YOU HEARD IT HERE...FIRST!
<3 to YWL for repping BG Scrubstrike
First night playing 2345 against stiff competition, it was pretty fun. ^^ Naturally we started the night with a DC, but afterwards spent the night trading games back and forth with Firemen Squadron. They run classic+hunter which is a challenging matchup for 2345 (well challenging for us at least as we've been running 2345 for < 4 hrs). Basically, they put hunter and pet on me with constant vipers and silencings, and put pressure on our priest and do what they can to stall the game to let viper do its damage. This is similar to how we used to play 2345 teams as classic+hunter so it wasn't like we were unprepared for their game. (This isn't Europe where apparently nobody has SEEN a hunter before)
I know that a lot of people are tempted to just say "just kill the pet, it has no resil, dies fast." The problem is that if you fail to kill the pet, you've wasted that time and mana -- both precious resources in the matchup. We initially tried a few strategies: moving burst around with MS debuff, keeping pressure on the priest, keeping pressure on the mage, playing defensively and just killing pets, etc. None of these were as effective for us as running split DPS on the priest and hunter; perhaps this is a noobish way of handling the matchup but it does allow me to do significantly more damage as me and my pet aren't chasing around a priest for long stretches of time. If you ignore the priest too much though, his ability to dispel your CC is too great and you end up being unable to control their DPS well enough for your priest to play an active role. In Nagrand, I found myself able to avoid vipers and hunter harassment, but in RoL you really eat the vipers hard; embarrassingly, I found myself using first mana gem pretty much as I summoned first pet and pulling out second gem when I was at zero mana for a fireblast on a low target or a blink to stay alive.
The games were educational; 2345 is much more reactive than 4DPS because with 4DPS you can really control the fight to such a degree where adapting is less of a factor. Don't think because I've stopped playing 4DPS, I'm going to become anti 4DPS or anything though. ^^ There are just different advantages and disadvantages.
It's also an interesting role reversal as I'm familiar with playing very aggressive in 4DPS teams while our shaman, Reft, was our most defensive DPS member -- now that's flipped. It's back to sheeping better than my video editing and running around praying for the chance to land a decent shatter combo. I thought it would be hard to readjust to the playstyle difference, but it's not really that hard -- I've always been more comfortable playing a heavy kite style of play.
I don't have much intelligent to say about tonight's games -- I think we had watched a lot of different strong 2345 teams play and we all thought very different things about how we'd play. Ultimately, you can steal great ideas but you do have to make them your own. ^^
Huge thanks to Firemen Squadron for the games -- I beg the other Stormstrike teams to Q up Monday night for some games; we're high rated and not very good! Our playing schedule will basically be mon-thur-fri evenings and hopefully afternoons and evenings on the weekends.
WSVG matches were great. Come hang out on IRC and cheer for Yea We Lift tomorrow. I'll also be lamenting any losses of EG as I have a strange love for the Huks.
Oh and Mounsif made me eat my words about dueling resto druids on PTR earlier today. Got to step my game up! I still feel like I have the advantage in the match, but perhaps I'm overconfident or delusional. This whole argument came up with the Benevolent vs Spoh moment earlier at WSVG. Either way, I got ripped. ^^
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Friday, August 24, 2007
More Brainstorming
More brainstorming less mage related:
Pally:: Disbelief - Interrupts target's cast and makes you immune to that school of magic for 8 seconds. Pallies have been dominated by casters for way too long with zero defense against caster damage basically. This would give them some help at reducing the damage they take from casters (though they could switch trees), be an indirect buff to classes supposed to benefit from multiple spell trees (minor), and be a great CC counter for paladins more interesting than the current spam Sacrifice nonsense. Should have short but not crazy short CD. (30-45 sec?)
Pally::Hallowed Ground - 5min CD Blesses the ground around the pally (5yd AE) for 20 seconds. While inside the hallowed ground, targets receive 25% more healing and damage done to them is reduced by 10%. A situational healing buff and damage reduction that requires your healing target staying inside the radius of the effect. There are perhaps some serious concerns with something like this in PvE. (or any healing buff)
Priest::Sleep - 2 sec cast (holy tree) - Puts the target to sleep for 6 seconds. Any damage will break the effect. Sleeping targets regenerate health slowly. I picture a short duration poly with a longer cast and a greater spell school being locked risk. The cool thing about this is that since shadow priests rely so heavily on DoTs, something like this wouldn't be THAT dangerous for them. (like say a more reliable fear would be =p) Old school players probably recognize this a bit. ^^
Priest:: Penance - 1.5 sec Cast. Afflicts the target with penance for 8 seconds. While that target is healed, you gain mana equal to 25% of the healed amount. Another twist on the whole healing debuffs/buffs thing whatever.
