Cataclysm

[Ingmar]

I don't get the point of rated battlegrounds. I want to get good shit from doing something SOLO, not sign up for a 15v15 arena team.

The blue response to that sentiment:

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/11/19378794913-rated-bgs-disappointing.html

I tend to think they maybe should offer something a little better for the solo PVPer as well, but there's lots of time left I suppose.

[Nevermore]

The way it's been presented so far, rated BGs look like they'll be even less popular than Arenas.  It seems to me that if people were that willing to pre-make their own PUGs to PvP, the Arenas would be a lot more popular than they are.

[Ingmar]

Yeah, although I guess it depends on how much of it is that, and how much of it is a playstyle preference thing. Some people just hate straight deathmatch, and that's what arenas are. BGs support a wider range of specs and team makeups, etc.

[Jayce]

They can use horses or other racial mounts in human form, they should get running otherwise.

I would have only played Tauren if they would have given them plains running like originally intended.

I really don't see why they didn't.  Besides slowing down the animation, it seems a lot less technically challenging than making actual Kodo mounts.  And I personally have always hated the Kodo animation. Especially the 100% ones look like they are twinkling along rather than thundering, if that makes sense.

They could fix that issue and add worgen running in one shot here. I hope they do.


Regarding lolore, I love the lore but recognize it takes a back seat to game balance, fun, and all sorts of other things.  It takes a lot of effort at suspending disbelief to enjoy it.  If you're the kind of person who bemoaned LOTR movies because they didn't have Tom Bombadil, you're probably the kind of person who gets ragey about WoW lore.  I'm not.

[Sjofn]

Plains running died for two reasons: Lots of tauren players in beta begged for a "real" mount, and they couldn't make the plainsrunning thing work in a way they liked. From what I remember, they didn't want you to have to stop and cast to start it up, because that seemed weird, but being able to ramp up into it seemed broken, etc. If they were adding tauren NOW, it might be a different story, but I remember those were the reasons then.

[Ingmar]

What bugs me about it, honestly, is nothing about the 'sanctity' of the lore or anything Bombadil-ish.

There's just a really obvious timeline discrepancy which they should probably cover up somehow. It isn't a lore problem as much as it just is a 'wtf' problem. See WUA's diagram.

[Sheepherder]

Actually, every ability on your list barring the rogue ones causes you to simply have fall through macros and Boom, skill averted. "attempt to use overpower on every ability, if it's not up, use normal ability" Taste for blood Solved. Decimation isn't at all random, and is calculated into rotations (it's an execute variant, not something to break up your rotation if things light up)

You can't build fall-through macros for damaging abilities as of patch 2.0, but thanks for the tip.  I'll keep it in mind for when they roll back Cataclysm, Wrath, and TBC.

Also, Decimation wasn't in my list, though I included it as a notable exception.

HaT does not alter rotations at all, you still just hit builder until 5, evis/rupture/SnD depending on what isn't up and how fast you're generating CPs

Maelstrom is a terrible example, because Enhance shaman aren't doing jack all with GCD locking, so it's just a bonus when it's ready.

And none of this comes down to your amazingly stupid idea of adding "on miss" abilities. Specifically, you couldn't come up with a single example for my missed spell that would make it better, instead wanting, apparently, to burn the entire skill tree to the ground and make WoW2, instead of something sane like accepting that Missing is not part of the high end game of WoW, and if you want something more skill based and interesting, the question would be "why not make two instants I can burn off of Immolate on a shared cooldown, so I have to pick the right thing to use at the right moment"

Which is just as simple as 1-2-3-4, because it's not that hard to say "oh, and if KM procs, hit 4 I guess"

Ohh, I get it, random is not random when it's easy.

And again, what is it about the instant cast nuke that hits approximately as hard as Soulfire, procs a 20% haste buff on your next three casts, and has a 5 second snare that does not immediately strike you as inherently retarded?

