like Valley Girls addicted to Meth, yes, even the males.
Tauren: I don't really have any beef with the Beef. Don't really get what you're doing over there.
Goblins: Great, a whole race of Gevlons... just what we need...

Lorewise, the Horde has been one of the worst things to ever happen to Azeroth. They cut down forests simply for the sake of pissing off the Night Elves. They stab the alliance in the back whenever the Alliance attempts to fight a more dangerous foe. They develop the tools for genocide, with a history to match. The Alliance might not be perfect, they might have done some rash, or arrogant things, but they've never been involved in anything half as shady as the Horde has done in the past few years on Azeroth. I have little desire to spend my time in game collecting the skulls of innocent peasants.

The Nature of Raiding in Wrath: Easy Mode

2009-12-05T17:45:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm currently blogging from a freezing motel room as I fritter away the time between drill days. This means that there's no new news from the progression front, and I really don't need another drama post right now, so I'll talk about an issue that I've been planning on talking about for a while now. The nature of raiding in Wrath of the Lich King.

As a true Child of Wrath, I didn't experience the endgame of Vanilla, or BC, but I've done my homework on how it was brought down. In a way, this gives me a unique perspective on raiding in the age of Wrath. I'm going to start with the implementation of Normal/Hard modes of fights.

In Pre Wrath raiding, aside from a few examples, such as Hakkar, and most notably the Three Bugs in AQ40, there were no hard modes for bosses. You either killed the boss, or you got nothing. If you couldn't kill the boss, then your only recourse was to wait until Blizzard nerfed the boss down to the level where you could defeat it.

This changed with the widespread use of hard modes in Wrath. The hardcore raiding guilds that ran Sunwell had extremely difficult fights they could brag about dropping, and the casual raiders had the ability to see the content, without being confined to the Zul'Aman style kid's table raids.

However, Blizzard's gotten a lot of flak for this move. Flak which I think is due entirely to perception, rather than reality. People now complain that raid content is too easy. Yet the overwhelming majority of those people haven't actually defeated all of the hardest fights in the game. People now believe that because they can clear the instance on "Normal" mode, that there is nothing more for them to do. This is where the fallacy lies.

Consider for a moment, what the default setting of most encounters is? What happens if you walk into the Obsidian Sanctum, clear trash, and pull Sartharion? What happens if you talk to the Lore Keeper of Norgannon and proceed directly to the Flame Leviathan? What happens if you clear to Yogg and pull? The answers are, respectively, The Twilight Zone, Orbituary, and Alone in the Darkness. Those are the default settings of the encounter. That is normal mode. Less than 1% of guilds in the world have actually downed Alone in the Darkness on 25 man. How is that easy?

The answer is, it isn't. However, because of the a choice made by Blizzard to avoid alienating the casual raider, it is perceived as superfluous content. It is, after all, "Hard Mode", why bother with it if you can just do "Normal Mode?" But what if it wasn't Normal Mode and Hard Mode? What if they called Hard Mode normal mode, and Normal Mode was called easy mode? By clearing the content on easy mode, you were essentially a tourist to raiding, enjoying a watered down, safer version of what the Naxx40/Sunwell Raiders of the previous expansions were struggling through? Instead of thinking that Blizzard was nerfing the content, you would be made painfully aware of the fact that Blizzard nerfed nothing, they're simply carrying you. They're giving you the choice to nerf the encounter into oblivion yourself, rather than wait for Blizzard to do it.

People need to realize their place. A guild that can clear Ulduar on easy mode is not the same as a guild that cleared TK before 2.1. A guild that downed Yogg+1 is more like it. What this does, is that both guilds get to see the content that Blizzard put so much effort into creating, while one guild gets better loot. It grants the power of choice to the masses.

If you're one of those people who feel that raiding is too easy, and you're not currently 5/5 ToGC 25, rocking out on your Iron-Bound Proto Drake, then you should consider ignoring normal mode raiding altogether. Get kills on Heroic, or go home with nothing. That should bring you closer to the flavor of BC era raiding, if that's what you truly desire. Granted, the setup for Icecrown won't lend itself to this philosophy quite as well as Ulduar did, but it should still provide you and your guild with a challenge superior to simply farming easy mode content.

