Saturday, April 14, 2012
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Tier 4 Updates: Beta Build 15589
According to MMO Champion there is a new beta build on the way, and if MMO Champion's datamining is correct it has a lot of changes for all of the classes. Most of the druid changes were for Feral and Restoration, and there aren't many that significantly affect Balance. Who knows what this means about the status of Moonkin development, but lets take a look at the few bits of new information that we do have.
Incarnation v3:
It should come to no one's surprise that Chosen of Elune (the moonkin portion of Incarnation) has been changed once again. This is a good thing because version two turned out to be pretty bad and only became worse at higher levels of gear. Now we have to decide if this new version is an improvement. Here is what MMO Champion has on the change.
There is no official word about the value of "?%", but the number I've heard is 25%. My first impression of this new version is that it's boring, but it's definitely an improvement. The big advantage that it has over the previous versions is that it can work with Celestial Alignment, and it seems that they should work extremely well together.
While my first impression is good, there are still several open questions (beyond the value for "?%") that will ultimately decide the fate of this ability. Is the damage increase additive or multiplicative with the Eclipse bonus? How does it affect DoT damage? Is it dynamic or will DoTs hold the buff for their duration? How will it relate to our other tier 4 options Soul of the Forest and Force of Nature? We won't know the answer to these questions until we can test it on the servers, but I have made some assumptions and built a model to try and calculate some values.
Theoretically, Chosen of Elune should be used in Lunar Eclipse with 100 energy, and Celestial Alignment should be used as soon as you hit 0 energy. This should maximize the buff, and minimize the amount of energy wasted when CA is used. In my model I have assumed that the bonus is 25%, that the buff is multiplicative with Eclipse, and that it affects DoT damage dynamically. I've also run the model with a couple different casting patterns, but I always started at zero energy. When started my rotation going towards Lunar Eclipse, Chosen of Elune provided a 2.61% dps increase at a lower level of gear and a 2.32% increase at a higher gear level.
** Quick Disclaimer: I admit that my simulator is fairly primitive and could contain errors. I don't trust these numbers 100%, but I don't have an obvious reason to doubt them either.
I was surprised by this valuation for a couple of reasons. First, my napkin math suggested that that the DPS increase should be closer to 4% when you combine CoE and CA. This is partially due to me treating the buff as a dynamic buff with regards to the DoTs. However, it's also due to slightly reduced DoT uptime when you don't use CA right away. Second, I expected CoE to scale better with a higher level of gear, but the truth is that it scales very poorly with haste. If you use CoE with CA it is petty much impossible to get to a new eclipse after CA runs out. As a result, increased haste doesn't have much of an impact on how many spells are buffed by Chosen of Elune.
The final question is how does it compare to our other tier 4 options Soul of the Forest and Force of Nature? At this point I would say that it doesn't compare well. At lower levels of gear my simulator is estimating the value of Soul of the Forest at around a 3.3% DPS increase, and it scales well with gear increasing the gain to 4.4% at higher levels of gear. If these versions go live, SotF will be the standard talent choice from the tier 4 talents in most fights. That doesn't mean a cooldown can't be better in the right situation, but that begs the question of how do CoE and Force of Nature relate to each other? As cooldowns, are they so similar to each other that the choice between the two is more of math equation then an actual choice? That will be difficult to tell until we can see the DPS potential of FoN at level 90 and see the fights that might require a cooldown, but I think there is some reason to be concerned.
To sum this all up, this new version of Incarnation is definitely an improvement over the older versions. That said, I still expect SotF to be the primary choice, and the usefulness of the new Incarnation will ultimately be determined by how it relates to Force of Nature.
More Trees:
Speaking of Force of Nature, it was changed as well. According to MMO Champion the duration of the trents is being doubled from 30 seconds to 60 seconds. This could be a straight buff to the ability since I don't see any indication that the Trents damage has changed, but I'm guessing that there is another reason behind this change.
As I indicated above there is a real worry that Incarnation and Force of Nature are too similar to each other as talents and this change may be intended to differentiate them. With a 60 second duration, FoN would become the "sustained cooldown" that I talked about in the past. Assuming that the trents damage is solid this could differentiate the two cooldowns nicely. FoN would be good for single target, extended burn phases like phase 3 on heroic Ragnaros. Chosen of Elune would become the burstier option with just 30 second duration and would also be more useful when you need to buff AoE output. It's too early to say anything definitive, but I like the FoN change at this point.
Glyph Feedback:
This is completely unrelated to the recent beta changes, but I sent some moonkin glyph feedback to Blizzard a week ago and I thought you might be interested in what I had to say.
Incarnation v3:
It should come to no one's surprise that Chosen of Elune (the moonkin portion of Incarnation) has been changed once again. This is a good thing because version two turned out to be pretty bad and only became worse at higher levels of gear. Now we have to decide if this new version is an improvement. Here is what MMO Champion has on the change.
Incarnation: Chosen of Elune - No longer doubles Solar and Lunar power generation. Instead increases all Arcane and Nature damage done while in Eclipse by ?%
There is no official word about the value of "?%", but the number I've heard is 25%. My first impression of this new version is that it's boring, but it's definitely an improvement. The big advantage that it has over the previous versions is that it can work with Celestial Alignment, and it seems that they should work extremely well together.
While my first impression is good, there are still several open questions (beyond the value for "?%") that will ultimately decide the fate of this ability. Is the damage increase additive or multiplicative with the Eclipse bonus? How does it affect DoT damage? Is it dynamic or will DoTs hold the buff for their duration? How will it relate to our other tier 4 options Soul of the Forest and Force of Nature? We won't know the answer to these questions until we can test it on the servers, but I have made some assumptions and built a model to try and calculate some values.
Theoretically, Chosen of Elune should be used in Lunar Eclipse with 100 energy, and Celestial Alignment should be used as soon as you hit 0 energy. This should maximize the buff, and minimize the amount of energy wasted when CA is used. In my model I have assumed that the bonus is 25%, that the buff is multiplicative with Eclipse, and that it affects DoT damage dynamically. I've also run the model with a couple different casting patterns, but I always started at zero energy. When started my rotation going towards Lunar Eclipse, Chosen of Elune provided a 2.61% dps increase at a lower level of gear and a 2.32% increase at a higher gear level.
** Quick Disclaimer: I admit that my simulator is fairly primitive and could contain errors. I don't trust these numbers 100%, but I don't have an obvious reason to doubt them either.
I was surprised by this valuation for a couple of reasons. First, my napkin math suggested that that the DPS increase should be closer to 4% when you combine CoE and CA. This is partially due to me treating the buff as a dynamic buff with regards to the DoTs. However, it's also due to slightly reduced DoT uptime when you don't use CA right away. Second, I expected CoE to scale better with a higher level of gear, but the truth is that it scales very poorly with haste. If you use CoE with CA it is petty much impossible to get to a new eclipse after CA runs out. As a result, increased haste doesn't have much of an impact on how many spells are buffed by Chosen of Elune.
The final question is how does it compare to our other tier 4 options Soul of the Forest and Force of Nature? At this point I would say that it doesn't compare well. At lower levels of gear my simulator is estimating the value of Soul of the Forest at around a 3.3% DPS increase, and it scales well with gear increasing the gain to 4.4% at higher levels of gear. If these versions go live, SotF will be the standard talent choice from the tier 4 talents in most fights. That doesn't mean a cooldown can't be better in the right situation, but that begs the question of how do CoE and Force of Nature relate to each other? As cooldowns, are they so similar to each other that the choice between the two is more of math equation then an actual choice? That will be difficult to tell until we can see the DPS potential of FoN at level 90 and see the fights that might require a cooldown, but I think there is some reason to be concerned.
To sum this all up, this new version of Incarnation is definitely an improvement over the older versions. That said, I still expect SotF to be the primary choice, and the usefulness of the new Incarnation will ultimately be determined by how it relates to Force of Nature.
More Trees:
Speaking of Force of Nature, it was changed as well. According to MMO Champion the duration of the trents is being doubled from 30 seconds to 60 seconds. This could be a straight buff to the ability since I don't see any indication that the Trents damage has changed, but I'm guessing that there is another reason behind this change.
As I indicated above there is a real worry that Incarnation and Force of Nature are too similar to each other as talents and this change may be intended to differentiate them. With a 60 second duration, FoN would become the "sustained cooldown" that I talked about in the past. Assuming that the trents damage is solid this could differentiate the two cooldowns nicely. FoN would be good for single target, extended burn phases like phase 3 on heroic Ragnaros. Chosen of Elune would become the burstier option with just 30 second duration and would also be more useful when you need to buff AoE output. It's too early to say anything definitive, but I like the FoN change at this point.
Glyph Feedback:
This is completely unrelated to the recent beta changes, but I sent some moonkin glyph feedback to Blizzard a week ago and I thought you might be interested in what I had to say.
While writing yesterdays blog post I thought a lot about glyphs and thought you might be interested in a detailed review of the glyphs currently in Beta from a moonkin perspective. The short version is that there isn't a whole lot of choice for PvE moonkin in the terms of glyphs. The top three choices are obvious and will likely be used 99% of the time. The other options are either useless in PvE or extremely situational. There really needs to be some additional options for PvE moonkin to have a choice and I have made a few suggestions at the bottom.
Glyphs I would use 99% of the time:
Glyph of Rebirth - Awesome glyph that is mandatory in PvE. Don't change a thing other then possibly baking it into the spell.
Glyph of the Moonbeast - A nice glyph but is just a convenience and offers no real utility. Shifting to heal in PvE really isn't that big of a deal since casting a spell does it automatically. This glyph is probably a lot more significant in Arena and 5 mans.
Glyph of Stampede - A nice glyph. Again it s a little more of a convenience then a utility, but Stampeding Roar is probably more regularly useful in a raid then self healing.
Very low use Glyphs:
Glyph of Hurricane - An ok glyph, but it is usually pointless even when a slow is useful. The biggest thing hurting Glyph of Hurricane is that it is just a 50% slow. If a group of mobs really needs to be slowed some one will be using the 70% slow which makes GoH irrelevant.