However, to thoroughly answer your question, a decent solution would be to have the Conflag snare and haste proc regardless of the miss, have the reaction ability be an instant that has an average DCPT, and then clone the "lost" damage of the last missed spell as a rolling DoT capable of critting that occurs over ~15 seconds.  The cloning mechanism would need some mathy bits so that it carries over +crit modifiers specific to certain spells as +damage coefficients though.

FAKEEDIT: Gilneas inns will be very disturbing indeed.

[Fordel]

Yeah, although I guess it depends on how much of it is that, and how much of it is a playstyle preference thing. Some people just hate straight deathmatch, and that's what arenas are. BGs support a wider range of specs and team makeups, etc.

The Highest rated BG'ers will be 25 man raid guilds that kill Van/Drek with all four war-masters up.

[Merusk]

but being able to ramp up into it seemed broken, etc.

Nah the Tauren beta players whined that everyone else got 100% of their mount speed from the start, but they had to 'warm into it.'  At which point a mob may have aggroed them so they couldn't run, or the distance was so short that by the time they were up to full speed they stopped again.   I also always suspected that when they began planning the PVP (which on Blizzard time scale would have been somewhere in beta)  They realized that Tauren running would have been very broken for the BGs.. even moreso than Druid travel form feels.

[Fordel]

Druid Travel form hasn't been a factor in PvP since WotLK.


For 2 out of 3 specs it's suicide and for Resto they don't care anymore.


/watches the tree walk across WSG with 5 people trying to kill it

[Merusk]

I suppose so.. but I only do low level BGs anymore.  L80 pvp can stuff it.

[kildorn]

Actually, every ability on your list barring the rogue ones causes you to simply have fall through macros and Boom, skill averted. "attempt to use overpower on every ability, if it's not up, use normal ability" Taste for blood Solved. Decimation isn't at all random, and is calculated into rotations (it's an execute variant, not something to break up your rotation if things light up)

You can't build fall-through macros for damaging abilities as of patch 2.0, but thanks for the tip.  I'll keep it in mind for when they roll back Cataclysm, Wrath, and TBC.

Also, Decimation wasn't in my list, though I included it as a notable exception.

HaT does not alter rotations at all, you still just hit builder until 5, evis/rupture/SnD depending on what isn't up and how fast you're generating CPs

Maelstrom is a terrible example, because Enhance shaman aren't doing jack all with GCD locking, so it's just a bonus when it's ready.

And none of this comes down to your amazingly stupid idea of adding "on miss" abilities. Specifically, you couldn't come up with a single example for my missed spell that would make it better, instead wanting, apparently, to burn the entire skill tree to the ground and make WoW2, instead of something sane like accepting that Missing is not part of the high end game of WoW, and if you want something more skill based and interesting, the question would be "why not make two instants I can burn off of Immolate on a shared cooldown, so I have to pick the right thing to use at the right moment"

Which is just as simple as 1-2-3-4, because it's not that hard to say "oh, and if KM procs, hit 4 I guess"

Ohh, I get it, random is not random when it's easy.

And again, what is it about the instant cast nuke that hits approximately as hard as Soulfire, procs a 20% haste buff on your next three casts, and has a 5 second snare that does not immediately strike you as inherently retarded?

However, to thoroughly answer your question, a decent solution would be to have the Conflag snare and haste proc regardless of the miss, have the reaction ability be an instant that has an average DCPT, and then clone the "lost" damage of the last missed spell as a rolling DoT capable of critting that occurs over ~15 seconds.  The cloning mechanism would need some mathy bits so that it carries over +crit modifiers specific to certain spells as +damage coefficients though.

FAKEEDIT: Gilneas inns will be very disturbing indeed.

Questions: how is this less convoluted and stupid than just "on crit X, spell Y becomes available", because in order to not be a DPS loss on a miss, your rolling dot would need to deal ~30,000 damage over 15 seconds. That would turn PVP into   in seconds.

