Back on Track

With Storm Peaks done, it was time to move to the other endgame zone: Icecrown. I have only completed a few dozen of the 140+ quests in the zone, and it seems that Blizzard did spare the best for the last.

Icecrown is the first zone where phasing was built-in all the way. The main plotline starts with the Argent Crusade camp, which is being sieged by the Scourge. If you listen to Tirion Fordring's and the Ebon Watcher's dialogue, the Ebon Watcher correctly observes that the Lich King is using Tirion Fordring's morals against him by using captured Argent troops as meatshields. Fordring, being unwilling to kill his own troops, won't use artillery to break the siege. And that's where you come in. After you free the said meatshields (who, being paladins, buff and heal you), you get to the next phase, where the battlefield has been cleared of friendly troops and thus you're free to use the artillery. After  you've mopped up the rest of the Scourge, there is an another phase transition and the former battlefield quiets down. Soon afterwards you'll get a quest to start the next offensive to secure the next foothold. When you complete the quest, you gain access to a brand-new quest hub that wasn't on the map before. While seeing a full-size tower appear during the ten seconds it takes to return the quest is a bit funny, it's better than the alternative.

The Ebon Blade also gains a base with phasing. The deathknight on board the Horde airship , the Orgrim's Hammer, gives you a quest to contact an undercover death knight. The agent then instructs you to defeat and recruit a geist, a banshee and an abdomination from the Scourge outpost. Those three then help you fight an elite deathknight within the outpost. When you win, the Ebon Blade takes over the outpost, bringing along blacksmiths, vendors, an innkeeper, a mailbox, a flight master and all other usual amenities. And the three Scourge you recruited before stick around as questgivers. 

So far, so good.

"Epic"

After understanding that getting the questing achievement in Zul'Drak is impossible without group quests, I moved on to the Storm Peaks. The realm of powerful elementals, the dastardly iron dwarves andd the majestic giants..

..who ask me to participate in a snowball fight. Using a giant. Against mobs that I can kill faster myself.

But aside from the usual problems of low respawn and drop rates, running back-and-forth, the zone isn't that bad. It's the first one designed for flying mounts and it even uses phasing reasonably. For example, there is a big iron dwarf golem that's being constructed. It's a landmark for a series of quests, and eventually the iron dwarves manage to activate it. The mandatory faction grind with Sons of Hodir uses phasing as well.. and most of the time the reputation grinders are safely hidden away and won't tag any quest mobs. Of course, not every designer got the memo about this new, exciting feature, but it's not like Blizzard's famous for their consistent quality or anything.

Another derailment

With the Scholazar Basin done, I moved on to Zul'Drak. Zul'Drak is a zone which is a one big city, and thus I was hopeful. I liked the city of Kurast in Diablo 2, and hopefully the designers compared their notes.

However.. the very first quests are not promising. The very first quest involves killing a 100k hp mob which cannot be snared or slowed, and hits for 2.5k. Then there's a Wolvar rescue quest, where the supposedly friendly mobs were angry at me for being saved. And then there's a quest about Drakuru, the troll whose real agenda was supposed to be the big reveal of Grizzly Hills. Er.. what? Grizzly Hills has the same level range as Zul'Drak, yet the designers expect people to fully finish one before the other? They even share an instance, with build-up quests on both sides. It seems like the people assigning levels were not talking to the people making the quests and in the process ruined a perfectly good Nice Job Breaking It Hero moment the quest guys set up at Drek'tharon. In the Grizzly Hills, you first meet Drakuru, who has been captured by your local questgivers. Because the player fights the Drakkari elsewhere in the zone, doing some quests for Drakuru seems harmless enough. Of course, unlike the other questgivers, Drakuru only sends you against the pure Drakkari, not the plagued ones. But if you go to Zul'Drak first, Drakuru is already the local taskmaster for the Scourge, not some whiny little troll in a cage. It's obvious that the quest designers wanted Grizzly Hills and Drek'tharon to be completed first, but the overlapping level ranges undermined that. 

To think of it, it seems that the same issue is behind the design of Borean Tundra and Howling Fjord. The events of Borean Tundra happen before the events of Howling Fjord, which is why nobody in the Fjord sees the sudden contact with the Taun'ka odd. I think I'll opt for clearing the Storm Peaks before entering the Icecrown, just to make the storyline seem coherent.

Oh, and there's also one quest reward which was clearly unfinished. The Fire Extinguisher has staff graphics.. but is not a staff. It has DPS, it's a two-hander and it has weapon speed and flavor text. But that's it. There's no stats at all, leaving the item useless for both melee and casters. This would have been okay in the beta, but this is not even the release version. This is the patched version, and it still has a bug that's blatantly obvious to anyone who starts Zul'Drak.

Stuck in the Freezing Jihad

The more things change, the more they stay the same. I'm level 77 now, and the zones are starting to feel more and more tedious. I've been questing in the Hinterl.. Grizzly Hills. All of the old favourites are there: Camping and ninjaing of quest mobs, animals with no body parts, a whole lot of different vendor trash types to fill your inventory, quests which require you to travel all across the zone multiple times.. Fortunately I got my netherdrake back.

To top it off, the western part of the zone seems unfinished. The terrain and the doodads are there.. but considering the quest density of the eastern side of the zone, it seems that Grizzly Hills is missing at least 20 quests. It also seems like the main Horde base in the zone, Conquest Hold, has less quests than the small quest hub in the eastern part. The west has some Kill Ten Rats quests, a few quests against the only Vrykul presence in the zone, a small chain about the furbolgs, and the rest is in the eastern parts. The civil war between Rune Dwarves and the earth elementals, the Worgen, the Drakkari, the clues to Brann Bronzebeard's location and some more Kill Ten Rats. At least it wasn't as group-quest-happy as the Dragonblight, and I got only three group quests littering my quest log. I did run out of quest slots, though.