Priest::Berserk - Friendly buff. 2min CD. 3 second cast - shadow. Friendly unit is immune to all crowd control effects and has its damage dealt and received increased by 10% for 8 seconds. Shrug.
Lock:: Death & Decay - 1.5 sec cast, 60 sec CD. All hostile units in the targeted area are randomly afflicted by Afflction effects including Curse of Agony, Corruption, Sypon Life, and Seed of Corruption. I imagine something the size of blizzard and the average target receiving 2 debuffs.
Lock:: Atrophy - Causes your curse of weakness and curse of tongues to also reduce the rage, energy, and mana regeneration rate of the target by 25% for 12 seconds.
Lock:: Curse of Tongues and Weakness are now on Diminishing returns. With only 2 classes able to remove these effects while most other CC effects have other means of removal (shifting, escape artist, interrupting the cast of the CC, felhunter dispel), these two abilities are too spammable.
Warrior:: Shrug Off - Removes all movement impairing effects. (30 second CD) While this seems pretty ridiculous, consider that things like hunter traps, poisons, frost chills can all be nearly immediately reapplied.
Warrior::Disable - Melee Range - 30 Rage - Roots the target in place for 5 seconds. Target's ranged and casting speed is reduced by 15%.
Rogue:: Shadow Knives - 3min CD - You may attack your target as if it were in melee range at up to a 20 yard distance. Your attacks do 75% of their normal damage, and this damage is shadow not physical. How cool would it be to see a rogue stabbing the air and doing damage to a guy 20 yards away? ^^
Rogue:: Lethal Wound - Bleed effect. 80 Energy. Wounds the target fatally that deals increasingly more damage until the target leaves combat. Rogues (and warriors) really get to play with the whole in-combat vs ooc thing, why not explicitly make it ability related.?
Rogue::Shroud - 60 Sec CD. Grants the rogue stealth for 3 seconds. Usable anytime. Debuffs and damge over time effects are not removed but their effects are suspended during Shroud. Besides allowing for some stupid combos, increases survivability and allows for greater use of openers.
And I'm bored of doing that now...
I shall return with updates and lessons learned playing on GameOver's new 5s team. Until then, go watch WSVG. ^^ I'll leave the reporting and editorializing of the WSVG events to others as doing so just really depresses that I'm not there playing.
I still don't think our battlegroup sux =p
AND we aren't battlegroup 6, we're BG5 (and yeah we wouldn't be 1400 on BG9*)
* Copyright Nimch 8/24/07
Pally:: Disbelief - Interrupts target's cast and makes you immune to that school of magic for 8 seconds. Pallies have been dominated by casters for way too long with zero defense against caster damage basically. This would give them some help at reducing the damage they take from casters (though they could switch trees), be an indirect buff to classes supposed to benefit from multiple spell trees (minor), and be a great CC counter for paladins more interesting than the current spam Sacrifice nonsense. Should have short but not crazy short CD. (30-45 sec?)
Pally::Hallowed Ground - 5min CD Blesses the ground around the pally (5yd AE) for 20 seconds. While inside the hallowed ground, targets receive 25% more healing and damage done to them is reduced by 10%. A situational healing buff and damage reduction that requires your healing target staying inside the radius of the effect. There are perhaps some serious concerns with something like this in PvE. (or any healing buff)
Priest::Sleep - 2 sec cast (holy tree) - Puts the target to sleep for 6 seconds. Any damage will break the effect. Sleeping targets regenerate health slowly. I picture a short duration poly with a longer cast and a greater spell school being locked risk. The cool thing about this is that since shadow priests rely so heavily on DoTs, something like this wouldn't be THAT dangerous for them. (like say a more reliable fear would be =p) Old school players probably recognize this a bit. ^^
Priest:: Penance - 1.5 sec Cast. Afflicts the target with penance for 8 seconds. While that target is healed, you gain mana equal to 25% of the healed amount. Another twist on the whole healing debuffs/buffs thing whatever.