Glyph of Innervate - It's a little hard to judge this one until we know the mana situation at level 90, but I doubt this one will be all that useful. As a moonkin, if I need mana I'm going to save my innervate for myself 99% of the time. If I don't need to save innervate for myself then the 10% mana I would get from casting it on someone else is likely inconsequential.
Glyph of Stampeding Roar - I can see how this glyph would be very useful in the right situation. My only issue with it is that as for moonkin it pretty much requires that Glyph of Stampede be used as well. If used on its own then use of Stampeding Roar would have to be a planned, and even then it would take the moonkin out of DPS for several seconds while shifting, waiting for energy/rage, using the ability, and shifting back.
Glyph of Master Shapeshifter - Why is this a major glyph? It doesn't do anything interesting and conceptually it is much closer to Glyph of the Wild then any other glyph. It should be a minor glyph; also it should be titled Glyph of the Master Shapeshifter. It sounds a little strange with the current title.
Glyph of Entangling Roots - From my PvE perspective reducing the cast time of Entangling Roots by 0.2 seconds is insignificant. I liked this glyph when it made roots instant cast, but I'm assuming that caused issues else where and won't be changed back.
PvP Glyphs:
Glyph of Barkskin - A 25% reduction in the chance to be critically hit is almost entirely useless in PvE. The only possibility I can see is a moonkin might need it if he pops Heart of the Wild to emergency tank and be crit immune, but I view that situation so unlikely that it’s not really worth considering.
Glyph of Cyclone - I've used Cyclone in only one fight in three expansions of raiding and even in that one situation having an extra 4 yards wasn't that helpful.
Glyph of Nature's Grasp - Like Cyclone I've used Nature's Grasp in only one boss fight in 3 expansions. It's not a realistic choice for PvE
Glyph of Solar Beam - In most situations where I've had to use Solar Beam in raid, the silence aspect of the spell doesn't work. If that changes, this glyph could be useful, but I don't expect it to change.
Minor Glyphs:
Glyph of Unburdened Rebirth - This is a mandatory glyph because who wants to take up a bag slot with a reagent or have to remember to repurchase them? The main question I have is, why does Rebirth still have a reagent cost? Why not get rid of it and this glyph as well? (note: this was written before the most recent beta build and this glyph is obviously no longer useful)
Glyph suggestions:
For the record, I want to say that I don't take "armchair developing" all that seriously. I realize there are things that I am not aware of that could make some of these suggestions problematic.
Starsurge Healing - Much like Glyph of Ferocious Bite, why not have a glyph that gives a moonkin ability a small self healing component? My suggestion would be to heal the caster for ~5% when ever Starsurge hits the target. It could be helpful in raids, PvP, and casual play but given how infrequently Starsurge is cast I don't think it would be overpowering in anyway.
One Mushroom - Having to place three mushrooms and detonating them is a clunky mechanic that players have been complaining about since Cata Beta. An obvious glyph would be to place three mushrooms at once. This would also benefit a moonkin's movement DPS.
Larger WM Detonation Area - Increasing WM detonation area would be very helpful in some situations. I realize that WM had a larger detonation in Cata beta and was nerfed, but considering the nerfs to WM damage output I don't think it's likely that WM will remain a primary AoE utility in MoP. Therefore, increasing the detonation area would account more for placement error then be a DPS increase.
Larger Fungal Growth Area - You would likely need to limit Wild Mushroom to just one mushroom, but I see this as a nice option especially when a hunter is not available for the group.
Monday, April 9, 2012
Why Beta isn't a Huge Deal
The Mists of Pandaria Beta is here, which is awesome for quite a few different reasons. It means that the new expansion isn't to far away (Aug or Sept if history is any indication). It's also a time when Blizzard reveals what plans they have for each class/spec and what they are trying to do to improve them. And most importantly to most people it is the first glimpse we get of all the new content from new races, new classes, new levels, and a lot of other new stuff.
The beta is an exciting time in the WoW life cycle. Everyone wants to be involved, and it sucks to be one of the people not included. I know this from experience. I never got into the WotLK Beta and I got into the Cata Beta quite late. When you’re not in the Beta if feels like there is a really cool party around the corner that you weren't invited too. For those people who are not included it can feel awful.
However, looks can be deceiving. Though the party looks awesome from the outside, you don't see the guy puking in the bathroom or the fight that breaks some furniture. In the Beta, there is a lot of cool stuff going on but it can also be frustrating. It's not all peppermint and ice cream. I'm not going to tell you that Beta sucks, because it doesn't, but I do want to give you a few reasons why you should be patient if your beta invite hasn't come yet.
Beta is Crowded:
Let’s do a little bit of simple math. At WoW peak hit had 12 million accounts. There are 754 active servers listed in WoWWiki for all regions. That means the average server would have around 16,000 accounts on it. The Beta has four servers, and over the past two weeks Blizzard has sent out over 550,000 beta invites. This means that the beta servers have on average 137,000 accounts on them. I'm making a lot of generalizations and assumptions, and I will agree that this math is not completely fair, but I do think it makes my point. Beta is crowded and probably more crowded then anything you have ever experienced in WoW before.
When I got my Beta invite I copied Graylo over as I downloaded the client. When I finally got on the server I tested mechanics for an hour or so before I took a look at any of the new content. When I finally decided to do some quests I as smacked in the face by a ton of blue name plates. There were players everywhere, and trying to quest was like pulling teeth. Mobs were tagged as soon as they spawned and the spawn rate was incredibly slow. To complete one of my quests I ended up having to form a group of 3 or 4 people and basically camp spawn locations. It literally took me an hour to complete this one quest. To be fair the others weren't that hard, but finding quest mobs in this crowded environment is difficult. When I'm questing I'm more frustrated then excited because most of the time I'm running around looking for the spawn I need rather then actually doing something.
The good news is this will slow down. Check back in a few weeks and I bet questing will be a whole lot easier after people spread themselves out a little bit and others loose interest in the beta. In this way, getting into the beta later rather then sooner could be a good thing.
So Many Bugs:
When playing on a live server, the bugs are annoying but infrequent. So, we complain about it for a little bit, find a work around, and continue on with our questing. In the Beta, the bugs can be crippling. The first big bug I experienced was the invisible quest giver. I could see the question mark on my mini map, but the NPC was there. Eventually I figured out that if I stood out side the building and moved my mouse over the area, I could target him (still without seeing him), but as soon as I moved into the room he was untargetable again. Eventually I as able to inch forward enough so that I could click him with out him disappearing but it was a big pain in the butt, and that one is fairly mild.
Here are some of the other bug issues I've experience. The first button in vehicle quests isn't hot keyed to "1", so I have to click to do the quest. There are quite a few lore cut scene quests that can only be done one at a time and have a big line waiting to do them. My personal favorite is the mobs that cause a critical WoW error every time I kill one of them. It makes it really hard to complete a quest when every time you fight a mob you get kicked out of the game.
It's important to remember that the Beta is not a polished product, and can feel choppy when your experience is interrupted by bugs and such. If this is something that frustrates you in live, then you are unlikely to enjoy Beta much since it happens much more frequently.
No Addons:
This is more of a personal pet peeve, but I find it very frustrating that I can't have addons in the beta currently. I completely understand why Blizzard has turned them off, but I've grown so used to them on the live servers that it is difficult to play without them in some cases. I'm mainly missing something that I could use to track DoTs and Starsurge with, and really those aren't huge things while questing, but I miss them. I feel like a bad without them. If you are a big addon user, you might find the Beta frustrating at this point as well.
It's Temporary:
Finally, Beta is temporary. Nothing you do in the Beta Will last. Everything you do will be deleted except for the things you learned in the process. If you are the type of player who is going for a server first level 90 toon, then the Beta experience is invaluable to you. If you are the type of player who has several alts that you will be leveling to level 90, then the Beta is just removing some of the fun you will be having later. In short, being in the Beta is a little like getting to open your Christmas presents early, but having to wrap them back up as soon as you do. You know what’s in there. There are no more surprises, but you still have to go through the motions later.
TL-DR:
The release of the Beta is an exciting time, and if you are one of the people who hasn't been invited yet it can be very frustrating. However, let me assure you that Beta is not all cupcakes and ice cream, and getting in a little later then most is not a horrible thing. Getting in a little later means you will avoid some of the issues that a lot of testers are experiencing now and may have a more enjoyable experience later. It's also important to remember that by playing the beta you are just ruining the experience you will have later. So, not being in the Beta is frustrating, but being patient will result in you having a better experience later.
Skunkworks LF Moonkin:
Just wanted to throw this out there that an old guild of mine is looking for a Moonkin. Skunkworks is an awesome guild and I would be applying for this spot if I hadn't finally found a good raiding home. If you are looking for a new guild and have experience raiding at a high level, I would recommend that you give them a look. You can find their recruitment information here
The beta is an exciting time in the WoW life cycle. Everyone wants to be involved, and it sucks to be one of the people not included. I know this from experience. I never got into the WotLK Beta and I got into the Cata Beta quite late. When you’re not in the Beta if feels like there is a really cool party around the corner that you weren't invited too. For those people who are not included it can feel awful.
However, looks can be deceiving. Though the party looks awesome from the outside, you don't see the guy puking in the bathroom or the fight that breaks some furniture. In the Beta, there is a lot of cool stuff going on but it can also be frustrating. It's not all peppermint and ice cream. I'm not going to tell you that Beta sucks, because it doesn't, but I do want to give you a few reasons why you should be patient if your beta invite hasn't come yet.
Beta is Crowded:
Let’s do a little bit of simple math. At WoW peak hit had 12 million accounts. There are 754 active servers listed in WoWWiki for all regions. That means the average server would have around 16,000 accounts on it. The Beta has four servers, and over the past two weeks Blizzard has sent out over 550,000 beta invites. This means that the beta servers have on average 137,000 accounts on them. I'm making a lot of generalizations and assumptions, and I will agree that this math is not completely fair, but I do think it makes my point. Beta is crowded and probably more crowded then anything you have ever experienced in WoW before.
