Aliena's Week in Warcraft (Episode 8)

[Ciderhelm]

http://www.wowhead.com/blog=169026 New account recovery feature
http://www.wowhead.com/blog=169045 New Tinkertown preview
http://www.wowhead.com/blog=168863 Tier 11 3D models
http://blue.mmo-champion.com/t/26859...ot-are-a-myth/ Ghostcrawler on talent tree re-design

[Pers3us]

Hmm... automated account recovery. Could be a bad thing if used wrong, which honestly, most people that get their accounts hacked will probably get that messed up as well.

Grats on the Kodo! I don't have that one yet, just the ram.

As for Cata, I was going to tank a bunch of heroics in this build, but then I found out that Sanctuary is broken (moreso than last build), so I'll have to stick to ret and holy. Really looking forward to running every heroic, even if it's impossible. I'll try to run the heroic as ret... I don't want to steal your spot or anything!

Great video again, I love responding to these...

[Rennadrel]

Good vid, I too don't agree with what Ghostcrawler says about the talent tree designs and how it effects cookie cutter builds. I don't think cookie cutter builds are necessarily a bad thing, but being able to find certain upsides in one build over another would make for the best performance in a role, especially for DPS players. I mean, there are a lot of warlocks out there who play any 3 of the specs in the game, they are all certainly raid viable and with the right gear, gems, enchants and rotation you can do well regardless of spec, however I was always of the understanding that demonology was the weakest of all 3 but still provides it's own raid benefits.

The problem is now that 31 point talents have pretty much forced cookie cutter builds, players are going to take the best talents available for their role (DPS especially) and then when they can't reach any more talents to improve in some areas, they will select certain utility with the few remaining points. I think from a utility standpoint people will find a preference in choosing certain utility talents over other players, I know this will probably be true among Paladins especially who seem to be thought of as a utility class before filling any of the major roles in Cataclysm.

And I have yet to get either the Kodo or the Ram, so I am still sad face about that.

[88h2o88]

TINKERTOWN! I am going to have to start up a level 1 gnome mage to try out the new gnome area. Looks really great and what us little people need. FTG!

[Scottpoet]

...the Ghostcrawler thread annoyed me to no end. I can't believe I read it all.
Lore explained the cookie cutter concept way better, if there is a red button and a green button and every time you log on you press the red button...you die. Eventually you will learn to press the green button and live. (paraphrasing here just so you know; lest the administrative hobbit of doom uses the power of the one ring finger to delete my profile)

Talent specs, glyphs, gems/enchants and gear all fall into this same category to some degree. The arguments used by the players and by Ghostcrawler all danced around one issue that was never really addressed, "Can Blizzard design talent trees that allow a player to build a character that feels unique, powerful, and able to access all the content?"

The answer is no. At best they can only add a little variety.

The problems that have arisen come less from Blizzard's design, but rather from players abusing that design. "LFM 10 man ICC must have +5800 gear score and link Achievement." How many people had a 5800 gearscore when ICC first came out? If I am a competent player, why can't someone explain to me the fight and I will do it? These problems are created by players, and only the player community can really address them.

The only part of the entire thread that really concerned me was that GC seemed to suggest that Blizzard doesn't really do the math concerning talent tree builds. I'm sorry but, that is really important. 1% is really really important. Take a 1% dps reduction across 25 players in a raid it is pretty big stuff. It's like having one of your dps afk for 2 minutes in a 10 minute fight. Any guild leader would immediately boot someone for continually doing that. For that same reason, any sane progressive guild leader is going to question a member of their raid team for taking a pure flavor talent over a +1% function talent. Change +1% to +10% factor and oh yes, someone is getting booted.

[DeathOrCake]

Got the ram on two chars last year, and funnily enough got the shanker on two alts that can't use daggers ( a DK and a Pally) Wish they made those BoE. Also, been dying to know where Aliena is from. Its cute how she mispronounces some words on the strat videos.

[Xcuse]

Also, been dying to know where Aliena is from. Its cute how she mispronounces some words on the strat videos.

Germany if I'm not horribly mistaken. (Oktoberfest?)
I'm from Switzerland and mispronounce quite a lot of words myself, but as long as both sides understand eachother that's a non-issue I guess.

Love the Brewfest dungeon-finder feature thou... lazy peon ftw.

[Quinafoi]

Well here are my comments...

Ghostcrawler on Talents
No matter what happens, cookie cutters will be a fact of life regardless. The point in all of Ghostcrawler's posts that caught my attention the most is when he made the comment that "the WoW community has evolved in a direction where being badly informed is worse than being a bad player." Theorycrafters and those that read and contribute to that information will always lead towards finding a numerically best situation. And despite the fact that people can't perform according to the theory perfectly, because they want to be better players they will continue to strive for perfection. Even though players may have varying levels of skill, one can still generally assume that everyone wants to be better than they are now, and if they have the information to point them towards a theoretical perfect world, they will strive for that perfection.

New Account Recovery
While I'm pleased to see them try and make the process faster, despite the warnings they provide those people that have been compromised already are still highly likely to be compromised again.

Tinkertown
The music better have kazoos... after Operation Gnomeregan's epic soundtrack with kazoos, gnomish music would be a pure letdown if it didn't have this truly gnomish instrument.

