If you still happen to read my blog, or have it in your feed reader gathering dust, I am here to tell you that I haven’t left!

Yes, Light’s Fury is dead.  Save for the occasional paladin mechanics post (I.E. the RET FAQ that I have done whenever paladin mechanics change enough), I feel that Light’s Fury has run its course.  This is not a “I’m coming back” post.

This is actually a post for those of you who enjoyed my off topic writings and musings.

I have created a new blog, and have set up shop there.  It may contain WoW related posts, but it will not be a WoW blog.  Rather, this blog will be a place for me to vent, bitch, muse, write, and do all the million other things that the million other blogs do.  But instead, it will be more awesome.  Because it is mine.

I welcome anyone who ever read, or will read, Lights Fury and enjoyed its off topic posts to venture over and say hello!

implicitrandomness.wordpress.com

See you on the flip side!

During my freshman semester of college I was fortunate enough to take Psychology 101 with one of the most respected professors on my campus.  I don’t know how I actually got into her class – generally it has a waitlist of 50-100 people (I would later find out).  I just happened to be in the right place in the right time, I suppose.  The class was the only class she teaches at night – I had a full time job so I was a 7-1030 PM student.

And I suppose that bears some on this piece of advice I am about to give you too.  Classes at night are a whole different breed than the classes during the day.  Generally, they are filled by the kind of people who WANT to be in class – they are working towards a degree while also holding a full time job, etc…

Anyway, this teacher had a tradition in her class.  You see, people generally don’t approach Psychology with an open mind.  They think shrinks and insane asylums and such (at least that is what she tells us).  They don’t appreciate the finer points of Freud.  Her tradition started with creating a very safe protective environment.  I remember the speech still in my head.  ”We are going to broach some very serious topics in this class.  This class will be a sanctuary from the outside world.  What happens here, stays in here, and what happens there does not come here.  If there is any ridicule of any sort – laughing, teasing, anything whatsoever, you will be escorted from this room and you will fail my class.  No exceptions.  No dropping to avoid the F.  I will publish the failing grade to your transcript no matter what.”

The silence in the room after such a serious statement was palpable.  She went around the room to ask each student what they thought Psychology was.  I was surprised to find that the subject did have a very negative connotation to it.

“Thank you.  Now I am going to teach you what Psychology really is.  I am going to give you an assignment, and then we can all leave early.  This is a very practical assignment, not one out of the book.  I am 40 some years old, and I carry this book..” She held up a very nice leather-bound journal.. “with me everywhere.  It is a diary.  It holds my life in it.  I want you guys to start a diary – or journal for you guys – for at least the duration of my class.  To get started, I want you to write a chronicle of your life.  An autobiography.  I want nothing less than 10 pages..”  She was interrupted by groans around the room, but just raised her voice.  ”This will not be seen by anyone by me.  I will read it, but it will be a complete/not complete assignment.  There will be no A’s or B’s, it is not my place to grade your life.  I will use it to get to know you guys just a little better.   And I bet a pizza party that two things will happen.  Every person who does this assignment will be reduced to tears.  Those that don’t cry, havent done the assignment.”  With that, she left the room, and we left counting our blessings that we got out early.

I started the assignment two days later, and initially laid out a timeline.  I wrote on it, and it only came in at about 2 pages.  I started adding detail, and realized that if I was going to fill 10 pages, I would actually have to go into detail about many, many aspects of my life.  As I wrote, I found myself drawn into the writing, and at a certain point, I don’t know what point it was, but at a certain point I just started writing without thinking about what was coming out, or what was next.  What followed was a 20 page monument to my own life.  the pages were stained with tears, sweat, and the blood of my inner being.

When we met again, the next week, I found out that my story was not unique.  Almost every person who actually completed the assignment had a similar experience.  She called us up one at a time from our seats (it was a typical lecture hall with 70 students, so it took a while).  We were instructed to stand in front of the class and share how it felt to write our assignment.  At first, it was awkward, especially for us guys (lets share our FEELINGS – could you think of something more foreign to a guy?).  But, as more people came up front to turn in their assignment -the size of each assignment astounded me – 20, 30, 40 pages some of them spanned – it got easier.  And each person had a similar story of just letting everything hit the page, for better or worse, and having the sense of an amazing emotional release.

Next week the students all pitched in $10 and we had an amazing pizza party complete with ice cream and sodas for all.

Around the campus, those that had taken her class were easily spotted writing in their own journal whenever they had free time, long after they had even stopped taking her class.

All of the preceding 900 words serve only to point out how powerful a tool writing can be for cleansing one’s soul.  Myself, I have a journal and a story that I have maintained ever since that class.  The journal is a journal.  It is a place where I write to keep things straight in my head, remember things, put them down on paper to get them off my shoulders.

But the story, the story is something different.  The journal is something very practical, very academic.  The story… The story has a life of its own.  Whenever I cannot put something to paper in my journal, whenever I am feeling particularly lost, hurt, sad, happy, confused – whatever – I write in the story.  In many ways the story parallels my life, because that is its purpose – to help me figure out what I am feeling, what I need to do, or whatever.  The characters in it have had a harrowing and exciting time as I have had.  It is not a carbon copy, not even close.  But it does bear the same scars and bruises that I do.

