We've had a few builds' worth of the new 31-point talent trees released so far, so I'm going to offer some brief comments on the Fire tree and mage talents in general. In a word?
Awkward!
Most of the talents which remain are those which I expected to hang around. Master of Elements, Incineration, Ignite, Fire Power, Improved Scorch, Hot Streak, Molten Fury, Critical Mass . . . these are all recognisably similar to existing talents in the Fire tree, which fit with the schema of "something that changes the way you play" rather than "something which passively increases your damage" that Blizzard is openly aiming for. Then there are the four "new ability" talents, which are much the same as they always were - Blast Wave, Dragon's Breath, Combustion (albeit altered, and I'll come back to that), and Living Bomb.
The problem, as I see it, is that once I have taken all of the obvious PvE talents that I'd like to have as a raider, I'm left with cruft which is either obviously PvP-oriented, or involve making changes that probably won't show up at all in 90% of my gameplay. After taking Master of Elements, Incineration, and Ignite, I have to put a point in something I have almost no use for in order to advance.
Burning Soul is a PvP talent - it has its uses in PvE, but even with increased health pools in Cataclysm I doubt I'll want to stand around getting beat up enough to make investing a talent point in making my spells faster while it's happening. The priority will always be to get out of that situation. Likewise Blazing Speed and Molten Shields. Therefore all I have left is Improved Fire Blast, reducing the cooldown and increasing the range on a spell I almost never use.
The next tier is fine - Fire Power, Blast Wave, and Improved Scorch are all welcome. Well, technically, I don't have Blast Wave in my raiding spec at the moment, but it's a fun talent and it will presumably have its uses if Cataclysm succeeds in making crowd-control a more important part of gameplay. Knocking loose adds away from the healer and back towards the tank is always a good time.
In the next tier, Hot Streak, Combustion, and Pyromaniac are all interesting enough. Combustion's changes make it a very different spell, but I can see that it will be very useful for lining up multiple damage-over-time effects on a target, then popping Combustion and nailing it with a Fireball or even a Pyroblast made instant-cast by Hot Streak. Speaking of the latter, the change from "2 consecutive critical strikes" to "3 consecutive strikes within 6 seconds of each other" is fine with me.
But then in the next tier we get Dragon's Breath - again, welcome, and making a return to my spec where I skip it now - and Molten Fury, which I've found very useful for raiding . . . but there isn't enough in this tier to get me anywhere. So I have to go back and put another point in Improved Fire Blast.
Critical Mass is great, but all by itself in the second-to-last tier it's just frustrating. So what else have I got to go back and get? Impact is a PvP talent - the chances are that a 7% chance to proc a stun from a Fire Blast is going to come up at a time which is useful are pretty damn small. A stun is always welcome in PvP but will more often than not be wasted in PvE.
Improved Flamestrike is not awesome, but it's the best of a bad lot of choices - more damage and a reduced cast time can be useful when dealing with packs of trash, and it might well count towards the various effects that key off damage-over-time effects on enemies. I'll take it, but again I feel like I'm using up talent points on stuff I'll rarely if ever use, just to reach what I really want to take - and that's not supposed to happen in these new trees.
Now I can finally have Living Bomb, hooray!
My options outside of the Fire tree are actually a little complex. Do I focus, for instance, in the Arcane tree, picking up Arcane Concentration for Clearcasting, Netherwind Presence for haste, and Arcane Potency for improved crits after Clearcasting procs? In this instance, I still have to decide between Frost's mana-reduction from Frost Channeling and increased crit chance from Piercing Ice. Or do I skip Arcane Potency and instead fill out both of the Frost options, leaving Arcane Concentration at 2 points?
Obviously final decisions won't be made until I'm level 85, and no-one knows what the trees will look like now. My final conclusion on the talents as they stand, however, is that Fire still has a few places where I'm required to choose talents I don't care about at all, and ironically the interesting choices lie in what I'll choose from the other trees. Hopefully Blizzard is still tweaking Fire, and I'll feel more positively about it in the future.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Saturday, July 10, 2010
In Hindsight . . .