There's also a small PvP subzone called Venture Bay, where the Venture Company gets trampled between the Horde and the Alliance. Fair enough.. but it seems like it offers only level 74 PvP gear, just like Halaa and other PvP objectives in TBC. To top it off, it seems even more vulnerable to level 77+ players dominating it with flying mounts than Halaa or the Hellfire Peninsula towers. There's plenty of buildings to stand on, and it's somewhat simple to snipe any hostile forces trying to mow their way through friendly NPCs.

I like the looks, especially the height differences and the redwood trees, but the whole zone really feels like an afterthought.  

I've also switched to the Only Spec™ for mages, the deep fire/light frost Frostfire spec. Frostfire Bolt gets synergy benefits from both frost and fire talents, and the end result is a very crit-dependant build. Ice Shards coupled with Ignite means big crits.. but lackluster damage when you don't crit. And thanks to the diminishing returns from crit rating, my crit % has been steadily decreasing. It's probably the only accepted choice for raiding, though. Hopefully I'll ding soon, the rate at which the guild is clearing raid content is somewhat worrying, and they might be done with both 10- and 25-man versions of the raid content within a week or two. It seems that my worries about 10-man content being tougher than 25-man is misplaced, though. Apparently it can be cleared with five people.

Take Two

After I finally ran out of quests in the Dragonblight and unable to level further, I restarted Wrath by entering the Borean Tundra. Two levels later I can say that Borean Tundra is definitely the place to go if you're Horde.

First of all, the main theme of Wrath, the struggle against the Scourge, starts right outside Warsong Hold, and you'll run into Kel'Thuzad quickly enough. You're also re-introduced to the one of the major schisms within the Horde. And I'm not talking about the Forsaken here: It's Thrall's new Chessmaster approach versus Hellscream's "Orc Smash!". In the main hall of Warsong Hold, Garrosh Hellscream and Saurfang the Older discuss strategy. That is, whether to use strategy or not. Garrosh's drive to push through is understandable, considering that a creepy variety of the Vrykul ambushed the Horde ships and the Nerubians are literally undermining Warsong Hold. To stay still is to die slowly, but rushing into things might lead from bad to worse. Such as the quest to kill a necromancer that's been turning the local Horde farmers into monsters, cutting off the Horde's food supply. The necromancer is way out of your league, so Saurfang has to bail you out.

In general, it seems that all of the continuity in quest lines was made for Borean Tundra, and the Horde part of Howling Fjord was made as an afterthought. I missed a lot by starting at the Howling Fjord. To name a few:

• The introduction of the Tuskarr and the Taun'ka
  
• The civil war between the Red and Blue dragonflights
  
• Scourge's overall objective to infect, dominate or resurrect ancient beasts
  
• D.E.H.T.A. vs Nesingwary
  
• Exodus of the Taun'ka and the start of integration of the Horde
  
• Remnants of the fragile truce between Horde and the Alliance
• Origin of the Gnomes, seasoned with a nice Cybermen homage
• Murlocs, including one where you control a zerg of (non-combat) murlocs. Also, you get to loan the Blizzcon Murloc suit

And while the Blue Dragonflight obviously has been stealing Naaru technology, the overall look and feel of the place is very blue and thus omnious. You're also introduced to the crystal trees you'll see later around Dalaran. If you did the Nexus first like you were supposed to, arrival to the Crystalsong Forest should trigger an "Oh crap, they're here as well" reaction instead of just "Oo, pretty". There's also one room where the flames from the torches (along with everything else, including the air) are drawn towards.. a huge rift in space and time. The air around the rift is filled with blue drakes fighting etheral snakes, so it seems that the Blue Flight bit off slightly more than it can chew. Thus the resulting miniboss fight has a definite Final Fantasy / Chrono Trigger feel to it. It also prepares the player for a questline in the Dragonblight where the Blue Flight tries to make a truce with the Ethereum, the antagonists from the Netherstorm. While there's plenty of reasons to dislike the jarring departure from the fantasy/steampunk mythos that was the Burning Crusade, having some plot glue is nice.

Eventually, you also get a glimpse of Malygos. However, he's somewhat of a disappointment. I was looking toward into seeing his insect-like, almost skeletal form that was described in the Day of the Dragon. Instead, he's just like every other dragon out there. At least Alexstraza got a decent model.

Eventually, I finished the rest of the quests in the Borean Tundra and returned to the Dragonblight. Now that the other half of the quests were open, getting to level 76 wasn't a problem. However, my quest log is rapidly filling with group quests, and I'll probably have to start rejecting quests soon.

Off the Rails

I'm now about a quarter through the Dragonblight. I'm seeing level 77 people in a zone that's supposed to be level 72-74 and I actually ran out of quests at one point. Doing both the Fjord and the Tundra before the Dragonblight certainly seems to be the expected path. I eventually found a rather large Taun'ka village at the western edge of the zone, which is obviously the starting point for those who finished the Borean Tundra. Doing their quests opens up the main questlines for the zone: the integration of the Taun'ka to the Horde, their war against the Nerubians, the Wrath Gate and the Wyrmrest Temple. So yeah, Horde is definitely expected to clear the Tundra for the storyline to work.

I keep having the feeling that I'm doing something wrong. I get a quest to defend a Taun'ka chieftain against a Crypt Lord.. except that I don't need to do anything. The Crypt Lord just literally drops dead. Then I get a quest to disrupt the resurrection of Grakkarond, the forefather of the Dragons.. except that I don't need to do anything. Finally, I get to the main attraction in this theme park, the Wrath Gate. The cutscene is nice.. but the dragons just finish talking as the cutscene ends, so I have no idea what they were supposed to say. I start the Undercity siege questline and get a nice buildup at Ogrimmar, where Sylvanas, Thrall and Jaina are talking about sieging Undercity. They make me a portal and instruct me to join Vol'jin outside Undercity, which I do.