Lord Jaraxxus

2009-12-04T23:32:00.000-08:00

Hot on the heels of Monday's kill of the Heroic Beasts, we returned to ToGC 25 on Wednesday. We quickly mopped the beasts back up, after teaching the new group of ranged DPS the proper positioning for phase two. After the beasts went down, we moved onto Lord Jaraxxus. Lord Jaraxxus is a pushover on normal mode, however, it's a whole different story on heroic. While not as difficult as the beasts, the biggest thing that a raid must fight against Jaraxxus is their own perception that Jaraxxus is a wimp. Things that were of somewhat menial importance, such as legion flames, fel infernos, and incinerate flesh went from slight nuisances to raid destroyers.

We wiped a few times to people being careless with legion flames and not switching onto the portals quick enough. I wound up letting Angry Dammer surface a little bit. Not much, but enough to get their attention. With the raid's focus gathered, we began identifying problems and setting up a general strat for how we'd handle the fight. We focused on minimizing tank movement, to ensure a consistent portal spawn point. We then assigned our three raid healers to specific points of the star to ensure that the legion flame victims wouldn't run out of healer range. Then we made sure the DPS were pre staged to DPS down portals and volcanoes as quick as possible. We began to make progress, and it culminated on our tenth attempt, as we began to put all the pieces together.

The attempt was running very cleanly, we never got more than one Mistress or 3 Infernals before the spawn point was closed. Nether Power was getting dispelled briskly, and people were quick with Fel Infernos and Legion Flames. But with Jaraxxus at 23%, and the 3rd nether portal having just been closed, the proverbial shit hit the fan. The healer for the add tank got hit by a fel lightning, then immediately got lit up by the mistress' pile driver. At the same time, Jaraxxus buffed nether power, pulling the attention of the priests, who comprised two of the three raid healers. On top of this, the interrupters hadn't pushed back into range of Jaraxxus, allowing Jaraxxus to get a nether enhanced Fel Fireball off, whacking off about 85% of my health, and locking my healer onto me. All of this lead to the add tank going down, cutting the mistress free, and leaving no one to cover the infernals that would soon be sprouting into our raid.

As I taunted the mistress onto me, I made the call. Full burn on Jaraxxus. All DPS snapped onto Jaraxxus, and the cleave and AoE damage quickly reduced the Mistress to a distant memory. The volcano spawned, and began spewing infernals out as Jaraxxus was pushed deeper and deeper into execute range. Our boomkin shifted to bear, popped barkskin, and did his best to keep the infernals from running amok, as the healers went into overdrive to try and keep everyone up. Tick by tick, Jaraxxus' health inched towards our victory, and with cries of glee echoing through vent, he crumpled to the ground.

Those cries of happiness were replaced by gasps of horror. The last thing Jaraxxus did before his death was cast incinerate flesh on our shadow priest. The entire raid had completely come to a standstill once Jaraxxus was done, and that included our healers. The poor shadow priest erupts into a burning inferno, scorching the 19 members of the raid that managed to outlast the eredar lord. Oh, the humanity! When the napalm deathstorm boiled over, 12 of the 19 raiders got waxed. The 7 who survived had all popped cooldowns, ranging from my Divine Shield, to Iceblock, to Anti-Magic Shell. Not sure how the warlock managed to survive it... shady...

No sexy tanking loot has dropped in any of our ToGC 25 kills yet, and with Icecrown looming, our focus will be shifting elsewhere, but I'm still glad to prove that unlike previous tiers, we're capable of making an impact on the 25 man level.

the Ghost of Patches Past

2009-12-03T14:47:00.000-08:00

With 3.3 coming next week, presumably, I thought it would be a good idea to look at the massive failures of other recent patches. Here's the top three.

3: Patch 3.0.8: For those of you who don't remember, two words, Lake Winterfail. The patch that brought Death Knights to the unwashed masses also brought a glitch which caused the entire continent of Northrend to crash for 5 minutes whenever the Battle for Lake Wintergrasp ended. When Northrend came back up, the Wintergrasp began again, meaning that Northrend was only up for about 15-20 minutes at a time. Players earned an astonishing amount of marks, being able to do WG every 20 minutes, as opposed to every 2.5 hours. Epic marks, epic honor, epic annoyance.