. . . my decision not to write a post about Blizzard's announcement that they would implement the use of Real ID on the official forums was a prescient choice that avoided wasted effort.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Cataclysmic Talent Changes
It's time to talk about the redesign of talent trees coming with Cataclysm.
Radical!
Frankly I think it looks like a great new design if they can get it working as intended. Obviously we don't have specific details on the new trees and class abilities - and I'll post again when we do, of course - but I think it's worth thinking about the intent here.
Talent trees have always undergone changes. Back in the classic era, they were a late-breaking design element in the first place, and at the level 60 endgame there were classes which only had one or two viable trees - especially any class which could heal.
Later in classic and during The Burning Crusade, we saw an effort to make each tree viable for at least one aspect of the game. It was accepted, for instance, that Frost was the tree mages used to be viable in PvP, and it wasn't considered important that they be competitive with Fire mages (and, later, Arcane mages) in PvE. Wrath of the Lich King evolved talents to the point where it was intended that each tree be useful in all areas of the game: dungeons, raids, arenas, battlegrounds, and solo questing. Blizzard never found the perfect balance - and they have admittedly basically abandoned fixing up our current talent trees in favour of working on making Cataclysm better - but each patch brought new tweaks that didn't presume that Subtlety should be outright weak in raids, even if they never made it competitive at the high end.
In principle, then, even this very different approach to the talent trees is not much of a departure from the general history of change and flux around talents over the last five years. If you accept Blizzard's stated goals as valid and worthwhile, and I do, then the new design promises to be very interesting and a lot of fun.
First and foremost, I love the idea that the players of new characters will be presented at level 10 with a choice to make between each talent tree, and the information necessary to make the right choice for how they want to play. If Cataclysm represents a concerted effort by Blizzard to bring new players into the game, and (on the evidence of all of the quality of life and newbie-friendly changes they've made recently) I think it does, this is probably one of the best they could have made. Why not tell new players - or players new to a class - what they're in for when they specialise their character? Let people know that Subtlety rogues rely more on stealth and tricks, Assassination rogues more on poisons, and Combat rogues on straight-up viciousness.
Second, and following on from that last, it's a great idea to give each specialisation a defining ability right off the bat at level 10. I'm anxious to see the full list, but what we already know suggests that Blizzard is thinking in the right direction. Divine Storm for Retribution paladins, Mind Flay for Shadow priests, Mortal Strike for Arms warriors . . . all iconic choices.
Some people have suggested that Pyroblast might end up as the iconic Fire mage ability, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were something more flashy like Dragon's Breath. I suspect that the new Fire tree will see Pyroblast remain a talented spell but immediately open up and lead into the talent for Hot Streak.
In passing, I note with interest the idea that Frost mages will have the Water Elemental as their iconic level 10 ability. It will be interesting to see if this becomes something of a mage's equivalent to Spirit Wolves for Enhancement shamans, or if it's going to be more like the death knight's Ghoul with an option to make it permanent, perhaps via a talent point like Unholy death knights rather than through a glyph as it now stands.
Obviously there will be more to say when we learn more. Hopefully the next week or two will see the announcement of the whole enchilada, as Ghostcrawler put it.
Radical!
Frankly I think it looks like a great new design if they can get it working as intended. Obviously we don't have specific details on the new trees and class abilities - and I'll post again when we do, of course - but I think it's worth thinking about the intent here.
Talent trees have always undergone changes. Back in the classic era, they were a late-breaking design element in the first place, and at the level 60 endgame there were classes which only had one or two viable trees - especially any class which could heal.
Later in classic and during The Burning Crusade, we saw an effort to make each tree viable for at least one aspect of the game. It was accepted, for instance, that Frost was the tree mages used to be viable in PvP, and it wasn't considered important that they be competitive with Fire mages (and, later, Arcane mages) in PvE. Wrath of the Lich King evolved talents to the point where it was intended that each tree be useful in all areas of the game: dungeons, raids, arenas, battlegrounds, and solo questing. Blizzard never found the perfect balance - and they have admittedly basically abandoned fixing up our current talent trees in favour of working on making Cataclysm better - but each patch brought new tweaks that didn't presume that Subtlety should be outright weak in raids, even if they never made it competitive at the high end.
