Patch 4.0.1

I haven't posted for longer than I expected, what with the many changes that talents have undergone on both the beta servers and the patch test realm, but now that Patch 4.0.1 has arrived and I've spent some time on Ascanius, I feel qualified to write a little about it.

Provisional!

I'm fairly happy, overall. The new Fire tree is significantly improved from the version about which I wrote in my last post on the subject. Impact is even a useful talent in PvE, now! For the first time in my World of Warcraft career, Ascanius actually has two talent specs - one with Burning Soul, Cauterise, and Molten Fury for single-target fights, the other with Improved Fire Blast, Impact, and Improved Flamestrike for multiple-target encounters.

I enjoy the new Combustion mechanic, too - it's a straightforward and accessible way to improve your performance when you're on a boss long enough to make sure all of your damage-over-time effects are up at once. It's also nice that the Scorch debuff can be refreshed by Pyroblast - and I can't tell you how enjoyable zero-mana Scorches while moving has been!

It's a little disappointing that clipping Living Bomb removes the explosion effect, but I can actually imagine encounters in Cataclysm where we might not want the area-of-effect damage spreading out from the boss. The more frustrating aspect of Living Bomb is the new three-target limit, especially as it pertains to the DoT-spreading aspects of Impact (or just to slipshod tab-targeting on my part!).

I'm enjoying the new built-in "Power Auras" system, although the glowing on-screen graphics make me even more anal-retentive about using my Hot Streak procs than I already was. In some ways, though, it's a shame that I never got to experience what it was like getting Arcane Missiles or Pyroblast procs as I levelled - luckily, I do intend to create a goblin mage in Cataclysm on another server.

I will likely have more to say in the future, but I'll knock out a few more points before I go:

• Although it smacks of homogenisation, I do like that Engineering tinkers have lost their enchant-like secondary effects and can now be applied to gear along with regular Enchanting effects.
• I haven't been raiding very much in Icecrown Citadel, but I did go in after the patch and came out with heroic Ether-Soaked Bracers and heroic Frost Needle. The sword was good enough to make switching from my Mag'hari Chieftain's Staff worthwhile right away, but I had no off-hand item better than the Inscription-created Rituals of the New Moon - until only my second run through heroic Halls of Reflection, when I was lucky enough to get Shriveled Heart. I also managed to earn my third piece of Tier 10 gear this morning after defeating the Headless Horseman.
  
• This week many of us finally earned our Glory of the Ulduar Raider achievement, even though the Rusted Proto-Drake no longer automatically awards you with the Master Flying skill for 310% speed. Still, it's a great mount and I'm glad to have it. Hopefully we can get most of the rest of the raid their achievements this coming week.
• I really like the fact that all mounts scale with Riding skill now. Ascanius is currently zooming around Dalaran and the old world on the same Chestnut Mare that was his first-ever mount back at level 40 in 2005, bought for what seemed like a fortune in gold at the time.
  
• My alts are more or less static; I have respecced and fixed up their action bars, but the only one I'm really doing anything with is my Retribution paladin. I actually took her to kill XT-002 Deconstructor for the weekly raid quest last night, and was lucky enough to get Ironsoul from Flame Leviathan on the way. Concepción had previously been carrying the ilevel 200 sword that you can buy at the Argent Tournament, so this was a fun upgrade.

Next time, I expect I'll have some more to say about raiding - we still haven't killed Halion, and we're doing surprisingly well in heroic Icecrown Citadel - and, of course, about what we learn at BlizzCon 2010 this weekend!

The Story of World of Warcraft

So talents are for another time. I'm going to take a stab at something else (credit goes to the hosts of the WoW Insider Show from WoW.com for the notion): summarising the story of the original World of Warcraft up until the release of The Burning Crusade.

Convoluted!

The story of the game is largely expressed in the broad strokes of the end-game dungeons and raid instances, so that's what I'll use as the basis for my summary.

WoW launched with two 40-player raid instances: Onyxia's Lair and Molten Core. The titular Onyxia was a malicious black dragon, daughter of the corrupted Dragon Aspect Deathwing (originally Neltharion, the Earth-Warder). The storyline that led players to confront her in her lair in Dustwallow Marsh involved her having posed as a noblewoman in the kingdom of Stormwind (a trick her father had used before), using magic and guile to distract and corrupt the nobility and the regent, Bolvar Fordragon. In the current canon of the game, however, Onyxia was slain by Stormwind's king, Varian Wrynn, upon his return from captivity.

