The plan, and it was quite a plan if I do say so myself, which I clearly do, hence the saying so of it by myself, was to write an article on which PvPer you would most like to fuck. As in sexual relations. Maybe in the butt. But then I felt that it perhaps a little desperate. Maybe it would seem that I perhaps was running dry on content and, due to my need for constant attention, that I would be willing to flood this reputable blog with pointless drivel as I masturbated furiously to my skyrocketing Alexa score. Which brings me to exhibit A:
As you can see, I've long surpassed fat chicks and my triumph over dicks is beginning to look inevitable. I'm not exactly experienced at interpreting these traffic rankings, but a little voice in my head is telling me, dude, you've won the internet. That same little voice had me pretending to be my ex-girlfriend on CollarMe and posting her address with a nice little map with a big black 'X' footnoted with "Rape Me Here" beneath it. Oh, like you haven't.
Anyways, I was even going to get one of those 'SKILL' things like on WCM. Like this shit:
Except mine would have like a naked woman or some dicks instead of that dumb fist. Maybe a fistful of dicks. Or instead, maybe a fistful of...dicks?
But I've decided to scrap that idea. Don't worry -- if you liked it, I'm sure it will turn up on Gameriot in a few weeks anyways.
Truth is, though I was hoping you'd pick me, with fake naked Crysalid and sexy-t-shirt-and-frisbee Dahis floating around, I realized I had no chance. Well, short of doing a "I'm Fucking Matt Damon" ripoff titled "I'm Fucking Ming" and honestly I'm not sure that would be enough, because the whole "I'm Fucking ___" is already on the way out (Thanks Affleck) and, well, there's just no way he'd do it with me.
And so, that leaves us here. Right here actually. You should reread back to that second here. It's the good one. The point I'd like to get to, but somehow have drunkenly rambled around, is that I'll be more frequently updating this site with WoW and non-WoW content in the coming weeks because I rather like words and I think you do too, and if you give us a chance, I think we can have something special between us with those words.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Big Ol' Mana Shields
One incoming change in 2.4 that has received little coverage here or anywhere else has been the improvements to Mana Shield. For those way out of the loop, Mana Shield now receives half of your +damage, and in PvP gear, we're talking about 500 more absorbed per shield -- this extra absorption comes at no extra mana cost, and with Improved Mana Shield, it will operate overall at near 1:1 efficiency. Time to put on those level 60 PvP gloves? Probably not, but the change should help pretty significantly in duels and 2v2.
I think that the mage player base is still largely disappointed with what 2.4 offers, but the class is undeniably significantly more powerful than it was a few patches ago. I'm not going to laundry list everything, but: Improved Evocation, Improved Mana Gems, Impved Spellsteal, Improved Mana Shield, Improved Nuke Coefficients, Trainable IB, Icy Veins, Lower Mana Costs, etc. Mages have really gotten the most improvements of any class in the past months -- the question really is, have the changes been effective?
If you look at all of the statistics, probably not. Even after playing priest in 2s for 2 days, I think I'd be more likely to hit 2400 on my priest than my mage. I also have way more versatility in forming viable teams. And I'm not a good priest, or a bad mage. =p
Maybe that's a stretch, but it's a not a crazy one.
A mage brings no healing, no healing debuff, no mana draining, and no defensive dispelling of any significance to a 2s matrix. These are not necessary by any means, and the mage does bring great burst, decent CC, and great survivability (in 2s!) without the need for healing.
I do think mage/rogue is a top 2s team without a doubt. But would that rogue be better with an equivalently skilled priest or druid? Even if I think mage/rogue has perhaps surpassed spriest/rogue and lock/rogue to be the strongest 2dps team, it doesn't change the fact that locks, priests, and rogues all have stronger matrices than 2dps right now. No matter how much I go on and on about mage potential in 2s, the representation has remained unchanged in the past months. But does this really mean much?
A quick diversion -- Mages have never felt as strong (Even Pre-TBC) as they do now in BG type PvP. I've said before that I feel that mages are the best class at leveraging small skill and gear advantages to great effect. Even if a warlock, warrior, or priest is a solid player, in a 1v3 against semi-decent players, they have really not much of a chance -- they just get zerged and can't do much. However, put a s3 equipped mage with good skill against 3 people with 200 resil and 8k hp, and I wouldn't bet against the mage. And this is arrogant and whatever fuck you, but a few months ago, when I rolled up a to a guared flag in AB and saw 3 defenders, I'd hit fraps and hope to get a good clip, now I think, there's only 3. This isn't a testament to my skill or anything, but just the class has scaled pretty out of control in some ways and it looks to continue down that path in 2.4. With cooldowns, an AP/Fire mage can basically kill one target instantly, do huge damage to a secondary, and still have nigh invuln, IB, and a ton of other tricks left -- with pots and engineering in the mix, the potential is huge. It feels very much like playing 28/23 back at 60, except instead of cold snap, you have an IWIN, and honestly, the IWIN is more powerful. So while mages might not be getting the buffs they need to hold number one spots on arena teams, the class is undeniably becoming increasingly generally powerful in PvP -- just not the PvP that matters.