It is no secret to my guildies and close friends that I have had a craptastic few years in my life.  Life threw punch after punch and I was feeling like I couldn’t get my footing.  And about 4 or 5 weeks ago, another blow hit me that knocked me flat on my rear.  So, I dealt with it as best I could, even though I knew I wasn’t really dealing with it.

And then I thought about my story.  So I looked for it.  I looked for it on the hard drive of my old computer, the various flash drives I have lying around the house, and my own external drive.  After searching everywhere I could not find it.  I think that I had it on my old computer when the hard drive crashed.  I had to admit to myself that it was lost.  I cannot tell you how sad I was when I finally searched the last possible place, only to find an empty screen staring back at me.

Yesterday, feeling particularly low, I decided to re-write the story.  So I thought for a while about what I had already written, and where I was going and I started writing.

It became clear to me, very early, that this story was not going to be the same as the last.  Whenever I tried to guide the story, it felt wrong.  The characters that I know and love would practically scream at me, “No!  That’s not what I would do.  This isn’t right!  I can’t do that!”  and I would backspace and stop for a moment.  I would take stock of what I had written in this new story, and after getting only about 2,000 words into the story, backspacing and re-writing at least double that, my will was broken.  I gave in and let the characters guide the story, for better or worse.

What followed was a frantically paced writing session.  I made the mistake of starting the project at lunch, while I was at work.  Thankfully, it was a very slow day, and my only job was pretty much to answer calls.  Oh yes, I had other projects.  But they were all waiting for other people to do their jobs before I could do mine (Oy!  I hate days like that!).  So I sat at my desk and I wrote and wrote and wrote.  I stopped long enough to answer calls, and do a few related tasks, and of course, stopped to go home.  But as soon as I was home I resumed writing – I didn’t even eat dinner.

When I was done I had a story that was different, but familiar.  New characters were added, characters that were previously key to the story dropped to the background, and I had a 20,000 word document that I immediately backed up online.  Most importantly, I had a new chapter added on the end.  A chapter about my recent issues.

Writing that last chapter was, as I expected, quite cathartic.  The story, while not the same, was familiar in many ways to the last 5 weeks of my life.  And when I put the last period on the last sentence of that chapter, it felt as if I had lifted the weight of the world off of my shoulders.  The character now bears the weight, and he did it without me guiding the story at all.

Creative writing – writing to get rid of your sorrows – writing to get your thought onto a page – writing for work – writing for fun – writing for school -it doesn’t matter.  Stop guiding the story.  Let the characters themselves write the story.  Do this, and you will find you will write a more satisfying story than you ever thought possible.  And if they choose to bear the weight of your troubles for you, all the better.

Perhaps this isnt the end.  Perhaps it is the end for the forseeable future.

In any event, I am no longer going to be actively posting on this blog (as if that wasnt painfully obvious).

There are many reasons for it, but the most important one is simply time.  A person really close to me re-introduced me to my love of table top RPG’s (during a games convention), and I have picked it up and started running with it.

WoW is, for the most part, losing influence in my life.  Heck, over the last week, I have spent less than 5 hours on the game.  Raid time only, basically.  Part of it is my new found vigor in my second hobby.  I have also found several games that I want to play, other than wow.

A lot of it, though, is that…  I guess I am saying cataclysm sucked for me.  For me, it feels all too insubstantial.  Where is cataclysm?  BC, and WOTLK both had whole continents to them, and cata has 5 zones.  It feels like cata really didnt happen.  I am (or was) playing my little warrior through all the new zones, but even that didnt really seem like “cataclysm”.  A LOT of it also has to do with the story.  For me, a good story is what makes the game.  Sure, there are pokemon and games of its ilk, where its just really a time waster.  And those are ok.  To an extent.  But, for a big blockbuster game, cataclysm just doesnt seem to hold my attention.  I was with arthas as he rose to power back in WC3, and I was there when I ran my blade through his heart.  Though deathwing is a pretty darned big threat (who isnt, that can tear the world apart?), to me he feels like generic dragon #129587.  He doesnt have a storied history like arthas.  Note to Blizz – a prime target for “posession” is Tirion Fordring.  I would love to see an expac with him getting posessed and ripping through the faction leaders, Bonus points if its crazy ass sylvanus that did it.

I have not cancelled my subscritpion.  And I likely wont, for a long while at least.  But in the times of 1-1.5 hour heroics, endless grinding to get gear, and raids that are….   demanding.   I don’t see myself becoming as hardcore as I was in LK.

I will be putting up a blog for campaign notes for my current RP campaign.  when it is created, and has a few posts fleshed out, ill post the link here.

Till the next time, swing those hammers hard fellow paladins.

But with success also comes failure. Stats are quite frankly boring, and in my opinion, completely broke. We now can share gear with tanks, which somewhat limits our choices for gear and gems. Our AoE is lacking compared to almost every other class.

Even with these problems, ret is still amazingly fun to play, and difficult to master. Welcome to Retribution 4.1.

Part 1 – Stats, Gemming, Reforging, Enchanting

What are my stat rankings?