When I got my Beta invite I copied Graylo over as I downloaded the client. When I finally got on the server I tested mechanics for an hour or so before I took a look at any of the new content. When I finally decided to do some quests I as smacked in the face by a ton of blue name plates. There were players everywhere, and trying to quest was like pulling teeth. Mobs were tagged as soon as they spawned and the spawn rate was incredibly slow. To complete one of my quests I ended up having to form a group of 3 or 4 people and basically camp spawn locations. It literally took me an hour to complete this one quest. To be fair the others weren't that hard, but finding quest mobs in this crowded environment is difficult. When I'm questing I'm more frustrated then excited because most of the time I'm running around looking for the spawn I need rather then actually doing something.
The good news is this will slow down. Check back in a few weeks and I bet questing will be a whole lot easier after people spread themselves out a little bit and others loose interest in the beta. In this way, getting into the beta later rather then sooner could be a good thing.
So Many Bugs:
When playing on a live server, the bugs are annoying but infrequent. So, we complain about it for a little bit, find a work around, and continue on with our questing. In the Beta, the bugs can be crippling. The first big bug I experienced was the invisible quest giver. I could see the question mark on my mini map, but the NPC was there. Eventually I figured out that if I stood out side the building and moved my mouse over the area, I could target him (still without seeing him), but as soon as I moved into the room he was untargetable again. Eventually I as able to inch forward enough so that I could click him with out him disappearing but it was a big pain in the butt, and that one is fairly mild.
Here are some of the other bug issues I've experience. The first button in vehicle quests isn't hot keyed to "1", so I have to click to do the quest. There are quite a few lore cut scene quests that can only be done one at a time and have a big line waiting to do them. My personal favorite is the mobs that cause a critical WoW error every time I kill one of them. It makes it really hard to complete a quest when every time you fight a mob you get kicked out of the game.
It's important to remember that the Beta is not a polished product, and can feel choppy when your experience is interrupted by bugs and such. If this is something that frustrates you in live, then you are unlikely to enjoy Beta much since it happens much more frequently.
No Addons:
This is more of a personal pet peeve, but I find it very frustrating that I can't have addons in the beta currently. I completely understand why Blizzard has turned them off, but I've grown so used to them on the live servers that it is difficult to play without them in some cases. I'm mainly missing something that I could use to track DoTs and Starsurge with, and really those aren't huge things while questing, but I miss them. I feel like a bad without them. If you are a big addon user, you might find the Beta frustrating at this point as well.
It's Temporary:
Finally, Beta is temporary. Nothing you do in the Beta Will last. Everything you do will be deleted except for the things you learned in the process. If you are the type of player who is going for a server first level 90 toon, then the Beta experience is invaluable to you. If you are the type of player who has several alts that you will be leveling to level 90, then the Beta is just removing some of the fun you will be having later. In short, being in the Beta is a little like getting to open your Christmas presents early, but having to wrap them back up as soon as you do. You know what’s in there. There are no more surprises, but you still have to go through the motions later.
TL-DR:
The release of the Beta is an exciting time, and if you are one of the people who hasn't been invited yet it can be very frustrating. However, let me assure you that Beta is not all cupcakes and ice cream, and getting in a little later then most is not a horrible thing. Getting in a little later means you will avoid some of the issues that a lot of testers are experiencing now and may have a more enjoyable experience later. It's also important to remember that by playing the beta you are just ruining the experience you will have later. So, not being in the Beta is frustrating, but being patient will result in you having a better experience later.
Skunkworks LF Moonkin:
Just wanted to throw this out there that an old guild of mine is looking for a Moonkin. Skunkworks is an awesome guild and I would be applying for this spot if I hadn't finally found a good raiding home. If you are looking for a new guild and have experience raiding at a high level, I would recommend that you give them a look. You can find their recruitment information here
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
A View From Beta: The Little Things
The beta has been open for about two weeks now and I have been in since last Thursday. If you've been following the various forums around the internet, I doubt anything I post today will be new to you. However, I want to give a summary of some of the little things (and some not so little things), that I and others have seen in the beta.
Is Insect Swarm Gone?
One of the curious happenings of the early beta is that Insect Swarm isn't in the moonkin spell books at the moment. There is a history of Insect Swarm being bugged and not showing up in early beta, but given the overall reaction to the IS changes made and other changes seen in beta, some are speculating that Insect Swarm may be gone for good.
In case you've forgotten, the early MoP talent calculators indicated that Insect Swarm was being converted into a debuff that would increase moonkin nuke damage on a single target. Later it was modified slightly to include all damage, but at a lower rate. While I approved of the change, there are a lot of players that didn't like it for a number of reasons. Some just didn't like the idea of loosing a DoT, but others saw the new spell as pointless and uninteresting.
There has been no official word, but it now seems that Blizzard is agreeing with the second view point and is scrapping the spell entirely. Not only that, but the spell co-efficient for the three nuke spells has increased by 26% which is surprisingly close to the bonus that Insect Swarm would have provided.
Personally, I am not sad to see it go. Insect Swarm has had a long and mediocre history in the game and never really found its place. In TBC it was ok at low levels of gear, but couldn't keep up after the first tier of raiding was dropped from the rotation. In WotLK it survived a little longer, but by the time ICC rolled around it fell out of favor unless you are moving and couldn't do anything else. In Cataclysm, IS has remained a strong spell for the entire expansion, but it is so similar to Moonfire that it doesn't really add anything to the rotation other then another button to push.
Small Spell Changes:
Over the past couple of months a lot of attention has been focused larger changes to the spell like how Insect Swarm, but not as much has been focused on the smaller changes that also have a significant impact on Moonkin performance.
First, the amount of energy generated by Wrath and Starsurge has increased. Wrath now generates 15 energy (up from 13.33 in live), and Starsurge generates 20 energy (up from 15 in live). Energy generated by Starsurge is also affected by Euphoria.
Second, Starfire's cast time has been reduced to 2.7 seconds (down from 3.0 after talents on live). I did question if this was a bug when I saw it on the early versions of the talent calculator, but it is 2.7 seconds in the beta and it makes sense when you consider the energy generation changes above.
These changes primarily serve to standardize the nukes and the amount of energy per second they generate. It also causes energy to be generated round numbers and is hopefully less confusing. It's not really a big change but the overall impact is that it will shorten the Eclipse transition so that we have larger uptimes on DoTs and Nature's Grace.
Instant Eclipse Energy:
In beta, Eclipse energy is generated when the spell cast is completed rather then when it hits the target like it does on the live servers. This is a subtle change, and the reactions I've seen are a bit mixed. The detractors have sited that the travel time of Wrath and Starsurge has served as a way for moonkin to extend the Eclipse's effective uptime by casting instants like Moonfire in the small window of time when the nukes are traveling. However, that argument loses its merit when you consider some of the other changes made in beta. Namely, we are no longer going to be manually refreshing DoTs at the end of Eclipse since our nukes well be doing it for us.
I'm in favor of this change since it takes a little of the awkwardness of the rotation. It wasn't that big of a problem at lower gear levels because it was difficult to cast Starfall that was shorter then Wrath's travel time, but as the expansion progressed it became a frequent occurrence especially with temporary haste buffs from weapons, trinkets, and cooldowns. All in all there may be a couple of downsides to energy generation being instant, but I think the positives out weigh the negatives.
The Lack of Glyphs:
This has been commented on by a lot of people but it's worth saying again. There are very few good major glyph options for PvE moonkin at the moment. Glyph of Rebirth is so good that it is a required glyph for every raiding Druid, but after that the options are fairly weak. Glyph of the Moonbeast and Glyph of Stampede are the most frequent choices for the other two slots, but they are really more of a convenience and provides no real utility since I can already switch into the necessary form and use them anyway.
After those three the choices are pretty bleak. Glyph of Hurricane is nice in the right situation, but if you really need something slowed its likely that you will have something with a 70% slow being applied as well. Glyph of Innervate may be helpful, but most of the time if I need the mana I am unlikely to give the innervate away. I an also see a use for Glyph of Stampeding Roar, but probably not frequently. Other then that, the other options either have no use for moonkin or are only useful in PvP.
Creating glyphs for Balance or any DPS spec is going to be some what difficult now that they are trying to get away from the DPS boosting glyphs. However, I do think there are options that have been unexplored. For example, they could add a healing component to one of our existing spell much like they have for Glyph of Ferocious Bite. In my opinion the obvious example would be to have Starsurge heal the moonkin for 5% every time it hits.
I also find it surprising that there is not a single glyph that affects Wild Mushroom or Fungal Growth. I can think of three possibilities around these abilities alone. The most obvious is to have a glyph that allows you to place all three mushrooms at once. Another good one would be to increase the blast radius of the WM detonation. This shouldn't be over powered since WM is getting a pretty heavy nerf and really more of a correction for placement error rather then a DPS gain. Finally, why not have a glyph that extends the radius of Fungal Growth but only allows you to place one mushroom?
Lunar Shower and Movement DPS:
Lunar Shower hasn't really changed at all other then having the energy generation removed, but that lack of change is what I find most interesting. You might remember that back in May Daxxarri said that "Lunar Shower will be working differently in the future" in a post he made on the WoW forums. The interesting thing is that here we are three months later without any significant changes. So the question is did Blizzard scrap the Lunar Shower overhaul or are they still thinking about it?
Wild Mushroom UI:
This is a really small thing but it makes me happy. Now when you place your mushrooms little icons with a timer for the mushrooms appear below the player unit frame in the standard UI. It looks a lot like how totems appear in the standard UI for shaman (if I remember correctly). Hopefully this will make it easier for addon writers to build a WM counter into a standard balance addon like Balance Power Tracker. This isn't a huge issue since there are plenty of ways to track the mushrooms, but I do like it when things are consolidated into few addons.
Edit: This is apperently nothing new, and has been this way on life for some time. I guess I just use so many addons that I never noticed it before.
Thorns is Gone:
I didn't notice this until it was mentioned on the forums, but Thorns is not in the beta or on the MoP talent calculator. I'm not sure how I feel about this. For most of its life Thorns has been a pretty lack luster spell doing so little damage that it wasn't even noticed. In Cata the spell got a new life after its damage was increased at the expense of gaining a cooldown and having a shorter duration.