2: Patch 3.1: My personal favorite post patch anecdote comes from the Secrets of Ulduar patch. The Tuesday that it came out, I was part of a ten man guild expedition into the titanic facility. I took the helm of a siege engine, steam rushed down the ramp, and fell through the world. As many have done since, it's a known bug. But here's where it got interesting. I landed. In Naxx. In Grobbulus' room, to be specific. In my siege engine. What really made it priceless was the fact that it wasn't some new Naxx instance made for me... oh no, it was a Naxx in progress by a horde guild, who were getting ready to pull Grob. My tank lands right next to Grob, and pulls him before the hordies were ready. Hilarity ensues. I was so flabbergasted, that I just sat there in my tank. Then I realized the potential this situation had. I drove over and electroshocked their Grob tank, one shot, one kill. Now, the initiation of PvP combat inside of an instance must have broke something in the code, because once the horde tank died, the entire instance despawned from underneath us. We fell into oblivion, repeatedly, taking durability damage each time. I lost my siege engine after the first fall, took a screenshot, and logged off for a while. I logged on a few hours later to find myself in ghost form in Crystalsong Forest, with my corpse apparently buried far underground. I had to eat a spirit rez, and a nearly 200g repair bill from the dura loss from falling so many times, and the rez damage.

1: Patch 3.0.2: As fun as nuking horde raids with siege engines, and stacking marks of WG to the ceiling were, in terms of unmitigated fail, patch 3.0.2 took the cake. Echoes of Doom brought the scourge invasion, and for about two days, the servers were so unstable the game was practically unplayable. Servers crashed when people earned an achievement, took a point in a 51 talent, logged on... Basically, for a few weeks, while they were backtracking all the bugfixes, WoW was closed on Tuesdays.

So, when you're complaining that the ICC portal leads to Naxx, and that in order to get into ICC, you have to use the Wailing Caverns portal, or whatever way Blizzard tries to screw up 3.3, remember this, it probably won't be worse than what we've already dealt with.

The Aftermath

2009-12-01T15:30:00.000-08:00

It's been 12 days since the exiles left. At first, I was baffled and angry. I wasn't sure why they left, and to be honest, they were a big reason why I kept Legacy going as long as it has. I actually cancelled the next payment on my subscription, deciding that either the next three weeks would bring something that would convince me to stay, or I'd dismantle Legacy and leave Azeroth. I faced a decision to on how to handle things. I could either slam the door shut behind them, or leave access to me open, and pray that I could find the answers to my questions. I talked to some of my friends for guidance, and got a mixed bag of responses, from chalking it up to John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory, to possibly pointing out to a misunderstanding like when our neurotic former officer holy paladin convinced our Resto Druid to quit the guild. I drew up a post the next day, laying out the facts, and my thoughts, to give myself a little more clarity, and see if possibly some members of the blogging community had any ideas on how to best handle the situation.

After a little thought, I realized that salting the earth was easy, I could do it anytime I wanted, but it is also, unfortunately often permanent. So I decided to leave their alts in the guild, and not ban them from our vent. Some of them have popped in from time to time. A couple have seemingly spent more time on the alts in Legacy than on their horde toons. I've found at that they left to go play with some of their friends who had left Legacy and Faction Transferred when going to the dark side first became an option. The Death Knight left to go form a 3s team, which is now 2k rated. The Hunter left because she wanted to raid with the DK, and the other three just kinda followed the crowd. It's nice to have them around, but it still stings. My gut instinct tells me that they're still decent people, but my heart still reminds me of the manner of their departure. The loss of trust that was created by their leaving still colors every interaction I have with them.

Even with the answers I got, there's still some nagging questions that elude me. These are the hard questions, the things that don't fit, and the questions that I fear that if I ask, would destroy whatever goodwill I have left for these people. Why, if the Hunter wanted to raid with the Death Knight, are they in different guilds? Why, if the Shaman could barely make any raids with us, did he think transferring to a guild with pretty much the same raiding schedule, and an attendance requirement would work? How long ago did they put in their applications to those guilds, and continued to assure me that I could count on them for the push to Icecrown? I don't know if I really want to know the answers.

I threw recruiting open the moment they left, and a Fury Warrior who joined us a few months ago and worked his way onto my ten man squad began tapping his resources. He gathered several of his friends, a Warlock, Mage, Rogue, Feral Druid, Resto Shaman, and Unholy Death Knight, who were looking to get back into raiding after an extended break. They were mostly Ex-Get of Fenris members who got sick of raiding when the guild transitioned to Awaken. Heavily undergeared, but extremely skilled. We can get them gear, though, that's not an issue. The losses suffered have been quickly replenished.

