Back when The Burning Crusade launched I can remember trying the new 'heroic' dungeon mode out. We went in with a couple people at less than max level and got absolutely butchered. Most of the trash had cleaves which hit our melee for more than half their max health. Byung and Tom died on pretty much every pull. We did manage to get one boss down before figuring we should actually get everyone to max level and get some gear before trying again. Some of the BC heroics were truly brutal and were very hard even with awesome gear.
Wrath of the Lich King heroics were locked so you need max level to even try them. They were easier than TBC heroics were at launch but they were still pretty tricky. We died some but I don't remember ever giving up on one of them. They were all doable at max level with reasonable gear.
Cataclysm went way back in the other direction. I can remember giving up on heroic stonecore in the early days of the expansion. The problem here was with healer mana. They'd gone to a new system and healers simply needed a higher gear level to succeed than in Wrath. I'd like to think our healers played quite well and we likely won more than an average group would have but in some cases it was flat out impossible at low gear levels.
Cataclysm may have been a tad too difficult but I actually liked it. Having a chance for failure makes things interesting. It would be better if the chance for failure was skill related but having the outcome be up in the air makes things a little more interesting. Yesterday Tom and I did some Mists of Pandaria heroics and there was no chance for failure. We did 6 heroics and I didn't die a single time. That's unheard of when compared to heroics from previous expansions. Even Wrath had some deaths! To make things even worse we actually pulled the final boss of one of the dungeons with our tank (Tom) dead. No problem. The hunter switched to his turtle pet and we 4-manned the final boss. Of a heroic dungeon. While we were still wearing a lot of leveling greens.
That just shouldn't happen! I want to die! On another boss I didn't understand the mechanics and actually just stood still while trying to read tooltips for most of the fight. Didn't matter. You can easily win down a DPSer.
Now, they did add a difficulty above heroic this time around so maybe they made heroics particularly easy with the thought that people like me who want to lose can go lose in challenge dungeons. Unfortunately i can't play in challenge dungeons right now because there is no 'looking for challenge mode' tool. Tom and I can't just play with random idiots. We need to co-ordinate with 3 other people like back in the old days. In a week or two when Brendan, Pounder, and Sky hit max level this will become an option but for now we're kinda stuck if we want something hard to do. Maybe it would be worth trolling trade chat/the realm forums to find 3 other people that way?
Friday, September 28, 2012
Thursday, September 27, 2012
Spirit of Harmony
Blizzard took out any semblance of elemental crafting materials in this expansion and replaced them all with a single bind on pickup item that drops from practically everything. The idea is to force crafters to go out and kill monsters instead of just buying all the materials for their stuff. Some people are pretty bitter about needing to actually play their alts but I don't much care. What I actually care about is what I can use these things for.
The reason I'm so curious now is I can craft a pretty significant upgrade weapon for 5 SoHs. I've only gather 6.5 total (and spend one getting realm first blacksmithing) so that's a pretty significant number. But if there's not really anything important to spend them on I might as well go for it, right?
The first thing you can do with an SoH is buy crafting materials. Ore, leather, cloth, herbs... All stuff I could spend money on if I needed it. Maybe if I end up with infinite SoH I'll use this to convert them into cash but if this is the best option I will absolutely craft a blue weapon out of them now.
I can buy more blacksmithing recipes. Recipes for PvP gear which might sell well? Again, though, this is converting SoH into cash and I have more than enough cash. On the other hand there are also some ilvl 450 blue recipes that make tanking gear. None of the pieces have hit or expertise which might be a problem. And will also certainly all be replaced in short order since we need ilvl 463 for challenge modes.
I can use it as a reagent for crafting a bunch of different blacksmithing things. Again, I could sell this stuff for money but I could also build it now before it would hit the market and become available otherwise. 2 make a low level weapon. 5 make a ilvl 463 weapon. 8 make ilvl 476 gloves/chests (but also take a large number of living steel, the new alchemy cooldown). 2 make ilvl 496 gloves/chests (but also take a large number of items only obtained by DEing a raid weapon).
Honestly, I look at this list and it really seems like all SoHs are really good for in the long term is making money. In the short term I can give a small boost to a few tanking slots, a medium boost to my weapon, or track down a ton of living steel for a medium boost to my gloves or chest. I think for now making a better weapon for questing just makes sense. Time to spend the rest of my SoHs I guess!