All things considered, I am a bit surprised to see it gone. There are several fights in Cata where it is useful, and it seems like it would be very useful in PvP. I don't know why Blizzard would want to get rid of it after people finally started using it. That said, from my perspective as a PvE player it isn't that interesting of an ability. When ever I needed it I made a macro that automatically targeted the tank and casted the spell on cooldown, so it didn't really add anything to my rotation.
Is Insect Swarm Gone?
One of the curious happenings of the early beta is that Insect Swarm isn't in the moonkin spell books at the moment. There is a history of Insect Swarm being bugged and not showing up in early beta, but given the overall reaction to the IS changes made and other changes seen in beta, some are speculating that Insect Swarm may be gone for good.
In case you've forgotten, the early MoP talent calculators indicated that Insect Swarm was being converted into a debuff that would increase moonkin nuke damage on a single target. Later it was modified slightly to include all damage, but at a lower rate. While I approved of the change, there are a lot of players that didn't like it for a number of reasons. Some just didn't like the idea of loosing a DoT, but others saw the new spell as pointless and uninteresting.
There has been no official word, but it now seems that Blizzard is agreeing with the second view point and is scrapping the spell entirely. Not only that, but the spell co-efficient for the three nuke spells has increased by 26% which is surprisingly close to the bonus that Insect Swarm would have provided.
Personally, I am not sad to see it go. Insect Swarm has had a long and mediocre history in the game and never really found its place. In TBC it was ok at low levels of gear, but couldn't keep up after the first tier of raiding was dropped from the rotation. In WotLK it survived a little longer, but by the time ICC rolled around it fell out of favor unless you are moving and couldn't do anything else. In Cataclysm, IS has remained a strong spell for the entire expansion, but it is so similar to Moonfire that it doesn't really add anything to the rotation other then another button to push.
Small Spell Changes:
Over the past couple of months a lot of attention has been focused larger changes to the spell like how Insect Swarm, but not as much has been focused on the smaller changes that also have a significant impact on Moonkin performance.
First, the amount of energy generated by Wrath and Starsurge has increased. Wrath now generates 15 energy (up from 13.33 in live), and Starsurge generates 20 energy (up from 15 in live). Energy generated by Starsurge is also affected by Euphoria.
Second, Starfire's cast time has been reduced to 2.7 seconds (down from 3.0 after talents on live). I did question if this was a bug when I saw it on the early versions of the talent calculator, but it is 2.7 seconds in the beta and it makes sense when you consider the energy generation changes above.
These changes primarily serve to standardize the nukes and the amount of energy per second they generate. It also causes energy to be generated round numbers and is hopefully less confusing. It's not really a big change but the overall impact is that it will shorten the Eclipse transition so that we have larger uptimes on DoTs and Nature's Grace.
Instant Eclipse Energy:
In beta, Eclipse energy is generated when the spell cast is completed rather then when it hits the target like it does on the live servers. This is a subtle change, and the reactions I've seen are a bit mixed. The detractors have sited that the travel time of Wrath and Starsurge has served as a way for moonkin to extend the Eclipse's effective uptime by casting instants like Moonfire in the small window of time when the nukes are traveling. However, that argument loses its merit when you consider some of the other changes made in beta. Namely, we are no longer going to be manually refreshing DoTs at the end of Eclipse since our nukes well be doing it for us.
I'm in favor of this change since it takes a little of the awkwardness of the rotation. It wasn't that big of a problem at lower gear levels because it was difficult to cast Starfall that was shorter then Wrath's travel time, but as the expansion progressed it became a frequent occurrence especially with temporary haste buffs from weapons, trinkets, and cooldowns. All in all there may be a couple of downsides to energy generation being instant, but I think the positives out weigh the negatives.
The Lack of Glyphs:
This has been commented on by a lot of people but it's worth saying again. There are very few good major glyph options for PvE moonkin at the moment. Glyph of Rebirth is so good that it is a required glyph for every raiding Druid, but after that the options are fairly weak. Glyph of the Moonbeast and Glyph of Stampede are the most frequent choices for the other two slots, but they are really more of a convenience and provides no real utility since I can already switch into the necessary form and use them anyway.
After those three the choices are pretty bleak. Glyph of Hurricane is nice in the right situation, but if you really need something slowed its likely that you will have something with a 70% slow being applied as well. Glyph of Innervate may be helpful, but most of the time if I need the mana I am unlikely to give the innervate away. I an also see a use for Glyph of Stampeding Roar, but probably not frequently. Other then that, the other options either have no use for moonkin or are only useful in PvP.
Creating glyphs for Balance or any DPS spec is going to be some what difficult now that they are trying to get away from the DPS boosting glyphs. However, I do think there are options that have been unexplored. For example, they could add a healing component to one of our existing spell much like they have for Glyph of Ferocious Bite. In my opinion the obvious example would be to have Starsurge heal the moonkin for 5% every time it hits.
I also find it surprising that there is not a single glyph that affects Wild Mushroom or Fungal Growth. I can think of three possibilities around these abilities alone. The most obvious is to have a glyph that allows you to place all three mushrooms at once. Another good one would be to increase the blast radius of the WM detonation. This shouldn't be over powered since WM is getting a pretty heavy nerf and really more of a correction for placement error rather then a DPS gain. Finally, why not have a glyph that extends the radius of Fungal Growth but only allows you to place one mushroom?
Lunar Shower and Movement DPS:
Lunar Shower hasn't really changed at all other then having the energy generation removed, but that lack of change is what I find most interesting. You might remember that back in May Daxxarri said that "Lunar Shower will be working differently in the future" in a post he made on the WoW forums. The interesting thing is that here we are three months later without any significant changes. So the question is did Blizzard scrap the Lunar Shower overhaul or are they still thinking about it?
Wild Mushroom UI:
Edit: This is apperently nothing new, and has been this way on life for some time. I guess I just use so many addons that I never noticed it before.
Thorns is Gone:
I didn't notice this until it was mentioned on the forums, but Thorns is not in the beta or on the MoP talent calculator. I'm not sure how I feel about this. For most of its life Thorns has been a pretty lack luster spell doing so little damage that it wasn't even noticed. In Cata the spell got a new life after its damage was increased at the expense of gaining a cooldown and having a shorter duration.
All things considered, I am a bit surprised to see it gone. There are several fights in Cata where it is useful, and it seems like it would be very useful in PvP. I don't know why Blizzard would want to get rid of it after people finally started using it. That said, from my perspective as a PvE player it isn't that interesting of an ability. When ever I needed it I made a macro that automatically targeted the tank and casted the spell on cooldown, so it didn't really add anything to my rotation.
Friday, March 30, 2012
The Issues with Moonkin Incarnation
Over the past week a lot of information has been pouring out of the Beta, and in all honesty I've had trouble keeping up with it all. Most of it has been small stuff, that I don't think merits it's own blog post, and there hasn't been enough small stuff yet to do a bigger post. However, there has been one tid bit that I think is big enough to get it's own post and that is the change to the Balance portion of Incarnation and how it relates to the other druid abilities.
The New Incarnation:
The second strange thing about it is that it is kind of a "sustained DPS" cooldown, because it's not bursty at all. Most of the cooldowns in the game are shorter in duration and provide more direct DPS benefits like Elemental Mastery or Combustion. This one is spread out over 30 seconds and has several very subtle impacts on your DPS. So it's kind of a new model as far as I know.
The Issues of Incarnation:
Now that I've listed five ways in which this version of Incarnation will improve moonkin DPS, I think a lot of people would assume that this is a good ability and one we would like Blizzard to keep. Unfortunately that is not the case. Hear are the big issues.
It's Relatively Weak: When compared to Soul of the Forest it is relatively weak, which will make it a difficult talent to choose. I've built another simulator to try and value some of these talents options and the results are not good for Incarnation. In my simulator Soul of the Forest provided a 3.29% DPS boost at a lower level of tear, while Incarnation was about a percent behind at 2.32%. It's too early to place a definitive valuable on each of these abilities, but my results are similar to the other valuations I've seen. Hamlet put SotF at 3.5% and Incarnation at 2.2%. Dopefish created a simulator that put SotF at 4.47% and Incarnation at 2.45%.
While Incarnation does increase your DPS in five ways, all five are pretty small. Our DoT and Nature's Grace uptimes are already pretty high without Incarnation so there isn't a whole lot of room to improve. Plus, you will be transitioning so fast between Eclipses that the DoTs and NG will be refreshed before they fall off. Plus, the Starfall improve is limited because few of the stars will be buffed by Eclipse.
It Doesn't Play Well with Haste: As I said above, Incarnation relies on transitioning through Eclipse cycles more quickly to increase uptimes and provide a DPS boost. Haste has a similar impact on our DPS. It also helps us to transition through Eclipse cycles more quickly. This means Incarnation will scale well as we progress through the expansion. It may start out as a respectable 2% buff, but as our gear level increases that buff will shrink because Uptimes cannot be improved past 100%. It also means that Incarnation will have a limited impact during temporary haste buffs like Bloodlust.
When I increased the gear level in my simulator, Soul of the Forest increased slightly to 3.58%, but Incarnation fell dramatically to just 0.57%. Hamlet so a similar impact to increased heal in his WrathCalcs numbers.
It Doesn't Play Well with Celestial Alignment: In my opinion the biggest issue with this version of Incarnation is that we already have Celestial Alignment. Incarnation and Celestial Alignment are kind of similar in that the are both long duration cooldowns that fit that "sustained DPS cooldown" model I mentioned earlier, but they buff moonkin DPS in completely opposite ways. CA buffs our DPS by giving us an Eclipse buff and stopping the Eclipse transition. Since Incarnation increases power generation it would have absolutely no impact on DPS if triggered during CA, therefore they can't be used together. This creates a bit of an awkward situation in which we have two long duration cooldowns that can't be used at will due to their various drawbacks. In short, there just isn't room for both Celestial Alignment and Incarnation in the in the moonkin rotation without some negative interactions. As a result, if we need to choose a DPS cooldown from Tier 4, Force of Nature would be preferable since it can be used at any time and it plays well with others.
Conclusions:
At this point, I'm convinced that this version of Incarnation is a bad talent and needs to be redesigned once again. The question is how?