Priest::Berserk - Friendly buff. 2min CD. 3 second cast - shadow. Friendly unit is immune to all crowd control effects and has its damage dealt and received increased by 10% for 8 seconds. Shrug.
Lock:: Death & Decay - 1.5 sec cast, 60 sec CD. All hostile units in the targeted area are randomly afflicted by Afflction effects including Curse of Agony, Corruption, Sypon Life, and Seed of Corruption. I imagine something the size of blizzard and the average target receiving 2 debuffs.
Lock:: Atrophy - Causes your curse of weakness and curse of tongues to also reduce the rage, energy, and mana regeneration rate of the target by 25% for 12 seconds.
Lock:: Curse of Tongues and Weakness are now on Diminishing returns. With only 2 classes able to remove these effects while most other CC effects have other means of removal (shifting, escape artist, interrupting the cast of the CC, felhunter dispel), these two abilities are too spammable.
Warrior:: Shrug Off - Removes all movement impairing effects. (30 second CD) While this seems pretty ridiculous, consider that things like hunter traps, poisons, frost chills can all be nearly immediately reapplied.
Warrior::Disable - Melee Range - 30 Rage - Roots the target in place for 5 seconds. Target's ranged and casting speed is reduced by 15%.
Rogue:: Shadow Knives - 3min CD - You may attack your target as if it were in melee range at up to a 20 yard distance. Your attacks do 75% of their normal damage, and this damage is shadow not physical. How cool would it be to see a rogue stabbing the air and doing damage to a guy 20 yards away? ^^
Rogue:: Lethal Wound - Bleed effect. 80 Energy. Wounds the target fatally that deals increasingly more damage until the target leaves combat. Rogues (and warriors) really get to play with the whole in-combat vs ooc thing, why not explicitly make it ability related.?
Rogue::Shroud - 60 Sec CD. Grants the rogue stealth for 3 seconds. Usable anytime. Debuffs and damge over time effects are not removed but their effects are suspended during Shroud. Besides allowing for some stupid combos, increases survivability and allows for greater use of openers.
And I'm bored of doing that now...
I shall return with updates and lessons learned playing on GameOver's new 5s team. Until then, go watch WSVG. ^^ I'll leave the reporting and editorializing of the WSVG events to others as doing so just really depresses that I'm not there playing.
I still don't think our battlegroup sux =p
AND we aren't battlegroup 6, we're BG5 (and yeah we wouldn't be 1400 on BG9*)
* Copyright Nimch 8/24/07
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Brainstorming
Before the silliness, check out Yea We Lift's blog. So far it features entries from their priest, Eks, but will eventually feature articles from the team's other members. Even if you're not on Stormstrike, you've likely heard the name of many of their players as some of them have been big name PvPers since WAY back. And if you haven't, you'll see a few of them hopefully not embarrassing themselves and me in the process at WSVG this weekend. =p Seriously, they're crazy good and have been a dominant part of Stormstrike arena since the beginning of season one.
I know this isn't the sort of article that people want, but I thought it would be interesting to randomly brainstorm potential changes and future abilities before too much expansion news hits and we're all jaded by what we've seen.
Brainstorming Ideas for WLK:
Some are changes to existing mechanics, some are stupid thoughts that I had, and some are just cool things I've heard.
Spellsteal - Spellsteal's base mana cost reduced by 35%. Casting Spellsteal now gives you the Arcane Blast debuff increasing the mana cost of your next Spellsteal and Arcane Blast spell and reducing the cast time of your Arcane Blasts with each stack. (Stacks 3 time) Spellstolen buffs cannot be dispelled. Basically, makes Spellsteal have a dynamic with Arcane Blast and makes it cheaper and more desirable for single dispels, but extremely costly to spam.
Feedback - Randomly removes one beneficial effect from the target and restores 5% of the mage's mana and health. (45 Sec CD) I always thought that the BE priest racial was a really cool idea but underpowered and too situational. I like the idea of sacrificing buffs on a moderate cooldown for a powerful effect. Some class should have something like this, it's a cool mechanic and if you think about it in conjunction with rank 1 buffs and the ability to remove buffs from friendly targets (not yourself), it has some cool potential.
Haste - Increase target's movement, casting, and attack speed by 30% for 12 seconds. Target is afflicted with exhausted after haste ends (if not dispelled, get it?) which reduces the above 3 by 30% for 6 seconds. Again pretty obvious, but the mechanic twist is that you have to choose whether to dispel it or not, as if dispelled, they won't become "exhausted."
