A Week With the Hour

Thrall, Aspect of Stealin' the Scene.

We’ve had a week since 4.3 dropped and it’s been a lot of fun so far, I made money hand over fist the first few days. Oh, Auction House, you are so good to me. Ahem, anyway! I don’t know if I am an exception or the rule on this, but this patch has thrust me fully back into PvE and for that I am thankful.

-Feeling like a Hero-

 

I’ve been through all the new heroics multiple times with various characters in a number of roles. These are heroics that feel right again, they have just enough going on to keep you engaged, but are still easy enough to blunder through on the first go without too much hassle, I’m in love. I do worry though that it might not last, I beat that loot piñata hard this first week and have 4 mostly complete sets of gear to show for it. We might be in love now, but I think we’re gonna see the same sort of content burnout we always do. I just hope the speed and ease of these will help, when you don’t have hour long slogs to deal with moods tend to be better.

-The Hive Mind-

The other big deal of course is the raid finder. I found it a pleasant surprise really, folks dealt with the content very well. I can’t say for sure if it’s as easy as it seems or if it’s just my latent raider kicking in after better than a year of dormancy. Naturally, of course, the human factor was, what’s the word for this…present? People are people, they whine, they insult, they stamp their feet and quit when they don’t get their way or fail to grasp a simple concept (Hagara, I’m lookin’ at you). None of this, however, stopped the 20 of us who gave a damn from putting our heads down and terminating the boss with brutal efficiency. As time goes by people will learn the fights and the wrinkles will smooth out. It'll eventually be an overgrown dungeon finder, swift, silent destruction... for fabulous prizes!

-Conquistadors-

Taking a different track, while the season is just getting going I am a huge fan of Conquest Points from Battleground wins. I’ve already seen the Allies trying a lot harder now that we got a real prize on the line. The gains feel just right too, the current cap of 1650 can be met with 3 or 4 wins a day, which can be meet, barring horrible luck, with a few hours of BG in the evening. Feels like a good balance. Throw in some arena and a casual team can knock out a few wins one night and make up the rest with a BG or two a day for the rest of the week. 

-Looking Ahead-

This patch as a whole is meant to be a sign of things to come according the Blizzard. The test run for the raid finder, dungeons that conform to the goals of MoP design (3-4 bosses, couple pulls of trash in between, 30 minute run times), and being able to play the way you want without the rewards being restricted to those with a large guild. I like it a lot, it’s a good feeling and it’s successfully gotten at least one casual back into current content. When the new expansion drops containing two or three raid finder queues of three or four bosses each and has nine different well-crafted, smooth running dungeons that flow along from boss to boss I’m gonna be a happy player. And despite what some may say I think most other players will be happy too.

Class Abilities: Take One

Image from Blizzard Entertainment

We finally got a look at the updated ability lists for Mists of Pandaria, hopefully this will help dispel some of the false info flying around the web right now. Of course as with anything Blizzard says its debatable whether it provided more questions or answers. However, a few things have come to light and I feel that, for the most part, they are positives.


-It should now be abundantly clear that they are not taking away your class specialization.

While this was known from the beginning lots of folks still seemed ignorant of the fact that talents were now a separate thing from spec. To anyone still confused, its ok, it really is, you can still be a Frost Mage, or Marks Hunter, or Protection Paladin. You get all the abilities you need for your chosen spec automatically as you level, and the new talent system provides additional utility on top of the basic skills you need to do your job.


-Pure DPS classes generally have very few spec specific abilities compared to others.

This is a good sign for anyone hoping to see more useful cross spec abilities. For example, a Mage’s class specific abilities are limited to the main rotational nukes, a flavored orb and the spec’s cooldown skill. There are no elemental damage boosts, which in the case of Mages and Warlocks is one of the main factors limiting the effectiveness of spells from other schools. Under the new system a Fire Mage can spread their Living Bomb to other targets using Inferno Blast (a spec specific Fire Blast upgrade), but a Frost or Arcane Mage’s version will tick for the same amount of damage. This will bring in a lot more variety and useful situational tricks for mages.


-Heal capable hybrids are losing access to a lot of their healing when not a healing spec.

Any non-healing spec of these classes is only going to be able to use a single direct heal, typically the “fast heal” of the current trinity, and a class themed specialized heal, Power Word: Shield, Word of Glory, Rejuv, and Healing Rain, along with a stray cool down here and there for some classes. Now, on the surface this seems to be a bad thing, however, in light of the previous point I feel this could turn out a plus. By limiting the number of healing spells these specs can use they can make these spells more effective, healing for amounts similar to their healer speced brethren, rather than weakened off spec heals. This fits in nicely with the idea that other casters won’t be at a disadvantage using spells from schools they aren’t speced into.


-What few new spells we are seeing are extremely interesting.

The ability lists are incomplete, but a some of the new tricks are listed and they are good. A lot of these skills are wildly different from anything currently in game and show that Blizzard isn’t shying away from some very finicky, tricky to use, sorts of skills. Alter Time for Mages is going to be immensely powerful in skills hands, but very, very hard to pull off. Druid’s Symbiosis is just way out there, the closest thing to it is Dark Simulacrum, but that’s more an offensive Spellsteal. The possibilities on this one, geez, I am already plotting how to best use my guild mates.  Demonic Portal for Warlock is fun, the description is so vague though, is this a group wide Demonic Circle, some kind of Lock answer to the Mage-Portal, who knows? Rounding out the list is Blinding Light for Pallys. This is the Plain Jane of the bunch, useful, long asked for, but at the end of the day just a Pally-themed AoE disorient. Still a nice trick though.


-This is all still a work in progress.

This talent set up is already showing differences from the original release and its all still pre-alpha. If you see an issue now, don’t panic, talk about it, calmly and rationally. Bring up your concerns, lay them out and give a solution. Blizzard does not want to kill their game, they want to make it better.


So far, so good.