Cataclysm

[Setanta]

Blackrock was running 30 min queues on the weekend - one was at 37 min.

After that I logged and played Rift

[Ironwood]

This is it all round though :

1 - The DPS have huge queues and get frustrated at the wait and the 'new' style of play.
2 - The Tanks have to have more control of an instance and slow things down more than they're used to.
3 - The healers have to work a lot harder to keep just the tanks up, so the DPS have to slow and be wary due to this.


It's a recipe for fucking disaster every time.  Sure, in randoms you'll occasionally get a group who understands all this, but they're rare as hens teeth.  So, you want to get your own group on.  The own group you used to have are probably bored mindless of this, however, due to the overriding rule number 4 :

4 - The loot, badges and itemisation is utter shit and NOT WORTH THE EFFORT.


I can't believe an expansion finally made me quit and, to be brutal, I'm not missing it in the slightest.

  

Really, this is more of a knee jerk reaction then anything.   While what you are saying IS true in some cases, only the first point really applies in any meaningful form.  DPS queues are terrible, everyone agrees with this.

2 and 3 only really apply to people at the very bottom of the gearing curve (Ie, you barely have an average item level high enough to get into a heroic).   Sure, if the dungeon finder happens to throw you together into a group wiith 3 or 4 people who barely manage to qualify to be there, your run will likely be rough.  And this was a serious issue a month and a half ago.  Now a days though, most of the runs I end up in on my boomkin (or any alt) are almost back to Wrath level facerolls.    CC is almost never used (you might cc one mob in a pull, if it is really irritating, instead of 3), tanks just barrel into the group, rotate short timer cooldowns, and plow through the instance.   I havent been in a failed Dungeon Finder Pug in almost a month, and most of the time, if someone DOES leave, it is usually one of those "I personally dont like this dungeon, bye" kind of things.

As for 4.  I am not sure what your arguement is here.   Loot is loot.  For the most part, I have not seen any terriblely itemized gear.  Hell, with very few exceptions, it is possible to find perfectly itemized gear for nearly every slot for almost any given class.  Really, the only gear complaint I have at the moment is that, as far as raids go, they could have used a bit more variety, and tweaked where some stuff dropped.  Stuff like that there is only ONE pair of leather caster wrists in the entire raid tier (of course, that is probably more of a symptom of the fact that there only really needs to BE one pair of leather caster wrists), or the fact that if you are an enhance shaman, your only choice for weapons is either BoE's (that drop off trash in the raid instance with the least trash in the history of raid instances), or drops off the hardest boss in the tier.

As to loot being utter shit and not worth the effort?  That is purely subjective.  If you want to go that route, might as well say that there is no point in ever playing the game at max level, since the hole point of the "end game" is to endlessly cycle through marginally useful tiny gear upgrades over and over again.

Thanks for shooting down my subjective argument with your subjective argument.  It was a worthwhile endeavour.

 

Also, lol @ 'hole'.   

[caladein]

How long are your DPS queues in the US? You're all talking like they're 40 mins plus.

They're 15-20 mins here. Early in the morning usually shorter, 8-10 mins or so. Instant as tank, obviously, and healer queues are half as long as DPS ones typically. If this is markedly different from the US then I wonder why? Is it something to do with the way servers are clustered here or what?

It's about 20 minutes here for solo DPS in US Group D Horde-side.  Time doesn't change that much between mid-morning and prime time, maybe a few minutes above or below the 20 minute mark.  Healer queues hover around half that.

[Simond]

Incindentally, I'm finding the current Fires of Heaven front page mildly amusing.

[Ironwood]

And now I am too.

 

[caladein]

It wasn't until I saw Calling: on the item links after I'd gone down the page a few times that I realized what was going on.  (It's late.)

[Paelos]

That's funny! Ah WoW... 

[K9]

I think I'm missing a vital piece of context.

[Ingmar]

Man, I hadn't actually paid much attention to Rift, I guess people weren't kidding about it being a clone.