The original version of the talent, that halved Eclipse power generation while in Eclipse and doubled it while Eclilpse was down, had some potential. However, it also had some drawbacks like how it reduced the uptimes of DoTs and Nature's Grace. There's also a lot of support out there for a standard DPS cooldown that increases damage by 20% for 30 seconds.
I would still like to see something in this tier that boosted AoE or Multi-Target DPS. The idea I had was a buff I called Infestation that spread Insect Swarm to all near by targets for say 15 seconds, and increasing our Hurricane or DoT damage on all of those targets by 25%.
TL-DR: This version of Incarnation is bad.
The New Incarnation:
Balance: Chosen of Elune - Improved Moonkin Form that doubles Lunar and Solar Power generation. 3min CDThis is kind of a strange cooldown for a couple of reasons, but the biggest one is that how it helps Moonkin DPS isn't immediately obvious. What it does is speed up out Eclipse transitions which in turn increases out DPS in a lot of little ways. For example:
- Increase to DoT Uptime Since Moonfire and Sunfire no longer over write each other.
- Increased DoT uptime increases Shooting Star procs
- Increase Nature's Grace Uptime since we will proc Eclipse more often.
- Increase Starfall Uptime since Lunar Eclipse will be procced more often.
- Increases the Effective Uptime of Eclipse because of how the energy math works out.
The second strange thing about it is that it is kind of a "sustained DPS" cooldown, because it's not bursty at all. Most of the cooldowns in the game are shorter in duration and provide more direct DPS benefits like Elemental Mastery or Combustion. This one is spread out over 30 seconds and has several very subtle impacts on your DPS. So it's kind of a new model as far as I know.
The Issues of Incarnation:
Now that I've listed five ways in which this version of Incarnation will improve moonkin DPS, I think a lot of people would assume that this is a good ability and one we would like Blizzard to keep. Unfortunately that is not the case. Hear are the big issues.
It's Relatively Weak: When compared to Soul of the Forest it is relatively weak, which will make it a difficult talent to choose. I've built another simulator to try and value some of these talents options and the results are not good for Incarnation. In my simulator Soul of the Forest provided a 3.29% DPS boost at a lower level of tear, while Incarnation was about a percent behind at 2.32%. It's too early to place a definitive valuable on each of these abilities, but my results are similar to the other valuations I've seen. Hamlet put SotF at 3.5% and Incarnation at 2.2%. Dopefish created a simulator that put SotF at 4.47% and Incarnation at 2.45%.
While Incarnation does increase your DPS in five ways, all five are pretty small. Our DoT and Nature's Grace uptimes are already pretty high without Incarnation so there isn't a whole lot of room to improve. Plus, you will be transitioning so fast between Eclipses that the DoTs and NG will be refreshed before they fall off. Plus, the Starfall improve is limited because few of the stars will be buffed by Eclipse.
It Doesn't Play Well with Haste: As I said above, Incarnation relies on transitioning through Eclipse cycles more quickly to increase uptimes and provide a DPS boost. Haste has a similar impact on our DPS. It also helps us to transition through Eclipse cycles more quickly. This means Incarnation will scale well as we progress through the expansion. It may start out as a respectable 2% buff, but as our gear level increases that buff will shrink because Uptimes cannot be improved past 100%. It also means that Incarnation will have a limited impact during temporary haste buffs like Bloodlust.
When I increased the gear level in my simulator, Soul of the Forest increased slightly to 3.58%, but Incarnation fell dramatically to just 0.57%. Hamlet so a similar impact to increased heal in his WrathCalcs numbers.
It Doesn't Play Well with Celestial Alignment: In my opinion the biggest issue with this version of Incarnation is that we already have Celestial Alignment. Incarnation and Celestial Alignment are kind of similar in that the are both long duration cooldowns that fit that "sustained DPS cooldown" model I mentioned earlier, but they buff moonkin DPS in completely opposite ways. CA buffs our DPS by giving us an Eclipse buff and stopping the Eclipse transition. Since Incarnation increases power generation it would have absolutely no impact on DPS if triggered during CA, therefore they can't be used together. This creates a bit of an awkward situation in which we have two long duration cooldowns that can't be used at will due to their various drawbacks. In short, there just isn't room for both Celestial Alignment and Incarnation in the in the moonkin rotation without some negative interactions. As a result, if we need to choose a DPS cooldown from Tier 4, Force of Nature would be preferable since it can be used at any time and it plays well with others.
Conclusions:
At this point, I'm convinced that this version of Incarnation is a bad talent and needs to be redesigned once again. The question is how?
The original version of the talent, that halved Eclipse power generation while in Eclipse and doubled it while Eclilpse was down, had some potential. However, it also had some drawbacks like how it reduced the uptimes of DoTs and Nature's Grace. There's also a lot of support out there for a standard DPS cooldown that increases damage by 20% for 30 seconds.
I would still like to see something in this tier that boosted AoE or Multi-Target DPS. The idea I had was a buff I called Infestation that spread Insect Swarm to all near by targets for say 15 seconds, and increasing our Hurricane or DoT damage on all of those targets by 25%.
TL-DR: This version of Incarnation is bad.
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
MoP Press Event Reaction
As most of you know, the march towards a new expansion continued last week with the Mists of Pandaria Press Event, and yesterday we got buried with information from multiple sites and I am only now digging myself out of it.
There are several things that came out in the press event that I like, but my general feeling is disappointment. To be fair, my disappointment probably has something to do with high expectations and in no way am I proclaiming that “WoW is doomed” as some like to do, but I expected more. Overall it felt like a Blizzcon recap and we were fed a lot of rice (no pun intended) without much meat. Though as Lissanna tweeted to me yesterday, that is kind of inevitable until we can get our hands on the Beta.
Anyway, I’m going to break this post into three sections I think of as bit stuff, medium stuff and little stuff. I’ve read everything I could find, and taken some notes on along the way. However, there are a lot of things that are hinted out without much detail backing them up. It is quite possible that I missed something or misunderstood something. Please feel free to comment with different view points or with corrections.
My Big Raiding Questions:
It’s safe to say that my biggest concern after reading all the press event stuff was what wasn’t said about raiding in MoP. In the media presentation it was glossed over very quickly by saying there would be three raids with fourteen bosses and two world bosses, but that was it. When Lore from Tankspot questioned J. Allen Brack about it he said:
Brack was also questioned about the overall raiding philosophy for MoP and had this to say:
Garrosh: The Final Raid Boss
Taken entirely on its own without considering other theoretical “lore vs game play” issues, I love the idea that a faction leader of a playable race can screw up so horribly that BOTH factions think it’s necessary to pull him down. I like a lot of people have never been a Garrosh fan, and despite a few slightly positive moments I think it’s safe to say that his reign as warchief has been a bit of a disaster. I won’t be sad to see him gone, but I do have some concerns about what this will me for the game’s tone and lore as a whole.
I’ve seen the Horde vs Alliance debates for years, and one thing that I think is often forgotten is that game play will always trump story and lore. For this reason, there will never be peace between the Alliance and Horde, because PvP would feel hollow without the overall conflict. There needs to be animosity between the Horde and Alliance, and that is why Garrosh and the irrational Varian were good for the game. They maintained that animosity in a reasonable way.
In MoP that’s clearly going to change. I don’t have a problem with Varian maturing and becoming the “great king” for all of the Alliance that he can be since the Horde had good guy Thrall for so many years. However, I do think a good guy Varian would need to be balanced out by an irrational enemy, and that won’t happen if Thrall is reinstated as Warchief as suggested by J. Allen Brack on GamePlanet.
In short, I like the fact that the Alliance is being presented in a more positive light while the Horde is getting slapped around a little by Garrosh’s the ends justify the means philosophy. However, that will be hard to maintain if Thrall is reinstated. You can only have so many peace talks disrupted by Onyxia or the Twilight Cult. Plus, I think it’s a little strange that Chris Metzen just spent an expansion explaining that Thrall is more of a World character then a Horde character to throw him right back into the leadership of the Horde.
The Medium Stuff
Removing Group Summon: In his Curse interview Tom Chilton said that they plan on removing the Have Group, Will Travel guild perk because it “shrinks the world and allows players to avoid being out in the world” I have to say, this is one of the dumbest things I ever heard a WoW developer say. I agree that it shrinks the world, but it’s absolutely ludicrous to think that by eliminating it players we be out in the world more.
I think of it this way. HG,WT is a travel ability. On my main it primarily gets me to my raid quickly, on my alts I use it to go back to Org to train and such. Without it, I would use a flight path or pop in to flight form fly in the general direction of my objective. Am I really out in the world when I’m on a flight path I can’t get off, or flying myself a +100 yards above the ground?
I would argue not. In fact, removing HG,WT will result in fewer people being out in the world. The HG,WT perk is a quick and easy way to get your friends and guild mates to your location quickly when something worthwhile is going on. Let say for example, the Alliance is attacking Crossroads. If you put out a call for help, the action could be over by the time people get there, but HG,WT will can get people there quickly for some real world PvP.
To get players out into the world more Blizzard needs to create content that make people want to get out in the world. If Blizzard really wants to tackle this problem by eliminating modes of travel there are much bigger fish to fry like Flying Mounts, LFR, LFD, Flight Paths, Portals, and Hearth Stones.
Druid Glyphs and Inscription Changes: In general terms I don’t have a problem with what they are doing to Inscription. Getting rid of Prime Glyphs makes perfect sense since in most cases people use the same three 95% of the time. I also like that they are focusing more on utility and situational options for Major Glyphs while adding a lot of “fun cosmetic” minor glyph options.
That said, I am surprised that the Glyph of Stars made it past the editing room, because its either a half-baked idea or not finished. According to the tool tip (reported by several sites) the Glyph of Stars Transforms your Moonkin Form into Astral Form. This sounds cool at first until you find out that Astral Form is just the “spirit” model that is used when players are dead.
Given that moonkin models have been the same since vanilla WoW, and that the only way to change a moonkin’s appearance currently is to change races, I approve of Blizzards effort to give us a little variety. However, the ideal change would be to update the Moonkin models much like they did for the cat and bear models in WotLK. If that is to much work and a bandade fix like Glyph of Stars is the only change possible, do it better. Please come up with a new graphic rather then a tired old one that makes us look like a Shadow Priest. I think a model like Algalon’s would be cool and would fit the title of Glyph of Stars.
