No Respawns Please

My guild ran Karazhan for the first time this week. The first night we didn't get anyone down, but last night we got Attunemen down and almost got the Maiden down. After spending two nights in there, I was reminded of this post on respawns from the Blessing of Kings blog.

I completely agree with the post. Respawns are simply time wasters when you have a limited amount of play time. Most of our guildees only have a 2 or 3 hour window to play a night. Wasting 30-45 minutes clearing pointless trash 1 time in a raid is one thing. But having to do it repeatedly is just stupid. We had to do the scroll quest for several people so instead of being able to try the Maiden 3 times, we could only do it twice because of the trash respawns.

The reason I pay $15 a month for the game is to have fun. Cleaning trash repeatedly is NOT fun. Its boring and annoying and makes me want to stop playing the game.

Why are Warlocks Overpowered in PVP?

Simply put, they have the best player versus player (PVP) crowd control in the game combined with very effective and easy to cast damage over time spells (DOTS). Specifically, let's look at their crowd control spells.

• Death Coil (Instant Cast) - 3 second fear that returns health to the caster equal to damage inflicted. Technically this is considered horror not fear. So not included in diminishing returns for fear. 2 min cooldown.
• Howl of Terror (1.5 sec cast) - 8 second area of effect fear that affects 5 toons. 40 sec cooldown. Also considered terror or horror so not included in fear diminishing returns.
• Fear (1.5 sec cast) - 10 second fear in PVP. Can only be cast on 1 toon at a time. Diminishing returns. The first spell is 10 seconds, the second 5 seconds, the third 3 seconds. Then a toon is immune from your spell for 15 seconds. Then, everything is reset and you can be feared again.

This is a very powerful set of spells. Most classes have 2 or 3 crowd control spells. But because Warlocks spells are all fear based, this gives them an advantage.


What Makes Fear based Spells Different from Other Crowd Control?
There are a couple of things that set fear apart from other crowd control spells.

1. Complete control of your toon is lost.
   
2. Damage can be increased while the fear effect is in place.

When feared, your loss of control is total. Your current target is lost. The camera angle cannot be controlled or changed. Basically you cannot do anything for the duration of the Fear effect except sit back and watch. This differs from many crowd control effects like Roots, Frost Nova, Earthbind Totem, or Hamstring which allow you to maintain control of your toon even though your movement is impaired. The only counter for most classes is the PVP trinket you can earn in battlegrounds. The trinket will break a fear effect, but has a 2 minute cooldown this limiting its usefulness.

Many crowd control effects seem to have some limitation in regard to damage. Polymorph actually causes the affected toon to regenerate health and mana faster. Cyclone makes a toon immune to damage. A Freeze Trap breaks if the toon suffers any damage. Sap break with any damage.

Fear effects differ in that damage over time spells can be added without breaking the effect. In theory, at some magical threshold, damage from DOTS will break fear. But in practice this seems to be a very rare occurrence. Burst spell or melee damage has been changed and now breaks fear. But, only poor arena players would actually risk breaking fear in this way.

Thus, in many situaltions, a good Warlock can reduce your health by 50% without using any of their damage spells and without you having a chance to fight back. Add to this one of the warlock pets charming you, pounding on you with a large axe, or silencing your attempts to heal and the situation is grim indeed.

Nerf Warlocks?
The simplest solution would be to merely put all warlock spells on the same diminishing returns timer, just like every other class. At least with 15 seconds of immunity to fear effects, you would have more of a chance. Any solution should only affect PVP. Changing any classes overal abilities is a bad idea when only a PVP fix is needed.

Blizzard Developers Play Undead Warlocks

Overpowered warlocks in PVP has been a topic of much discussion amongst Warcraft players for some time. It is apparent to most players that Warlocks are overpowered compared to other classes, in 2v2 or 3v3 arena matches. Blizzard acknowledges the problem but refuses to do anything about it. So one begins to wonder, do all Blizzard developers play undead warlocks?

Here are my thoughts on the subject, broken into a couple of posts. In my next post, I will explain why I think warlocks are overpowered. And in a final post, I will provide evidence proving that warlocks are Blizzard's favorite class. This conspiracy shall not stand!!!! ;-)

Reactions to Fear Ward

I'm a little surprised at the muted reaction the Fear Ward nerf. It seems most priests just don't get the magnitude of the nerf. Or maybe, they are just happy that dwarf and draeni priests no longer have it. I don't know. One would think priests would want the original spell or something close to it?

Over at the Disciple of the Light blog, they see Fear Ward nerf clearly. Bruthah makes the argument the nerf is for PVP. If that is the case, there is really only 1 class that Fear Ward would affect in any big way, Warlocks. Obviously Blizzards favorite PVP class isn't overpowered enough. So now priests can join all the other non warrior classes as chain fear toys. Thanks Blizz.