At Undercity, it seems that there's a siege going on. The orcs are cheering and the catapults are pummeling the outer walls.. but there's no defenders. I talk to Vol'jin and he tells me to talk to Thrall. There's an Orgrimmar portal behind me, which I cannot use. I'm guessing that Thrall will arrive soon. Any minute now.. Zzz.. I wait about half an hour. Maybe he's already inside. There's some more orcs there and even some at the Trade Quarter. I get to fight a few patrols of renegade Forsaken, but this siege is definitely less epic than advertised. I finally make my way to the Royal Quarter and.. nothing. No Thrall, no Sylvanas, no Varimathras. I get a momentary buff from both Thrall and Sylvanas, so they're around here somewhere.. and then everything respawns. An Abdomination pulls me to him and promptly twoshots me. I think I had been walking on the tracks of this particular rollercoaster and just got run over by the next set of cars. I do a corpserun, resurrect as far as possible from the Abdomination and keep mashing Blink.. but he pulls me back to him and oneshots me. I try again, with the exact same results. I double-check that I'm actually running the release version instead of the beta and log off. If I'm going to have to burn some experience points to get away from this mess, I might as well get some rested experience first.

High Expectations

After reinstalling Vista, reinstalling Nvidia drivers five times and spending all of my limited free time time between release and Sunday fixing those issues, I finally got to play Wrath of the Lich King. Suffice to say, I was somewhat grumpy and thinking that Wrath better be the best expansion ever.

Naturally, it isn't. People are dinging 80 already, so I missed the initial leveling rush, so the initial instances are inaccessible. I've been more than 12 hours in the LFG queue so far. Unfortunately, some of the more undesirable parts of the leveling rush are still there, like about a dozen people fighting over drops from two mobs. Fortunately, all of the supposed group quests have been soloable so far. One of the more annoying things is that several hunters have read Big Red Kitty's posts about AoE grinding with a gorilla. I wouldn't mind otherwise, but they suck at it. When they inevitably fail and get their pet killed, the resulting zerg goes after me. Especially when I'm escorting an NPC who relies on proximity aggro. In one instance, I was questing in Shield Hills southeast of New Agamand when a gorilla hunter started AoEing. The only way to save myself was to jump into the water, which resulted in a long swim to the nearest elevator. I should have reserved Howling Fjord to my deathknight alt, at least he can ride on water. I suddently see the appeal of games like Fable, which are like MMORPGs, only with the other players are usually safely tucked away behind a chat screen, unable to mess things up. Hell is other people.

Note: None of the above is Blizzard's fault. The zone looks decent, and it has it's moments. Blizzard has it's own shortcomings, though. For example, quest hub design. New Agamand, a rather large settlement for the Forsaken has a handful of quests, and a two-hut Taun'ka village has at least three times as many. And that's just two of half a dozen or so quest hubs in the zone. There's the Vengeance Landing, the walrus village, pirates, Taun'ka spying on the Explorer's League, another Forsaken settlement.. It's like they wanted to have a quest hub every few quests.. and then failed to apply that principle to Winterhoof. That two-hut Taun'ka village has almost half of the whole zone's quests. Howling Fjord is classic WoW, in both good and bad. In TBC, you could pick up a bunch of quests from a well-defined quest hub, play for an hour or so and then return the quests, all at once. Fjord has plenty of quest chains where you first do fetch something, then go back to turn it in, only to return to the same area to fetch or kill something else. Granted, many of the quests suffering from that disease are about either testing the New Plague, assaulting the Vry'kul or researching the rune dwarves, and experimentation questlines do require some travel back-and-forth. But it's not like Blizzard doesn't know how to do these kinds of questlines. Terokkar Forest had a perfect example with the mana bomb questline. The first questgiver is right next to the village you're supposed to explore. You then eventually get sent near the Blood Elf camp, where there's an another NPC hidden close by, who serves as your primary questgiver from that point onward. The whole zone could make do with just a few settlements. There's also the concept of a summonable questgiver, which was introduced in Blade's Edge and is actually used in one of the Vry'kul questlines. But whoever made the Taun'ka quests obviously didn't compare notes with the other quest designers. Blizzard, learn from yourself.

The pre-WotLK wait is here

My guild's been stuck on Kalecgos for a few weeks, so our raid leader called for a two-week raid break. Considering that I've been playing more EvE than WoW (even during raids), I welcomed the break.

Now with about a week and a half through the break, the 25-man raid announcements have started popping up on WoW Raidar once again. However, there's only 8 signups. With Age of Conan out soon and WotLK probably due to be released around Christmas, many people seem to be in the wait-and-see mode. Still, I'm getting a deja vu. I had two guilds pre-TBC that stopped raiding after a few wipes on Razuvious. That time I could get a few upgrades from PvP that were good for PvE, but that isn't the case here. If I'll never enter Sunwell again, I have almost as good gear as I can get. If history does repeat itself, there's no reasons left for me to resume my subscription until WotLK.

So.. I will wait and see.

Kalgan on Effort vs Rewards

Many "hardcore" raiders might nod approvingly at this comment by Kalgan:

I definitely think there's a valid argument to be made that the time investment and organizational requirement versus reward aren't balanced well enough right now

However, you should be careful what you wish for. Balance goes both ways. If Blizzard ever realizes how difficult the PvE encounters really are and balances the game.. a flamewar of epic propotions will ensue.

Warlocks using mage gear?

I recently listened to the WoW Insider podcast where the topic of the day was the Warlock Life Tap change on the PTR. While my guild's warlocks have been up in arms about it, I haven't paid much attention to it. Until one of the hosts on the podcast mentioned that warlocks might start to favor mage gear. That comment was worth a chuckle for a variety of reasons. Suffice to say, I doubt that any sane warlocks will pick mage gear, since mage gear isn't optimal for mages either. If warlocks (especially Affliction warlocks) want to waste item points on spirit and spell crit, go right ahead. Maybe some poor fool even spends dkp on a certain robe.

How to kill Shartuul

By request, here's a guide on how to kill Overseer Shartuul, the soloable world boss encounter at the western plateau at Blade's Edge Mountains. If you can complete the prerequisites, anyone can defeat Shartuul. Race, gender, class, spec or gear will make no difference whatsoever.