But missing isn't needed for what you want. At all. All you want are abilities that light up after X random effect. Which is doable on crit or on non crit. Why reintroduce a horrible mechanic like missing (especially when your solution is to put every effect of the spell onto the target even though I missed. What? We're rewarding failure here..)

That's not even counting opportunity costs of effects. What happens when you miss an interrupt? That can spell a win or a loss immediately if you miss a kick. What, the interrupt happens anyways? That would be silly. Again, doable with less stupidity if you just make new chains available on crits, and keep Missing out of the high end game.

Essentially, the question repeatedly boils down to: what the shit, missing? More over, you want misses with absolutely none of the side effects of missing? (namely, you kept the damage, snare, and self buffs generated by a hit on a miss. So what, exactly, is the point of making it off a miss instead of an extra effect you could press a button for on a crit, exactly?)

[Fordel]

I suppose so.. but I only do low level BGs anymore.  L80 pvp can stuff it.

It's probably super awesome in the 10-19 WSG, true.




-edit-


My disappointment with the proposed rated BG system, mostly falls under "this is what you were working on and 'holding back' for all those months/years?". Every time they even hinted at it, they made it seem like the BG would somehow gauge each players individual effort and reward them with points or rating accordingly, some kind of magic score keeper technology that would account for how well you could defend that tower, or heal that flag carrier etc.


This, this shouldn't have taken anywhere near this long. This is just Arena++ , with longer Queue's and probably even more absurd team comps.

[Koyasha]

It seems likely to me they spent all this time trying to figure out different ways and doing internal testing/speculation on various different ways to rate battlegrounds.  This is probably the best they could come up with after all this time that makes sense and is feasible given the technology available to them.

The fact that you don't lose rating when you lose will make it so people aren't hesitant to just pug the battlegrounds if they don't have a solid group of their own, so it should work out.  Maybe.

[Fordel]

Queue times are going to kill it before it even starts is my guess.


Think of how long the average Naxx Pug takes to setup. Now factor in you need to wait for another Naxx Pug to also setup and Queue to fight you. Then you have the usual issues with Pugs, people AFKing, leaving randomly, rage quitting etc. Odds are you'll still get stomped to boot 




The only people going to enjoy this are 25 man raid guilds with the ability to essentially form Mega-Arena teams, or the rare, rare cases of a collection of "real" PvP'ers all coordinating a BG night regularly.

[Sheepherder]

Questions: how is this less convoluted and stupid than just "on crit X, spell Y becomes available", because in order to not be a DPS loss on a miss, your rolling dot would need to deal ~30,000 damage over 15 seconds. That would turn PVP into   in seconds.

More over, you want misses with absolutely none of the side effects of missing? (namely, you kept the damage, snare, and self buffs generated by a hit on a miss. So what, exactly, is the point of making it off a miss instead of an extra effect you could press a button for on a crit, exactly?)

You need to explain the reasoning why a 2k DPS DoT over 15s plus instant damage comparable in DPCT to the warlock average as a refund to the cast time lost (~2000 DPS, ~20 000 DPCT - not factoring the instant damage) would be equivalent to a ~10.5k average damage cast occurring every 10 seconds (1050 DPS, 7000 DPCT).  Because now I'm sure you're just talking out your ass.

Second, does the snare/haste applying on a miss bother you?  Because it could just as easily go on the reaction ability (edit: as well as Conflag) with a 5-8s cooldown placed on the appropriate talents to keep things in check.  I just figured you'd like thing the easy way.

EDIT: I'd also like to point out that chaining more damage after a crit is probably one of the dumbest concepts imaginable.