There's a probably a sizable audience out there who thinks that mages are fine, need no improvement and just need to man up to be competitive in top level arena. I felt this way about hunters, not going to lie, and am somewhat on the fence with mages. Hunters ended up receiving both a healing debuff and an offensive dispel to make them more competitive in arena -- mages have thus far received a dozen tweaks without really trying to add new class mechanics. I prefer this style balancing in a sense as it reduces class homogenization, but at some point, I worry that it makes trying to balance the classes a real fuckshow. Say you improve all this crap on mages and without a few core ability changes, mages are still never competitive, are you going to rollback these improvements and give mages a healing debuff? Leave the changes in and the class just starts to get retarded overpowered. Honestly, I think that with a little bit more damage scaling AP+PoM+Pyro could get retarded out of hand, almost to the point of the double trinket days. I get that the mage class is supposed to have tons of tricks and situational abilities combined with devastating burst, but I can't help but feel that our real weakness is lack of good synergy right now and not anything intrinsic to the class itself. These changes are great for pwning noobs in battlegrounds, but it all feels like a precarious balancing act.
I think that the mage player base is still largely disappointed with what 2.4 offers, but the class is undeniably significantly more powerful than it was a few patches ago. I'm not going to laundry list everything, but: Improved Evocation, Improved Mana Gems, Impved Spellsteal, Improved Mana Shield, Improved Nuke Coefficients, Trainable IB, Icy Veins, Lower Mana Costs, etc. Mages have really gotten the most improvements of any class in the past months -- the question really is, have the changes been effective?
If you look at all of the statistics, probably not. Even after playing priest in 2s for 2 days, I think I'd be more likely to hit 2400 on my priest than my mage. I also have way more versatility in forming viable teams. And I'm not a good priest, or a bad mage. =p
Maybe that's a stretch, but it's a not a crazy one.
A mage brings no healing, no healing debuff, no mana draining, and no defensive dispelling of any significance to a 2s matrix. These are not necessary by any means, and the mage does bring great burst, decent CC, and great survivability (in 2s!) without the need for healing.
I do think mage/rogue is a top 2s team without a doubt. But would that rogue be better with an equivalently skilled priest or druid? Even if I think mage/rogue has perhaps surpassed spriest/rogue and lock/rogue to be the strongest 2dps team, it doesn't change the fact that locks, priests, and rogues all have stronger matrices than 2dps right now. No matter how much I go on and on about mage potential in 2s, the representation has remained unchanged in the past months. But does this really mean much?
A quick diversion -- Mages have never felt as strong (Even Pre-TBC) as they do now in BG type PvP. I've said before that I feel that mages are the best class at leveraging small skill and gear advantages to great effect. Even if a warlock, warrior, or priest is a solid player, in a 1v3 against semi-decent players, they have really not much of a chance -- they just get zerged and can't do much. However, put a s3 equipped mage with good skill against 3 people with 200 resil and 8k hp, and I wouldn't bet against the mage. And this is arrogant and whatever fuck you, but a few months ago, when I rolled up a to a guared flag in AB and saw 3 defenders, I'd hit fraps and hope to get a good clip, now I think, there's only 3. This isn't a testament to my skill or anything, but just the class has scaled pretty out of control in some ways and it looks to continue down that path in 2.4. With cooldowns, an AP/Fire mage can basically kill one target instantly, do huge damage to a secondary, and still have nigh invuln, IB, and a ton of other tricks left -- with pots and engineering in the mix, the potential is huge. It feels very much like playing 28/23 back at 60, except instead of cold snap, you have an IWIN, and honestly, the IWIN is more powerful. So while mages might not be getting the buffs they need to hold number one spots on arena teams, the class is undeniably becoming increasingly generally powerful in PvP -- just not the PvP that matters.
There's a probably a sizable audience out there who thinks that mages are fine, need no improvement and just need to man up to be competitive in top level arena. I felt this way about hunters, not going to lie, and am somewhat on the fence with mages. Hunters ended up receiving both a healing debuff and an offensive dispel to make them more competitive in arena -- mages have thus far received a dozen tweaks without really trying to add new class mechanics. I prefer this style balancing in a sense as it reduces class homogenization, but at some point, I worry that it makes trying to balance the classes a real fuckshow. Say you improve all this crap on mages and without a few core ability changes, mages are still never competitive, are you going to rollback these improvements and give mages a healing debuff? Leave the changes in and the class just starts to get retarded overpowered. Honestly, I think that with a little bit more damage scaling AP+PoM+Pyro could get retarded out of hand, almost to the point of the double trinket days. I get that the mage class is supposed to have tons of tricks and situational abilities combined with devastating burst, but I can't help but feel that our real weakness is lack of good synergy right now and not anything intrinsic to the class itself. These changes are great for pwning noobs in battlegrounds, but it all feels like a precarious balancing act.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Oh Well
"Yes there is a bug with lifetap only returning mana based on your current mana instead of your maximum mana. This is being worked on."
Well, it was a lovely tea party.
They all fixed spellsteal back to worthless again, don't worry. You can now have multiple armors at least. (Fel Armor + MA GO!)
Well, it was a lovely tea party.
They all fixed spellsteal back to worthless again, don't worry. You can now have multiple armors at least. (Fel Armor + MA GO!)
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