In principle, then, even this very different approach to the talent trees is not much of a departure from the general history of change and flux around talents over the last five years. If you accept Blizzard's stated goals as valid and worthwhile, and I do, then the new design promises to be very interesting and a lot of fun.
First and foremost, I love the idea that the players of new characters will be presented at level 10 with a choice to make between each talent tree, and the information necessary to make the right choice for how they want to play. If Cataclysm represents a concerted effort by Blizzard to bring new players into the game, and (on the evidence of all of the quality of life and newbie-friendly changes they've made recently) I think it does, this is probably one of the best they could have made. Why not tell new players - or players new to a class - what they're in for when they specialise their character? Let people know that Subtlety rogues rely more on stealth and tricks, Assassination rogues more on poisons, and Combat rogues on straight-up viciousness.
Second, and following on from that last, it's a great idea to give each specialisation a defining ability right off the bat at level 10. I'm anxious to see the full list, but what we already know suggests that Blizzard is thinking in the right direction. Divine Storm for Retribution paladins, Mind Flay for Shadow priests, Mortal Strike for Arms warriors . . . all iconic choices.
Some people have suggested that Pyroblast might end up as the iconic Fire mage ability, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were something more flashy like Dragon's Breath. I suspect that the new Fire tree will see Pyroblast remain a talented spell but immediately open up and lead into the talent for Hot Streak.
In passing, I note with interest the idea that Frost mages will have the Water Elemental as their iconic level 10 ability. It will be interesting to see if this becomes something of a mage's equivalent to Spirit Wolves for Enhancement shamans, or if it's going to be more like the death knight's Ghoul with an option to make it permanent, perhaps via a talent point like Unholy death knights rather than through a glyph as it now stands.
Obviously there will be more to say when we learn more. Hopefully the next week or two will see the announcement of the whole enchilada, as Ghostcrawler put it.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Achievements
Instead of discussing the little information we have at this time about changes to the mage class or the Engineering profession in Cataclysm, I've decided to write about what I've been doing in the game recently: namely, earning achievements.
Diverting!
This past weekend, I finally completed the Loremaster achievement.
The real challenge was, of course, Loremaster of Kalimdor. I have to say that, despite some issues, the EveryQuest addon was really helpful in tracking down quests I still needed to do.
In the course of this achievement, I naturally earned the Seeker title for 3000 quests complete. That happened somewhere in Tanaris, I think; it's all a blur to me now.
The final leg of my journey was Loremaster of Eastern Kingdoms. I actually started with a higher EK total than Kalimdor, which is natural for a human character who avoided night elf zones back in the original game, but I figured it'd be easier to complete the whole achievement if I finished off the harder part first. It also really, really helped that I was earning the achievement on a mage who is also an Engineer; being able to teleport all over the world, including to Everlook, was a blessing.
Ascanius's final quest turn-in to earn the achievement was for killing Araj the Summoner, which I dimly and possibly inaccurately recall was a Raid quest back in the day when I first encountered it while levelling in the Plaguelands. I could never find a group to help me back then, especially since I was playing in my original California-based guild; naturally, at level 80 in Icecrown Citadel raid gear it wasn't much of a challenge.
The reason I chose Araj the Summoner actually relates to another personal feeling about the game. As I mentioned, I levelled to 60 in the Plaguelands back in the pre-Burning Crusade days. This was around the time that the original Naxxramas preparation grind was patched into the game, and Light's Hope Chapel was suddenly surrounded by dozens of NPCs from the Argent Dawn and even the Scarlet Crusade. I became very interested in the Argent Dawn and its anti-undead mission; I remember discussing how cool it would be if you could actually join in-game factions in a meaningful way, leading to exclusive quest chains and the like.
That never quite happened, although in a way the Argent Tournament works by unlocking extra daily quests once you've achieved the Crusader title is kind of like a pale shadow of it. Still, I never lost my fondness for the Argent Dawn, so a couple of months ago I went through Stratholme over and over, farming reputation with them, until I finally earned the Argent Champion title (Ascanius and my paladin Concepción have been Crusaders for a long time).