The reason I'm so curious now is I can craft a pretty significant upgrade weapon for 5 SoHs. I've only gather 6.5 total (and spend one getting realm first blacksmithing) so that's a pretty significant number. But if there's not really anything important to spend them on I might as well go for it, right?
The first thing you can do with an SoH is buy crafting materials. Ore, leather, cloth, herbs... All stuff I could spend money on if I needed it. Maybe if I end up with infinite SoH I'll use this to convert them into cash but if this is the best option I will absolutely craft a blue weapon out of them now.
I can buy more blacksmithing recipes. Recipes for PvP gear which might sell well? Again, though, this is converting SoH into cash and I have more than enough cash. On the other hand there are also some ilvl 450 blue recipes that make tanking gear. None of the pieces have hit or expertise which might be a problem. And will also certainly all be replaced in short order since we need ilvl 463 for challenge modes.
I can use it as a reagent for crafting a bunch of different blacksmithing things. Again, I could sell this stuff for money but I could also build it now before it would hit the market and become available otherwise. 2 make a low level weapon. 5 make a ilvl 463 weapon. 8 make ilvl 476 gloves/chests (but also take a large number of living steel, the new alchemy cooldown). 2 make ilvl 496 gloves/chests (but also take a large number of items only obtained by DEing a raid weapon).
Honestly, I look at this list and it really seems like all SoHs are really good for in the long term is making money. In the short term I can give a small boost to a few tanking slots, a medium boost to my weapon, or track down a ton of living steel for a medium boost to my gloves or chest. I think for now making a better weapon for questing just makes sense. Time to spend the rest of my SoHs I guess!
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Realm First Cooking
During the Cataclysm expansion for World of Warcraft the very first realm first earned was cooking. They'd implemented quests a month beforehand which allowed you to stockpile the materials needed to max out. So all it took was clicking a couple buttons once the servers came up and someone would get it. I got lucky (there were probably a dozen people trying for it on Alliance side alone) and pulled it off last time.
Cooking in Mists of Pandaria is significantly harder than it was in Cataclysm. The number of materials needed to max out was pretty extreme and there's pretty much no way to get them in a short period of time on one character. Someone who was really hardcore about it would level multiple characters to 86 or get friends to help out. On Vek'Nilash it didn't seem like anyone was really hardcore about it at all. It was approaching my bedtime and cooking was the only profession realm first that hadn't been claimed. So I figured I'd try to throw some money at the problem...
You see, all the materials could be purchased with tokens earned via Tiller quests. Anyone just randomly questing in the zone was likely to pick up a few tokens. Ideally they'd save them up to buy interesting items from one of the Tiller vendors but I hoped I could bribe some people to part with them for me. My first request was met with puzzlement. I probably hadn't worded it too well (I'd been up for a long time by this point) and no one was interested at 1k per token. I went fishing for a bit in another zone to earn a couple more tokens myself and then came back to try again. This time I spelled out precisely what I wanted by calling out one specific item I wanted to buy. (100 year soy sauce) I was about to give up when I got a taker. Woo! He sold me 5 which put me within striking distance. I'd have to catch a lot of fish but I could do it. He then asked if I was going for realm first with the soy sauce. I said yes and he opened a second trade and threw some random cooking materials at me. I didn't need any of them for the recipe I was planning on making but it did include 5 carrots which meant I could get 3 more tokens myself. That meant I was a mere 5 fish away! I quickly ran out, found two pools, and caught my fish. Back to town, spend my tokens on 250 pumpkins, and I was set. Victory!
First one done in one expansion. Last one done in the next. But both of them mine! Last time around I got 3 realm firsts. This time I have two, but there's still a couple to go. Pandaren ambassador and all gold challenge dungeons!
Cooking in Mists of Pandaria is significantly harder than it was in Cataclysm. The number of materials needed to max out was pretty extreme and there's pretty much no way to get them in a short period of time on one character. Someone who was really hardcore about it would level multiple characters to 86 or get friends to help out. On Vek'Nilash it didn't seem like anyone was really hardcore about it at all. It was approaching my bedtime and cooking was the only profession realm first that hadn't been claimed. So I figured I'd try to throw some money at the problem...
