The Ever-Expanding Worlds of Warcraft

[pacobird]

Could sort of consider that 1% haste since you're going to be raiding at night...?

[sei]

a) Fucks people over depending on time zone.
b) I expect a day in Azeroth doesn't take 24 hours.
c) Racial abilities are still bad for balance, especially when faction specific.

[Nope]

.

[zaratustra]

a) Fucks people over depending on time zone.
b) I expect a day in Azeroth doesn't take 24 hours.
c) Racial abilities are still bad for balance, especially when faction specific.

even if it's a 1% bonus?

[pacobird]

a) Fucks people over depending on time zone.
b) I expect a day in Azeroth doesn't take 24 hours.
c) Racial abilities are still bad for balance, especially when faction specific.

even if it's a 1% bonus?

whatever, dad

[Niku]

why do people continue to pretend that anything other than quality of life racials actually even matter anyway. i mean, alliance has always been super OP because humans get faster rep gains, but goblin rocket jump is a pretty close second!

"but what about pvpers complaining about free trinkets"

i said people

[sei]

a) Fucks people over depending on time zone.
b) I expect a day in Azeroth doesn't take 24 hours.
c) Racial abilities are still bad for balance, especially when faction specific.

even if it's a 1% bonus?

A 1% bonus to haste can be more than a 1% bonus to damage. Games like WoW tend to have "soft caps" for stats, which are breakpoints that significantly change gameplay.

In WoW, haste breakpoints can sometimes mean an extra DoT tick per cast or the ability to squeeze an additional spell into a X second window where the time would otherwise be wasted or used on something inferior. Some examples of haste breakpoints are listed on askmrrobot.

Similarly, some specs (at various points in the game) got a lot more mileage out of crit than others. This is because crits either trigger other mechanics (more frequent ability to use big money abilities) and/or the crit gets multiplied.

Example: Mage. Fire-specced mage both (a) had their crit chance multiplied and always wanted more crit and (b) had 2 significant mechanics severely impacted by crit, one of which being their main damage cooldown (powerful ability with a long re-use timer). Frost mage was sort of the opposite; they had a soft cap of 50%(?) crit and any crit above that was essentially wasted, because an RNG-based class mechanic gave them a much higher crit chance for the ability they cared about critting with.

All of the big boy DPS Real Talk™ aside, there's a psychological impact that matters.

Having your class feel better half the day than the other half would be an obnoxious itch. Especially if the shitty time of day for your spec/server situation aligns with when you raid.

[sei]

p.s. if it were only 1% i would still do it to appease the meter gods

[Newbie]

Consider Blizzard's public opposition to any opportunity for an inexperienced player to make a character progression decision that will limit their ability to contribute to the group: reforging is gone. Haste breakpoints for DOTs and HOTs are gone. Hit and expertise--stats that basically require you to reach a cap and then provide no benefit afterward--are gone. Gemming is getting scaled way back. With so many traditional tools of the exclusionary raider eliminated, they're forced to rely almost exclusively on item level... and as the Island of Misfit Armor Pieces demonstrated (and the new, amplifying-returns loot system for WoD should prove), Blizzard's committed to gearing everybody up significantly easier than in ages past.

That just leaves the meters. God, how Blizzard hates meters: they don't accurately represent raid contribution, they skew player priorities, and they unfailingly prompt half the specs to complain about the other half and ask for buffs. Mark my words: Touch of Elune is only the beginning of Blizzard's attack on meter effectiveness. I fully expect more abilities to appear in the beta that rely on RNG or environmental factors to mess with raiders' careful tuning. Hell, the dumbing down of smart healing might serve a similar purpose, above and beyond the way it forces Disc players to wake up again.

[sei]

Consider Blizzard's public opposition to any opportunity for an inexperienced player to make a character progression decision that will limit their ability to contribute to the group

This is inconsistent with having racial abilities that impact DPS (crit, haste, movement), tank mitigation, and other forms of raid contribution.

God, how Blizzard hates meters: they don't accurately represent raid contribution, they skew player priorities, and they unfailingly prompt half the specs to complain about the other half and ask for buffs.

Source? "Blizzard" is not comprised of one guy. Can you name a specific designer or team? A link would be killer.

Meters allow players—especially raid leaders—to make informed decisions. They track DPS, mechanics, causes of death, and more.

Who suffers from this transparency? Bad/mediocre players get outed. Maybe designers feel bad while held accountable for balance issues, but it's ultimately good for the game.

People worth playing with understand that (necessary) bitch duty costs DPS. Deciding who to assign to bitch duty is informed by meters, player reliability, and class mechanics. Given 2 people of the same class, you'll put the person with worse DPS on bitch duty, unless the lower-DPS-player is unreliable.

[meters] don't accurately represent raid contribution, they skew player priorities

I'm getting a distinct feeling that you're just discussing recount/skada's DPS and HPS views. Meters and parsers also show things like which players did how much damage to which mob types, making them excellent tools for representing raid contribution. Examples:

• Who isn't DPSing the right target?
• Who failed encounter specific mechanics?
• Who is standing in too much fire (even if they're not the ones dying first)?
• Who fucked the raid over by positioning badly?

traditional tools of the exclusionary raider

Your bias is showing. Challenging activities are a bit exclusionary. That's okay. This issue isn't WoW-specific. You don't put the 400lb asthmatic kid on the relay race team if you want to set national records.

Exercising for casual fun, though? Sure, make him the fucking star.

So, not all content needs to be heroicmythic raiding. If you aren't willing to optimize or aren't capable of executing mechanics for hard modes, the game still affords you flex, LFR, pet battles, battlegrounds, and (clearly most excitingly of all) daily quests.

[Wheels]

One of the reasons I hate LFR is that it takes otherwise interesting and good fights and turns them into boring shit that's another unnecessary progression step and thus makes the game worse for it. Games are better if there is challenge. If you can't get to the end of world 1-1 because you keep falling in pits, removing the pits from the Mario level will make it a worse experience for everyone. Especially if you need to play the level without pits to do the level with.

[sei]

I like LFR being a rewarding option for casual play.

I don't know how I feel about LFR as a gearing mechanism.

On the one hand, it's annoying "having" to do it. On the other hand, it's less shitty than having to farm end bosses of Wrath dungeons, especially when LFR pieces counts towards set bonuses when one gets "normal" pieces.

My understanding is that flex obviates the need to dip into LFR as part of gearing for normal mode. With any luck, something similar will persist in WoD, (intentionally?) confusing naming conventions aside:

[TedBelmont]

D A M N

[norn]

so i bet there are people here who want to help me get challenge modes done before they get black proto-drake'd out of the game.
c'mon, you're gonna resubscribe for core hound mounts anyway! just do it a little earlier.





hey, remember when we cared about this game

[sei]

OpenRaid that shit.

You already have the competent WoW players from here on your Steam friends list.

[Rico]

Damn it norn, I'm gunning for a promotion but you know I love you. (tts gay)

[Bal]

And I'll form the healer!

[norn]

whoa buddy, hunters can't heal. unless... does mend pet work on tauren?

i wouldn't want anyone to actually bother if you're not going to be playing WoD but sieg and i (moreso sieg) have some interest in at least getting silver done for cool (?) phoenix mounts.

why am i playing this game in 2014 whyyyyyyyy

shut up sei

[Rico]

Actually mildly tempted, we'll see what happens when my Internet gets hooked up at home. And if I have any idea where my authenticator is.

[Z%rø]

Come back to teamspeak Tuhandalar and/or Dameron. I am currently subscribed to WoW but I'm so fucking rusty.