PST Episode 71 - Extended MoP Q&A!

[Oint]

I enjoyed the extended show Lore. Some questions overlapped a bit, but sometimes things do need fleshed out more. There were some interesting points brought up...Warlock tanks, charms (not sold on them, seems grindy for no guarantee of loot), the item squish, and challenges.

Warlock tanking would probably be similar to the talent system. It would add a very interesting gameplay element but not be required all of the time. However, it is the kind of idea that I enjoy about raiding, and that's finding creative solutions in unconventional ways, without it being required, but a viable option based off of your teams composition.

I don't care for their ideas of giving raiders more things to do like dailies for charms and materials...just give me more raids, that's what we enjoy doing, raiding. If they really wanted to give us more as a raid, give us raid quests to do while raiding. Give us quests for flasks, food, crafting materials, gold even. They can say they want us more in the world, but if I want to raid, it doesn't matter what they put in the world, I won't want to do it, and it will feel like a chore instead of an interesting gameplay element.

I have to laugh about the large amount of discussion on the item squish. When it was first brought up a few months ago, I found it interesting, but I didn't give it much thought. Now, I really am looking forward to a solution. I am definitely understanding that they will wait until the next expansion as it would be another big change. It's a good thing to pace our big changes, it keeps things interesting. Once I saw the previews of the heroic level items in MoP, I cringed. The stats on gear are ridiculous. I just don't find value in them, I just see a massive amount of numbers, and now I'm carelessly looking at the item level without giving the gear a reasonable amount of thought in how to maximize it. I just don't care. So I can say I am definitely an early adopter to the item squish, and I look forward to when gear has meaningful value once again as it did earlier in WoW.

One thing I disagree with you on is your hope that silver medal challenges are fairly easy to obtain. I don't want them extremely hard, but I don't want to see everyone have them quickly. I do think the armor sets should require a decent amount of skill and competency. Yes, anyone that puts in the time and study of the challenges should be able to get them, but in no way should someone be able to step foot into a challenge on their first time and win it without full knowledge of the path they need to go on. I also hope that challenges become a solid option to test a recruits ability to perform their role and follow instruction for raiding on a basics test for groups.

Sorry forgot about the Garrosh reveal. I just wanted to say I consider the reveal to be a big mistake and one that I'm very surprised that an experienced storytelling group decided to let out. I don't want to hear the ending of a book or movie before I watch it. While some will argue its all about the journey...the ending is the closure to the journey, or the cliffhanger to the next. I do hope they look at this and never forget it was a boneheaded move. You can't give us open ended lore when you tell us the ending. It doesn't matter how you tell it....we know the end. Dumb.

[Leucifer]

Exactly this is the main problem, some players wanna process that information themselves ... the "masses" will not ever care but about the big 1 mil crits they do damage.


Comparing 600 > 598 is easy ... comparing 1 staff with 1349 st/899 int/626 mast/555 crit/5151 sp vs. offh 501 int/752 st/344 haste/318 mast + 1h 578st/385int/276 crit/225haste/5152 sp (these are just some stats I pulled from actual items on MMO-C) ... then my head starts to hurt, and these have similar stats and I don't even count all 13 items or reforging or going to compare different tiers, gems etc.

People will just don't process the information, or just count the looks of an item, the ilvl, compare blue vs purple ?
I guess it's what "the masses" do now anyway.

Comparing those two are easy..... sure.

The problem comes in when you design a raid boss. If you want to make it challenging, you're going to want a fairly narrow performance band. What I mean by that is, say, for a 10 man boss, you're going to want a combined raid dps range to be within certain limits for a successful kill.

The problem will arise when you have larger differences between dps outputs.

I don't have the time at the moment to go into an extensive explanation of the math involved. But I'll make some handy predictions....
1) You'll see more bosses that become total lolstomps as groups gear up.
2) You'll see some bosses that are VERY nasty..... as in, "Make Heroic Ragnaros Look Like a Mewling Kitten"

The simple explanation is, when you start dealing with larger numbers, you're going to have a harder time fine tuning an encounter.