This is where I was referring to stats being broken. STR is king, more so that even in wrath. So much so that, when determining whether an item is an upgrade, STR determines wether you take it or not. If an item has more STR, take it. You can reforge to move around secondary stats.

Hit (to cap) > STR > Expertise (to cap) > Mastery = Crit > Haste

Don’t you dare pick up anything with agility. Leave that to your hunters.

Notice mastery and crit are equal. Try to balance them out. The big theory crafting think tank that is EJ says that Mastery is marginally better than Crit. But realistically, the difference between mastery and crit is virtually negligible.

Haste used to be king – USED – it is now universally the worst stat. You will be reforging haste in every instance to something else.

What is hit cap?

8%

What is expertise cap?

Technically, expertise cap is 21. But due to glyphing (see the glyph portion), you will only need to get to 11.

What meta gem do I use?

Reverberating Shadowspirit. If you have a cheap helm from lvling and don’t want to invest, you can look at chaotic shadowspirit, and chaotic skyflare. The largest portion of the meta contribution is the 3% increased crit damage. You don’t want to lose that.

What gems do I use?

Bold Inferno, Skillful Ember Topaz, Inscribed Ember Topaz, Etched Demonseye

In all cases, do not ever EVER gem straight hit, or expertise. You will lose too much str to gem for hit.

How do I socket gems?

Bold Inferno. For 99.9999% of sockets you will use only bold. The default position should be socket bold, except in these circumstances:

If your socket bonus (for one socket) is 20 STR then use a hybrid.

If your socket bonus (for one socket) is 30 Mastery or Crit, use a hybrid.

If your socket bonus (for two sockets) is 30 STR, use a Hybrid.

If your socket bonus (for two sockets) is 50 Mastery or Crit, use a Hybrid.

OMG, reforging is confusing! Help!?!?!

If you have any haste, Reforge to the next highest stat allowable, based on stat rankings.

If you have expertise or hit and are above cap, reforge into next highest stat so long as you do not go UNDER cap.

If your item has crit, and mastery, and you are at or above hit and expertise cap, leave it alone.

If you are not at hit cap, reforge away your worst stat (mastery and crit in balanced amounts) into hit. It is more important to be at hit cap than have those secondary stats.

If you are within 1-3 of your expertise cap, DO NOT reforge into expertise.

Simple enough

Almost every single item will be reforged.

You said we could use tank gear – are you insane?

Nope, not insane. Generally tank gear comes with primary stats equal to, or slightly better, to items of similar Ilvl. Where they differ is secondary stats, which you can reforge. Generally they contain 1 DPS stat, and 1 Tank stat, like parry. Simply reforge the tank stat to one of your highest useful stats. This is not as efficient as having a pure DPS piece, however, it is totally acceptable if the gear is just going to be sharded, and it is an upgrade. An upgrade is an upgrade.

What do I enchant on my xxxxx?

Use your stat rankings to determine your best enchants. Unless you have the maelstroms to excess, use the next available enchant.

Avalanche for the “cheap” weapon enchant, Landslide if you are rolling in the cash.

Part 2 – Spec and Glyphs

What Spec Should I use?

This is the accepted standard spec. You can move the points from Long Arm Of The Law around as you like, however, it is generally inadvisable. Remember, the quicker you can move into battle, the more dps time you will have. You have one point that is “your choice”.

What glyphs do I use?

Prime

Seal of Truth – 10 expertise, the single biggest dps gain from a glyph you can take

Templar’s Verdict

Exorcism

Major

Hammer of Wrath

Ascetic Crusader

Your choice

Minor

Your choice

Part 3 – The Rotation, Mechanics, Spells

What are the primary spells I will be using as ret?

Crusader Strike (CS)

Divine Storm (DS)

Inquisition (INQ)

Judgement (J)

Holy Wrath (HW)

Exorcism (Exo)

Consecration (Cons)

Hammer of Wrath (HoW)

Avenging Wrath (AW)

Guardian of Ancient Kings (GK)

Zealotry (Zeal)

Templar’s Verdict (TV)

What are the special combat mechanics of ret paladins?

Ret paladins how have Holy Power, in addition to mana, to manage. This holy power sort of functions like rogue combo points – you build them up in combat using crusader strike (one CS = 1 HP, except in Zealotry phase). This is especially important because many of your primary DPS talents rely on HP to do more damage.

Wow, that is a LOT of spells, how am I ever going to manage that in combat?!?!

I like to group up the spells into three categories – Single Target, AoE, and Cooldowns. They are as follows:

AoE

Consecration

Divine Storm

Holy Wrath

Single Target

Consecration

Holy Wrath

Crusader Strike

Templar’s Verdict

Exorcism

Hammer of Wrath

Cooldowns

Avenging Wrath

Inquisition

Holy Wrath

Guardian of Ancient Kings

What seals do I use?

Seal of Truth if you are going to be on a target for 20 seconds or more. Seal of Righteousness if you are frequently changing targets, or in an AoE situation. Trash basically.

How does my rotation work?

Ret paladins have two separate rotations – one for AoE and one for Single Target (boss fights and such).