You see, all the materials could be purchased with tokens earned via Tiller quests. Anyone just randomly questing in the zone was likely to pick up a few tokens. Ideally they'd save them up to buy interesting items from one of the Tiller vendors but I hoped I could bribe some people to part with them for me. My first request was met with puzzlement. I probably hadn't worded it too well (I'd been up for a long time by this point) and no one was interested at 1k per token. I went fishing for a bit in another zone to earn a couple more tokens myself and then came back to try again. This time I spelled out precisely what I wanted by calling out one specific item I wanted to buy. (100 year soy sauce) I was about to give up when I got a taker. Woo! He sold me 5 which put me within striking distance. I'd have to catch a lot of fish but I could do it. He then asked if I was going for realm first with the soy sauce. I said yes and he opened a second trade and threw some random cooking materials at me. I didn't need any of them for the recipe I was planning on making but it did include 5 carrots which meant I could get 3 more tokens myself. That meant I was a mere 5 fish away! I quickly ran out, found two pools, and caught my fish. Back to town, spend my tokens on 250 pumpkins, and I was set. Victory!
First one done in one expansion. Last one done in the next. But both of them mine! Last time around I got 3 realm firsts. This time I have two, but there's still a couple to go. Pandaren ambassador and all gold challenge dungeons!
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Monday, September 24, 2012
League of Legends: Taric Shatter
My support of choice in recent days has been Taric. Popular wisdom encourages leveling his shatter spell first and it has seemed to be working out pretty well but I wanted to look at it further to completely justify it to myself.
Taric has three spells to choose from when deciding what to level. His first three points are going to go into each skill since they're all very good. The question is what do they gain from extra points?
Q: Imbue, the healing spell. Heals for 60 base on two targets for 80 mana on a 20 second cooldown. (Always Taric and someone else.) Extra points increase the healing done by 40, increase the mana cost by 15, and knock 1 second off of the cooldown. So it gets more mana efficient on top of providing better throughput.
W: Shatter, the flexible spell. An aura which passively increases armour by 10. Provides double that amount to Taric. Also gives an AoE attack spell which hits everyone around Taric for 60 damage and lowers their armour by 10 for 4 seconds. Costs 50 mana and has a 10 second cooldown. While on cooldown Taric loses his doubled armour but the aura remains. Putting a point into it adds 10 to the mana cost, adds 5 to all the armour numbers, and ups the damage done by 45.
E: Dazzle, the stunning spell. Ranged spell which stuns an enemy for 1.5 seconds. Also does 40 damage. Costs 95 mana and has a 14 second cooldown. Putting a point in lowers the cooldown by 1 second and adds 30 to the damage done.
Right away, if you're looking to do more damage you'd rather put the point in W than anything else. 45 damage is more than 30 and way more than 0. This is before taking the armour reduction into account. I've never seen anyone recommend leveling dazzle first and it just seems wrong unless you _really_ want to stun every 13 seconds instead of every 14 seconds.
Now, what does the armour actually do? I took a look and it seems typical armour values at low levels will be around 50. We're already giving 10 so we want to see what the gain for our buddy is when we take him from 60 to 65. We also want to look at the extra damage done to the other team when we lower their armour from 40 to 35. Also I guess relative to the base of 50 so we know what's going on when we're playing not-Taric.
Going from 50 to 40 (what happens when shatter is used with 1 point) is an increase in damage taken by 7.1%. Going from 40 to 35 is an increase of 3.7%.
Going from 50 to 60 (what happens when you stand near your friend with 1 point) is a reduction in damage taken of 6.3%. Going from 60 to 65 is a reduction of 3.0%. The healing spell heals your friend by another 40 damage. How much total incoming damage would they have to take for an extra 5 armour to prevent 40 damage? 2112 raw damage. That's not going to happen when you have maximum health in the 600 range. So if you just want to survive you definitely want to level the healing spell. Especially since it lowers the cooldown!