Molten Core has a more involved history, but one with interesting links to the black dragons. Three centuries before the game began, there was a civil war between the three branches of the dwarven race. Thaurissan, leader of the Dark Iron dwarves, sought to summon a powerful fire elemental in order to destroy the forces of the Bronzebeard and Wildhammer clans; instead he accidentally released Ragnaros the Firelord, master of all fire elementals, from his captivity within the earth. Ragnaros destroyed the capital of the Dark Irons and caused the eruption of a mighty volcano now called Blackrock Mountain. Beneath the volcano, Ragnaros and his minions occupy the Molten Core, and the Dark Iron dwarves are largely loyal servants of the Firelord. In the canon of the game, Ragnaros was defeated and thrust back to the Elemental Plane.

There's one obvious connection between Ragnaros and the Black Dragonflight, but before we come to it, there are others. Before he was corrupted, Neltharion was appointed by the Titans who created Azeroth as Earth-Warder: given dominion over the element of earth and the deep places of the world. Which race is most associated with earth and the depths? Dwarves, of course, who literally descend from the Earthen race originally created as servants by the Titans.

Who corrupted the Earthen with the "Curse of Flesh" to create the dwarves in the first place? The Old Gods. Who corrupted Neltharion the Earth-Warder and caused him to become Deathwing? The Old Gods. Who were the original masters of the armies of wind, tides, stone, and fire - this last led by Ragnaros the Firelord? The Old Gods. The hand of the Old Gods - C'thun, Yogg-Saron, and others yet unnamed - has been behind a great many of the evils which have plagued Azeroth right down to the modern day.

The obvious connection between black dragons and Ragnaros is related to the next 40-player raid instance introduced to the game, in patch 1.6: Blackwing Lair. Blackrock Mountain isn't just the lair of Ragnaros and his Dark Iron servants; its upper reaches, in the Lower and Upper Blackrock Spire dungeons and the Blackwing Lair raid, are controlled by the forces of Deathwing's son Nefarian and his servants, the Blackrock clan of orcs and ogres. Nefarian struggled with Ragnaros for control of the entire volcano, and also presented a threat to the Horde through his alliance with Rend Blackhand and his "Dark Horde". Canonically, Varok Saurfang was responsible or at least involved in the final defeat of Nefarian.

After the struggle against Onyxia, Ragnaros, and Nefarian occupied the attention of both Horde and Alliance heroes, new threats began to make themselves known in patch 1.7. In the jungles of Stranglethorn Vale, the troll god Hakkar the Soulflayer arose in the ruined city of Zul'Gurub, former capital of the Gurubashi troll empire. Zul'Gurub became a 20-player raid instance, as the Zandalar tribe of trolls sponsored the efforts of heroes to invade the city and defeat Hakkar along with the troll priests who had attempted to stop his rise but found themselves enslaved to his will.

The threat of Hakkar was soon eclipsed by a more serious danger stirring in the sands of Silithus and other locations in southern Kalimdor: the ancient qiraji, masters of the insectoid silithids already known to infest the region. Patch 1.8 introduced the efforts by the druids of the Cenarion Circle to investigate the phenomenon; patch 1.9 saw the Gates of Ahn'Quiraj open and provide access to the 20-player Ruins of Ahn'Quiraj and the 40-player Temple of Ahn'Quiraj raids.

It all comes back to the Old Gods. Hakkar the Soulflayer is also called the Blood God, and his strange power might be connected in some way to the Old Gods. The qiraji once sealed in Ahn'Qiraj were created by and still serve the Old God C'thun, who dwells at the bottom of the Temple. The influence of the Old Gods didn't end with the defeat of C'thun, although their involvement in the final 40-player raid instance of the original game is a little harder to tease out.

This final instance, Naxxramas, is most directly connected to the storyline of Warcraft III, especially its expansion pack The Frozen Throne. The demonic Burning Legion desired to invade and destroy Azeroth; to this end, they empowered the spirit of a corrupted orc shaman, Ner'zhul, as the Lich King, and commanded him to raise an undead army called the Scourge to assist in the conquest. Ner'zhul, ruling the Scourge from his Frozen Throne on the continent of Northrend, desired his freedom and conquest of Azeroth for himself, however, so he sought the corruption of the human prince Arthas Menethil of Lordaeron (who had, ironically, fallen into fanaticism as he sought to eradicate the Scourge) and turned him into a tool for taking ultimate control of the Scourge away from the Burning Legion. This was finally accomplished when Arthas merged with the Lich King, the two becoming one entity.

Prior to this, however, Arthas had been essentially a general of the Scourge, loyal to the Lich King. One of his closest allies was the lich Kel'Thuzad, who had been one of the architects of the very plague which had turned Arthas's people into Scourge. Kel'Thuzad's fortress was the floating necropolis of Naxxramas, which invaded the Eastern Kingdoms of Azeroth in patch 1.10 and occupied the skies above the Plaguelands - the former lands of Lordaeron.