LFR Loot System: There has been a lot of confusion about the changes being made to LFR looting. If you are one of the confused, here is a link to the thread in which Zarhym is trying to explain it.
The basic premise is that for LFR kills loot is done on the individual level rather then for the entire group. If you win an item it will be an item that you can use based upon your class and spec, and it will be unaffected by what other people win.
From what we’ve been told, I really like this idea. For one, it gives us a consistent chance of obtaining loot. We aren’t S.O.L. because the boss only dropped protector tokens and an enhancement shaman can’t role on a caster trinket I want. The other thing it will prevent is the 2minute wait after a fight for loot because someone decided to log off without rolling.
Valor Point Revamp: Blizzard didn’t address this directly in a formal way, but many of the interviews commented on a revamp of the Valor Point system. The most direct comment I could find was on the WoWHead News site which said:
WoW Farmville: With the Tillers and Anglers faction players will have the ability to tend there own farm to grow cooking ingredients, herbs, quest turn-ins, and pets. I’m not really interested in a farming for farming’s sake mini game, but I find this addition very interesting.
There are a lot of open questions, but this could have a dramatic impact on the game. The first question is, do you have to be an herbalist to pick the herbs that you grow? How many Herbs can you grow and how often? Can you grow all herbs including low level herbs? Can you choose which herbs you grow?
As you can see there are far more questions then there are answers, but it will be interesting to see how this plays out since it could have a huge impact on the WoW economy.
I also wonder if this is a reaction to the SWTOR professions system. I haven’t played the game, but from what I’m told the crafting system in SWTOR is very hands off, where you tell your crew what to do and they do it while you are off-line or doing something else in game. The Tillers and Anglers faction along with the possibility of Scribes being given a “staff” seems very similary.
The Small Stuff
There are several things that came out in the press event that I like, but my general feeling is disappointment. To be fair, my disappointment probably has something to do with high expectations and in no way am I proclaiming that “WoW is doomed” as some like to do, but I expected more. Overall it felt like a Blizzcon recap and we were fed a lot of rice (no pun intended) without much meat. Though as Lissanna tweeted to me yesterday, that is kind of inevitable until we can get our hands on the Beta.
Anyway, I’m going to break this post into three sections I think of as bit stuff, medium stuff and little stuff. I’ve read everything I could find, and taken some notes on along the way. However, there are a lot of things that are hinted out without much detail backing them up. It is quite possible that I missed something or misunderstood something. Please feel free to comment with different view points or with corrections.
My Big Raiding Questions:
It’s safe to say that my biggest concern after reading all the press event stuff was what wasn’t said about raiding in MoP. In the media presentation it was glossed over very quickly by saying there would be three raids with fourteen bosses and two world bosses, but that was it. When Lore from Tankspot questioned J. Allen Brack about it he said:
Yeah, that’s because we haven’t done a lot of the work yet, and so we’re reluctant to commit to a whole bunch because things may change for us, but we’re working on spawning out the dungeons, we’re working on spawning out the various raids, and building those out. Those take many, many, many months to be built out from an artists’ perspective. Then we’ve got all the itemization, and all the character art that has to happen, from weapons, and armor, and bosses, and trash mobs that we have to make and dress up in order to make that happen.This has me concerned because I am really hoping for an early Q3 release and don’t want to be killing Deathwing for another nine months. It could be that Brack is underplaying how much work has already been done or just trying to manage expectations, but if the raids are really “many, many, many months” we are in for some rough times.
Brack was also questioned about the overall raiding philosophy for MoP and had this to say:
We actually have not decided what our raiding philosophy, our raiding design will be. We have a lot of different ideas in terms of where we're going to end up, but I really can't say because we basically haven't decided just yet. But we have changed our raiding philosophy very significantly with every single expansion, and I don't expect this expansion to be any different, so we'll have a lot of thought, and a big write-up, and a blog will go out when we've decided how it will all work, and the forums will explode and it'll be amazing! (GamePlanet)
I think we’re gonna look at how the 10/25 person lockout worked as a shared cooldown. Was that the right decision, or do we want to do something different? I don’t really know what the right answer is yet. We haven’t decided.” (Tankspot)I am happy that they are taking another look at the overall raiding philosophy and aren’t afraid to change it for the fourth time. It needs to change to address the 10vs25 issues, but judging from some of the comments I’ve read it seems like they are committed to the two raid format model. I’ll hold off judgment until they do make a blog post about their ideas, but I am becoming less and less confident that a two format system can work.
Garrosh: The Final Raid Boss
Taken entirely on its own without considering other theoretical “lore vs game play” issues, I love the idea that a faction leader of a playable race can screw up so horribly that BOTH factions think it’s necessary to pull him down. I like a lot of people have never been a Garrosh fan, and despite a few slightly positive moments I think it’s safe to say that his reign as warchief has been a bit of a disaster. I won’t be sad to see him gone, but I do have some concerns about what this will me for the game’s tone and lore as a whole.
I’ve seen the Horde vs Alliance debates for years, and one thing that I think is often forgotten is that game play will always trump story and lore. For this reason, there will never be peace between the Alliance and Horde, because PvP would feel hollow without the overall conflict. There needs to be animosity between the Horde and Alliance, and that is why Garrosh and the irrational Varian were good for the game. They maintained that animosity in a reasonable way.
In MoP that’s clearly going to change. I don’t have a problem with Varian maturing and becoming the “great king” for all of the Alliance that he can be since the Horde had good guy Thrall for so many years. However, I do think a good guy Varian would need to be balanced out by an irrational enemy, and that won’t happen if Thrall is reinstated as Warchief as suggested by J. Allen Brack on GamePlanet.
In short, I like the fact that the Alliance is being presented in a more positive light while the Horde is getting slapped around a little by Garrosh’s the ends justify the means philosophy. However, that will be hard to maintain if Thrall is reinstated. You can only have so many peace talks disrupted by Onyxia or the Twilight Cult. Plus, I think it’s a little strange that Chris Metzen just spent an expansion explaining that Thrall is more of a World character then a Horde character to throw him right back into the leadership of the Horde.
The Medium Stuff
Removing Group Summon: In his Curse interview Tom Chilton said that they plan on removing the Have Group, Will Travel guild perk because it “shrinks the world and allows players to avoid being out in the world” I have to say, this is one of the dumbest things I ever heard a WoW developer say. I agree that it shrinks the world, but it’s absolutely ludicrous to think that by eliminating it players we be out in the world more.
I think of it this way. HG,WT is a travel ability. On my main it primarily gets me to my raid quickly, on my alts I use it to go back to Org to train and such. Without it, I would use a flight path or pop in to flight form fly in the general direction of my objective. Am I really out in the world when I’m on a flight path I can’t get off, or flying myself a +100 yards above the ground?
I would argue not. In fact, removing HG,WT will result in fewer people being out in the world. The HG,WT perk is a quick and easy way to get your friends and guild mates to your location quickly when something worthwhile is going on. Let say for example, the Alliance is attacking Crossroads. If you put out a call for help, the action could be over by the time people get there, but HG,WT will can get people there quickly for some real world PvP.
To get players out into the world more Blizzard needs to create content that make people want to get out in the world. If Blizzard really wants to tackle this problem by eliminating modes of travel there are much bigger fish to fry like Flying Mounts, LFR, LFD, Flight Paths, Portals, and Hearth Stones.
Druid Glyphs and Inscription Changes: In general terms I don’t have a problem with what they are doing to Inscription. Getting rid of Prime Glyphs makes perfect sense since in most cases people use the same three 95% of the time. I also like that they are focusing more on utility and situational options for Major Glyphs while adding a lot of “fun cosmetic” minor glyph options.
That said, I am surprised that the Glyph of Stars made it past the editing room, because its either a half-baked idea or not finished. According to the tool tip (reported by several sites) the Glyph of Stars Transforms your Moonkin Form into Astral Form. This sounds cool at first until you find out that Astral Form is just the “spirit” model that is used when players are dead.
Given that moonkin models have been the same since vanilla WoW, and that the only way to change a moonkin’s appearance currently is to change races, I approve of Blizzards effort to give us a little variety. However, the ideal change would be to update the Moonkin models much like they did for the cat and bear models in WotLK. If that is to much work and a bandade fix like Glyph of Stars is the only change possible, do it better. Please come up with a new graphic rather then a tired old one that makes us look like a Shadow Priest. I think a model like Algalon’s would be cool and would fit the title of Glyph of Stars.
LFR Loot System: There has been a lot of confusion about the changes being made to LFR looting. If you are one of the confused, here is a link to the thread in which Zarhym is trying to explain it.
The basic premise is that for LFR kills loot is done on the individual level rather then for the entire group. If you win an item it will be an item that you can use based upon your class and spec, and it will be unaffected by what other people win.
From what we’ve been told, I really like this idea. For one, it gives us a consistent chance of obtaining loot. We aren’t S.O.L. because the boss only dropped protector tokens and an enhancement shaman can’t role on a caster trinket I want. The other thing it will prevent is the 2minute wait after a fight for loot because someone decided to log off without rolling.
Valor Point Revamp: Blizzard didn’t address this directly in a formal way, but many of the interviews commented on a revamp of the Valor Point system. The most direct comment I could find was on the WoWHead News site which said:
Valor Points are completely reworked. They are no longer a currency for actual items, but something you use to (repeatedly) augment the ilvl of your gear. Details are still being worked out as to how many times players can bump up the ilvl, or what happens when players hold onto an ancient item for the stat combinations.There were also comments made about using Valor points to buy rep and extra loot rolls in all tiers of raiding. It’s hard to comment too much without getting more information, but what little we’ve heard so far sounds good. Valor points have been a bit of a joke where they are really important for maybe four weeks and then they become completely useless. Tier 13 has highlighted this amazingly well.
WoW Farmville: With the Tillers and Anglers faction players will have the ability to tend there own farm to grow cooking ingredients, herbs, quest turn-ins, and pets. I’m not really interested in a farming for farming’s sake mini game, but I find this addition very interesting.