AoE

The AoE rotation is simple – use Divine Storm, Consecration, and Holy Wrath as they come off cooldown, filling in with single target as needed. AoE is particularly mana intensive, so make sure you are judging to replentish mana. Also, Divine storm is only superior to Crusader strike if there are 4 targets or more. If there are 4 or fewer, you must switch to single target tactics.

Single Target

The previous incarnations of ret were simply first come, first serve, priority based. That means, you smashed the buttons whenever they came off cooldown, with weight towards the highest dps spell. The new rotation is a priority based filler rotation. The rotation is this:

CS > Filler > Filler > CS > Filler > Filler > CS > TV

The entire point of the ret rotation is to get holy power through Crusader Strike to use Templar’s Verdict. It is the third hardest hitting spell you have.

Filler spells in this rotation is any spell other than CS. This could be Exo, Cons, or any of your cooldown spells, or even a potion. The idea is the only time you are going to miss a crusader strike is if you have a proc that is higher priority. All filler spells should be used based on the highest dps available.

Your CS will come off of cooldown before the GCD of the second filler finishes. Do not take this as incentive to stand and wait, or trim off that second filler. It is universally a DPS loss. Do not try to stack haste to trim this second filler off either, it is simply not feasible, and a massive dps loss to try and do.

I have the basic premise of the rotation down, what are the priorities of the spells?

HoW > Exo (proc only) > TV (3 HP only) > CS > Judge > HW > Cons

Hammer of Wrath is your single biggest dps spell. It hits like a Mack truck, and a large part of that damage is holy, meaning it cannot be mitigated by resistances – it shoots straight through to the target.

Exo is next, but it only ever should be used with an AoW proc. If you cast exo at any time without the proc, it is a dps loss. It loses the DPS gain of AoW, drains your mana, and most importantly, stops and resets your swing timer.

Templar’s Verdict should only be used with three holy power. Using it with any less is a massive dps loss.

Consecration is at the end only because it really is your lowest dps spell, and is only used as a filler when you have NOTHING ELSE you can do. It will use 50% of your mana, but it is SOME dps, rather than none.

I see there is a talent, selfless healer, that allows me to get a DPS increase for using my HP to heal others, thats neat!

Yup, it is. But using selfless healer will ALWAYS, in EVERY CIRCUMSTANCE be a dps loss. The buff is not large enough or long enough to counteract the loss of the TV or Inquisition refresh.

However, when faced with the choice of TV or keeping the tank up through a rough spot, there is an obvious choice.

Mastery procs are quite unpredictable. How do I fit them into my rotation?

Treat mastery procs as a “filler”. Either use it to refresh inquisition, or fit an extra TV in as one of your filler placeholders. If you absolutely must, you can use it for selfless healer, but remember, its ALWAYS a dps loss.

Alright, enough of that. How am I using cooldowns?

Cooldown usage is simple enough.

Inquisition

First off, inquisition should be thought of as a very short duration cooldown that needs to be up as close to 100% as possible. It increases your holy damage for each of your spells. For each point of HP you generate, it lasts 10 seconds. Generally, you should refresh INQ only when you have three holy power. Depending on latency, start anticipating refreshing INQ at about 3 or 4 seconds. Your goal is to clip as little time (meaning refreshing before its expiring) and not let it expire if at all possible. Think of it as The Price Is Right – The closest to the actual time of expiry, without going over. Remember, you can use your mastery procs to refresh it.

Zealotry

Zealotry is a unique little bugger. It makes it so each of your CS generates 3 HP. Effectively, it compresses your rotation to get more TV in. Zealotry requires 3 HP to activate, but does not consume the HP used to activate it. For this reason, Zealotry should always be used in conjunction with INQ to ensure you get maximum dps benefit (i.e. all of your zeal goes to TV rather than losing one to refreshing INQ). Zealotry is usually perfectly timed so that as you lose the effect, the next three HP generated will refresh your INQ with little or no time loss. Zealotry should always be used with Avenging Wrath, as well.

Avenging Wrath

AW increases all damage done by 20%, as well as allows you to use HoW as if the target was below 20%, significantly boosting your dps. AW should always be used with Zealotry, and since they have the same cooldown timer, they will always be ready together.

Guardian of Ancient Kings

GoAK is an awesome looking pally/knight/angel that will come out and fight for you when you activate it. Each of your strikes that land during the duration will increase your STR by 1% for a maximum of 20%. Once it expires, it does a minimal amount of dps.

You can use GoAK in one of two ways.

The official stance from EJ on the subject is that you use GoAK exactly 10 seconds before you pop Zeal, Inq, and AW. This will give you the maximum strength benefit to your other cooldowns.

Now for reality.

For us mere mortals, in my opinion, it is better for us to separate GoAK into a second cooldown phase. Phase 1 being Zeal, INQ, and AW. Phase two being GoAK, Trink, Pot (if appropriate).

Why? Two reasons.

First, fights are extremely mobile in Cata, and rarely will you ever have a solid 45 seconds of stand and burn time, leading to loss in usefulness of your cooldowns, penalizing your dps.

Second, and most importantly – threat. Popping everything you have like EJ suggests introduces a MASSIVE dps spike. In some cases as much as double your normal dps. It’s not hard to rip aggro off of your tank during this phase. And remember, even if you are doing awesome dps, a dead DPS does no DPS. Splitting them up allows you to smooth that spike out, and manage aggro much easier. And let you live. To swing your hammer. And do DPS. You get what I mean.