Ignite - The damage done through ignite is based on the critical strike damage before resilience is included. So a 2k crit yields 800 ignite damage even if the crit is reduced to 1500 by resilience. This is more of a balance/scaling thing than a change, but I think that these types of effects shouldn't be triple-taxed by resilience.
Molten Armor - The damage dealt by molten armor will now damage ranged and caster targets. This is a ridiculous buff especially when you figure in impact. Weirdly, Blue said in Beta the reason why this wasn't in the game was due to technical and not balance issues. I always thought that this would be cool and make mages way more of a pain to FF despite their squishiness. (literally) I think that people talk about spec viability for other classes a lot (read shamans, rogues, priests) but the topic is generally ignored for mages. I'm not sure fire mages should be a LOT harder to kill but perhaps what keeps them alive in arenas more than survivability could be a mechanic that makes targeting them painful. (beyond the annoyance of chain blazing speed procs)
Frost Snares - All frost snares are on self diminishing returns. After 3 frostbolts, you are immune to the frostbolt snare for 15 seconds, same for CoC. (obviously not Blizzard) This would probably make almost no difference balance wise, but it feels stupid that I can grief people forever with rank 1 fbolt and depending on their class and current cooldown status, they can never escape or fight back.
Minimum Mana Cost on Low Ranks - Rank 1 spells cost at least 50% of their max rank equivalents. This would be a huge nerf, but why are half the spells I cast from level 20 or earlier? Rank 1s should still be better situationally, but not equivocally. (poly, nova) Other classes don't get this luxury to the degree that mages do; it seems like a real oversight.
Master of Elements - Mana restored from criticals going to whole party, amount restored reduced to 10/20%. I really know very little about endgame PvE anymore, but even if frost remains marginalized in raiding, how can you make both fire and arcane attractive, fun to play, and viable? Fire always felt extremely mindless fireball spam to me; perhaps it is time to tweak the gameplay. (this doesn't change gameplay really...)
Spell Haste, Heroism, and Troll Beserking should reduce the global cooldown. Because they do not, many core abilities gain nothing from these effects and this creates weird scaling issues.
New Area of Effect Spell - Blue stressed again the AoE nature of the class during both class panels at Blizzcon. There were no new AE abilities for mages in BC (except DB, which is only sorta AE and shares CD with CoC) while other classes received many. I've always loved the idea that Blizzard would be changed to a 6 second channel that would continue for 4 seconds in the area after the channel. Think summon blizzard on an area instead of stand there channeling it. You'd then get 4 seconds of overlapping AE potential plus some cool possibilities in PvP.
Sear - 4 Second Channel. Deals fire damage each second with each tick doing increasingly more damage. 24 Sec CD. Think Protoss Warp Rays. There aren't any escalating damage channels, why are they all flat damage? This would be cool in PvE and PvP and as long as it was long enough cooldown to be reliably interrupted (and PvE balanced) could be an interesting mechanic. I imagine scorch stacking and trying to outrange that ES to get off the sear.
Cauterize - Deals 500 damage to a friendly unit and removes all bleeds. Healing done to the target is increased by 30% for 8 seconds. Could do more damage based on spell damage or not. The idea is that you can harm a teammate (breaks poly, sap, gouge) which alone is not in the game and you can simultaneously give him a healing buff. (also strangely missing from the game as a player ability at least) The second mechanic is dying to be in the game and could be really one of the missing pieces in extending and making more complex arena matches.
And that's all that I got on top of my head right now. Post up some weird ideas or thoughts preferably with mechanics not yet in game as player abilities but are still the sorts of things that can be reasonably implemented. (As cool as that slow motion Mothership time stop thing would be in WoW)
I know this isn't the sort of article that people want, but I thought it would be interesting to randomly brainstorm potential changes and future abilities before too much expansion news hits and we're all jaded by what we've seen.
Brainstorming Ideas for WLK:
Some are changes to existing mechanics, some are stupid thoughts that I had, and some are just cool things I've heard.
Spellsteal - Spellsteal's base mana cost reduced by 35%. Casting Spellsteal now gives you the Arcane Blast debuff increasing the mana cost of your next Spellsteal and Arcane Blast spell and reducing the cast time of your Arcane Blasts with each stack. (Stacks 3 time) Spellstolen buffs cannot be dispelled. Basically, makes Spellsteal have a dynamic with Arcane Blast and makes it cheaper and more desirable for single dispels, but extremely costly to spam.