But first, the prerequisites. You have to have completed the initial Ogri'la questline to be crowned the king/queen of the ogres and acquire Honored reputation. At that point, Kronk will ask you to Banish the Demons. As a reward, you get a Darkrune. You will also gain access to the followup daily quest, Banish More Demons, which rewards you either with an another Darkrune or a Darkrune Fragment. Collect 5 fragments and you'll get a Darkrune.

Now, go talk to Gahk, who'll upgrade your Darkrune to a Crystalforged Darkrune. Now you can challenge Shartuul and kill him. In theory, that is. Personally I recommend getting at least a few Charged Crystal Foci first. When properly used, these will allow you to "reset" the encounter. But more of that later.

So, off to Shartuul's teleporter, which is located northeast of the Skyguard camp. Avoid the Felguard Degrader and walk into the teleporter. Now, use your Crystalforged Darkrune. This will allow you to take control of the Felguard and start the encounter. Your own body will be safely hidden inside the teleporter.

Phase 1 of the Shartuul encounter involves you trying to break the Teleporter's shield while Shartuul sends his Felhound and Imp minions at you.

When you took control of the Felguard, your primary skill bar got replaced with the Felguard's skills:
Mortal Strike - your standard melee attack. Use it whenever you can.
Mighty Whirlwind - Point-blank range AoE attack.
Terrifying Roar - AoE fear.
Chaos Charge - Charge attack with an AoE element. Your key to completing the first phase of the encounter.
Smash Shield - Throws your hammer to break the teleporter's shields. Use it immediately when it's ready.
Absorb Life - Point-blank AoE life drain. Requires a Charged Crystal Focus to use. It's somewhat bugged, and not really required to complete phase 1.

Shartuul will start spawning his minions after you've used Smash Shield once. The first few waves could be killed using Mortal Strike alone, but it's better to get used to the rhythm now. Pick a corner and let the minions come to you. You'll quickly notice that the Felhounds will get into melee range immediately, the imps stay back and pelt you with fireballs. When all of the Felhounds are attacking you and you have an Imp nearby, run towards the imp and use Chaos Charge at around 10 yards. The direct damage from the charge should kill the Imp, and the AoE should kill all Felhounds around you. This simple manouver is the key to completing phase 1.

The number of Felhounds will ramp up as you keep damaging the shield with your Smash Shield. Since the Felhounds don't spawn all at once, you'll find that the cooldown of Chaos Charge becomes a problem. This is where the other skills come in. If you have a large amount of Felhounds at you and no imp nearby, use Mighty Whirlwind. While it takes longer to finish than Chaos Charge, it too should kill all Felhounds who received full damage from it. Your other primary skill, Terrifying Roar, can be used to avoid excessive damage from the initial Felhounds. Fear a bunch of them. They'll return by the time the Imp gets in range. Just stay patient until all of the Felhounds have returned to you. This is a perfect opportunity to use Chaos Charge to kill all of the minions at once. Remember to keep an eye on your Smash Shield cooldown.

Once the shield reaches around 20%, all remaining minions die and a Doomguard is released from the Teleporter. This is the end boss of phase 1. He does more damage than you, so stay away from his melee range and especially his flames. Wait until he gets in range and use Chaos Charge. Immediately afterwards use Mortal Strike and Terrifying Roar. This manouver will allow you to do damage to the Doomguard while denying him the opportunity to do the same. While he's running in fear, run as far as you can and wait for your Chaos Charge cooldown to recharge. Repeat. When he is almost dead your Felguard gets stunned and your life is drained. Congratulations, welcome to phase 2.

Phase 2 is similar to Phase 1. There's no shield to break this time, only waves of minions to fight. This time you'll control the Doomguard Punisher, which has a different set of skills:
Punishing Blow: Standard melee attack. Does more damage against stunned targets.
Fel Flames: Channeled AoE attack that lets you damage enemies in front of you. You can move while it's being cast.
Throw Axe: Ranged stun with a minimum range.
Super Jump: Ranged charge with an AoE stun element.
Consume Essence: Single-target life drain.
Bombing Run: Special attack which makes you reflect all enemy attacks and deal random damage to all enemies. Consumes a Charged Crystal Focus.

The minions you'll be fighting against are Mo'arg Tormenters and Gan'arg Underlings. The Gan'arg will melee you and construct cannons. Never let them do that. If you see one channelling a blue beam, stop whatever you're doing and stun/kill it. While you have a lifedrain attack, it isn't enough to offset the damage done by the cannons. Finally, the Gan'args can shield and heal the Mo'arg. This is seen as a red beam effect. Don't let them do that either. Stun or kill the Gan'arg and he'll stop.

The larger Mo'arg Tormenters will shoot poison at you, and have much more HP than the small Mo'args. These are your main targets in this phase.

Like in phase 1, the first waves are easy and no Mo'args will spawn. Super Jump towards the Gan'arg, use your Fel Flames to do AoE damage while you melee them down. Kill runners with Consume Essence or stun them with Super Jump or Throw Axe.

When a Mo'arg spawns, Super Jump to it as soon as possible and get a few Punishing Blows through while it's stunned. Remember to activate Fel Flames, and manouver yourself so that all of the Go'args are hit. The Fel Flames have a small stun effect, so you'll both do significant damage and stop them from rescuing the Mo'arg. When Fel Flames is on cooldown, run away and use Throw Axe or Super Jump to resume your stunlock. Your Punishing Blow requires the stun to do significant damage. If you need health, use your Consume Essence on Go'arg runners. It does around 90% damage, so choose wounded targets to finish them off. If you feel overwhelmed, you can use Bombing Run to get a breather.