[Khaldun]

In an odd way, I think lore doesn't matter but mood and feel does. Meaning, the art resources, tone of dialogue, rough sense of humor and so on are pretty consistent in their feel or mood across the game, even with oddities like Outlands and Space Goats and all that. Whereas (for example) something like EQ2 felt like an aesthetic dog's breakfast, with very little sense of a mood or feel. Blizzard can do anything they like to the lore, I suspect, but they might run into a problem if they did something to really seriously break the mood or feel of the game. Cataclysm doesn't seem to me to break the mood, whatever extra incoherencies it piles onto the massive pile of lore contradictions that already exist.

[kildorn]

Questions: how is this less convoluted and stupid than just "on crit X, spell Y becomes available", because in order to not be a DPS loss on a miss, your rolling dot would need to deal ~30,000 damage over 15 seconds. That would turn PVP into   in seconds.

More over, you want misses with absolutely none of the side effects of missing? (namely, you kept the damage, snare, and self buffs generated by a hit on a miss. So what, exactly, is the point of making it off a miss instead of an extra effect you could press a button for on a crit, exactly?)

You need to explain the reasoning why a 2k DPS DoT over 15s plus instant damage comparable in DCPT to the warlock average as a refund to the cast time lost (~2000 DPS, ~20 000 DPCT - not factoring the instant damage) would be equivalent to a ~10.5k average damage cast occurring every 10 seconds (1050 DPS, 7000 DPCT).  Because now I'm sure you're just talking out your ass.

Second, does the snare/haste applying on a miss bother you?  Because it could just as easily go on the reaction ability with a 8s cooldown placed on the appropriate talents to keep things in check.  I just figured you'd like thing the easy way.

Conflag: 15k crit, ~60%+ crit rate. Follow up cast = 12-15k crit, 1.2s cast time, ~40% crit rate.

In order to make up for the miss and the GCD loss for using the follow up, it needs to deal as much damage as both of those landing. ~30k. You want a dot over 15s that is better than missing my conflag and wasting a GCD on the follow up. That would be 30k damage via whatever means.

Unless you want to counter this somehow? Because that's what you're doing with a follow up to a miss that makes missing not matter: making the follow up the damage equivalent of the missed spell and whatever would have followed it. In this case, a conflag followed by a chaos bolt. Make it better. Without being a 20-30k DoT over 15 seconds.

In other words: what you just did in your math was make a miss auto apply a DoT equivalent to the damage of the spell. Which isn't what you've been talking about: you want buttons to press. Which means wasting the cast (missed) and the follow up (burning it on the follow up), so even assuming your followup is instant cast, the GCD cost alone means to make it better than the lock's normal rotation you need to apply all the self buffs/debuffs, AND deal 20-30k damage. Which, by the by, would mean missing Conflag would let me oneshot most players with the followup (even as a 15s dot, anything lacking a heal = dead no matter what)

You're not thinking this through, at all. Rewarding a miss with effects greater than actually hitting is.. stupid. It's a second form of crit at that point. There's no negative effect to missing at that point, so why exactly are you harping on all this nonsensical crap on a miss when what you want is already done by critting, and you just need a button that can be cast after a crit or something.

Because please, explain to me why your follow up to conflag doesn't need to deal 20-30k damage in order to not be a net DPS loss. Because you're ignoring that DPS keeps casting, it doesn't cast one spell and go home. As your follow ups roll into further possible casting time, you need to accomidate that, or it's a net DPS loss for missing. Beyond the silliness of all secondary effects applying to a target even though you freaking missed.

[Sheepherder]

Conflag: 15k crit, ~60%+ crit rate. Follow up cast = 12-15k crit, 1.2s cast time, ~40% crit rate.

What?  Your Conflag has magically gained a thousand damage in a few posts, your follow up cast (Chaos Bolt) has 20% less crit chance, despite the fact that the difference between the two derived from talents is 25%, and you're magically assuming both will always crit back to back?  Then you get on my case because the completely pulled-out-the-ass-by-you number of 30k damage over 15s is too much compared to your existing figure of 30 000 in 3.04s?   The Fuck?

I'm done, this is retarded.