So it seems if you want to play defensively you want to level up your Q. If you're playing offensively you want to level up your W. What if you're somewhere in the middle? My feeling is that since the W does provide some defensive benefits and the Q provides no offensive upside at all that it remains correct to level W most of the time. Personally I want to play Taric offensively so there's no question in my mind what I should be doing. But now I know if we're falling behind in lane and we just want to turtle that the heal is actually better than the armour. Good to know!
Taric has three spells to choose from when deciding what to level. His first three points are going to go into each skill since they're all very good. The question is what do they gain from extra points?
Q: Imbue, the healing spell. Heals for 60 base on two targets for 80 mana on a 20 second cooldown. (Always Taric and someone else.) Extra points increase the healing done by 40, increase the mana cost by 15, and knock 1 second off of the cooldown. So it gets more mana efficient on top of providing better throughput.
W: Shatter, the flexible spell. An aura which passively increases armour by 10. Provides double that amount to Taric. Also gives an AoE attack spell which hits everyone around Taric for 60 damage and lowers their armour by 10 for 4 seconds. Costs 50 mana and has a 10 second cooldown. While on cooldown Taric loses his doubled armour but the aura remains. Putting a point into it adds 10 to the mana cost, adds 5 to all the armour numbers, and ups the damage done by 45.
E: Dazzle, the stunning spell. Ranged spell which stuns an enemy for 1.5 seconds. Also does 40 damage. Costs 95 mana and has a 14 second cooldown. Putting a point in lowers the cooldown by 1 second and adds 30 to the damage done.
Right away, if you're looking to do more damage you'd rather put the point in W than anything else. 45 damage is more than 30 and way more than 0. This is before taking the armour reduction into account. I've never seen anyone recommend leveling dazzle first and it just seems wrong unless you _really_ want to stun every 13 seconds instead of every 14 seconds.
Now, what does the armour actually do? I took a look and it seems typical armour values at low levels will be around 50. We're already giving 10 so we want to see what the gain for our buddy is when we take him from 60 to 65. We also want to look at the extra damage done to the other team when we lower their armour from 40 to 35. Also I guess relative to the base of 50 so we know what's going on when we're playing not-Taric.
| Armour | Damage Taken |
|---|---|
| 35 | 74% |
| 40 | 71% |
| 50 | 67% |
| 60 | 63% |
| 65 | 61% |
Going from 50 to 40 (what happens when shatter is used with 1 point) is an increase in damage taken by 7.1%. Going from 40 to 35 is an increase of 3.7%.
Going from 50 to 60 (what happens when you stand near your friend with 1 point) is a reduction in damage taken of 6.3%. Going from 60 to 65 is a reduction of 3.0%. The healing spell heals your friend by another 40 damage. How much total incoming damage would they have to take for an extra 5 armour to prevent 40 damage? 2112 raw damage. That's not going to happen when you have maximum health in the 600 range. So if you just want to survive you definitely want to level the healing spell. Especially since it lowers the cooldown!
So it seems if you want to play defensively you want to level up your Q. If you're playing offensively you want to level up your W. What if you're somewhere in the middle? My feeling is that since the W does provide some defensive benefits and the Q provides no offensive upside at all that it remains correct to level W most of the time. Personally I want to play Taric offensively so there's no question in my mind what I should be doing. But now I know if we're falling behind in lane and we just want to turtle that the heal is actually better than the armour. Good to know!
Friday, September 21, 2012
Mists Plans
I'm big on making plans for things and time is rapidly running out on making plans for the Mists of Pandaria launch. Where should I focus to start? What else do I need to do to get ready?
A couple days ago I was messaged by a former OGT shaman from back in the Burning Crusade days. It would seem he's going to start a monk and is shooting for realm first and heard I might be doing the same thing. He did his best to convince me to try for anything else. He thinks he's a lock to get it as long as I don't try but that I might be able to beat him. I still think I'm too easily distracted by other things and likely wouldn't be able to focus long enough to get to 90 first, but the recruit a friend thing is a pretty strong advantage. Especially if I didn't start a Pandaren and could therefore get boosted a lot earlier... Apparently gnomes can be monks! How awesome would that be? I would need Robb to actually get around to playing (or maybe stealing his account and two-boxxing all weekend) but I just might be able to get it done. I'd be giving up on any other realm first by doing it. If I was switching mains I'd be setting myself up for grinding all sorts of things up. 6 professions in particular but also all the mounts/pets and such. Really, I don't think I want to do this. So I won't!