Last night, something interesting happened. For the last patch, Legacy was pretty much a semi casual 25 man raiding guild with a hardcore ten man team. We'd made some attempts in ToGC 25, but people lacked focus, and couldn't handle wiping. To be honest, I still had it scheduled only because not at least making the effort would pretty much lay that sham right out in the open. But last nights raid was different, after 5 wipes, people weren't whining and weren't leaving. Each attempt made incremental progress. Finally, after 15 attempts, and two and a half hours of wiping, we had a dead yeti on our hands.

After the raid time elapsed, I rebuilt my ten man team, having 3 of the 5 exiles on my ten man team left me unsure of how successful we could be, but we breezed through ToGC 10, and after an oddball wipe due to a burrower getting stuck on an unused patch of frost in phase three, allowing him to shadow strike, my new feral druid found himself earning Call of the Grand Crusade, Tribute to Skill, and Tribute to Mad Skill all in the same night.

I still don't know what my plan is going to be with the Exiles, but I do know this, I still have work to do. This morning I sent Blizzard the next payment for my subscription.

How to go out with your dignity intact

2009-11-28T18:20:00.000-08:00

One of my recent posts inspired a few replies from around the blogosphere, and I promised that I would put together a reply when I got my thoughts and feelings sorted out. My feelings on the situation still evade me, like some sort of greased pig on speed, but the logical part of my mind has sorted out some things that correspond directly with one of the replies.

Tengen posted a reply that was built around the the concept of the etiquette of leaving a guild. In my time as GM of Legacy, I've had a lot of people come and go. People of varying skill, personality, and tenure have left, and they've left via different means. We've had people leave after ninjaing anything they could get there hands on. We've had people leave spewing hate across gchat and forums. We've had people slip off in the middle of the night. We've had our fair share of people who joined up just to use our tag as an resume builder for the further progressed guild that they left for in less than a week. People have left for a variety of reasons, and I remember the majority of them. However, the people that left with the most goodwill from me had two things in common, communication and honesty.

The one player who probably made the best exit from Legacy, despite depriving us of his leadership, 6k DPS, and all of the tailoring patterns the guild had drop, was a warlock who had been an officer in the guild for about 4 months. He was part of my ten man squad. However, he had some friends in Awaken, the top PvE guild on the server, and decided to apply to them. He explained to me that he had put in an application, explained to me his motivations for his choice, and offered to leave the guild immediately if that was what I wanted. I let him stay in the guild, and raid with us until the disposition of his application became clear. He let me know when his application was approved, and left the guild graciously. He went on to earn a Death's Demise title when Awaken dropped Yogg+0, and still came back to hang out with us from time to time.

What can someone learn from that example is how to graciously make an exit. Be discreet, but not hidden. The fact that you're applying to other guilds isn't something that you want to broadcast to the guild at large until you're sure you've got somewhere to land. But at the same time, if you don't tell the guild leader, and they find out, then it just makes you look like a shady bastard trying to hedge your bets. So the key to this situation is communication with your leadership through the proper discreet channels. This might be through whispers, in game mail, e-mail, vent, the website, or any one of a number of ways to get in contact with your GM. Explain what you're doing, and why you're following this particular course of action. Then give the GM's response a fair listen, and work with him to decide what your future with these people will be.

You also need to be prepared for the consequences. Depending on your GM and your guild's current needs, you might find your raid spot given to someone else, or find yourself removed from the guild. But you're gonna lose those things anyways if your application goes through, and if it doesn't, but wind of it gets back to your current guild, you might find yourself out on the street without anywhere to go. But most GMs I've talked with tend to look more favorably upon honesty than negatively about desire to leave.

Now, all of this is still dependent upon the situation being you leaving one guild because you think the other guild would be a better situation. However, if you find yourself in a situation where you need to leave a guild because your situation has become untenable, then most of the rules still apply. Honesty and communication are still of paramount importance, but in this situation, where reaching the limbo between guilds would be an improvement over your current situation, then leaving is more important than where you're going. You still owe it to your leadership to inform them of why you're leaving. You can do this through an in game mail if they aren't online, or some other discreet method of communication. Once you've done that, then you can leave with your obligations discharged.