Fear Ward is Now Useless

From the 2.3 PTR notes.
* Fear Ward is now available to all priests at level 20. Duration reduced to 3 minutes, cooldown increased to 3 minutes.

This one has got me speechless. A PVP trinket can do the same thing and only has a 2 minute cooldown. And now my dwarf priest gets a 2 second incapacitate, not a stun. Woo hoo!!!!

I rolled a Dwarf Priest because of Fear Ward. I wouldn't roll one for a 2 second incapacitate that isn't even an instant cast. More comments to come.

Avoid Nurturing Instinct

Just remembered this and thought I should share. When you are allocating points in the feral talent tree, do not put any points in the Nurturing Instinct talent. Why not? Well, since the first or second Burning Crusade patch, it doesn't do anything. Its broken. How do I know?

Well I had the talent before BC and it increases the healing you do by 25% of your strength after you shift out of bear or cat form. So when you use Lifebloom or Rejuvenation, there is a definite increase in healing per tick. After the 2nd or 3rd patch, I noticed the amount of healing per tick seemed lower.

If you have the talent and want to see if it has been fixed, its easy to test. Just jump off a building or something that causes you minor damage, then cast Lifebloom. Note the amount of healing per tick. Repeat the jump, but this time do it in Bear form. Shift out and cast Lifebloom. The amount of healing should be greater for the second cast. If the healing numbers are the same, it is still broken.

I reported the problem 2 or 3 separate times. Each time, I was assured that it was "known" problem and it would be fixed in the next patch. After 2 patches with no fix, I re-speced. Don't miss it much. It is really not worth the talent points for the amount of healing you get.

Got my Epic Flying Mount

It has been a busy week, so I forgot to mention a couple of important in game events. First on Tuesday, I finally got my arena helm! Then on Wednesday, I got my epic flying mount! Woo hoo!

The arena helm is awesome and have been working towards that for a numbers of weeks. But the epic mount has to be one of the tougher things to do in the game. Saving up 5200 gold is just freaking hard. So how did I do it? Well there was some mining, and there was some herbing, but I made most of the money fishing. Yes, that's right, fishing. On a good night, I made around 140 gold in about 1.5 hours. On an average night, about 80 gold.

I am not yet ready to reveal all my secrets, but I will share in a future post. The crazy thing to come out of all this is, I actually enjoy fishing now. I never thought I would be saying that. But I do. I like fishing.

A Little Feral Love for 2.3

WOW Insider has this story on a change to the Heart of the Wild feral druid ability. Basically, instead of buffing strength by +20% in cat form, it will buff attack power by +10%. This should be a nice boost if you have any sort of feral staff or mace as that is generally you biggest source of attack power.

Leveling Improvements for 2.3 Patch

Wow Insider has a nice post on the coming improvements for leveling from 30-60. Looks like if you are leveling alts, it would be best to wait on the patch.

It certainly changes, my strategy. I am leveling a gnome mage (52) and a dwarf priest (39) to 70. So instead of leveling both, I will leave the priest where he is, and focus on the mage as he is only 6 levels from 58 and burning crusade content.

I was surprised that Blizz seemed to be most concerned about quests from 30-40. Which seems kinda silly. The hardest leveling is from 40-60. Many of the quests, especially after 50, are focused on instances that are much harder to run than they used to be.

I have never been a huge instance person. You should be able to skip all the instances and still level fairly easily. I think Blizzard makes a mistake when they want people to play a certain way. The game is successful because of multiple play styles that are available. (raiding, questing, pvp)

Capturing Alterac Valley Towers and Removing Archers

There is one tip I would like share about Alterac Valley and the towers in each faction's base. On a number of occasions I have shared this information in the battleground, but it difficult to make things clear in chat.

If you can sneak into the horde or alliance base and capture the tower before an archer fires a shot, all the archers in that tower magically disappear. Yes that is right, you can take out all the archers in the tower without firing a shot.

Now the key here is the archer's can't fire a shot. This means the tower must be captured by a stealth toon, a rogue or a druid. Simply stealth in, climb the tower, and capture the flag. If you keep a reasonable distance from the archers, its a piece cake to take both.

Unfortunately, often there seems to be some unstealthed knucklehead who insists on riding in and messing the whole thing up. Please non stealthies, if there is a rogue or druid nearby, give them a couple minutes to do their thing before riding in.

Welcome

Welcome to this World of Warcraft blog. Having found the Official Warcraft forums less than adequate for airing grievances or sharing tips, I decided I should create this blog. Even if no one reads it, the cathartic value will be great.