An Alchemical Imbalance

Bubble bubble, toil and trouble. Fire burn and cauldron bubble

I have always been a big believer in the need to bring your best buffs to a raid.

WoW raiding, in my mind, is a game of inches. If you are on the edge of your raiding abilities, then you are going to defeat bosses with luck, preparation, and the best attention to stat details that you can muster. Thus, getting the rare quality gem instead of the uncommon, using enchants, and drinking your flasks make a huge amount of difference in winning a fight.

It is with this background that I come to the very reluctant conclusion that the current batch of flasks in game are totally not worth it.

Spanking Tanks

Uh-oh! Lady Ga-ga forgot her meat shield.

In the last of three examinations of what should be expected from your dungeon partners, we have to look at the tanks.

Let me start by saying that tanking is most likely the most difficult of roles. It is also the role with the most potential to really shine. Tanks have had the most difficult of stat balances to obtain. The little details of placement, and how to effectively use utility abilities like interrupts adds a lot of complexity. And then the very aware tanks who can assess problems arising and defuse them can really put a shine on a tank's reputation. On top of this, tanks are sort of the de facto leaders of almost any sized WoW group.

I won't pretend to tell you guys how to do all that, but I will try and help guide around the margins of what could make you look bad.

I'll also put forward my belief that there are "tanks" in WoW and then there are "noobs who want a fast track through the LFG queue and think tanking is as easy as pew pew." I hope I have a few things to say to both groups, but I hope the "tanks" are not offended.

Tank Priorities
1. Hold aggro on the bad guys
2. Stay alive.
3. Put the bad guys in the best place to be killed
4. Use utility abilities to the party's benefit
5. Save the healer
6. Save the DPS

Follow-up: Tol Barad to Remain Really Really Broken

That's right, it's actually getting worse and worse.

Corey Stockton, the lead content designer for WoW, posted a blog post in the past few hours describing wassup with Tol Barad. To be honest, I'm not exactly enlightened or pleased with the information he has to reveal. In fact, I read this and begin to worry that the developers don't get what the problem is.

Here is Stockton's post, with some editorial comment by yours truly (after the jump):

Tol Barad is Really Really Broken

The keep is broken too, but that's not what the headline meant.

This headline is not really news, I'm afraid. Ever since players began hitting level 85 and dropping by for a visit, the flaws in this place have been very apparent. What's kind of amazing to me has been Blizzard's response to it.

A fast summary:

Tol Barad was billed as Wintergrasp 2.0. However, that was really not the case. If it was 2.0 of anything, it was the "Isle of Quel'Danas 2.0." Although they combined some aspects of Wintergrasp into the design, and then made some new mechanics by enabling additional daily quests if your faction controls the keep.  The main fallacy here is that most players expected to portal onto the island and become immediately flagged for PvP, thus opening up the possibilities of being ganked, and all the problems that come with that. But, for the most part, you can run around Tol Barad all you want and not participate in any PvP whatsoever.  There is a battle every 2.5 hours, but you are not compelled to participate in it. The faction rewards from the Baradin Wardens and the Hellscream's Reach are all primarily PvE oriented as well, making reputation grinding there attractive, if not necessary.

The battle itself, has never worked.

Fool DPS

Please visit www.thedailyblink.com for more friendly public service announcements like this.

Continuing a look at Dungeoneering today in the Cataclysm. It's time to pick on everybody's favorite whipping boys: The DPS.

I do go here reluctantly. I am a healer and I know that my DPS finesse is not the best. I cannot tell you guys how to pew pew, and I shall not.  But I believe it is moderately easy to play DPS in WoW. It is quite challenging to play DPS well. I don't mean to scapegoat the damage dealers, especially since I have met quite few really good ones. But there is a lot more being expected of these players than I see many of them knowing that they have to give.

DPS Players' Priorities
1. Stay alive
2. Stay healthy
3. Perform necessary utility functions.
4. Hurt the boss

Healing Fallacies

You know it's true

This will be the first part of a brief series to address some of the bigger mistakes I'm seeing in dungeon groups these days. And rather than get raging on dps or tanks (oh, but you know that's coming) I first turn my eye on myself and my chosen WoW profession: healing.

I have written on some of the difficulties of healing in Cataclysm before, and whether that is insightful observation or else self-serving QQ, I leave up to you, gentle readers. This article is not intended to be a bunch of whining, merely a list of what I see as player shortcomings that could use some work.

The Healer's Priorities:

1. Stay Alive
2. Keep the Tank alive
3. Keep the DPS alive
4. Maintain your Mana
5. Assist with Other Utility as Called For
6. Top off the health of players
7. Communicate issues or observations
8. Hurt the mobs/boss

Let me present a very broad overview of what healers are facing right now in early heroic dungeon runs: Incoming damage to tanks is generally slow and reasonable. Health pools for all characters has jumped dramatically, as much as 400% greater than where they were towards the end of Wrath of the Lich King. Mana pools however, have only increased about 100% (give or take a bit). The cost of healing spells has also risen around 500% from what they were in Lich King.

The Lost Arts of Dungeoning

... a Doofus Award

It's the third week of the Cataclysm.

Heroics are cropping up for most of us, the need to run dungeons becoming more and more important as it's the only source for upgrade drops and reputation for the factions that have upgrades.

But, as you might be experiencing, this is not often very smooth.  I'm trying pretty hard not to get rage-y about it sometimes in game, and I'm still mostly running with friends or guild members. But it's still bothering me when some folks don't quite know what's going on.

So, instead of raging (I reserve the right to do that later, if I feel like it), allow me instead to provide an educational opportunity to present and explain some of the more subtle things going on in a dungeon.  I'm sure that there are players who only grew up playing in weak excuses for Northrend dungeons and have never been confronted with having to do some of this stuff.  I'm sure there are some others who forgot. I'm sure that there are no crappy players who just don't care and still think dungeoning is a chance to show off their dps meters.


Dungeon Marks - Those funny colored marks that sometimes appear over mobs heads... those are "dungeon marks."  At this time, anybody can place marks on mobs' heads in a dungeon using the UI, but generally the tank is doing it.  They are there to indicate an order in which the mobs should be killed, or else to indicate which mobs need to be CC'd (more on that below).  Mostly, tanks will clarify at the beginning of a dungeon run which marks mean which, but there are a few standards. The "skull" mark almost always means "Kill this mob now."  The "X" mark almost always means "Kill this mob after you kill Skull."  The others marks usually indicate which target to use for which CC. "Moon" is often for mage sheeping, Nipple (some people say it's a circle, but we know better) for hunter trap, etc. Again, the tank will generally clarify which is which and that mark will not change for the rest of the dungeon run.