Through honest communication, you can avoid a lot of the bad blood that comes with leaving a guild, and possibly be the cause for major improvement within the guild that you left. Burning your bridges through either spite or negligence helps no one.

The Audacity of Armor

2009-11-25T16:46:00.000-08:00

There's a few blog posts out there that I intend to reply to, but I'm going to hold off for the moment until I have a better handle on my thoughts and feelings on the matter in question. So in the interim, I'm gonna post this response to a new topic that cropped up on maintankadin, and has taken protadin bloggers by storm.

Theck, the bringer of numbers, posted another of his patented analysis threads based on armor, and in particular, inspired by the Glyph of Indomitability. Some readers will remember that I recommended the Glyph to newer tanks in my post on Chill of the Throne. However, I made a caveat.

However, the glyph is absolutely useless on fights where the majority of the
damage is magical in nature.

Wrathy, Rhidach, and Honors have all posted their thoughts on the meaning of Theck's analysis with regards to dogmatic protection paladin theory. This post has kind of turned the ideas behind the predominant effective health formulas on its ear.

However, the conclusions were something that I already had a good idea of, and I'm fairly certain that any of the more cerebral tanks in the game already had a pretty good idea of too. What Theck's analysis has done is empirically prove what we've known all along. That currently slavish dedication to a single ideal of effective health is the wrong way of going about things. Variations in encounter design and damage sources creates variables that the old 11 armor=1 stam effective health equation simply does not accurately map.

In order to determine the best gearing philosophy, it has to be done on an encounter by encounter basis. It also requires an understanding of the limitations of each form of survivability, and their impact on encounter mechanics. A tank has several forms of survivability.

Flat damage mitigation: This is typically involves talents and cooldowns. This is advantageous because it works on all forms of damage. However, it cannot mitigate damage in its entirety, you will be hit through this, and some fight mechanics, which are predicated upon you taking damage, will still remain dangerous regardless of how much flat damage mitigation you have.

Avoidance: Dodge, Parry, and Miss. Each has certain advantages with regards to itemization, however, with the exception of miss, none of these work on non physical attacks. The benefits of avoidance is that it occasionally provides 100% mitigation from melee attacks, which are often the biggest source of incoming damage on most fights. This means that any debuffs associated with melee hits won't land either. However, this suffers from a lack of predictability, leading to healer panic attacks, and straight up ineffectiveness against many different mechanics.

Expertise: Expertise is usually considered a threat stat, and it certainly is, however, against many mobs, it works almost as well as dodge in regards to reducing incoming damage. Once again, Theck brought the numbers. It's kinda like the anti-dodge. Whereas dodge makes the mob attack and not hit you, expertise simply makes the mob not swing at you. However, this has all the limitations of dodge, and another big one. Against certain mobs, Gormak the Impaler and Patchwerk being among the more famous, they don't parry haste at all. In those encounters, expertise does absolutely nothing to improve survivability.

Armor: Armor is flat damage reduction that only works against physical damage. It has all the strengths and weaknesses of flat DR, but also becomes absolutely useless in the face of magic damage.

Stamina: Stamina works by directly increasing a tank health pool. It works equally against magic and physical damage, does not suffer diminishing returns, and scales blessing of kings. It sounds like a delicious panacea, and in some regards, it is. However, it is a statistic that is subject to "magic numbers". The point of stam that lets you go from being two shot to three shot is so much more important than any point since the one that let you stop being one shot by the boss. What the majority of the points in between do is simply make for smaller overkill numbers. It does help with healer strain, but different itemization theory can sometimes be a smarter way to go when you find yourself in the wasteland between those magic numbers. However, while the situations where more stam is actually detrimental are very few and far between, they do exist. Fights with mechanics that scale off health can create a harder healing load. The most prominent example is Anub'Arak's leeching swarm.

Resistances: Resistances are a much more difficult thing to decide upon. If stacked, the right resistances can almost completely mitigate some of the hardest hitting magic abilities in the game. However, it does nothing against anything else. It's also on very specialized gear which asks you to make severe sacrifices in exchange for that resistance.