I still like the idea of doing all the dailies and trying for Pandaren Ambassador even though I know I can't win if a human (like Sthenno) tries for it. I'll likely want exalted in those things anyway for mounts/pets/gear so I'm still going to go for it but it can't be my only focus or I'll come away with no realm firsts at all. I'm ok with getting none of them but I'm not ok with not even trying for one!
One thing I've already done is unlearned jewelcrafting and picked up mining on my death knight. It's how I leveled in both Wrath and Cata and it just feels right. Especially if I might ultimately end up an engineer for challenge dungeons. I want to at least consider defending my realm first blacksmithing title. The key to doing that is likely to just go out and do the quest lines in the expansion right at launch. I need to get together a Spirit of Harmony which you get by killing monsters. And find my way to the vendor in the vale of eternal blossoms. An advantage of being a miner is I can gather some of the mats I need along the way. Also I can buy either bars or ore and smelt it myself. Yeah. I like this plan. I definitely need to hit the mining cap by Tuesday.
I also have a minor desire to just jump off the boat and fish for a while. It would give a lot of fodder for cooking as well which is nice. Ultimately though while I'd like to go for many professions I think they're all going to be done so fast that trying for more than one is guaranteed to end in disaster. So I'm going to go for blacksmithing and keep an eye on inscription. If blacksmithing gets done before inscription (by me or someone else) then I might swap over to my rogue and buy up a ton of herbs and go for it. I want to get started making the new glyphs anyway, after all.
The last thing that needs consideration is sleep plans. The expansion launches at 3am and I am taking next week off work. Ideally I'd want to wake up around 2am Tuesday morning so I can eat and get ready for 3. This is not my norm so I have to adjust forward or backward. Backward might be easiest for many people but not really for me. Left to my own devices I tend to run on a 26-28 hour day. Trying to lose 6 hours is rough. Going for that plan I'd probably only get 2 or 3 hours sleep if any at all which would suck. The other option is to swing way forward. Stay up until something like 5am Saturday morning. Sleep until 6pm. Stay up until noon Sunday. Sleep until midnight. Stay up until 3pm Monday. Seems somewhat plausible! At the very least when it goes wrong I'm apt to be awake at 3am no matter what. Maybe I need to go to sleep a few hours later but I should be ready to go for long enough to see some realm firsts get claimed.
Seems like a plan! So tonight, a lot of League of Legends! Or maybe I'll give up on Robb hitting level 80 anytime soon and level my druid so I can eventually level enchanting/alchemy.
A couple days ago I was messaged by a former OGT shaman from back in the Burning Crusade days. It would seem he's going to start a monk and is shooting for realm first and heard I might be doing the same thing. He did his best to convince me to try for anything else. He thinks he's a lock to get it as long as I don't try but that I might be able to beat him. I still think I'm too easily distracted by other things and likely wouldn't be able to focus long enough to get to 90 first, but the recruit a friend thing is a pretty strong advantage. Especially if I didn't start a Pandaren and could therefore get boosted a lot earlier... Apparently gnomes can be monks! How awesome would that be? I would need Robb to actually get around to playing (or maybe stealing his account and two-boxxing all weekend) but I just might be able to get it done. I'd be giving up on any other realm first by doing it. If I was switching mains I'd be setting myself up for grinding all sorts of things up. 6 professions in particular but also all the mounts/pets and such. Really, I don't think I want to do this. So I won't!
I still like the idea of doing all the dailies and trying for Pandaren Ambassador even though I know I can't win if a human (like Sthenno) tries for it. I'll likely want exalted in those things anyway for mounts/pets/gear so I'm still going to go for it but it can't be my only focus or I'll come away with no realm firsts at all. I'm ok with getting none of them but I'm not ok with not even trying for one!
One thing I've already done is unlearned jewelcrafting and picked up mining on my death knight. It's how I leveled in both Wrath and Cata and it just feels right. Especially if I might ultimately end up an engineer for challenge dungeons. I want to at least consider defending my realm first blacksmithing title. The key to doing that is likely to just go out and do the quest lines in the expansion right at launch. I need to get together a Spirit of Harmony which you get by killing monsters. And find my way to the vendor in the vale of eternal blossoms. An advantage of being a miner is I can gather some of the mats I need along the way. Also I can buy either bars or ore and smelt it myself. Yeah. I like this plan. I definitely need to hit the mining cap by Tuesday.