Feedback - Randomly removes one beneficial effect from the target and restores 5% of the mage's mana and health. (45 Sec CD) I always thought that the BE priest racial was a really cool idea but underpowered and too situational. I like the idea of sacrificing buffs on a moderate cooldown for a powerful effect. Some class should have something like this, it's a cool mechanic and if you think about it in conjunction with rank 1 buffs and the ability to remove buffs from friendly targets (not yourself), it has some cool potential.
Haste - Increase target's movement, casting, and attack speed by 30% for 12 seconds. Target is afflicted with exhausted after haste ends (if not dispelled, get it?) which reduces the above 3 by 30% for 6 seconds. Again pretty obvious, but the mechanic twist is that you have to choose whether to dispel it or not, as if dispelled, they won't become "exhausted."
Ignite - The damage done through ignite is based on the critical strike damage before resilience is included. So a 2k crit yields 800 ignite damage even if the crit is reduced to 1500 by resilience. This is more of a balance/scaling thing than a change, but I think that these types of effects shouldn't be triple-taxed by resilience.
Molten Armor - The damage dealt by molten armor will now damage ranged and caster targets. This is a ridiculous buff especially when you figure in impact. Weirdly, Blue said in Beta the reason why this wasn't in the game was due to technical and not balance issues. I always thought that this would be cool and make mages way more of a pain to FF despite their squishiness. (literally) I think that people talk about spec viability for other classes a lot (read shamans, rogues, priests) but the topic is generally ignored for mages. I'm not sure fire mages should be a LOT harder to kill but perhaps what keeps them alive in arenas more than survivability could be a mechanic that makes targeting them painful. (beyond the annoyance of chain blazing speed procs)
Frost Snares - All frost snares are on self diminishing returns. After 3 frostbolts, you are immune to the frostbolt snare for 15 seconds, same for CoC. (obviously not Blizzard) This would probably make almost no difference balance wise, but it feels stupid that I can grief people forever with rank 1 fbolt and depending on their class and current cooldown status, they can never escape or fight back.
Minimum Mana Cost on Low Ranks - Rank 1 spells cost at least 50% of their max rank equivalents. This would be a huge nerf, but why are half the spells I cast from level 20 or earlier? Rank 1s should still be better situationally, but not equivocally. (poly, nova) Other classes don't get this luxury to the degree that mages do; it seems like a real oversight.
Master of Elements - Mana restored from criticals going to whole party, amount restored reduced to 10/20%. I really know very little about endgame PvE anymore, but even if frost remains marginalized in raiding, how can you make both fire and arcane attractive, fun to play, and viable? Fire always felt extremely mindless fireball spam to me; perhaps it is time to tweak the gameplay. (this doesn't change gameplay really...)
Spell Haste, Heroism, and Troll Beserking should reduce the global cooldown. Because they do not, many core abilities gain nothing from these effects and this creates weird scaling issues.
New Area of Effect Spell - Blue stressed again the AoE nature of the class during both class panels at Blizzcon. There were no new AE abilities for mages in BC (except DB, which is only sorta AE and shares CD with CoC) while other classes received many. I've always loved the idea that Blizzard would be changed to a 6 second channel that would continue for 4 seconds in the area after the channel. Think summon blizzard on an area instead of stand there channeling it. You'd then get 4 seconds of overlapping AE potential plus some cool possibilities in PvP.
Sear - 4 Second Channel. Deals fire damage each second with each tick doing increasingly more damage. 24 Sec CD. Think Protoss Warp Rays. There aren't any escalating damage channels, why are they all flat damage? This would be cool in PvE and PvP and as long as it was long enough cooldown to be reliably interrupted (and PvE balanced) could be an interesting mechanic. I imagine scorch stacking and trying to outrange that ES to get off the sear.
Cauterize - Deals 500 damage to a friendly unit and removes all bleeds. Healing done to the target is increased by 30% for 8 seconds. Could do more damage based on spell damage or not. The idea is that you can harm a teammate (breaks poly, sap, gouge) which alone is not in the game and you can simultaneously give him a healing buff. (also strangely missing from the game as a player ability at least) The second mechanic is dying to be in the game and could be really one of the missing pieces in extending and making more complex arena matches.