One finds the optimal balance of stats for an encounter by looking at the mechanics of the fight. You have to look for what kind of sources of damage there are, which ones can be avoided, which can be mitigated by armor, which will require cooldown coordination. One of the most important things to affect your gearing decision is the choke point of the fight, the point at which you are at your most vulnerable. For example, Gormak the Impaler is the choke point for tanks from an itemization standpoint. You need to ensure you can survive the impale DoT melee combo, and while phase two and phase three contain a good amount of magic damage, armor is still a strong choice for itemization due to the fact that Gormak is the biggest threat, and all the magic mitigation in the world doesn't save you when gormak punches you in the chops.

I suppose that someone with far more time and inclination than myself could analyze the parses of those encounters, and determine the choke points in the fights. Then they could theoretically refine that information into an effective health formula that takes into account all forms of survivability weighted by usefulness. The coefficients would change based on each encounter, and give us a valid mathematical setup for the gear set.

However, that's beyond something I feel like doing, so until then, all I can suggest is that instead of mindlessly adhering to the EH formula, do your own research on the encounter, and make educated decisions. Don't be the tank shunning avoidance for Deathbringer.

Tank Itemization Finally Comes Around.

2009-11-24T15:08:00.000-08:00

Tarsus has a pretty good writeup on the datamined tanking gear coming in patch 3.3. What struck me about this particular tier of gear is how the itemization was done. I now know for a fact that I will be carrying at least two sets of tanking gear for Icecrown, possibly as many as 4. My bags cry out for mercy.

I will probably be building a heavy EH set to deal with fights like Rotface and Marrowgar, where large amounts of physical damage is the primary issue. This will be constructed out of badge and crafted gear. There's almost an entire plus armor set available. The chest, gloves, belt, and cloak from badges, and crafted pants. The chestpiece alone has more armor than any of the mages in my guild. Think about that, the mitigation you'll get from these pieces is the equivalent of having whole clothies strapped to you for protection. The gear, however, is not without its flaws. The high stam/high armor gear has almost no avoidance on it, and most of it is parry, which hits diminishing returns like Manny Pacquiao, hard and fast. It will be helpful on some fights, but in others, it will become a liability.

Then there's the T10 set. It's well balanced with regards to dodge and parry, and is possessed with a DR free boost to avoidance in the four piece set. This will be particularly powerful in the Deathbringer Saurfang encounter, where higher avoidance can allow the raid to avoid high amounts of damage late in the encounter when Marks begin to overwhelm the raid.

I'm also considering the usefulness of a Hodir style Frost Resist set for Sindragosa, however, I'm unsure of how much damage the tank will actually take from frost, as opposed to the melee. There's also the possibility of an Anub style block set for Lady Deathwhisper and Ogrim's Hammer, but the gap in the attack table due to Chill might make that untenable. Throw in a ret set of gear, and I have no bag space left... :(

All in all, my general progression set will probably be a combination of T10, along with Off set +armor pieces, along with dual stamina trinkets. But the diversity of the pieces allows us to customize our gear set for the encounters we struggle with, and this is a welcome change from previous tiers.

Thanksgiving

2009-11-23T04:16:00.000-08:00

Alright, enough with the touchy feely bullshit for now. Time to man up, shove my emotions back into that compartment that's slowly causing me liver damage, and talk about something that affects all of us.

The Turkinator. As you know, there's a new holiday around, and the most difficult achievement for the meta is to gain Turkey Triumph. You earn this by gaining 40 stacks of turkey tracker. How do you gain turkey tracker? By killing wild turkeys in Elwynn Forest of course!

Now the difficulty lies in the fact that you have to kill at least one turkey every 30 seconds, or turkey tracker falls off. Combine that with massive amounts of competition for said fowl, and you've got this holiday's "dammit" achievement.

There are several tricks that will aid you in your quest for a new pet and mount.

Eat Tracker Snacks. These allow you to track beasts on your minimap, and turkey's are beastly in this game. Unfortunately, so are every wolf, bear, and boar that covers the forest. Use this for guidance, but reliance.
Use instant cast ranged nukes. Hand of Reckoning is ridiculously overpowered here, as is icy touch. Low cooldown, low cost, instant cast spells allow you to kill turkeys with maximum efficiency.
Use your mount as soon as you leave combat. Use crusader aura, or unholy presence, or anything that make your mount move faster, because every second counts.
Most importantly, be one step ahead. By the time you kill a turkey, you should know where the next kill is, and be looking for the one after that.