Overall, using this method, I have found that my DPS is much more even and threat is less of an issue for my tanks.

Part 4 – General Suggestions, and Questions!

Find a way to track your buffs, including holy power, in a way that works for you!

Holy power, especially, is so important to your dps, that not tracking it in a way that you can manage is DPS suicide. There are a ton of addons out there that can do it, but I myself prefer Power Auras Classic. It allows me to track not just holy power, but duration left on inquisition as well as other things.

Remember, this is only a guide to get you started.

As with anything, people are different and do things in different ways. This sheet will work for 95% of all you rets. But for some of you, because of latency or setup, or whatever, will make this less than optimal. The only thing that matters is that the boss is down and you have done your part. Being at the top of the DPS meters is just that much sweeter If this isn’t working for you, adapt to maximize your own personal play style!

Did I miss anything?

Ask me in the comments.

WTB more time, that does not slip through my hands like water!

Anyway, its been a good month.  I have gotten into heroics and raids.  Haven’t tried a single attempt at the new ZG raid.  And I am still not a permanent member of a raid group, but rather a fill in.  And for now, I am ok with that.  I have, however, been there with my guild for the first downs of the raid bosses we have defeated, so im good.

But I cannot, for the life of me, seem to find the time to do 7 heroics each week.  So lacking in the VP department.

I’ve ventured into arena, and pretty much had my rear handed to me.  That was to be expected tho, I am still only in crafted gear.

It does seem to me that heroics…  heroics are a bit punishing, maybe a little bit too punishing.  I dont know, I did just one heroic in BC, and of course, a ton of heroics in wrath.  I know blizz is trying to make heroics more ‘heroic’, but it seems like there should be some middle ground there.  Coming from an era where blizz’s sole goal was to make the entire game more accessable, then just locking everything down so tight, it seems counter intuative.  I can tell you that *I* personally know 5 people who cancelled their accounts because, and I will use their words exactly, “I’m tired of telling my friends, sorry, I am not good enough, or sorry, you are not good enough, to play with me.”  That is just bad juju.

I got linked by wowinsider!  Woo hoo!

Dammed chaos orbs hate me…   They just LEAP into other people’s hands.

I leveled my priest and shammy, with my DK coming close behind.  I like healing on both.  But it just seems like priests are still not fixed.  I have every piece of gear so heavily laden with spirit, AND spirit pots, and it just seems like I have to use every single trick in my book to have *just* enough mana to end the encounter.  My shammy, she has mana for days.  Something smells broken, out of whack, to me.

I currently have more money than I have ever had in the history of wow.  AND stock for days.  I have diversified quite nicely, tho I still cannot seem to get a foothold in the glyph market.  That is rather frustrating.  Glyphers are more cutthroat than JCers, if thats possible!

L2Ret 4.1 edition coming, I promise.  I havent forgotten about you, mr. blog!

In today’s inaugural post, in addition to laying out the rules, he decided to touch on tanking and the stats thy use. Specifically, he focuses on this thoughts on bringing hit and expertise back to an attractive stat for tanks.

My first reaction to his post is this: tanks pay attention to stats?

Now wait. Don’t stone me. Yes, I know we all pay attention to stats. Let me explain a little about what I mean.

Way back before I ever rolled my tank and started playing him at any competent lvl, I had only Fire, and his awesome dps-ness (new word, woot!). I was raiding Ulduar, and my group was heading back to Hodir in that god awful frozen cavern with the bazillion worm spawn points. Someone brought up that they would hate to ever tank, that it would be too stressful. To which our tanks laughed and said that it was, in actuality, pretty damn boring. That got me to thinking, what does a tank really even do?

A tank, as GC points out, has two major jobs. Threat and survivability. In other words, a tank has to take the punches and keep the mobs pissed off enough at him that they won’t decide to slug out your healer or one of your dps. Yes, the tanks other job is to appropriately position mobs and obey the mechanics of the fight, but no amount of expertise or dodge is going to help with that. That is the human element that makes the game so compelling. Since these concepts are wholly different, let me tackle them separately.

The Case Of The Inadequate UI

Blizz has a major problem with tanks.  Actually, it’s not so much with tanks themselves, but rather the Tank UI.  The simple fact of the matter is that the UI is really built from a DPS point of view.  It gives very little Tank feedback.

You see, when I am DPSing, (sorry blizz, no matter how badly you want me to adopt “Damage Dealing”, It just does not work) there is a TON of information flying at me.  Whether I am hitting or not, what my general threat status is, how much I am hitting, how much more damage I have to do to kill a mob, when that mob is going to cast something I need to interrupt, how much life I have left, etc…  I can refine that even more with addons that tailor this to my specific needs.

How much of that information is useful to a tank?  The only real thing that tanks need to have there is their health status – whether they are going to die soon or not.  Everything else is borderline completely useless.  Yes, even general threat status.  How important is it to know that you have aggro?  Pretty dang important.  But that you can tell just by looking at the mob, because it beats on you.  But the general threat status does not tell you who is coming up close to ripping off your mob, and how close that is to happening.  It only tells you that the mob hates you enough to be smacking you in the face.