[Fabricated]

I guess since we're all talking jaded MMO-nerdspeak I'll sum up my problem with cata:

It is too fucking hard. I can't play the game with people I want to play the game with, because they are not good enough to do the content. Therefore, I cannot do content since I refuse to just play with random fuckheads I don't like because they can push buttons good.

I don't care if EQ/Vanguard/whatever is the BME pain olypmics in MMO form compared to WoW, because I don't play those, I would LIKE to play WoW. Unfortunately Cata has literally ran all my friends off except like 2. Their guild which was previously 12/12 H-ICC (even with the 30% buff that's impressive), still has not killed Nef on normal. It's too hard. Fucking nerf it. All of it. Epics from the sky.

[Paelos]

I agree with everything you said. Also, you're on my server so you know the pain. 

[Soulflame]

How much of it could be fixed by making healing less painful?

[Fabricated]

How much of it could be fixed by making healing less painful?

At this point everything needs to be less painful.

I find tanking to be pretty much just as easy as it ever was but I guess a lot of people who haven't maintanked for years think tanks have too much on their plate so maybe figure out something on their end (or make gear more effective I guess). Weak DPS specs like elemental shammies/etc need major buffs. Healing needs major buffs; WotLK was boring from a healing perspective since it was just hellacious spamming, so maybe just improving throughput and mana regen to where an average healer will still have mana left at the end of a raid encounter would be nice and prevent Blizz from having to go back to the "tank is nearly dead every hit" mechanic.

Whatever they do, everything needs to get easier.

[caladein]

Elemental is in a bad way when it needs to move, but even then it's numbers aren't bad for normal modes.

To the healer thing, you can't just give healers "more mana" and not take it away via some other mechanism as healers can only be tested in-combat by their reaction times and/or their spell selection (read: efficiency).  If you take away the possibility of using the wrong spell, then healing is just as brainless as it was last expansion.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Wow wasnt broke, they shouldn't have tried to fix it.

[Paelos]

If you take away the possibility of using the wrong spell, then healing is just as brainless as it was last expansion.

Here's the bottom line question, though: would it cause more people to play healers again if it was more "brainless" and would dps queue times drop?

[Lt.Dan]

If you take away the possibility of using the wrong spell, then healing is just as brainless as it was last expansion.

Here's the bottom line question, though: would it cause more people to play healers again if it was more "brainless" and would dps queue times drop?

Nope.  When tanks are insta-queue I'd suggest that that's the bottleneck.

[caladein]

Wow wasnt broke, they shouldn't have tried to fix it.

Sure it was.  Healing (and Paladins in general) was spammy and brainless, the talent and gear systems were collapsing under six years of kludges, the first 70 levels were awful, and the gear reset system was clunky just to name the issues that popped immediately to mind.

If you take away the possibility of using the wrong spell, then healing is just as brainless as it was last expansion.

Here's the bottom line question, though: would it cause more people to play healers again if it was more "brainless" and would dps queue times drop?

Giving healing a much higher skill floor than damage dealing or tanking would get more people to play them, yes.  In general though, I don't think it's appropriate to create a designated "easy raid spot", especially when it takes away from (the admittedly few) players who would enjoy that role otherwise.  I think everyone in a group should be expected to contribute a broadly similar amount towards the group's success or failure, with the difference coming in how one chooses to contribute instead of how much.

To queues: healer queues haven't been near-instant for months now, so I don't think having more healers is going to have an appreciable impact on DPS queues unless you also made tanking more popular (by making it easier as a result of whatever healing changes were made or something else).

[Lakov_Sanite]

All-time high subscriptions = not broke

[caladein]

popular_game = money_hats
popular_game != good_game

[Lakov_Sanite]

good_game != money_hats

[Paelos]

Giving healing a much higher skill floor than damage dealing or tanking would get more people to play them, yes.  In general though, I don't think it's appropriate to create a designated "easy raid spot", especially when it takes away from (the admittedly few) players who would enjoy that role otherwise.  I think everyone in a group should be expected to contribute a broadly similar amount towards the group's success or failure, with the difference coming in how one chooses to contribute instead of how much.