The same day that I earned Loremaster, I looked over my achievements, and realised that I was one heroic Oculus run away from earning five achievements: The Oculus, Heroic: The Oculus, Northrend Dungeonmaster, Northrend Dungeon Hero, and Champion of the Frozen Wastes. Yes, it turned out that I had never even run The Oculus on normal mode, let alone heroic, despite earning all sorts of raid achievements.
I queued myself up, and surprisingly only had to wait about three minutes. As it turned out, I earned six achievements with that single run, because my group also got the Make It Count! speed-run achievement. I did have to endure a comment of "eBay IMO" from one of my group members when I announced at the beginning of the run that I'd never been to the dungeon, given my Icecrown Citadel-10-level gear score.
Finally, after a bout of sickness yesterday, I managed to finish another achievement on my orc shaman this morning:
Yes, Mithridates is now the proud owner and rider of a Venomhide Ravasaur. The twenty-day daily quest process to earn the mount took me about a month, since I kept missing days here and there, but in the end I'm happy to have done it - and, once I inevitably transfer Mithridates to the Alliance and turn him into a dwarf or draenei, he'll have a Wintersaber without having gone through that much more tedious grind. Of course, I expect Blizzard to replace the Wintersaber grind with something much more palatable in Cataclysm, but still.
Future achievements I'm planning to earn are mostly related to raiding. Last night our guild attempted Algalon the Observer for the second time; we didn't really come close to success, but I feel like we'll get it either next time or the time after that. Starcaller Ascanius has a nice ring to it.
Once he's done, we're planning to finish off Glory of the Ulduar Raider; Ascanius only needs I Love The Smell Of Saronite In The Morning and One Light In The Darkness to earn his lovely Rusted Proto-Drake. I actually think it's the best-looking of all the raid reward mounts in the game, so I'm delighted that my preferred raid size matches up with my preferred reward in this instance! Of course, not everyone has earned the same achievements as I have; unfortunately our guild leader wasn't there when we finally earned Firefighter, so getting him that will be painful.
Then, of course, there's the Lich King. I honestly have no sense of how long it will take us to finally knock him down; even once they patch in the final 30% Strength of Wrynn buff, I expect we have a lot of work to do to nail the execution. Still, again, Ascanius the Kingslayer has a nice ring to it too!
I guess I'm fortunate that I have plenty of things left to do in the game. I still haven't been to the Ruby Sanctum, since I didn't raid last week. I'm really looking forward to the Operation: Gnomeregan and Zalazane's Fall events, whenever they become active (and I hope to have Mithridates to level 80 by that time). Then, of course, there's also the actual pre-Cataclysm events, which promise to outdo the excellent zombie plague event that preceded Wrath of the Lich King. I have my alts to work on - Mithridates is at level 74, my gnome warlock Burnadotte is at level 42, and I have my dwarf hunter Sigehelm at level 74 waiting for my wife to feel like playing her human mage again. I even have a dumbass night elf death knight bank alt, Khasemekhwy, if I feel like fucking around with a death knight some more.
Next time I post, I hope to have more to say about the information coming from Cataclysm testers. Let's hope Blizzard pushes some updates for mages or Engineering in the next beta patch!
Diverting!
This past weekend, I finally completed the Loremaster achievement.
The real challenge was, of course, Loremaster of Kalimdor. I have to say that, despite some issues, the EveryQuest addon was really helpful in tracking down quests I still needed to do.
In the course of this achievement, I naturally earned the Seeker title for 3000 quests complete. That happened somewhere in Tanaris, I think; it's all a blur to me now.
The final leg of my journey was Loremaster of Eastern Kingdoms. I actually started with a higher EK total than Kalimdor, which is natural for a human character who avoided night elf zones back in the original game, but I figured it'd be easier to complete the whole achievement if I finished off the harder part first. It also really, really helped that I was earning the achievement on a mage who is also an Engineer; being able to teleport all over the world, including to Everlook, was a blessing.
Ascanius's final quest turn-in to earn the achievement was for killing Araj the Summoner, which I dimly and possibly inaccurately recall was a Raid quest back in the day when I first encountered it while levelling in the Plaguelands. I could never find a group to help me back then, especially since I was playing in my original California-based guild; naturally, at level 80 in Icecrown Citadel raid gear it wasn't much of a challenge.