Eventually, the Shivan Assassin will be activated. If you have any Go'args still running around, kill them first. Like in the phase 1 boss fight, the Shivan Assassin does much more damage than you, so you can't afford the extra damage inflicted by cannons. Bombing Run is highly effective here, since the Shivan Assassin has plenty of ranged attacks that you can reflect back to her. However, she can be defeated without the Bombing Run. The key to that is to keep her stunned as long as possible and dish out those Punishing Blows. Super Jump her. When the stun ends, run away and Throw an Axe at her. Keep your Fel Flames up while you're meleeing her. Eventually, your life will be drained and you take control of her. Welcome to phase 3.

Phases 3, 4 and 5 involve you controlling the Shivan Assassin and fight two of Shartuul's pets, and finally Shartuul himself. The Shivan Assassin has 3 different "stances": Fire, Shadow and Ice. The stance changes have a cooldown, so knowing when to use each of the stances is vital.

Aspect of the Shadow: The stance you use when you need to regain health.
Death Blast: Shadow damage spell. If the target had a Siphon Life debuff, the debuff is consumed and you heal yourself for a significant amount.
Siphon Life: DoT that also heals you. Keep it up whenever you can. When it's about to expire, use Death Blast and recast Siphon Life.
Shadow Nova: Point-blank spherical AoE spell which does damage and heals you.

Aspect of the Flame: Your damage-dealing stance. It has passive 20% bonus to movement speed.
Pyroblast. Fire damage.
Flame Buffet: Fire damage debuff. Stacks up to 10. Keep those 10 stacks up and you'll do decent damage with Pyroblast.
Cleansing Flame: Removes debuffs from you. Use whenever you get debuffed.

Aspect of the Ice: Your damage-mitigation stance. Generally you want to use it for the Ice Block and switch away as soon as the danger has passed.
Iceblast: Ice damage. Deals more damage if the target is frozen.
Icy Leap: Frost Nova coupled with a self-inflicted knockback. Only occassionally useful.
Ice Block: The mage version on steroids. Lasts only 4 seconds, but it also reflects spells while it's active. This spell is literally a lifesaver.

Whew. That's a lot to remember, and the first attempts to fight with the Shivan Assassin will probably end badly. Fortunately.. you have a reset button:

Chaos Strike. Ranged spell which requires a Charged Crystal Focus. While it has plenty of effects, it's particularly useful with the Shadow stance. It applies a debuff which greatly increases damage done.. and life drained. If the target is debuffed with Chaos Strike and Siphon Life, a Death Blast will heal you to full. If you are about to die, use the Chaos Strike.

So, off to the monsters. In phase 3, you fight the Eye of Shartuul, a beholder. He moves relatively slowly, but applies a nasty debuff in melee. Stay away from him. His standard attack is a Fel Fireball. It hurts a bit, but isn't particularly dangerous. He also places stun fields. You'll see when he's casting one, so you have plenty of time to move away. Make sure you don't step in one. Stunlocking yourself is not wise. Finally.. he has a Dark Glare. It does a whole lot of damage, and if you get hit by more than one of these you'll probably die. It has a long cast time, so you have time to switch to Ice Stance and Ice Block.

Start Phase 3 in Shadow stance. As soon as the Eye of Shartuul spawns, apply Siphon Life and the Shadow Nova debuff to it. Switch to Fire stance and start applying those Flame Buffets. If he's casting a Fel Fireball, cast a Pyroblast. Otherwise keep your distance and avoid those stun fields. Counter Dark Glare with Ice Block. Immediately afterwards switch to Shadow stance and use the Death Blast just in time to consume Siphon Life and heal yourself. Reapply Siphon Life and Shadow Nova and switch back to Fire stance. Repeat. The Eye of Shartuul is not particularly difficult, but Dark Glare can kill you.

Phase 4: Hound of Shartuul. He's a melee-only mob, so you'll be spending most of your time in Fire stance. As before, start in Shadow stance, apply debuffs and switch to Fire Stance for Flame Buffets. However.. the Hound of Shartuul can charge you and apply a nasty snare. Use Cleansing Flame to get rid of it and run away. Switch to Shadow Stance before your Siphon Life expires and regain some life. You should end this phase with 100% health.

Phase 5: Shartuul. This is where you'll probably need those Charged Crystal Foci. Start in Shadow Stance as usual. Shartuul will start the fight by flooding the arena with eyestalks. These eyestalks have a nasty Mind Flay that stacks. Shadow Nova will get rid of them and heal you, but there's a small but annoying bug that will make the eyestalks ignore it for a few seconds after they spawn. If you're being attacked, it's usually safe to use Shadow Nova. Shartuul himself should be in the arena by now. Apply Siphon Life on him and run to an another set of eyestalks and Shadow Nova them too. Switch to Flame stance and start applying those Flame Buffets while casting Pyroblast. When you get debuffed, use Cleansing Flame. If he starts to cast Incinerate, use Ice Block. If he resummons the eye stalks, use Shadow Nova. And whatever you do, remember to consume Siphon Life with Death Blast and reapply it. This is a long fight and you'll need that life.

Simple? Not really. The tricky thing in phase 5 is that Shartuul is somewhat random with Incinerate. He may cast if before or after the eyestalks, or skip casting it altogether. If you go to Ice Stance too soon, you'll risk letting either Flame Buffet or Siphon Life expire. If you switch stances too late you get hit with huge damage. Or you may get stuck in Ice Stance while the eyestalks peel away your health. Or get rid of the eyestalks and not have enough time to Ice Block. And once you get "off schedule" once, it's easy to keep messing up the timing. If that's the case, don't shy away from Chaos Strike. Get full health and try to get a hold of the timing. If you keep Flame Buffet and Siphon Life up, avoid Incinerates, get rid of eyestalks and remember to consume Siphon Life regularly.. Shartuul should eventually die.

Curing Purple Fever

Tobold posted about the relative value of purples. While mudflation and applying economic theory to MMOs isn't new anymore, there was one tidbit that caught my attention:

Raiders should learn that it is in their self-interest to spread out the epics more evenly.

While it's easy to say that one shouldn't care too much on who gets a particular epic, that won't be much consolation to people stuck in the vicious circle of purple fever.