Well that would be nice, but mathematically it just never makes sense. What game have you ever played where the demographics actually matched the required need for classes? I mean ideally Wow would be populated with 20% playing tanks, 20% playing healers, and 60% playing DPS. I've venture a guess that it's probably more like 10% playing tanks, 15% playing healers, and 75% playing dps. No proof on that but tanks are usually woefully underrepresented now, with healers disappearing as well to play dps classes.

What I'd like for them to do is make tanking a heroic like tanking a raid. Think about the things you do in a raid and apply them to a heroic dungeon. If you don't use them in a raid, don't put them in a dungeon.

[Simond]

I think I'm missing a vital piece of context.

http://www.fohguild.org/archive.php?page=38
Bottom of the page, titled "The Plane of Time".

[WindupAtheist]

Sure it was.  Healing (and Paladins in general) was spammy and brainless

Did more than like 1% of the population really give a fuck about shit like this? If they gave me my old paladin back and let me plow through 20 minute Heroics again like I was doing in WOTLK, I'd be paying them money right now. As it is, I have a time card I got for Christmas still sitting here gathering dust.

[Paelos]

For some reason caladein keeps insisting that healers needed to be "tested" and that otherwise it was "brainless."

For some reason he also keeps referring to a population of healers that would be upset by making healing less intense through mana management. I'm pretty sure those people also have nipple clamps on when they play the game.

[Selby]

Eh, I am still enjoying raid healing.  It's considerably less spammy overall than it used to be and mana management is a big issue, but that's making it semi-interesting (at least as a priest).  I hate healing heroics though, the retard factor is just too high for me to deal with and when you combine that with "FUCKING HEAL ME U FAG" from DPS who firestand... well fuck that.

[Fabricated]

Also to give you an idea of my ennui; if you didn't gather I'm a tank. I can log on, hit a button, and be in a dungeon inside of 10 seconds. I can instaqueue until my eyes bleed and I do not feel like logging in.

Generally people who play DPS or whatever look at their queue timer and healers imagine healing 4 complete idiots and decide, "nah, not worth it" and log out. I can instantly "enjoy" content and I don't want to.

[caladein]

For some reason caladein keeps insisting that healers needed to be "tested" and that otherwise it was "brainless."

For some reason he also keeps referring to a population of healers that would be upset by making healing less intense through mana management. I'm pretty sure those people also have nipple clamps on when they play the game.

Well yes, healers need to be tested against just like any other role does, be it: crowd control, interrupting, damage dealing, the various aspects of tanking, or the generic "Are you able to stand out of fire?"  Otherwise, the only contribution they can make to the raid is being a warm body.  Expecting damage dealers not to be awful at dealing damage before they win doesn't make people think that you spend your non-raid nights down at the BDSM club.  I don't see why expecting the same out of healers does.

Making that testing be about managing mana through spell selection is preferable to making it about pure reaction time and latency, at least for me.  If mana is a trivial concern than healing is just a matter of gear, latency, and pressing the biggest sustainable heal button as quickly as possible.  Which is what Wrath was.  As a Disc Priest, I spent nearly the entire expansion (well, the year I was subscribed for at least) going around the raid casting Power Word: Shield and using one, maybe two, abilities that were on ten second cooldowns practically at random.  Healing as a Resto Druid or a Holy Paladin wasn't much more exciting.  Probably the hardest thing I had to do between the three was remember to refresh Beacon of Light.

The answer to "enough people will only heal or tank if it's an easy raid spot" isn't to make healing or tanking easy low-risk, low-ceiling roles, it's to reduce the amount of healers and tanks content is designed for.

[Sjofn]

Just posting to say I agree with most of caladein's views on healing, I just don't have much to add beyond that. I never, ever want to go back to falling asleep on my holy light key.