So where do the Old Gods come in? Among the forces of the Lich King to be found in Naxxramas were undead members of an insectoid race, called nerubians; these nerubians are an offshoot of the same original race that gave rise to the qiraji of southern Kalimdor. The nerubians had an empire in Northrend that attempted to resist the power of the Lich King, but eventually fell as he raised their fallen against him.

Not only were the nerubians themselves descendants of a race created by the Old God C'thun, new developments in Wrath of the Lich King would reveal that their empire in Northrend was destroyed not only by the fight with the Lich King but by their uncovering the Faceless Ones as they dug deeper into the earth in retreat from the Scourge. Who are the Faceless Ones? The ancient servants of Yogg-Saron, the Old God of death, of course.

It's clear that the influence of the Old Gods is behind much of the threats facing Azeroth in the original World of Warcraft. It's interesting to contemplate how this changed quite radically in the first expansion.

Raiding Achievements

In the past week, I've achieved two of the goals I had remaining for myself in Wrath of the Lich King.

Success!

Last Thursday, Free Company finally defeated the Lich King after two months of weekly attempts. I'll quote what Andrew, our raid leader, posted on our guild forums about it:

We first faced the LK on the third of June
We killed him on the fifth of August
I have logs from seven days worth of attempts
We killed the LK on our 76th attempt
According to GuildOx we are the 56th guild on our server to kill him
GuildOx claims that only 36.61% of the guilds in the world have done that
Using their 10 man casual ranking we are ranked as the 15th best guild on the server

It's a good feeling to finally be able to call myself Ascanius the Kingslayer. It's also funny to note, as Kate did, that our other tank - Lexa's gnome warrior - was carrying the ilevel 200 Titansteel Shield Wall when we killed the Lich King.

We didn't stop there, though! On Monday night, we ventured back in to Ulduar, and look what happened:


Yes, we finally defeated Algalon the Observer. The amusing thing about this attempt was that Ian came along - the first time he'd ever faced Algalon at all - and we succeeded on our third attempt of the night. He commented afterward that he didn't really feel like he'd earned it!

This leaves me with, really, only one more raiding achievement that I'd like to earn before Cataclysm: Glory of the Ulduar Raider and its Rusted Proto-Drake reward. Fortunately for me, Ascanius only needs two more achievements in order to attain that: I Love The Smell of Saronite in the Morning and One Light in the Darkness. Unfortunately, plenty of other people still need much more difficult achievements like Firefighter, but I don't mind helping them get there.

My next post will probably address beta talents for Fire mages again, now that we've had some time with the redesign.

Add-Ons

Although I enjoy raiding, there is definitely one word that neatly describes my attitude towards add-ons used for raiding or any other purpose.

Minimalist!

The list of add-ons I use is really quite short. Let's start with those unrelated to raiding. I use BankItems to keep track of what I have stored in the bank and bags of all my characters - with four 80s and another two in their 70s, this saves me a lot of time switching between characters. I also use GatherMate to keep a record of gathering nodes like herbs and ore.

Really, that's it. I don't use Auctioneer because I rarely use the auction house - what my characters gather and craft is for their own use or the guild's use, and I prefer to make money through daily quests when I need cash. I've never used a quest add-on like Quest Helper, although while I was earning my Loremaster title I did use EveryQuest to keep track of what I had and hadn't done. I don't use any map mods.

Raiding add-ons, I keep very simple. I use Quartz because I raid on my mage and a lag-sensitive cast bar is very useful. I use DeadlyBossMods for alerts and timers. I use Omen for a threat meter. I have Decursive for the rare occasions when it's necessary.

I don't have any kind of action bar mod. I don't have any kind of damage meter. I don't use anything besides the default raid frames (although I am cognizant that this is purely and simply because I have the luxury not to use them, since I raid as DPS). I don't even use something like PowerAuras (although I have tried it out) to alert me to Hot Streak procs, since between the sound, the visual around my mage, and the flashing icon on my list of buffs, I never miss one.

So that's me. I raid pretty light on add-ons; I only use a couple of macros, too, and most of them are just adding /cancelaura to Ice Block so I can hit the same key to come out of it (I do the same for Blink so I can use it in situations where I need to de-Ice Block and Blink immediately), or /stopcasting to Counterspell for when that's necessary.

On the other hand, you should see the tweaked UI that Lexa uses . . .

Beta Talents for Fire Mages

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.

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.

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.