You don't want to let other people have epics if you aren't sure whether they'll stick around or not. So you'll make arbitrary rules on who is eligible for a particular piece or loot, who won't get invites to raids etc. Naturally, all of that will just breed more distrust and envy. Eventually some people will leave, devaluing the guild of the collective benefit of their epics. To discourage that, you'll make even stricter rules, which cause more people to leave. Then, during a night of wiping at a previously easy boss because your class balance is screwed up.. tempers flare and guild breaking drama ensues.

I'm currently in the opposite self-reinforcing loop, where loot is plentiful and drama nonexistent. Unfortunately, reversing vicious circles is hard and painful at best, and quite impossible if you're deep enough into the downward spiral. To many, being an officer or a guild leader is the first time they're actually in a management position, so it's no surprise if they fail at detecting, let alone correcting these kinds of issues. But if you do succeed.. perhaps listing "Guild Management" in your resume isn't a bad idea after all.

Game Over

The End

The End,
originally uploaded by Shalkis.

You know the best part of killing someone? The look on their face. It's that look. Not when they're threatened. Not when you hurt them. Not even when they see my spell. It's when they realize that they will die. Right here, right now.

Punctuality and Discipline

Zanderfin's been wondering about raid punctuality. Here's my two cents.

When I joined my current guild I wondered how they were able to clear raid instances in just 3 hours. Not anymore.

First of all, signups and therefore raid tuning is done a week ahead of time. Invites start 30 minutes beforehand. If you have a tight schedule, you're expected to get your consumables, repairs etc ready beforehand and log off near the instance. When you receive the invite, you're supposed to drop whatever you're doing and start heading for the instance. You're expected to help with summoning the furthest raid members. Raid start time is when the first pull is made, ready or not. At that time everyone is in the instance. Buffs have been done and water/food/healthstones have been distributed.

During the raid itself, everyone is expected to know what the mobs do and what you should do. Certain raid markers are always reserved for specific purpose. For example, triangle, square and circle are reserved for crowd-controllable humanoids. Classes are expected to organize their duties by themselves. When that green triangle pops up, I'll always know that I'm expected to Polymorph that mob during the pull.

At bosses, there are no extensive tactics explanations. Everyone is expected to read the tactics beforehand, and 90% of the time the only discussion is about picking people for specific roles, group reassignment etc. Preferably, all discussion about specifics is done beforehand on the forums. If we kill the boss, loot is distributed quickly. If you don't bid for an item, it'll be disenchanted in 20 seconds. Meanwhile, people are being resurrected and rebuffed. Tanks and crowd-controllers are already setting up for the next pull. If we wipe, everyone's expected to be ready for the next attempt in five minutes.

During the raid, there will be one longer pause (long=5-10 min). That's enough for food, a bio break or a chance to sate your nicotine addiction.

If you have a bad connection, you're expected to notify the raid leader and preferably find yourself a replacement. If you screwed up, you're expected to admit it. Not learning from your mistakes is grounds for a kick from the raid. A farm-status boss will only be attempted for a maximum of 3 times, unless problems that led to the wipe(s) were clearly resolved and won't be repeatable. The raid leader relocate the raid to a different instance or even disband the raid early if no progress can be expected.

Sounds harsh? Perhaps it is, but it works. Nobody's kidding themselves here. We don't go to an instance to spend an evening. We go to an instance to progress as far as we can, because that's what we like. To defeat challenging enemies like a well-oiled machine. This requires a lot of self-discipline and being responsible for yourself. Nobody will hold your hand.

Self-discipline also ties to the age-old discussion about casual and hardcore players. One can attain the oxymoronic rank of a casual raider by focusing on the quality of time, not the quantity. Spend less time yet achieve more.

At worst, WoW is like work. You spend long hours doing some mindlessly dull task while trying to tolerate your mindless associates and a frothy-mouthed, always-yelling boss. At best, WoW is like work. You arrive at your workplace refreshed and eager to work. You use your skills to solve problems many thought to be impossible. Customers praise you and your boss can't wait to reward you appropriately. And you go home early.

Oo, shiny!

We're back in Black Temple after the holidays and proceed to Teron Gorefiend without major hitches. But then I do something completely foolish that had me cursing myself for the rest of the evening (and probably the next week). I bid on the Robe of the Shadow Council.

A caster robe with decent stats, lots of spelldamage and spell crit. How's that bad? It's bad because this item level 141 robe was worse than the item level 105 robe I was wearing, the Frozen Shadoweave Robe. Let's look at the stats, shall we?

Robe of the Shadow Council:
37 Stamina
36 Intellect
26 Spirit
28 Spell Critical Strike Rating
73 Spell Damage and Healing

Frozen Shadoweave Robe
30 Stamina
20 Intellect
Yellow Socket
Blue Socket
Socket bonus: 3 Spell Hit Rating
72 Shadow Damage
72 Frost Damage

At first glance, the choice seems obvious. Roughly the same spelldamage, but the former has more spell crit. As always, the devil is in the details, or in this case, sockets. If you equip the Frozen Shadoweave Robe with a Veiled Noble Topaz, (+4 spell hit and +5 spell damage) and a Glowing Nightseye (+5 spell damage and +6 stamina), you'll increase the stats by 7 Spell Hit, 10 Spell Damage and 5 Stamina.

Let's look at the new stats.
36 Stamina
20 Intellect
7 Spell Hit
82 Spell Damage.


Now, is 9 Spell Damage and 7 Spell Hit worse than 28 Spell Critical, which is 1.27% crit? Nope.

Let's factor in the remaining stat differences. 1 extra Stamina equals 10 hp, and 16 extra intellect equals +0.2% more crit. If you factor in Improved Divine Spirit from a friendly priest, you get 2.6 extra spell damage (10% of your Spirit) from it. So here's the final results:

+10 HP
-6 Spell Damage (rounded)
-7 Spell Hit
+1.29% Spell Crit

With my gear, that's roughly a 20 dps loss. Giving up 20 dps for 10 hp is simply not worth it. And as a final reminder, this is a comparison of item level 105 and item level 141 robes. Pre-Karazhan loot should not even compete in the same league as Black Temple loot and definitely not outperform it. I could go on a rant about how clueless Blizzard item designers are, but.. It's not the fool who asks, it's the fool who pays. In this case, me.