As an extension to the pervious statement, when managing threat, the damage portion of the UI only matters because a tank needs to do damage to piss the mob off.  How much threat does 8,365 damage generate?  Approximately 3x that, right?  OK, great.  What does that mean?  Does that mean that I need to hit a mob for 2k more damage to move them from the green shade of general threat, to yellow?  How much do I need to damage them to keep them from ripping off of me and going to my lock and one shotting him? Where is that line?  The answer is this:  The default UI does not compensate for this.

Oh yes, this information can be obtained.  Omen is a great tool that everyone should use.  But even Omen has its limits.  If you pick up a pack of 3 baddies, omen will tell you the threat status of only your currently targeted mob.  You have to tab around, wasting precious time, to find out which one needs to be smacked in the back of the head most.  Threat plates are the best solution to this, that I have seen.

Let’s get back to the stats, though, because that is the focus of GC’s article.  Let me ask this – How much threat would 125 hit rating net you?  Well, in order to obtain this information, you would have to do a whole crapton of math – Translate rating to %, then figure out how much more you would hit than miss without this stat, then figure out what strikes hit effects, and how often you use them, then translate that over to damage, and back to threat based on that damage.  *whew*

DPS, if they wanted to know exactly what Damage that Hit net them, they would have to go through a similar process, but hit is so fundamental to DPS that it is a moot point – you always make sure you are at hit cap, otherwise you are losing a significant amount of damage to misses.  DPS does not think twice about hit because they know they HAVE to be at cap.  Plus, DPS does not have a need to know how much threat a specific stat would generate.  Because tanks have different strikes that do not use hit tables (taunt anyone?), tanks don’t always need hit, nor do they have such an ingrained need to be at the cap.

Also is the always present question – Do I even need to increase my threat, as opposed to survivability?

Are You Really Dying, Or Just Faking It?

Let me ask you the single most fundamental question in tanking – Are you going to die?

Threat can be dealt with – Lower the DPS output, give time to get threat and build it up a bit, etc.  But, being one shot, there is nothing we can do about that.

Let’s play some mind games here.  Lets say that you are in a normal group – A healer, three dps, and a tank.  How do you know you have enough survivability?  When you die?  That’s what the healer is for.  The healer is supposed to keep you up.  Is the healer not up to par?  How do you know?

OK, let’s remove the healer.  Can your DPS heal you?  Should the DPS be able to heal you?

Survivability has to be the single most nebulous concept – everyone knows it, but no one can really quantify it.  Survivability is so essential to the game – you have to be alive to play, yet because so many factors are involved, there is no hard and fast “This is what you need to have” guideline.  And without that guideline, without that threat of dying or putting massive stress on your healer – why should you take 125 block over 1250 armor?

Survivability is not a binary stat.  By that I mean, it is not “you survive or you don’t.” I know, that seems a bit counter intuitive, right?  But surviving an encounter is more like “you survive with the help of a stressed out healer, and dps that were doing some healing, or you don’t.” The simple fact of the matter is that in almost all circumstances, having a better geared, and more skilled healer is more important than you squabbling over 1% dodge or .5% hit – In the long run, the healer has to be able to compensate for the RNG and differences in tanking style, more than you having 1% less survivability than threat.  Being an undergeared tank can be compensated for.  But being an overgeared tank with an undergeared healer is not going to help you much.

Ok, I Lied

Stats do matter.  They matter as a game mechanic – you need to block, dodge, and have armor to be able to survive the incoming hits.  You must have strength and hit and expertise to generate enough threat to keep the mobs stuck to you.  But in the big scheme of things, the stats are really only present on gear to function as progression – I know X piece of gear is better than the other, because it has .5% more dodge on it.

But as a function of being an interesting mechanic for tanks – There needs to be a better measure, and a much improved UI to boot, than just “we got through this encounter.”  That puts too much of the responsibility on your healer and your dps (either for backup healing or dialing back their dps to compensate for threat).  There needs to be a finer line in threat and a finer line in survivability for stats to really matter.

Image courtesy core77.com

The real post will be up after a bit.

Image Courtesy Businessinsider.com

This, of course, is the most logical response.  Currency, as I stated in my last Gold Cap post, is a way of universalizing your trading power.  Someone who has 100G has more trading power than someone who has 75g.  They can acquire more goods, and goods of higher value, then refine/remake/etc.. them, and sell them back.  It doesn’t matter what those goods, or services, are – those goods and services can only amount to no more than 100g. But do those goods and services really have a value of 100g?  And why does this really matter?

The answer is, value and currency are inexorably linked because of the nature of modern economy (and even more pronounced in WoW, with only one currency), but they are completely different, and have an effect on how you buy and sell.

Let’s take a step back for a second.  What is “value”?  Simply stated, value is how much something is “worth.”  That is  a tricky word, “worth.”  Worth is, in almost all circumstances, directly translated into currency.  But even currencies have different values.  I know that if I go to Sweeden, I have to change my USD over to the Sweedish Krona.  As of the time of writing, there are approximately 6.33 Kroner (I think that is the proper plural to Krona – correct me if I am wrong!) to 1 USD.  Each currency has its own conversion rate, which is derived from “buying power” – how much can one of my units of currency buy, as opposed to another currency.  A very good demonstration of this is the Big Mac Index.  The BMI (HA, couldn’t help but make that reference!) is an informal, but still very informational publication.  It compares how much of each currency around the globe is required to purchase a Big Mac, and thus, it can track all sorts of economic indices, including inflation, and value.