And that's all that I got on top of my head right now. Post up some weird ideas or thoughts preferably with mechanics not yet in game as player abilities but are still the sorts of things that can be reasonably implemented. (As cool as that slow motion Mothership time stop thing would be in WoW)
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Loose Ends Redux
As of last night, GameOver will no longer be the same 4DPS team it has been all season. While it is premature to talk about the future of the team, I can say that we'll be back in playing condition by the weekend and intend to remain competitive at the top of the battlegroup. It is always amazing to me the sacrifices that players make for each other, their guilds, and their teams -- farming consumables for raids, rolling a new character or new race just to improve their arena team, sacrificing lots of RL commitments to makes raids or arena times, or just sticking through lots of drama. This is somewhat relevant just for the fact that many of the players I know choose classes or specs they dislike just to satisfy their team's objectives. (BUT I DON'T)
It will definitely be a while till we're back to top level play, but expect to see mostly familiar names. I can't really speak to what matrix we'll exactly be running but it probably will be closer to a 2.5healer team than a 4DPS team. I'll very much miss playing on our 4DPS team; I think that it was by far the best team we'd ever had -- I would have been very comfortable playing that team on the private server. That being said, I like having diverse experience and welcome the chance to try and learn additional team formats. It's probably about time to trade in some of these +dmg gems though. ^^
Moving forward I have a few articles that I've been wanting to write in varying stages of completeness. Aesthyr is at Leipzig for the gaming show and promises he will give me at least a few paragraphs on his thoughts on SC2. I've had lots of time to read various fantasy WLK talent setups and analysis threads, and would like to do at least a little discussion of what I hope to see...and what I think we'll see.
Despite blue posts and rumors to the contrary, my spies have told me that the Beta pass from Blizzcon is indeed for SC2 and not WLK; supposedly, beta passes for WLK will be awarded to guild with significant PvE progression, to participants in the previous TBC beta, and to high ranking arena players. Again, this isn't "reliable" info, but I trust it more than the other sources I've seen. =p
I'm sure to mention this many more times before WSVG this weekend, but best of luck to the Yeah We Lift and Trounce guys. Just remember that you wouldn't be rated 1400 on BG 9. (Not Even 1400 on BG9 is a sick team name btw)
In response to being asked in comments and on IRC what I do, how I shouldn't mix WoW and RL, and other weird things: I don't really talk about that stuff on this blog. It isn't relevant. The end. ^^ (1. Who really cares 2. No reason to give haters ammo) Even comments like "I BET YOU JUMP A LOT IRL" leave me shivering, cold and naked, listening to death cab, praying for sweet death's gentle embrace. The district sleep alone tonight ~~
Actually sort of on that topic, I'm flattered to have been approached and offered the opportunity to write for many of the PvP related blogs out there. I'm still undecided exactly what I'll do, but I do like having my own site even if it remains small relative to the leading brands. It's nice having a site I can update from my phone, where I know a large number of those who leave comments (I don't get 100+ anonymous "YOU GAY SUCK SUCKY" everyday), where people can read it from work and the RSS feed actually works, where I can write at my own pace on my own topics without "dragging down the team", and where there is absolutely zero drama or conflict of interest. That said, I'm still open-minded.
I started using Proximo after watching the Rag Dolled vid; I had heard that it was the best arena mod previously, but I was way too lazy to check it out. After just a week of use, it is AWESOME. Even though I use Nurfed with party targets, I really like the built in targeting bars. They're not useful for assisting, but are quick and intuitive for telling who's targeting who. It's a bit hard to describe how it's better than Gladiator or Nurfed Arena, so just go check it out. =p
Since I'm really skipping around like crazy from topic to topic, I'll add a farewell to ArenaBlogger, which not only was among the few WoW PvP blogs with a working RSS feed (UNLIKE THE BLOG FORMERLY KNOWN AS SHADOW GAMING), but also was a fun blog for keeping track of teams across the different battlegroups. I tend to keep in touch with at least a few BG9 players (who remind me how I'm bad and would never make it on BG9, duh, that's why I stay on Scrubstrike), and I know what's happening on our BG, but Cyclone, Reckoning? Who knows! Who cares? Nobody good plays there anyways. It was always kind of fun reading about random teams I'd otherwise never would have known existed. (And will possibly face at the end of the season)
It will definitely be a while till we're back to top level play, but expect to see mostly familiar names. I can't really speak to what matrix we'll exactly be running but it probably will be closer to a 2.5healer team than a 4DPS team. I'll very much miss playing on our 4DPS team; I think that it was by far the best team we'd ever had -- I would have been very comfortable playing that team on the private server. That being said, I like having diverse experience and welcome the chance to try and learn additional team formats. It's probably about time to trade in some of these +dmg gems though. ^^
Moving forward I have a few articles that I've been wanting to write in varying stages of completeness. Aesthyr is at Leipzig for the gaming show and promises he will give me at least a few paragraphs on his thoughts on SC2. I've had lots of time to read various fantasy WLK talent setups and analysis threads, and would like to do at least a little discussion of what I hope to see...and what I think we'll see.