I also have a minor desire to just jump off the boat and fish for a while. It would give a lot of fodder for cooking as well which is nice. Ultimately though while I'd like to go for many professions I think they're all going to be done so fast that trying for more than one is guaranteed to end in disaster. So I'm going to go for blacksmithing and keep an eye on inscription. If blacksmithing gets done before inscription (by me or someone else) then I might swap over to my rogue and buy up a ton of herbs and go for it. I want to get started making the new glyphs anyway, after all.
The last thing that needs consideration is sleep plans. The expansion launches at 3am and I am taking next week off work. Ideally I'd want to wake up around 2am Tuesday morning so I can eat and get ready for 3. This is not my norm so I have to adjust forward or backward. Backward might be easiest for many people but not really for me. Left to my own devices I tend to run on a 26-28 hour day. Trying to lose 6 hours is rough. Going for that plan I'd probably only get 2 or 3 hours sleep if any at all which would suck. The other option is to swing way forward. Stay up until something like 5am Saturday morning. Sleep until 6pm. Stay up until noon Sunday. Sleep until midnight. Stay up until 3pm Monday. Seems somewhat plausible! At the very least when it goes wrong I'm apt to be awake at 3am no matter what. Maybe I need to go to sleep a few hours later but I should be ready to go for long enough to see some realm firsts get claimed.
Seems like a plan! So tonight, a lot of League of Legends! Or maybe I'll give up on Robb hitting level 80 anytime soon and level my druid so I can eventually level enchanting/alchemy.
Thursday, September 20, 2012
World of Pokemon
I've been doing some reading recently in an attempt to figure out what's going on with the new pet battle system launching in World of Warcraft on Tuesday. We can currently see all the possible pets along with their abilities. We can see our current pets and their stats. This has me wanting to know what those stats do! Which abilities are going to be the best? What are the crazy good combos? Do I need to spend money to get the unique pets? I will if I have to!
Check this out, for example... An ability only found on the baneling pet which requires buying the collector's edition of the StarCraft II expansion...
KABOOM! One of the other baneling abilities increases crit chance by 50%. Is that good? Does that mean the burst will hit for 80%? This sounds cool! KABOOM!
Unfortunately information on the subject appears to be pretty limited. I can find lists of pets and abilities but there's no context to what they mean. Some abilities talk about crit and accuracy. Others deal with the impact of weather on combat. But I can't find any baseline information. What is base crit chance? What does critting do? What is base accuracy? Weather? Really?
In the absence of real information to make a decision the first pet I play with is likely to be the Singing Sunflower pet. It has a power of 10 and a speed of 10. What do these numbers mean? As an elemental pet she'll ignore weather effects. This sounds bad on the surface. Maybe weather will be brutal and it will actually be good? Who knows!
Apparently pets are going to have a rarity stat which will impact the stats a pet will have at max level. This sounds fine for pets you catch through battles since you can just fight lots to get a rare one. How will it work for quest rewards like the Sunflower? It sounds like they're going to be uncommon but actual hard pets to get will be rare. So maybe I should plan on using Mr Pinchy instead? Rarity isn't currently listed in game so I can't tell for sure. And I still don't know what power and speed do so I don't know if higher stats even matters. Power supposedly increases damage done in some way. Speed either determines turn order in a given round or how often you go. So either it's mediocre (like agility in Final Fantasy I) or it's awesome (like speed in Final Fantasy V).
There are tons of achievements with the pet battle system. In particular there's an achievement for catching a pet of every single wild animal type in the game. Wow! That'll be 10 achievement points well earned.
Apparently there's going to be a queue you can enter to get matched with a random opponent for a 3v3 pet battle. But they want to minimize trash talk and bad feelings so you don't get to know who you're fighting against and the system will only count wins, not losses. This makes me a little sad but I guess I can understand that they're trying to make pet battles into a more casual friendly system. I have hopes that they'll eventually add in a ladder of some kind since I think pet battles will be easier to balance than actual PvP.