Alright, so I have driven the concept of value home – Value is what something is “worth.”  How does that affect you in-game?

Let’s do a thought experiment.  I am currently making Darkmoon cards though my shammy’s inscription, so I can sell for insane profits.  Let’s say I spend a grand total of 1000g to make a Hurricane Deck (HA, Funny!).  Without any research, any trade chat, any AH inspection, how do I value the deck?  At face value, saying that I made no duplicates, had no additional expenses, my cost would be (time cost + gold cost).  In short, T+G. To keep this thought experiment simple, let’s negate T.  If we include the time factor, we get into all sorts of sticky concepts like opportunity cost, that I don’t want to muck around in just yet.

So, my value is G+1g – because I want to make a profit, right?

So I turn on trade chat for the first time, and advertise “WTS Darkmoon Card:  Hurricane, 1001g, PST.”    I immediately get 300 whispers.

In this thought experiment, I have undervalued my product.  On the AH, even after a strong bout of undercutting, the deck is valued around 14000g.  It is a really decent trinket, and worth much more than 1001g.

Let’s say I have a guildie who is a herbalist.  Instead of selling it, I offer to trade herbs for the card, rather than selling it.  He passes me 6 stacks of Whiptail.  Is this a good trade?

Well, let me do a bit of research.  I check the AH.  Whiptail has recently skyrocketed, so that 6 stacks of it is worth 1500 g.  A bigger profit than I was asking for.  But it leaves me in a sticky situation.  I cannot use those herbs to make another darkmoon deck.  There are not enough, and it does not account for the Volatiles needed to produce them.  Is this a good trade?  Yes, because I can sell the herbs off, and bide my time to produce another deck.

Let’s take another though experiment.  I am a JC.  I need ore.  On my fictional server, ore is volatile.  The amount, and cost of the ore, can vary wildly even in a single hour.

Let’s say that there is a new batch of ore posted.  It is only ten stacks.  The price is on the lower side, 50g, and I have 300 stacks in my bank, as well as at least 4 stacks of each type of gem, waiting to be cut.  Do I buy it?  Some would, I wouldn’t.  The value of the ore is not enough to justify the capital loss of 500g when I have so many gems already in my bank.

Let’s change the scenario – There is only 5 stacks of ore on the AH, and there has been a general ore shortage for several weeks.  The ore is 90G a stack.  But, I don’t have any ore in my bank, I sold all but a very small handful of gems, and I need to do the JC daily.  There are no gems for the JC daily on the AH because of the massive ore shortage, so I can’t buy the gems directly.  Do I buy the ore?  The answer, almost assuredly, is yes.  The JC daily is too valuable to pass up, and the ore is sparse to begin with. The value of the ore is much greater in this situation than it is any other situation.

Let’s take this value concept and translate it into the glyph business.  Glyphs are relatively cheap to produce – The mats cost for most glyphs on my server are about 12g.  Most glyphs are posted at 40-60g, and the crafters make money hand over fist.  IF they sell the glyph.  There is intense competition in this market (this is actually why I left the glyph making business), housing no less than at least 15-20 heavy competitors.

But recently, there has been a “waller.”  If you are not familiar with the term of glyph walling, a glyph wall is someone who posts a TON of glyphs at a REALLY low price – usually just enough to barely squeak out a profit – in this case the waller has been posting the glyphs they have been getting at around 12.7g.  It is difficult for anyone to post under his price because they will, unless they farm herbs for hours themselves, not make a profit.  Why does this person post things that are so much more valuable than what he gets?

Because the value of “walling” is that it forces competition out of the market.  He is slowly making people leave the glyph market, and he is making a profit while he does it.  Eventually, when a lot of people have left, he can raise the price on glyphs almost unhindered, to make a more reasonable profit.

So, the next time you are venturing into new territory, the next time you look at how much ore costs, the next time you want to understand why a person is selling something so cheaply – remember how value effects your decision.

Next time we will expand on value, and how value translates to time.

And also, a ton of class balancing changes have been implemented. This is the way patches always have been, and will be for a long time. They change the game, not only in content, but in mechanics as well.

But a change buried under the DK list really has me irritated.

I Am A Gamer, I Like Shiny Things

I strongly identify myself as a gamer. I have shelves and shelves of games to which I dare not even try to guess how many hours I spent burning the midnight oil. I have my wow toons, which collectively account for just over 2/3 of a year /played. I have games that I cannot wait to play, just waiting for developers to RELEASE THE DAMMED THINGS.

And what do all of these games have in common? New, unique (for the most part) gaming experiences. And they are marketed as such. That is how one RTS separates itself from another, one MMO from another, one shooter from… Well, you get the point. Otherwise we’d all be playing the same thing, right?