There are a lot of open questions, but this could have a dramatic impact on the game. The first question is, do you have to be an herbalist to pick the herbs that you grow? How many Herbs can you grow and how often? Can you grow all herbs including low level herbs? Can you choose which herbs you grow?
As you can see there are far more questions then there are answers, but it will be interesting to see how this plays out since it could have a huge impact on the WoW economy.
I also wonder if this is a reaction to the SWTOR professions system. I haven’t played the game, but from what I’m told the crafting system in SWTOR is very hands off, where you tell your crew what to do and they do it while you are off-line or doing something else in game. The Tillers and Anglers faction along with the possibility of Scribes being given a “staff” seems very similary.
The Small Stuff
- Female Pandaran Model: I personally think it looks awesome. Much better then the female worgen model. I’m having a hard time understanding why some people seem to hate it.
- No Item Squish: I don’t have a strong opinion one way or the other on this one, but it does need to happen eventually.
- AoE Looting: Why couldn’t this have been available when I was farming Enchanting mats on my rogue.
- Buff UI Update: I really like the idea that it will show you if you have 8/8 of the buffs. It should make life slightly easier.
- Tier System Revamp: They seem to change how you acquire tier gear every patch so why should MoP be any different?
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
My Cata Post-Mortem
Normally I save these review looking, post-mortem type posts until a month or two before a new expansion is being released, but it feels appropriate to do Cata's now. For one, I've almost "beat the game." My guild is currently 7/8 HM DS, and I will be upset if we don't have Heroic Madness down in the next week or two. Second, Blizzard is giving almost every indication that they can that Cataclysm is over. They have already done three "Post-Mortem" blog posts focusing on systems, encounters, and quests, and with the MoP press event happening this week you can bet that all attention will be focused on the next expansion starting Monday the 19th.
So, I would like to take this opportunity and look back at what I think worked or didn't work, before it's completely irrelevant (if it isn't already).
Stats and Customization:
Mastery: Most of my experience is limited to moonkin, but I think most people would agree that the addition of Mastery has been a complete success. There are a lot potential issues with adding a new stat to an existing game. It could be too weak, too strong, or to complicated, and each would create problems. However, after a little tuning, Blizzard integrated it into the game almost seamlessly. In fact, I had read over years worth of old blog posts before I remembered that it was an addition in Cataclysm.
Reforging: As a concept Reforging gets an +A, but the implementation of the Reforging system gets a C. The problem with reforging is that it's hard to walk up to Thaumaturge Zajir and do it on the fly with the assistance of add-ons, third party web sites, or advanced planning.
I think the Reforging UI needs a significant revamp. First, it would be great if there was a "learn" feature like there is on the talent tree, so that you can make changes and see the impact without them being permanent. This would allow players to sandbox configurations without spending a lot of gold to figure it out. Second, I think they could make it clearer which items are reforged and how they have been reforged. If you look at the tool tip of each item it just says "reforged." Why not "reforged crit to hit," or have the reforged stats highlighted in some way on the tool tip?
Talent Overhaul: The fact that Blizzard is once again revamping the Talent system in MoP shows that Cata's overhaul was pretty much a failure. It wasn't all bad, but I think our main criticisms that it wouldn't create more interesting choices or optional talents, has been proven correct and that is why Blizzard is making such a big change in MoP.
Raids, 5-Mans, and Encounters:
General Awards: Traditionally, I have done a list of my favorite and least favorite instances and such. I am going to try and get away from that format a little this time, but I did want to make a few quick comments in this regard.
The reason LFR is so great is that it takes a lot of the headache out of having alts. I have leveled a lot of toons to max level over the years, and it's always a little bitter sweet. Once I get them to 70, 80, or 85 the question always came up. What now? Gearing them up to do any kind of endgame was time consuming and possibly expensive, but now there is a simple way to learn a new class without having to make significant time commitments. LFR is a homerun.
Revamped Instances: Revamping an old instance is a very risky prospect. First, Blizzard always gets called lazy for redoing old content rather then doing something new. Plus there is always the potential that a beloved dungeon is ruined. However, it is also something that players frequently request so that they can revisit some of their favorite instances from the past.
Looking only at the Cataclysm Revamps I think Blizzard has done an amazing job this expansion. The Deadmines was one of my favorite instances leveling up, and the revamp made it 10x better. ZA was another instance that I had a lot of experience with, and while I don't think they improved ZA at all with the revamp, I do think they maintained what made it great as a 10man when they converted it to a 5man. I was less familiar with SFK and ZF prior to the revamp, but I thought both were enjoyable in Cata. As a result, I think Blizzard has figured out how to revamp old content after the blunders in WotLK. I have no concern about the revamps Blizzard has planned for MoP.
Shrunken Raids: One of the more controversial choices made by Blizzard in Cataclysm was to drop the Abyssal Maw raid from Tier 12, and I found the explanation given to be not all that satisfying. To summarize, Blizzard stated that compared to Firelands the Abyssal Maw raid didn't look or feel that good. They also said that they wanted to get away from the 12 - 14 boss tiers and focus their development on 7 or 8 bosses to provide a better player experience.
All in all I think this turned out to be a mixed bag. Generally speaking I would much prefer 7 great fights then 12 mediocre fights, but in the end I think we got 7 mediocre fights in firelands instead of the 7 great fights we were promised. Having unique art does not make an encounter great. Nor does a gimmicky flying mode like on Alys'razor, a gimmicky steering mechanic on Rhyo'lith, or a don't take damage when damage is sometimes unavoidable buff like on Staghelm.
In short, I'm not really against smaller raid tiers because after 5 years of raiding I am interested in shorter raiding tiers, but I don't think blizzard achieved their stated goals for having the smaller tiers.
Other:
Two Equal Raid Formats: I've already discussed this at length and will not go into to much detail in this post, but two equal raid formats was a big feature of Cataclysm that I can't ignore in a post mortem.
On the positive side, Blizzard has done a very good job of balancing the two formats in terms of difficulty. Of course there are examples where 10man is easier then 25man and vice versa, but for the most part they have been reasonably balanced. Unfortunately, that is the only positive in my opinion.
As anyone who reads my blog with any regularity knows I am a 25man raider who prefers the 25man format, and I think it's fair to say that having two equal formats has resulted in the slow decline of the 25man format. I think it's also fair to say that Blizzards solution of more loot and Valor Points has had little or no affect on this decline. While I have proposed solutions to make 25man raiding more attractive in the past, I am quickly coming to Lissanna's point of view that two equal raid formats just won't work. It's bad from an organizational stand point because one format will generally be easier to organize then the other. It's bad from a design stand point, because blizzard has to create an encounter that can work for two different formats in the same general space. And it's bad from a resources stand point because blizzard has to spend resources on an aspect of the game that is shrinking in participation. All in all, two equal raid formats has been a failure in my opinion.
Quest Design and 1-60 Revamp: All in all, I have to say the 1-60 Revamp was a huge success. In my 5 years I've leveled 9 toons past level 60 and I have a pretty good idea of what questing was like before and after the revamp, and it is unquestionably better now then it was in the past. Blizzard has criticized itself for some of the zones being to linier, but I didn't have any problem with that. I love how story driven the new zones have been and how natural the progression within a zone has been. In fact, I only have two minor criticisms.
First, I think Blizzard when a little over the top with the gimmicky quests and themes. From the overall Indiana Jones theme of Uldum, to the Joust quests in Hyjal and the PvZ quests in Hillsbrad to name a few, it just got to be a little to much for me.
Second, this is a bit of a catch 22, but progression through the revamped zones is extremely fast once you combine Heirlooms, guild XP bonuses, rested XP, and experience gained from gathering or instances. Sure you can turn off your XP gain, or not use heirlooms and such, but that presents it's own problems. I'm not sure what blizzard can do about this, but it literally took me 3 different toons to see all of the different 1-60 zone revamps.
Archaeology: The best way to describe Archaeology in Cataclysm is that it's was a good first draft. Despite what its haters say, there are some really cool aspects of archaeology, but it has some very big problems as well. Blizzard has already recognized many most of the problem. It's too grindy. The travel time between dig sites is to long. The dig sites and projects too unpredictable. All in all, it’s just too random.
I would be very surprised if Archaeology didn't get a fairly big revamp in MoP, and it will be interesting to see what changes Blizzard comes up with. Personally, I would like to see some sort of currency being accrued as you complete projects so that you can request or purchase as specific quest after you completed so may artifacts.
Lore:
Lore is generally not something I like to talk about in my blog, but I have been reading a lot of the WoW books recently and the Lore of the game is something I've grown more interested in. These are couple of items that I had originally planned on including in my MoP wishlist, but ended up scrapping because they didn't fit.
Give the Old Gods a Break: If I remember correctly, right after WotLK was released a player asked why there were so few Naga in the new expansion. Blizzard responded that they felt players were a little tired of them after there large presence in TBC. With that in mind I am more tired of the Old Gods then I ever was of the Naga or any other race or faction.
I am tired of the tentacles everywhere, of the faceless ones running around, and of the big gapping mouths spotted around the map. I realize that the Old Gods are arguably the biggest bad in the game, but I'm tired of them after two expansions of heavy old god focus. Please skip them in MoP.
Garrosh Hellscream: As someone who played Alliance for almost 4 years before switching to Horde, I have long felt that Blizzard has been a bit unbalanced in how they've treated the two factions from a lore perspective. The Horde had Good Guy Thrall (there has to be a meme there) in charge for years which excused the idiots he had underneath him in the minds of a lot of players. The Alliance on the other hand was leaderless for a good amount of time and then when Varian Wrynn did step up he behaved like the idiots underneath Thrall. In short, Horde looks good, Alliance looks bad.
Cataclysm has been a step in the right direction in fixing that. I love that Garrosh is still pretty much an idiot who is alienating his allies, but also realizing that his style of leadership also had some negative consequences like they did in the Stonetalon Mountains. I think the tone that Garrosh's development has taken has been perfect, and I can't wait to see how it develops in MoP, when hopefully Varian Wrynn finally leaves his idiocy in the past and the Alliance in general wakes up. The good news is that judging from Chris Metzen twitter quotes I may get my wish.