At any rate... I went looking for information but it doesn't exist. I will likely fool around a little with pet battles after the early realm firsts get claimed and try to work some of these things out on my own I guess.
Check this out, for example... An ability only found on the baneling pet which requires buying the collector's edition of the StarCraft II expansion...
KABOOM! One of the other baneling abilities increases crit chance by 50%. Is that good? Does that mean the burst will hit for 80%? This sounds cool! KABOOM!
Unfortunately information on the subject appears to be pretty limited. I can find lists of pets and abilities but there's no context to what they mean. Some abilities talk about crit and accuracy. Others deal with the impact of weather on combat. But I can't find any baseline information. What is base crit chance? What does critting do? What is base accuracy? Weather? Really?
In the absence of real information to make a decision the first pet I play with is likely to be the Singing Sunflower pet. It has a power of 10 and a speed of 10. What do these numbers mean? As an elemental pet she'll ignore weather effects. This sounds bad on the surface. Maybe weather will be brutal and it will actually be good? Who knows!
Apparently pets are going to have a rarity stat which will impact the stats a pet will have at max level. This sounds fine for pets you catch through battles since you can just fight lots to get a rare one. How will it work for quest rewards like the Sunflower? It sounds like they're going to be uncommon but actual hard pets to get will be rare. So maybe I should plan on using Mr Pinchy instead? Rarity isn't currently listed in game so I can't tell for sure. And I still don't know what power and speed do so I don't know if higher stats even matters. Power supposedly increases damage done in some way. Speed either determines turn order in a given round or how often you go. So either it's mediocre (like agility in Final Fantasy I) or it's awesome (like speed in Final Fantasy V).
There are tons of achievements with the pet battle system. In particular there's an achievement for catching a pet of every single wild animal type in the game. Wow! That'll be 10 achievement points well earned.
Apparently there's going to be a queue you can enter to get matched with a random opponent for a 3v3 pet battle. But they want to minimize trash talk and bad feelings so you don't get to know who you're fighting against and the system will only count wins, not losses. This makes me a little sad but I guess I can understand that they're trying to make pet battles into a more casual friendly system. I have hopes that they'll eventually add in a ladder of some kind since I think pet battles will be easier to balance than actual PvP.
At any rate... I went looking for information but it doesn't exist. I will likely fool around a little with pet battles after the early realm firsts get claimed and try to work some of these things out on my own I guess.
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
World of Warcraft: Challenge Dungeon Details
Blizzard opened challenge dungeons on the beta for testing recently so a lot more information about them has been funneling out. They're not going to work quite as I expected but they still seem pretty awesome. Here are some interesting tidbits I've picked up that I think will be useful for other people to know...
- All mobs on challenge mode have one more level than the mobs on heroic mode. This brings them in line with raiding mobs. (In particular a heroic boss is level 92, a challenge boss is level 93.)
- Hit and expertise ratings on your gear will _not_ scale down. The reason for this is they didn't want to force raiders to maintain a set of raiding gear and a set of challenge gear. Typically getting to the hit and expertise caps is the best bang for your buck and they didn't want to force people to have to worry about just how much their hit cap would scale down.
- All your other ratings get scaled down more than they should to make up for the above point. Basically any hit or expertise rating that you should lose gets taken away from the other ones instead. Some people (dot/hot classes I think?) might care about a specific amount of haste and this will make their lives more complicated.
- Gear does _not_ scale up. I was under the impression initially that you'd be handed a set of gear when you zoned in that you were forced to use. Instead you just have anything higher than ilvl 463 scaled down. This means you do have to worry about hunting gear from other sources. It means you need to work out stat weights to pick the right gear.
- On the plus side it looks like ilvl 463 isn't raiding gear. 463 looks to be gear that drops from heroic 5-mans. Better stuff is fine (but will get scaled down). Worse stuff is likely crippling. So there's likely a lot of heroic 5-man running in our future.
- Set bonuses are turned off.
- It doesn't sound like they've actually decided how they're going to handle trinket procs/use effects. Will they get scaled down or will raiders get an advantage here?