Reliquary of Souls

Reliquary of Souls,
originally uploaded by Shalkis.

Rest in peace. This was definitely one of the more interesting fights I've seen, and a landmark of the philosophy behind 25-man raids.

The boss itself is guarded by a very short BWL-like gauntlet, which measures the raid group's ability to move and AoE as one. It also serves as an exercise in mana management, since it's very much possible to go OOM at the gauntlet and have no mana for the boss itself.

Reliquary of Souls is basically three completely different fights stringed together. Between every phase the raid is swarmed with weak ghosts, which restore your health and mana upon death. They are effectively a reset button between each phase.

First, there's the Essence of Suffering. His aura nullifies all healing and he aggroes on the closest person for 5 seconds at a time. These abilities make him an exercise in survival and movement for everyone, not just tanks. In practice, everyone tanks him for 5 seconds, and then hands off the boss to the next person. Sounds simple, but it is harder than it sounds until everyone understands how he works.

Phase 2 is Essence of Desire. She has an aura which keeps reducing your maximum mana, so naturally there's a DPS race involved. She must die before your healers have zero mana and can't prevent the tank from dying. She also has a Rune Shield which can be dispelled and a feedback ability that deals back 50% of the damage dealt. But the interesting parts are her other abilities: Deaden and Spirit Shock. Deaden increases damage on the target, so the tank must spellreflect it back to Essence of Desire to boost DPS. Spirit Shock is a quickly-cast spell which disorients the person with aggro and deals a large amount of damage. If the tank gets hit by it, Essence of Desire switches targets and casts the next Spirit Shock faster. The trick to killing her is to interrupt all Spirit Shocks while allowing the tank to reflect all Deadens and maintain maximum DPS. In other words, an exercise in total focus and seamless raid coordination.

Finally, there's Essence of Anger. He has a stacking aura which keeps dealing more and more damage as well as a timebomb-style ability called Spite. While he has a cone-like ability that burns rage as well as mana, this phase is not about tank survival per se. It's a frantic DPS race against mercilessly increasing raid damage, much like Buru phase 2 in Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj.

The combination of all these requirements in one fight makes it definitely one of the most memorable fights in World of Warcraft, because it tests all aspects of a successful raidgroup: gear, coordination, knowledge and focus. Those that can get past it get access to the next three bosses and the final 3 pieces of tier 6 sets.

Schizophrenic set design

The Hunter’s Mark recently discussed hunter set bonuses, so I'll do the same for mage sets.

As a rule, mage set design has always been.. schizophrenic. There's the sets with simply awful bonuses: Magister (dungeon set 1), Sorcerer (dungeon set 2a), Ironweave (dungeon set 2b), Vaulted Secrets (AQ20), Incanter(dungeon set 3a). People who designed those sets have no idea of overall mage gameplay. No intelligent mage is going to stand still and let his Mana Shield absorb hits while chaincasting Flamestrike. Not only it's suicidial, it also fails to provide adequate DPS due to having to recast Mana Shield. Even a Mana Shield amplified by set bonuses is only going to take 2-3 hits at most from non-raid mobs before crumbling, which means you have to recast it. Recasting Mana Shield leaves no time to take advantage of the reduced cast time on Flamestrike, so you end up doing minimal DPS and using all of your mana while doing it.

Then there's the okayish sets, like Arcanist(tier 1), Enigma(AQ40) and Tempest(tier 6). Definitely worth collecting, but could be eclipsed by careful itemization. If you head to Molten Core wearing Magister, Arcanist is certainly an upgrade. It's less so if you have cleared Zul'Gurub or gotten most of the better level 60 blues. Still, the decent 8-piece bonus of -15% threat helps a lot.

Enigma has a spec-specific set bonus, but makes up for it by having pretty hefty stats and a nice proc for boss fights if you didn't have Spell Hit capped (most mages didn't).

Tempest is currently the set with the highest itemlevels of mage gear, so it's best by default. It might eventually be eclipsed by stuff that drops from the Sunwell Plateau, but will hold up pretty well until that. The 2-piece bonus is a bit underwhelming when compared to the equivalent Frostfire one, but the 4-piece bonus is exactly what mages need: more damage.

Then there's the nifty sets, worth having for simply the set bonuses: Netherwind (tier 2) and Frostfire (tier 3). All set bonuses are useful and the items themselves are nothing to scoff at. Furthermore, the set bonuses are useful for all mages, regardless of spec.

Finally, there's the bizarre sets. Aldor (tier 4) is mediocre as a PvE set, but has a few of the most useful set bonuses ever for PvP. Pushback immunity and shorter cooldowns on PoM/Blastwave/Ice Block. Either of those bonuses would have been welcomed with cheers if those were put into the Gladiator set(s).

Then there's Illusionist (Zul'Gurub), an another oddball set. It has the bread-and-butter spelldamage bonuses, but then mixes the promising set up with reduced mana cost to buffs and Flamestrike cast time reduction. Even pre-nerf, Arcane Intellect and Arcane Brilliance mana costs were a non-issue. When you are buffing, you usually have plenty of time to do so. And since you can conjure your own mana drinks, you always have ample mana. Then there's the Flamestrike bonus. An okayish generic set which has a spec-specific set bonus in the end? And to get the said set bonus, you have to wear Hazza'rah's Charm of Magic, which boosts Arcane damage, not Fire. Is Illusionist a generic set, a fire mage set or an Arcane mage set? I really cannot say.

Finally, there's Tirisfal (tier 5). If there ever was an argument why mages should get alternate sets like most of the other classes, Tirisfal is it. It's exclusively designed for Arcane mages. For all others, Arcane Blast not only provides substandard DPS, it also is an order of magnitude more expensive than the other nuke spells (Fireball, Frostbolt). No sane frost/fire mage would ever want to make it even more expensive.