Sylvanis Windrunner: Like Garrosh, I am happy with what they've done with Sylvanis in Cata, but unlike Garrosh I am unsure of her future. Prior to Cataclysm it was easy to dismiss some of the atrocities that the Forsaken were involved in because they were so focused on the Lich King. However, now that the Lich King is gone, I think the faction needs a big story overhaul if it is to remain relevant. How can Garrosh and the Horde in general continue to ignore Sylvanis' deceit and double dealing. Personally, I would love to see Sylvanis (with some of the forsaken) split off from the horde and become its own bad guy faction, with the playable forsaken being those people that have rejected Sylvanis's extremism.
So, I would like to take this opportunity and look back at what I think worked or didn't work, before it's completely irrelevant (if it isn't already).
Stats and Customization:
Mastery: Most of my experience is limited to moonkin, but I think most people would agree that the addition of Mastery has been a complete success. There are a lot potential issues with adding a new stat to an existing game. It could be too weak, too strong, or to complicated, and each would create problems. However, after a little tuning, Blizzard integrated it into the game almost seamlessly. In fact, I had read over years worth of old blog posts before I remembered that it was an addition in Cataclysm.
Reforging: As a concept Reforging gets an +A, but the implementation of the Reforging system gets a C. The problem with reforging is that it's hard to walk up to Thaumaturge Zajir and do it on the fly with the assistance of add-ons, third party web sites, or advanced planning.
I think the Reforging UI needs a significant revamp. First, it would be great if there was a "learn" feature like there is on the talent tree, so that you can make changes and see the impact without them being permanent. This would allow players to sandbox configurations without spending a lot of gold to figure it out. Second, I think they could make it clearer which items are reforged and how they have been reforged. If you look at the tool tip of each item it just says "reforged." Why not "reforged crit to hit," or have the reforged stats highlighted in some way on the tool tip?
Talent Overhaul: The fact that Blizzard is once again revamping the Talent system in MoP shows that Cata's overhaul was pretty much a failure. It wasn't all bad, but I think our main criticisms that it wouldn't create more interesting choices or optional talents, has been proven correct and that is why Blizzard is making such a big change in MoP.
Raids, 5-Mans, and Encounters:
General Awards: Traditionally, I have done a list of my favorite and least favorite instances and such. I am going to try and get away from that format a little this time, but I did want to make a few quick comments in this regard.
- Favorite Fight: Sinestra - To be honest, I had a hard time choosing fights that I liked, and Sinestra kind of won by default. It was a tough fight and I thought the Cutter mechanic was interesting.
- Worst Fight: Spine of Deathwing - This was a hard one as well because in general I didn't like a lot of the fights in Cata. Spine won however, because the idea that DPS only matters for about 10% of the fight seemed really stupid. I also hated breaking the stun as a DPS because it was impossible to tell if you should continue casting or not. Dishonorable mentions: Rhyolith and Beth'tilac.
The reason LFR is so great is that it takes a lot of the headache out of having alts. I have leveled a lot of toons to max level over the years, and it's always a little bitter sweet. Once I get them to 70, 80, or 85 the question always came up. What now? Gearing them up to do any kind of endgame was time consuming and possibly expensive, but now there is a simple way to learn a new class without having to make significant time commitments. LFR is a homerun.
Revamped Instances: Revamping an old instance is a very risky prospect. First, Blizzard always gets called lazy for redoing old content rather then doing something new. Plus there is always the potential that a beloved dungeon is ruined. However, it is also something that players frequently request so that they can revisit some of their favorite instances from the past.
Looking only at the Cataclysm Revamps I think Blizzard has done an amazing job this expansion. The Deadmines was one of my favorite instances leveling up, and the revamp made it 10x better. ZA was another instance that I had a lot of experience with, and while I don't think they improved ZA at all with the revamp, I do think they maintained what made it great as a 10man when they converted it to a 5man. I was less familiar with SFK and ZF prior to the revamp, but I thought both were enjoyable in Cata. As a result, I think Blizzard has figured out how to revamp old content after the blunders in WotLK. I have no concern about the revamps Blizzard has planned for MoP.
Shrunken Raids: One of the more controversial choices made by Blizzard in Cataclysm was to drop the Abyssal Maw raid from Tier 12, and I found the explanation given to be not all that satisfying. To summarize, Blizzard stated that compared to Firelands the Abyssal Maw raid didn't look or feel that good. They also said that they wanted to get away from the 12 - 14 boss tiers and focus their development on 7 or 8 bosses to provide a better player experience.
All in all I think this turned out to be a mixed bag. Generally speaking I would much prefer 7 great fights then 12 mediocre fights, but in the end I think we got 7 mediocre fights in firelands instead of the 7 great fights we were promised. Having unique art does not make an encounter great. Nor does a gimmicky flying mode like on Alys'razor, a gimmicky steering mechanic on Rhyo'lith, or a don't take damage when damage is sometimes unavoidable buff like on Staghelm.
In short, I'm not really against smaller raid tiers because after 5 years of raiding I am interested in shorter raiding tiers, but I don't think blizzard achieved their stated goals for having the smaller tiers.
Other:
Two Equal Raid Formats: I've already discussed this at length and will not go into to much detail in this post, but two equal raid formats was a big feature of Cataclysm that I can't ignore in a post mortem.
On the positive side, Blizzard has done a very good job of balancing the two formats in terms of difficulty. Of course there are examples where 10man is easier then 25man and vice versa, but for the most part they have been reasonably balanced. Unfortunately, that is the only positive in my opinion.
As anyone who reads my blog with any regularity knows I am a 25man raider who prefers the 25man format, and I think it's fair to say that having two equal formats has resulted in the slow decline of the 25man format. I think it's also fair to say that Blizzards solution of more loot and Valor Points has had little or no affect on this decline. While I have proposed solutions to make 25man raiding more attractive in the past, I am quickly coming to Lissanna's point of view that two equal raid formats just won't work. It's bad from an organizational stand point because one format will generally be easier to organize then the other. It's bad from a design stand point, because blizzard has to create an encounter that can work for two different formats in the same general space. And it's bad from a resources stand point because blizzard has to spend resources on an aspect of the game that is shrinking in participation. All in all, two equal raid formats has been a failure in my opinion.
Quest Design and 1-60 Revamp: All in all, I have to say the 1-60 Revamp was a huge success. In my 5 years I've leveled 9 toons past level 60 and I have a pretty good idea of what questing was like before and after the revamp, and it is unquestionably better now then it was in the past. Blizzard has criticized itself for some of the zones being to linier, but I didn't have any problem with that. I love how story driven the new zones have been and how natural the progression within a zone has been. In fact, I only have two minor criticisms.
First, I think Blizzard when a little over the top with the gimmicky quests and themes. From the overall Indiana Jones theme of Uldum, to the Joust quests in Hyjal and the PvZ quests in Hillsbrad to name a few, it just got to be a little to much for me.
Second, this is a bit of a catch 22, but progression through the revamped zones is extremely fast once you combine Heirlooms, guild XP bonuses, rested XP, and experience gained from gathering or instances. Sure you can turn off your XP gain, or not use heirlooms and such, but that presents it's own problems. I'm not sure what blizzard can do about this, but it literally took me 3 different toons to see all of the different 1-60 zone revamps.
Archaeology: The best way to describe Archaeology in Cataclysm is that it's was a good first draft. Despite what its haters say, there are some really cool aspects of archaeology, but it has some very big problems as well. Blizzard has already recognized many most of the problem. It's too grindy. The travel time between dig sites is to long. The dig sites and projects too unpredictable. All in all, it’s just too random.
I would be very surprised if Archaeology didn't get a fairly big revamp in MoP, and it will be interesting to see what changes Blizzard comes up with. Personally, I would like to see some sort of currency being accrued as you complete projects so that you can request or purchase as specific quest after you completed so may artifacts.
Lore:
Lore is generally not something I like to talk about in my blog, but I have been reading a lot of the WoW books recently and the Lore of the game is something I've grown more interested in. These are couple of items that I had originally planned on including in my MoP wishlist, but ended up scrapping because they didn't fit.
Give the Old Gods a Break: If I remember correctly, right after WotLK was released a player asked why there were so few Naga in the new expansion. Blizzard responded that they felt players were a little tired of them after there large presence in TBC. With that in mind I am more tired of the Old Gods then I ever was of the Naga or any other race or faction.
I am tired of the tentacles everywhere, of the faceless ones running around, and of the big gapping mouths spotted around the map. I realize that the Old Gods are arguably the biggest bad in the game, but I'm tired of them after two expansions of heavy old god focus. Please skip them in MoP.
Garrosh Hellscream: As someone who played Alliance for almost 4 years before switching to Horde, I have long felt that Blizzard has been a bit unbalanced in how they've treated the two factions from a lore perspective. The Horde had Good Guy Thrall (there has to be a meme there) in charge for years which excused the idiots he had underneath him in the minds of a lot of players. The Alliance on the other hand was leaderless for a good amount of time and then when Varian Wrynn did step up he behaved like the idiots underneath Thrall. In short, Horde looks good, Alliance looks bad.
Cataclysm has been a step in the right direction in fixing that. I love that Garrosh is still pretty much an idiot who is alienating his allies, but also realizing that his style of leadership also had some negative consequences like they did in the Stonetalon Mountains. I think the tone that Garrosh's development has taken has been perfect, and I can't wait to see how it develops in MoP, when hopefully Varian Wrynn finally leaves his idiocy in the past and the Alliance in general wakes up. The good news is that judging from Chris Metzen twitter quotes I may get my wish.
Sylvanis Windrunner: Like Garrosh, I am happy with what they've done with Sylvanis in Cata, but unlike Garrosh I am unsure of her future. Prior to Cataclysm it was easy to dismiss some of the atrocities that the Forsaken were involved in because they were so focused on the Lich King. However, now that the Lich King is gone, I think the faction needs a big story overhaul if it is to remain relevant. How can Garrosh and the Horde in general continue to ignore Sylvanis' deceit and double dealing. Personally, I would love to see Sylvanis (with some of the forsaken) split off from the horde and become its own bad guy faction, with the playable forsaken being those people that have rejected Sylvanis's extremism.
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