[Tboshido]

How could anyone not have known, Garrosh would be a end boss. He driven by rage with very little reason or calm. He's tainted, I told my friends at the beginning of Cata, when i saw he was the Warchief, He will destroy everything Thrall has achieved with the horde.
Is it just me, could no one else see this???

[ryan4nayr]

I kinda like the incoming Glyph of Metamorphosis for warlocks. Warlocks had been used as gimmick tanks in prior raids, and Blizzard has been trying out different gimmicks over the years -- hunters with their tenacity pets, enhancement shamans that had talents for parrying and shield expertise. I guess we'll see where this experiment will lead.

[Rawer]

when i saw he was the Warchief, He will destroy everything Thrall has achieved with the horde.
Is it just me, could no one else see this???

Hmm, as I see things ... Thrall has achieved few things "with the horde". Most things he has done alone for himself or Azeroth.
Thrall hasn't achieved much "for the Horde" and "the Horde" has achieved more for Thrall.

[Lore]

Hmm, as I see things ... Thrall has achieved few things "with the horde". Most things he has done alone for himself or Azeroth.
Thrall hasn't achieved much "for the Horde" and "the Horde" has achieved more for Thrall.

You must not have played Warcraft 3.

[tawnos]

For the tanking glyph, why on earth would we need another tank? 1.5/25 (6%) slots in a raid are tank slots, and yet we already have 40% of classes with a tank spec. Soon it will be 46% of classes. Do we need > half of the classes having a spec/pseudospec to fill 6% of the roles in a 25man raid? There has been no indication they will be returning to making tanking a more substantial role as it was in wotlk that I've heard, so they will already be flooding the tank role compared to how many are needed just by adding monks.

I feel like the same is true for melee dps. Unless you're a high end guild, melee is already flooded and ranged rare and irreplaceable. People just plain like playing melee more than ranged, and yet ranged are always more or at best equally beneficial to the raid. THere has also been no indication I've heard that this will change, and a tiny extra increase in damage from might is both a bad way to 'fix' the problem and nowhere near significant enough to do so (see people calling 3 melee a 'melee-heavy' group in 10man heroics...if the problem were fixed anything short of 5 melee could never rationally be considered 'melee-heavy' any more than having <5 ranged should eve be considered 'range-heavy'). At the high end, where you get people playing whats optimal more than what they enjoy, this is a bad fix because it will end up with people heavily stacking melee on the 'melee fights' and still overstacking ranged on other fights (as is currently the case). At the low end, people are still going to play melee because people enjoy melee more and you will warp the difficulty curve where the 'melee-heavy' fights will seem too easy and the other fights too hard.

Outside of higher end guilds (and by that i mean the ones who are substantially into heroics) there is a huge composition problem when it comes to ranged versus melee, tanks, and even heals. I'm afraid monk is going to exacerbate this further and having both a tank and melee spec (both flooded roles) was a terrible idea. Not having at least one spec for the absolute most needed role without exception (ranged) was a terrible idea.

[Theotherone]

Why is there so much QQ on the offical WoW forums about people not getting into beta yet even though they have the annual pass? Dont people know what A. Beta testing is and B. What terms and conditions are?

There's QQ because people are ignorant jerks for the most part. They think the Beta is the final product and they'll get a jump on playing. They also don't read agreements and if they do they're too stupid to understand what they read. Then they talk about stupid things like bringing lawsuits - I want to see this, then I want to see them QQ when the court fines them for bringing a frivilous lawsuit.

Someone had a good idea that all the people who post QQing about the beta invites should go right the back of the line; but by that time the beta may be too polished, I think they should be among the first in and be alotted 2 weeks or something so that they can experience the buggy contet.

[Rawer]

You must not have played Warcraft 3.

We all know it ain't the same Thrall