- Pounder was worried that a stealth team of 2 rogues/3 druids would win by skipping everything but the bosses. Apparently they're adding in mechanisms to prevent skipping trash. I don't know details but it could be doors that don't open until all the trash is dead or true sight trash? Blizzard seems to want everyone to at least have a chance so I'm hoping the stealth group isn't feasible. But the second character I level to 90 will definitely be stealth capable just in case!
- Challenge dungeons don't drop gold or loot. Your gear also doesn't take damage. There are rewards for winning (valor points, and apparently a reasonable number of them?)
- You can reset the dungeon at any time and can run it as many times per day as you want.
- There is no dungeon finder for challenge modes. There is no free teleport to the dungeon. (Well, if you win in a gold medal time you get a spell to teleport there.) You have to have beaten the dungeon on heroic to zone in.
- No restrictions on consumables at all. So food/flasks/potions are going to be mandatory when trying for world records. Swiftness potions in particular are allowed as are engineering speed-boost tinkers. I can't help but worry that everyone's going to need to be an engineer...
- They're taking a lot of randomness out. Some dungeons have bosses that spawn with random abilities. On challenge mode the abilities are fixed. This is good since it means your time is based on how good you do and not if you got the fastest ability combination.
- The claim is they're about as hard as the harder Burning Crusade heroics. I have my doubts but I'll be happy if they are. We were able to eventually get through all of them pre-nerf (by days on Shattered Halls, I think, but we got it) and I'll be really happy if they're that hard.
- All mobs on challenge mode have one more level than the mobs on heroic mode. This brings them in line with raiding mobs. (In particular a heroic boss is level 92, a challenge boss is level 93.)
- Hit and expertise ratings on your gear will _not_ scale down. The reason for this is they didn't want to force raiders to maintain a set of raiding gear and a set of challenge gear. Typically getting to the hit and expertise caps is the best bang for your buck and they didn't want to force people to have to worry about just how much their hit cap would scale down.
- All your other ratings get scaled down more than they should to make up for the above point. Basically any hit or expertise rating that you should lose gets taken away from the other ones instead. Some people (dot/hot classes I think?) might care about a specific amount of haste and this will make their lives more complicated.
- Gear does _not_ scale up. I was under the impression initially that you'd be handed a set of gear when you zoned in that you were forced to use. Instead you just have anything higher than ilvl 463 scaled down. This means you do have to worry about hunting gear from other sources. It means you need to work out stat weights to pick the right gear.
- On the plus side it looks like ilvl 463 isn't raiding gear. 463 looks to be gear that drops from heroic 5-mans. Better stuff is fine (but will get scaled down). Worse stuff is likely crippling. So there's likely a lot of heroic 5-man running in our future.
- Set bonuses are turned off.
- It doesn't sound like they've actually decided how they're going to handle trinket procs/use effects. Will they get scaled down or will raiders get an advantage here?
- Pounder was worried that a stealth team of 2 rogues/3 druids would win by skipping everything but the bosses. Apparently they're adding in mechanisms to prevent skipping trash. I don't know details but it could be doors that don't open until all the trash is dead or true sight trash? Blizzard seems to want everyone to at least have a chance so I'm hoping the stealth group isn't feasible. But the second character I level to 90 will definitely be stealth capable just in case!
- Challenge dungeons don't drop gold or loot. Your gear also doesn't take damage. There are rewards for winning (valor points, and apparently a reasonable number of them?)
- You can reset the dungeon at any time and can run it as many times per day as you want.
- There is no dungeon finder for challenge modes. There is no free teleport to the dungeon. (Well, if you win in a gold medal time you get a spell to teleport there.) You have to have beaten the dungeon on heroic to zone in.
- No restrictions on consumables at all. So food/flasks/potions are going to be mandatory when trying for world records. Swiftness potions in particular are allowed as are engineering speed-boost tinkers. I can't help but worry that everyone's going to need to be an engineer...
- They're taking a lot of randomness out. Some dungeons have bosses that spawn with random abilities. On challenge mode the abilities are fixed. This is good since it means your time is based on how good you do and not if you got the fastest ability combination.
- The claim is they're about as hard as the harder Burning Crusade heroics. I have my doubts but I'll be happy if they are. We were able to eventually get through all of them pre-nerf (by days on Shattered Halls, I think, but we got it) and I'll be really happy if they're that hard.
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