The reason I chose Araj the Summoner actually relates to another personal feeling about the game. As I mentioned, I levelled to 60 in the Plaguelands back in the pre-Burning Crusade days. This was around the time that the original Naxxramas preparation grind was patched into the game, and Light's Hope Chapel was suddenly surrounded by dozens of NPCs from the Argent Dawn and even the Scarlet Crusade. I became very interested in the Argent Dawn and its anti-undead mission; I remember discussing how cool it would be if you could actually join in-game factions in a meaningful way, leading to exclusive quest chains and the like.
That never quite happened, although in a way the Argent Tournament works by unlocking extra daily quests once you've achieved the Crusader title is kind of like a pale shadow of it. Still, I never lost my fondness for the Argent Dawn, so a couple of months ago I went through Stratholme over and over, farming reputation with them, until I finally earned the Argent Champion title (Ascanius and my paladin Concepción have been Crusaders for a long time).
The same day that I earned Loremaster, I looked over my achievements, and realised that I was one heroic Oculus run away from earning five achievements: The Oculus, Heroic: The Oculus, Northrend Dungeonmaster, Northrend Dungeon Hero, and Champion of the Frozen Wastes. Yes, it turned out that I had never even run The Oculus on normal mode, let alone heroic, despite earning all sorts of raid achievements.
I queued myself up, and surprisingly only had to wait about three minutes. As it turned out, I earned six achievements with that single run, because my group also got the Make It Count! speed-run achievement. I did have to endure a comment of "eBay IMO" from one of my group members when I announced at the beginning of the run that I'd never been to the dungeon, given my Icecrown Citadel-10-level gear score.
Finally, after a bout of sickness yesterday, I managed to finish another achievement on my orc shaman this morning:
Yes, Mithridates is now the proud owner and rider of a Venomhide Ravasaur. The twenty-day daily quest process to earn the mount took me about a month, since I kept missing days here and there, but in the end I'm happy to have done it - and, once I inevitably transfer Mithridates to the Alliance and turn him into a dwarf or draenei, he'll have a Wintersaber without having gone through that much more tedious grind. Of course, I expect Blizzard to replace the Wintersaber grind with something much more palatable in Cataclysm, but still.
Future achievements I'm planning to earn are mostly related to raiding. Last night our guild attempted Algalon the Observer for the second time; we didn't really come close to success, but I feel like we'll get it either next time or the time after that. Starcaller Ascanius has a nice ring to it.
Once he's done, we're planning to finish off Glory of the Ulduar Raider; Ascanius only needs I Love The Smell Of Saronite In The Morning and One Light In The Darkness to earn his lovely Rusted Proto-Drake. I actually think it's the best-looking of all the raid reward mounts in the game, so I'm delighted that my preferred raid size matches up with my preferred reward in this instance! Of course, not everyone has earned the same achievements as I have; unfortunately our guild leader wasn't there when we finally earned Firefighter, so getting him that will be painful.
Then, of course, there's the Lich King. I honestly have no sense of how long it will take us to finally knock him down; even once they patch in the final 30% Strength of Wrynn buff, I expect we have a lot of work to do to nail the execution. Still, again, Ascanius the Kingslayer has a nice ring to it too!
I guess I'm fortunate that I have plenty of things left to do in the game. I still haven't been to the Ruby Sanctum, since I didn't raid last week. I'm really looking forward to the Operation: Gnomeregan and Zalazane's Fall events, whenever they become active (and I hope to have Mithridates to level 80 by that time). Then, of course, there's also the actual pre-Cataclysm events, which promise to outdo the excellent zombie plague event that preceded Wrath of the Lich King. I have my alts to work on - Mithridates is at level 74, my gnome warlock Burnadotte is at level 42, and I have my dwarf hunter Sigehelm at level 74 waiting for my wife to feel like playing her human mage again. I even have a dumbass night elf death knight bank alt, Khasemekhwy, if I feel like fucking around with a death knight some more.
Next time I post, I hope to have more to say about the information coming from Cataclysm testers. Let's hope Blizzard pushes some updates for mages or Engineering in the next beta patch!
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