Mage Class Concerns

Vaneras has requested feedback on the mage class. I've posted on the thread as well, but here's the short version: Inferiority Complex.

Oh, you wanted the long version? Quoting Wikipedia:

An inferiority complex, in the fields of psychology and psychoanalysis, is a feeling that one is inferior to others in some way. Such feelings can arise from an imagined or actual inferiority in the afflicted person. It is often subconscious, and is thought to drive afflicted individuals to overcompensate, resulting either in spectacular achievement or extreme antisocial behavior, or both. Unlike a normal feeling of inferiority, which can act as an incentive for achievement, an inferiority complex is an advanced state of discouragement, often resulting in a retreat from difficulties.

Overcompensation? Check. Extreme antisocial behavior? Check. Advanced state of discouragement? Check. Retreat from difficulties? Check.

Is it simply in our heads? Most of it, yes. But there are some real issues, some of which I listed on the feedback thread. Since the thread rules forbade me from discussing them at length or offering suggestions, I'll do it here. Since 95% of my non-RP playtime is either raiding or preparing to raid, I'll ignore 5-man PvE and PvP completely. Off we go then.

Provide a brief description of the areas you feel are most in need of improvement (you may list a maximum of three issues and each issue should be described in one or two sentences).

• Itemization. With the change to Evocation, Spirit is even more useless than it was before, yet it's still very "expensive" to have on an item. This makes all items designed for mages objectively worse than the corresponding warlock items. Even if the differences in individual items are small, they do add up when you compare full sets of gear.
  To fix this, Spirit either needs to removed completely, made significantly cheaper or made worth having at the current cost. Cheaper Spirit would also benefit healers, who do have spell rotations which allow Spirit to work.
  Spell Peneration is an another "junk" stat. Although it's rarer than Spirit and can be useful on some Black Temple bosses.. most of the time it's useless. One way to make it more useful would be to re-introduce the concept of negative resistances. If your Spell Penetration reduces the resistances of your target below zero, he would take extra damage. This would make Spell Penetration useful in fights where the target has zero resistances, such as.. almost all of them.
  
• Comparatively low DPS, in both single-target and AoE. Partially caused by poor itemization. Even with our top-of-the-line gear and min/max:ed talents, we get outdamaged by hybrids on single-target DPS and by warlocks on AoE DPS. I admit that while this can be more about individual skill, (lack of) class synergy and gear, the effect is still real and feeds the inferiority complex.
  But there are some issues that truly require Blizzard's attention, such as Seed of Corruption. The spell itself is pretty nice. A decent amount of AoE damage that doesn't require active targeting and can be chaincasted from a distance. The trouble is that Seed of Corruption scales with other AoE while mage spells do not. Any source of damage can trigger the Seed of Corruption, so if there are other sources of AoE damage present (such as mages), the Seed will detonate immediately for 1200 damage (non-crit, without spelldamage). No AoE spell in the game can compete with the Seed of Corruption in such a situation. Either the scaling needs to be removed or introduced into other spells.
  Single-target DPS inferiority can be divided into two subcategories: Melee and shadow priest + warlock. Melee should always do more DPS than mages because melee DPS is more hazardous than ranged, but the huge variety of melee buffs and procs tilts the favor heavily to melee. Melee classes benefit from increases to their base stats, while the +crit gained from Intellect is mostly neglible. Therefore paladin, shaman and druid buffs benefit melee much more than they benefit casters.
  The other side of the inferiority is shadow priests and warlocks. A competent warlock can already outdamage a mage, but a warlock coupled with a shadow priest can rack up numbers that mages can only dream about.
  Unfortunately, figuring out a way to fix this without introducing more imbalances is hard. Mages do need some classes to buddy up with. Elemental shamans and moonkins could be viable candidates, but the synergy needs to be reciprocal. Aside from Winter's Chill (which is only benefical to Frost Shock) and Fire Vulnerability (which is only useful to Flame Shock), there isn't that much that the mage can provide. The one common thing that these three classes do have is the need for spell crit. Elemental shamans have their totems and Moonkins have their aura, so mages would need something similar. Like a Winter's Chill that worked with all spells.
  
• Mana economy. To try to keep up with other classes in DPS, mages need to sacrifice mana efficiency completely. The design philosophy behind mage tier 5 set and the whole Arcane tree is a perfect example. We need to literally burn much more mana (which we don't have) than other classes to do less damage than they do. The upcoming reusable mana gems will alleviate this somewhat, but don't remove the problem altogether. Mages would need a lot more intellect to wean their addiction to mana potions, and increased +spell crit from the intellect wouldn't hurt either. Add in additional scaling mechanisms as Master of Elements and 3-piece Spellfire set and we might have something viable there. To get that intellect the stat needs to be made cheaper, just like stamina was made cheaper for the Burning Crusade. Warlock gear would delegate those freed item points to stamina (which provides them a dual benefit), while mage gear would get much more intellect-heavy.
  

Raid Lockouts & Casual vs. Hardcore

Tobold recently discussed the effects of raid lockouts on casual guilds, so I'll cover the hardcore side.

One important aspect of raid lockouts what also ties into Tigole's mention of fostering competition between guilds: Raid lockouts act as a pacing mechanism for inter-guild competition. If you need a certain gear level for an upcoming raid encounter, you can't just raid the previous raid encounters nonstop and have your whole raid equipped to the brim. Since you get just a certain amount of items per week, you can't compensate for lack of skill with extra time spent to progress. A perfect example of this is the Chinese guild The Seven, who killed Illidan in just 52 days. An average guild might spend 52 days just farming Karazhan to get gear to kill Gruul, The Lurker Below and/or Void Reaver. If Blizzard wants to encourage inter-guild competition in PvE, they must also discourage long raids and other unhealthy playing habits to avoid bad press. And that probably means that raid lockouts are here to stay.