If you follow these guidelines you should find yourself with a thick Austrian accent, and a new pet and title very soon.

This One Hurt

2009-11-20T14:33:00.000-08:00

We recently lost a group of five players to faction transfer. An enhance shaman, a resto druid, a rogue, an unholy DK, and a hunter. From a roster standpoint, it wasn't as bad of a loss as some previous players leaving was. The shaman's work schedule was so convoluted that he only made one 25 man raid per month. We've got DKs, Hunters, and Rogues falling out of every orifice, so to be honest, all their leaving does is open the door for someone else to step up, and should allow us to diversify our raiding comp. I've already got a mage to replace the hunter, and a feral druid to replace the rogue. I could probably force one of our other DPS DKs to go unholy for Ebon Plaguebringer, and use the freed roster spot to bring in an arms warrior for trauma. The resto druid is the biggest loss, as she was our only currently raiding resto druid. But hopefully the tree who's raiding spot she took will get his computer back from the shop soon, and would nullify that issue.

One of the reasons this particular loss hurt more than most was what these five did outside of raids. When I felt like running BGs to crush the horde, they were the first to jump in. When I wanted to run BWL so I could grab the elementium to finish the sceptre of the shifting sands quest line, they were the ones who followed me into Nefarian's Lair. When we downed Algalon and 1 light, they were the first players I boosted to get their drakes and titles. Several of them took the time to hunt me down on facebook which was something that only the other officers in the guild took the time to do.

If that weren't enough, their actions the last few days before their departure kind of rubbed salt in the wound. When I was talking to guild members about how we were going to handle the upcoming Icecrown raid, 3 of them assured me that they would be there for us. Less than 24 hours later they were gone. With a couple of them already accepted into endgame raiding guilds hordeside, Great Men in History and Crypt Friends, I know that that was something they had to have been planning in advance. I don't like being jerked around like that. 3 of them took ilevel 245 weapons from guild runs, less than 48 hours before they left. The rogue in particular, was frantically burning through his DKP during the last raid, and in hindsight, that looked pretty suspicious. One of them even had the gall to clean out everything his rank would allow him to take from the gbank.

I've dealt with some rough times in Azeroth. I've had two guilds collapse on me and leave me out on my own. Legacy very nearly did, until I decided to take the reigns. I've fought my way up from pugs that couldn't clear Noth in Naxx ten, all the way up to an Algalon kill and Tribute to Insanity. I've dealt with far more important raiders leaving than this group, but for some reason this one just cut deeper than the others. I feel taken advantage of.

Normally in a situation like this, I just kick the person, kick their alts, ban them from vent, and blacklist them from guild activities, and recruit their replacement. But this time, I'm kinda at a loss for what I should do. This isn't the neurotic holy paladin that we all knew would snap someday, it's not the mouthy warlock who's only tolerated because he pulls 5k DPS, or the mage who always seems like he'd rather be playing arenas. These were some of the closest people I had in Azeroth to friends. I trusted them, and this whole ordeal not only calls into question their actions, but it calls into question myself for having such trust in them.

I'm truly at a loss for how I should deal with this. Should I go scorched earth, and ruin any chance that the last week was a misunderstanding? Or should I leave them access, and possibly just let a frustrating wound fester?

What's in a Name?

2009-11-16T03:54:00.000-08:00

Gravity, of Pwnwear, asked his readers what was the name of their characters, and why did they choose that name. I've only got two relevant characters, my Paladin, and my DK.

Dämmerung is my first character ever, and my main character. Prot spec since day one. His name is German, it means Twilight. I pulled the name from the fourth act of Richard Wagner's epic 15 hour opera Der Ring des Nibelungen, Götterdämmerung. One of the reasons I choose the name was the duality of it. In addition to twilight, Dämmerung is also the german word for dawn. The beginning and the end, just as the tank is the first one in the fight, and the last one to leave. That, and I kind of hear Ride of the Valkyries playing in my head whenever I pull. One of the fortuitous things about my choice of name and class is that most of the endgame titles suit it very well, Of the Nightfall, Starcaller, Argent Defender, Crusader, Argent Champion, Wrath is a good time to be a paladin with a name related to the night sky.