T11
Another Druid set without antlers, I think that makes what, two, now? Its ok, I still have my own.

[Tengumight]

I ran the brewfest boss the other day on my dk and had both mounts drop in the same keg :-)

[Rennadrel]

...the Ghostcrawler thread annoyed me to no end. I can't believe I read it all.
Lore explained the cookie cutter concept way better, if there is a red button and a green button and every time you log on you press the red button...you die. Eventually you will learn to press the green button and live. (paraphrasing here just so you know; lest the administrative hobbit of doom uses the power of the one ring finger to delete my profile)

Talent specs, glyphs, gems/enchants and gear all fall into this same category to some degree. The arguments used by the players and by Ghostcrawler all danced around one issue that was never really addressed, "Can Blizzard design talent trees that allow a player to build a character that feels unique, powerful, and able to access all the content?"

The answer is no. At best they can only add a little variety.

The problems that have arisen come less from Blizzard's design, but rather from players abusing that design. "LFM 10 man ICC must have +5800 gear score and link Achievement." How many people had a 5800 gearscore when ICC first came out? If I am a competent player, why can't someone explain to me the fight and I will do it? These problems are created by players, and only the player community can really address them.

The only part of the entire thread that really concerned me was that GC seemed to suggest that Blizzard doesn't really do the math concerning talent tree builds. I'm sorry but, that is really important. 1% is really really important. Take a 1% dps reduction across 25 players in a raid it is pretty big stuff. It's like having one of your dps afk for 2 minutes in a 10 minute fight. Any guild leader would immediately boot someone for continually doing that. For that same reason, any sane progressive guild leader is going to question a member of their raid team for taking a pure flavor talent over a +1% function talent. Change +1% to +10% factor and oh yes, someone is getting booted.

Well, 1% can mean the difference in a kill or a wipe, especially when you spread that out across 2 tanks, 6 healers and 17 DPS or whatever you happen to be running for a raid formation. And from a damage dealers standpoint, if you are losing a total of 17% DPS loss across your entire raid for instance, that 17% could equate to a fairly large amount of the boss's health pool. And if you wiped at 10% due to enrage, you could easily be saying something like "damn if we had that extra 1% damage per DPS we would have killed him" but you had to sacrifice that 1% for a mandatory utility talent.

[fengosa]

...the Ghostcrawler thread annoyed me to no end. I can't believe I read it all.
Lore explained the cookie cutter concept way better, if there is a red button and a green button and every time you log on you press the red button...you die. Eventually you will learn to press the green button and live. (paraphrasing here just so you know; lest the administrative hobbit of doom uses the power of the one ring finger to delete my profile)

Talent specs, glyphs, gems/enchants and gear all fall into this same category to some degree. The arguments used by the players and by Ghostcrawler all danced around one issue that was never really addressed, "Can Blizzard design talent trees that allow a player to build a character that feels unique, powerful, and able to access all the content?"

The answer is no. At best they can only add a little variety.

The problems that have arisen come less from Blizzard's design, but rather from players abusing that design. "LFM 10 man ICC must have +5800 gear score and link Achievement." How many people had a 5800 gearscore when ICC first came out? If I am a competent player, why can't someone explain to me the fight and I will do it? These problems are created by players, and only the player community can really address them.

The only part of the entire thread that really concerned me was that GC seemed to suggest that Blizzard doesn't really do the math concerning talent tree builds. I'm sorry but, that is really important. 1% is really really important. Take a 1% dps reduction across 25 players in a raid it is pretty big stuff. It's like having one of your dps afk for 2 minutes in a 10 minute fight. Any guild leader would immediately boot someone for continually doing that. For that same reason, any sane progressive guild leader is going to question a member of their raid team for taking a pure flavor talent over a +1% function talent. Change +1% to +10% factor and oh yes, someone is getting booted.

A 1% dps reduction spread over 25 ppl is still only a 1% reduction to overall raid dps. In order for that to matter on a fight with a 10 minute enrage timer you would have to down the boss after 9m54s for those talent points to be of any consequence. To say that is really really important is an exageration in my book. To use your example, losing 1 player for 2 mins should not be crucial to an encounter. Any fight where having one person DC mid-fight inevitably causes a wipe is horrible design IMO.

The point GC is trying to make is that a single talent point shouldn't cause success or failure in a raid environment -- it is not and should not be a green button. Moving to spores, getting inocculated and not dying from pungent blight halfway through the fight should be a green button. Knowing your rotation, how to dps effectively while moving and/or switching targets and controlling your burst damage should be green buttons as these ultimately affect your dps far more than a 1% talent ever will.

I'm not trying to argue that theorycrafting should be irrelevant. There is a place for it in the game and it should provide an efficiency boost(10-20%?) that comes from your gems/chants/spec/glyph/etc that allows more serious guilds to down bosses ahead of time while more casual guilds may have to rely on gearing up a few extra weeks to down the same boss. So the question now becomes how important is that 10-20% boost? The answer is probably going to differ based on which part of the community you ask. The serious raid leader will say yes. The casual will say no. To say that Blizz doesn't understand the math on this one is pretty far off base. The biggest challenge for them is designing the game so that math doesn't have too large an outcome on a fight, but is still relevant to game play. Judging from all the stat changes coming in cata, this was something they felt had too large an impact in WOTLK.