EDIT: Oh wait, I have something else to say! I think if they made it easier for good players to piggyback shitty ones, that would go a long way to helping. Making it so, say, balance druids can be all "oh fuck, the healer died, TO THE RESCUE" for a trash pull or whatever rather than the current "welp." You know?

[Paelos]

The answer to "enough people will only heal or tank if it's an easy raid spot" isn't to make healing or tanking easy low-risk, low-ceiling roles, it's to reduce the amount of healers and tanks content is designed for.

Look I liked tanking, but even I had my limits with this expansion. That "warm body" thing you talked about for healers is actually what they did to tanks. Most of the fights don't involve any tanking skill beyond hitting the taunt button and having enough gear not to get rolled so fast the healers go OOM.

As for the reduction thing, how could they do that? If they design all the content around 1 healer and 1 tank, everything just becomes a dps race.

[Ingmar]

The fights where you had to do anything other than swap at the right time and not stand in bad stuff were few and far between before too. I haven't seen this raiding tier so I don't know what has changed, but mostly tanking has always been about being able to do your own job in your sleep so you have time to yell at everyone else to do theirs. 

That and wearing good gear.

[caladein]

Heroic Nerfs on the latest PTR patch:

Bound Flames in the Karsh Steelbender encounter no longer create Lava Pools when they are killed.

Ragezone cast by Defias Blood Wizards now only increases damage dealt, no longer increasing damage taken.

Grim Batol
Bleeding Wound damge from General Umbriss has been lowered by 20%.
Malignant Trogg now moves more slowly.
Encumbered damage bonus from Forgemaster Throngus has been reduced by 50%.
Invoked Flaming Spirits should prefer non-tank targets to fixate on.
The Twilight Flame Patch from the Twilight Drake has been removed.

Ground Slam now has a pre-cast visual on the ground in front of Ozruk. In addition, Ground Slam's damage and radius have been reduced.

Throne of Tides
Gilgoblin Hunters' Poisoned Spear direct and periodic damage has been reduced.
Gilgoblin Aquamages' Tsunami damage has been reduced.
Blight Beasts summoned during the Ozumat encounter now deal less damage with Aura of Dread.

Vortex Pinnacle
The Air Nova ability triggered when a Gust Soldier is killed has had its knockback effect reduced.
Altairus now spawns closer to the center of his platform, away from the edge.
Temple Adepts and Ministers of Air now wait 2 seconds before starting a spell cast when they are first engaged.

Also,

Account Bound Items
Many "Account Bound" heirlooms are now labeled as "Battle.net Account Bound", meaning that they can also be traded or mailed to characters that are on different World of Warcraft accounts under the same Battle.net account.
Mail sent to characters on the same Battle.net account now arrives instantaneously, as it does for the same World of Warcraft account.
Mailing account-bound items to characters of the opposite faction on the same Battle.net account will now correctly translate faction-specific items to their appropriate equivalent.

Flask of Steelskin now grants 450 Stamina, up from 300. The Mixology bonus for alchemists remains at 120 stamina.

[Fordel]

Just posting to say I agree with most of caladein's views on healing, I just don't have much to add beyond that. I never, ever want to go back to falling asleep on my holy light key.


EDIT: Oh wait, I have something else to say! I think if they made it easier for good players to piggyback shitty ones, that would go a long way to helping. Making it so, say, balance druids can be all "oh fuck, the healer died, TO THE RESCUE" for a trash pull or whatever rather than the current "welp." You know?

Here's the problem, those things are pretty much exclusive of each other. If you want to be able to carry people, then when you don't have to carry anyone, shit will be 'easy' and 'boring' again. If you make it so everyone has to be on the ball, then there is no more room for "I better step it up since we only have 1.5 DPS'ers now" or whatever, since normal play already has you at your maximum output.

[Tannhauser]

Someone at Blizz is slowly waking up in their pile of cash and screaming WHAR MHONEY HAT WHAR?

[Merusk]

Hey it only took them 4 months to nerf aquagoblins. 

I wonder how you mail things to characters on different servers, since that ability is implied by the way they worded the announcement.