EDIT: Fixed mathy bit for haste buff.

[Hindenburg]

Ahm, did they change something in the game mechanics to suddenly make conflag hit/crit for more than chaos bolt?

[kildorn]

Ahm, did they change something in the game mechanics to suddenly make conflag hit/crit for more than chaos bolt?

For quite some time, it's hit/crit for ~the same damage. Raid buffed in ~naxx 25 gear, that's ~15k crit for both. Mine tend to max and average within 600 damage of each other.

As for Sheep: You're right. This is retarded. Your entire premise is to call Crits Misses, and somehow make a convoluted senseless system in which all needed effects proc off a miss (even on the target, which is  ), and you get a damage boost that makes up for the GCD loss of two abilities(since you need to trigger the follow up on miss skill)

Explain to me how any of that makes any goddamned sense, because the easier method of doing what you in essence want (a skill based situationally aware dps boosting skill) would be "on crit, opens spell X which deals more damage than your usual filler nuke", which leaves a logical reason for all the natural effects of your prior skill to have applied properly (instead of "he missed you! Also, your spell got interrupted because he kicked 5 feet to your left") and allows for a situational increase to damage if you're paying attention. Though really, that already exists for a number of classes (even locks, if you proc pyroclasm, you can technically get a DPS boost by altering your rotation to take advantage of it by prioritizing recasting certain spells to take advantage of the boost)

So yeah, this whole thing is retarded, because you keep trying to implement "Miss", which is a Failure Case, as a beneficial event.

[Sjofn]

They realized that Tauren running would have been very broken for the BGs.. even moreso than Druid travel form feels.

Hence my "ramping up into it seemed broken" statement.

[stu]

I forgot BlizzCon was this past weekend! Guess I have some reading to do. No new Hero class?  

The changes in zone terrain will be refreshing.

[Fordel]

I forgot BlizzCon was this past weekend! Guess I have some reading to do. No new Hero class?  

The changes in zone terrain will be refreshing.

Fuck Hero Classes!



Seriously, DK's broke the game for a god damn year.

[stu]

I still haven't played DK, but I've been wanting a Hero-type Healer for a while now.

For me, most of this stuff is good since I haven't even finished slogging through the last expansion yet.

[Fordel]

Doesn't really need it's own thread: http://www.wow.com/2009/08/25/grunty-vs-zergling-battle-video/

[Soulflame]

I still haven't played DK, but I've been wanting a Hero-type Healer for a while now.

Already in the game.  They're called "druids".

[Sheepherder]

As for Sheep: You're right. This is retarded. Your entire premise is to call Crits Misses, and somehow make a convoluted senseless system in which all needed effects proc off a miss (even on the target, which is  ), and you get a damage boost that makes up for the GCD loss of two abilities(since you need to trigger the follow up on miss skill)

Apologies to everyone else, but for once the other guy is digging deeper.

[K9]

I really don't know what the fuck you are arguing about.

[Sheepherder]

I really don't know what the fuck you are arguing about.

He seems to thing there's something inherently wrong with the presumption that you can add a random factor contingent on failed events.  Overpower must have touched him in a bad way.

[K9]

No I fail to see why this matters, just stop it.

[Paelos]

I really don't know what the fuck you are arguing about.

Nobody else does either. They got lost on the way to EJ.

[jakonovski]

To get this show back on the road: I predict a deluge of goblins with Warhammer names. Mostly Shamans.

[Malakili]

To get this show back on the road: I predict a deluge of goblins with Warhammer names. Mostly Shamans.

Hmm, can goblins be hunters, I need to go look at that chart.  Also, what could I pass off as a squig?

[Lakov_Sanite]

To get this show back on the road: I predict a deluge of goblins with Warhammer names. Mostly Shamans.

Hmm, can goblins be hunters, I need to go look at that chart.  Also, what could I pass off as a squig?

They can, and maybe this?



or maybe