Despite blue posts and rumors to the contrary, my spies have told me that the Beta pass from Blizzcon is indeed for SC2 and not WLK; supposedly, beta passes for WLK will be awarded to guild with significant PvE progression, to participants in the previous TBC beta, and to high ranking arena players. Again, this isn't "reliable" info, but I trust it more than the other sources I've seen. =p
I'm sure to mention this many more times before WSVG this weekend, but best of luck to the Yeah We Lift and Trounce guys. Just remember that you wouldn't be rated 1400 on BG 9. (Not Even 1400 on BG9 is a sick team name btw)
In response to being asked in comments and on IRC what I do, how I shouldn't mix WoW and RL, and other weird things: I don't really talk about that stuff on this blog. It isn't relevant. The end. ^^ (1. Who really cares 2. No reason to give haters ammo) Even comments like "I BET YOU JUMP A LOT IRL" leave me shivering, cold and naked, listening to death cab, praying for sweet death's gentle embrace. The district sleep alone tonight ~~
Actually sort of on that topic, I'm flattered to have been approached and offered the opportunity to write for many of the PvP related blogs out there. I'm still undecided exactly what I'll do, but I do like having my own site even if it remains small relative to the leading brands. It's nice having a site I can update from my phone, where I know a large number of those who leave comments (I don't get 100+ anonymous "YOU GAY SUCK SUCKY" everyday), where people can read it from work and the RSS feed actually works, where I can write at my own pace on my own topics without "dragging down the team", and where there is absolutely zero drama or conflict of interest. That said, I'm still open-minded.
I started using Proximo after watching the Rag Dolled vid; I had heard that it was the best arena mod previously, but I was way too lazy to check it out. After just a week of use, it is AWESOME. Even though I use Nurfed with party targets, I really like the built in targeting bars. They're not useful for assisting, but are quick and intuitive for telling who's targeting who. It's a bit hard to describe how it's better than Gladiator or Nurfed Arena, so just go check it out. =p
Since I'm really skipping around like crazy from topic to topic, I'll add a farewell to ArenaBlogger, which not only was among the few WoW PvP blogs with a working RSS feed (UNLIKE THE BLOG FORMERLY KNOWN AS SHADOW GAMING), but also was a fun blog for keeping track of teams across the different battlegroups. I tend to keep in touch with at least a few BG9 players (who remind me how I'm bad and would never make it on BG9, duh, that's why I stay on Scrubstrike), and I know what's happening on our BG, but Cyclone, Reckoning? Who knows! Who cares? Nobody good plays there anyways. It was always kind of fun reading about random teams I'd otherwise never would have known existed. (And will possibly face at the end of the season)
Monday, August 20, 2007
Heroism: Urban Myth?
It's pretty common to here people talk about how heroism reduces the global cooldown while no other haste affect does. This is generally regarded as true; you'll see reference to this fact by many top players. (and top shamans)
Consider this post from Zaldinar:
What I then did, was chose a spell that had a cooldown that followed it, Fireblast was a good example, so you could be sure that the cooldown presented was either the GCD or the cooldown of the spell itself. Here are three casts of fireblast and the timestamps that came with them:
2967011.233 - Fireblast started
2967012.378 - Spell success registered
2967012.379 - GetSpellCooldown returns a timestamp of 2967011.235 for start of cooldown, vs our time now of 2967012.379 making a delta of approximately 1.144 seconds, duration of cooldown 1.5 seconds, after success the Fireblast 8 second cooldown begins.
2967153.687 - Fireblast started
2967154.533 - Spell success registered
2967154.534 - GetSpellCooldown returns a timestamp of 2967153.689 for start of cooldown, vs our time now of 2967154.534 making a delta of approximately 0.845 seconds, duration of cooldown is again 1.5 seconds, after success of the Fireblast the 8 second cooldown begins.