Czernobög started out as my token DK, because well, everyone has a token DK. He's evolved from a glorified bank alt, into an unstoppable blood spec killing machine, and a comical unholy tank for the occasional heroic on the side. The name is derived from a character in Neil Gaiman's novel, American Gods. In it, Czernobog was the Slavic deity of blood, darkness, and winter. Blood, Unholy, and Frost, the parallels seemed obvious. I threw in a gratuitous umlaut, as I do in most of my character names, in order to throw off the annoying gold spam and phishing whispers that plague my server.

Why warlocks are a tanks worst nightmare.

2009-11-13T15:53:00.000-08:00

Honors, over at Honor's Code has begun to notice a disturbing trend. The DPS are begining to catch up to him in threat. This is mostly because their itemization is more focused into the field of damage dealing, this means that as gear level increases, the DPS's damage output increases more rapidly than the tank's does. That's because we have more important things to focus on, like not getting one shotted by the angry crypt lord. The good news is that this means that your DPSers are doing more damage, the bad news is that this is only going to get worse.

Honors found that the two worst culprits are a destro lock and a hunter. The lock is the worse of the two, however, Honors is baffled because he knows the lock's a good player. Well,the reason why locks, and Destro locks in particular create aggro issues for tanks is oddball design on blizzard's part. Destro Locks have a talent called destructive reach. It decreases the threat of their destruction spells by 10%. This does not reduce their threat on their Aff or Demo spells. They can go into the affliction tree and get imp drain soul to get a 10% reduction in threat on their aff spells. This means that at any given time, a warlock's threat is being reduced by, at most, 10%.

Death Knights get a 25% reduction on all attacks from subterfuge.
Moonkins get a 25% reduction on all attacks from Nature's Reach.
Ferals get a 30% reduction just for being in cat form.
Mages get a 40% reduction on arcane spells from arcane subtlty, and a 10% reduction on fire spells from burning soul.
Ret Paladins get a 30% reduction on all attacks from Fanaticism.
Shadow priests get a 25% reduction on all shadow damage from shadow affinity.
Rogues get a 30% reduction on all attacks for being a rogue. Plus tricks.
Ele shamans get a 30% threat reduction on all spells from elemental precision.
Enhance Shamans get 30% reduction on all attacks from spirit weapons.
Warriors get a 20% reduction on all attacks when not in defensive stance, and fury warriors get an additional 10% from improved beserker stance.

The only class with less threat reduction than a lock is... a hunter. However, both classes come with tools to allow them to manage aggro. Hunter, with misdirection and feign death should never pull aggro. Warlocks have soul shatter. Their primary threat reduction ability is on a 3 minute cooldown. Their secondary threat reduction ability is death. Naturally, we don't want them to use the second one, so careful management of soulshatter is important. Along with that comes careful management of threat. Warlocks aren't like hunters, where they can just go, "Oh shit, feign death!" A warlock who pulls aggro is very quickly a dead warlock.

On some fights, such as hodir, the second half of Destructive Reach comes into play. If the boss is tauntable, a warlock might set up with the tank a plan where the warlock actually pulls aggro, the tank quickly taunts back, and the lock then shatters. That tank gets a threat boost, and the warlock gets breathing room. The other method is to methodically ride the tank's threat. I had a raiding warlock who was pro at this, and it freaked me out the first few times I raided with him. This takes advantage of the mechanics of threat. A warlock at range must hit 130% of the current aggro target's threat in order to pull. So while you see a lock blowing past you on omen, their threat meter shows them happily sitting at 85% of the threat needed to pull. Although on Hodir in particular, you get some hilarious moments where fight mechanics force the lock into melee range of the boss, where only 110% threat will pull, and the boss promptly kills them.

In the end, the key to working with a destro lock is communication. In order to maximize their DPS, they will likely be putting out more damage than you can put out in threat. Both of you need to know if there's a hand of salvation or soulshatter available. Both of you need to know if the boss is tauntable, and if the fight mechanics might force the lock into melee range. By being one step ahead of the boss, the lock can still put out killer DPS and not take an impale to the face.

The 8 words any paladin in tier 10 must know.

2009-11-05T17:18:00.000-08:00

"It's not a dress, it's a war kilt,"

Honestly, even though judgement armor was the best looking tier of all time, I'm not a fan of the plate mail dress. However, there's another phrase we should all learn.

"At least it's not tier 5!"