Then There Was Second String

WoW, it is almost universally accepted (though to be fair, never confirmed by Blizzard), brought in the “alternate” team of developers during the Wrath era. Many things were changed for the better. Consolidation of buffs, easier access to raiding, greater communication from the development team. So many that it is far too great to list here. And it was successful! Wow enjoyed the largest subscription it has ever had during the Wrath era.

But during this era of change in our beloved games, many things were lost. Buffs were shared by many classes, gear acquisition was a bit easy, difficulty was maybe undertuned… I am sure we can all think of things that we would change.

And then enters Cataclysm taking this design and driving it even further home.

Clone Me!

A while back I wrote a post (it was during T10, right as gear started flooding the game) which asked players to stand in Dalaran and take a gander at other toons. If you can remember the picture in your mind, you will remember how similar everyone looked. Yes, they, overall, looked better than the rainbow clowns of the BC era. But, you couldn’t pick individuals out of the crowd anymore.

Also at the beginning of wrath, they removed profession specializations. No more Tribal Leatherworkers, or Armorsmith Blacksmiths, etc. Once you learned a profession, everyone who had that profession could get your items. No more gallivanting around with your Stormherald as a sign of your e-peen.

And now, with the patch of 4.1 they are going to be removing one of the most unique spells in the game – DK’s Raise Ally.

Oh, it was comical to use. If a raid member died, your DK could go over and rip the bones from their body and make a ghoul. Which would promptly run around in circles or explode because the person behind it would rarely ever know how to work it.

And perhaps that is why it is being removed. Pruning talents/skills that have little use, or get used very little is certainly in keeping with the goal of cataclysm. I know as a tank I rarely ever had the chance to use it – I had to be in range of the dead body, select the raid member, and then click the button. It was a pain, and difficult to pull off as a tank. But as a dps? I always used it as DPS.

They are replacing it with… Raise Ally, Battle Rez edition. Yup, it’s just becoming a battle rez.

…

I could write a novel on why it is silly for a DK that is DEAD to raise another player back to LIFE – but that is for another time.

Right now, I just have to sit back and look at the repeating patterns in Cata. SW looks like an army of clones again. Ret Paladins play like Rogues. Professions don’t add anything to the game other than the small perks you get from them. Unique spells are being replaced with boring (if necessary) spells that are already in-game.

How far is blizz going to drive home that we are all just clones of one another?

In the past 4 months that I have eschewed all things blogging, I have avoided all contact with my blogroll.  Google reader has been spamming me with alerts that I would shove off into a folder marked “later.”  When I finally decided to come back to the keyboard, and looked at my reader I had well over 500 posts that I stared at like mount everest looming over me.  After making an honest attempt at reading them all (I got down to about 425), I realized this was a venture that was never going to come to fruition.  As fast as I could read them, you guys could produce them.  Admitting defeat, my cursor loomed over the “mark all as read” button.  How many great topics would I miss?  How many sad goodbyes, how many hearty hello’s, how many conflicts, disagreements, how many celebrations was I going to miss?

Needless to say, I hesitated.

If its one thing that us bloggers are addicted to, its conversation.  Disagreements, agreements, tangents, it doesn’t matter.  Verbose, eloquent, simple, straight to the point, it doesn’t matter.  We soak it up.  And that is true for me as well.

So, I headed off to a few other blogs, wanting to soak in some more before saying goodbye to it all.  I found and read Tamarind’s goodbye post from Righteous Orbs (I stand by my statement, Tam, that you are welcome to guest post here as often as you’d like!), Amber’s post on Frostheim’s antics, Typhoon Andrew’s laugh at a gold beggar….   The list goes on forever.  I was a bit melancholy over how much I have missed, and what I have to say about it.

And I thought back to the big Sexism debate of ’10 and now so many bloggers were involved.  And I realized that these connections, these conversations happen all the time.  Most times on a smaller scale.  A few bloggers will go back and forth, on a topic before it dies down.  Sometimes it gets picked up by more than just a few bloggers, and it explodes into a whole event/ordeal.

And then I navigate over to Larisa’s site, and notice that (as is appropriate), I fell off her blogroll.  She has a rule that you must post on a certain schedule, and be something that she reads, to remain on her blogroll – neither of which I was meeting.  While I was there I read one of Tam’s recent guest posts, where, among other things, he touched on blog size.  And I can’t help but look at my own, rather deflated readership numbers, and think – Are my ideas getting out there? Are my ideas good enough to break through a barrier of readership, if there is one?  Will my ideas, opinions, ever reach across the Blog-O-Sphere in the nets of other’s blog readers? Does it even matter?

If I only have 1 reader, is it worth blogging?

How do you define a “successful” blog?

These are questions that each blogger has to answer for her/himself.

Surely if there is such a thing as a “spectrum of being a dick” that tam has thoroughly convinced me there is, in his more than 4,000 word treatsie on the subject, there is a spectrum of success as well.

One thing I do know is that as I was perusing Larisa’s archives, rather than my reader, it reminded me of how fun it is to read through someone else’s musings, and see how the conversation flows through the Blog-O-Sphere.  How fun it is to see other ideas, opinions, that I had myslef and didn’t take the time to write.  And it gives me the itch to write.

I may not be as connected as I once was.  But I am glad I am back.