2967248.307 - Fireblast started
2967249.248 - Spell success registered
2967249.249 - GetSpellCooldown returns a timestamp of 2967248.309 for start of cooldown, vs our time now of 2967249.249 making a delta of approximately 0.939 seconds, duration of cooldown is again 1.5 seconds, after success of the Fireblast the 8 second cooldown begins.
This establishes the ability to observe exactly how much time is going into the GCD, the 1.5 second cooldown can only be the GCD. When lag forced the success event to be registered more than 1.5 seconds after the cast event, the cooldown registered as having an 8 second duration and starting at approximately the time of spell success.
The question at hand is if Heroism reduces the GCD to account for its 30% spellcasting increase. If it does we should observe the cooldown being a 1.5 * .7 = 1.05 second cooldown. Here comes my PTR Shammy, and some heroism action.
2967773.129 - Fireblast started
2967773.818 - Spell success registered
2967773.819 - GetSpellCooldown returns a timestamp of 296773.131 for start of cooldown, vs our time now of 2967773.819 making a delta of approximately 0.688 seconds, duration of cooldown is 1.5 seconds, after success of the fireblast the normal 8 second cooldown begins.
Three other datapoints of exactly the same results followed (for the cooldown duration that is).
What this means: Heroism does *NOT* reduce the GCD (For the folks that want to argue that it does, wait until the conclusion at the end once I cover haste, because there is something waiting for you there).
I had always believed heroism to not influence the GCD from inspecting fraps footage, but it is pretty deceptive. There are clips where I think it clearly does speed up the rate at which the "sparkle" moves; there are countless threads on this topic but this last series of tests on the most recent PTR seem pretty convincing.
Now onto Fear Ward and Fear DR.
Consider this post from Zaldinar:
What I then did, was chose a spell that had a cooldown that followed it, Fireblast was a good example, so you could be sure that the cooldown presented was either the GCD or the cooldown of the spell itself. Here are three casts of fireblast and the timestamps that came with them:
2967011.233 - Fireblast started
2967012.378 - Spell success registered
2967012.379 - GetSpellCooldown returns a timestamp of 2967011.235 for start of cooldown, vs our time now of 2967012.379 making a delta of approximately 1.144 seconds, duration of cooldown 1.5 seconds, after success the Fireblast 8 second cooldown begins.
2967153.687 - Fireblast started
2967154.533 - Spell success registered
2967154.534 - GetSpellCooldown returns a timestamp of 2967153.689 for start of cooldown, vs our time now of 2967154.534 making a delta of approximately 0.845 seconds, duration of cooldown is again 1.5 seconds, after success of the Fireblast the 8 second cooldown begins.
2967248.307 - Fireblast started
2967249.248 - Spell success registered
2967249.249 - GetSpellCooldown returns a timestamp of 2967248.309 for start of cooldown, vs our time now of 2967249.249 making a delta of approximately 0.939 seconds, duration of cooldown is again 1.5 seconds, after success of the Fireblast the 8 second cooldown begins.
This establishes the ability to observe exactly how much time is going into the GCD, the 1.5 second cooldown can only be the GCD. When lag forced the success event to be registered more than 1.5 seconds after the cast event, the cooldown registered as having an 8 second duration and starting at approximately the time of spell success.
The question at hand is if Heroism reduces the GCD to account for its 30% spellcasting increase. If it does we should observe the cooldown being a 1.5 * .7 = 1.05 second cooldown. Here comes my PTR Shammy, and some heroism action.
2967773.129 - Fireblast started
2967773.818 - Spell success registered
2967773.819 - GetSpellCooldown returns a timestamp of 296773.131 for start of cooldown, vs our time now of 2967773.819 making a delta of approximately 0.688 seconds, duration of cooldown is 1.5 seconds, after success of the fireblast the normal 8 second cooldown begins.
Three other datapoints of exactly the same results followed (for the cooldown duration that is).
What this means: Heroism does *NOT* reduce the GCD (For the folks that want to argue that it does, wait until the conclusion at the end once I cover haste, because there is something waiting for you there).
I had always believed heroism to not influence the GCD from inspecting fraps footage, but it is pretty deceptive. There are clips where I think it clearly does speed up the rate at which the "sparkle" moves; there are countless threads on this topic but this last series of tests on the most recent PTR seem pretty convincing.
Now onto Fear Ward and Fear DR.
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