Dissecting Da Boss

Yesterday in the car home I was discussing boss abilities with Thror and how most can be brought back to standard abilities. In fact, once you understand the basic abilities, raiding almost becomes like dancing. You dance left and right, and make sure to press the buttons at the same time. Make sure you stay in the right rythm ;)

After that we had some fun coming up with new boss abilities. I figured that it would be a lot of fun to write about this and got all excited about that!

At first I figured one post would be enough and started writing....turned out I had quite a bit more to write about than one post. So I'll turn it into a series of posts and come back to it when I feel like it.

Today I'll go with the first 3 abilities that came to mind, and 1 idea for a new boss ability.

This player has no idea....

'The Bomb'

One person gets chosen to be the bomb this person has to stand away from everybody else because everybody close will be blown up. Remarkably, the person itself is often not all that harmed.

Boss examples: 
Feng the Accursed - Arcane Resonance - Mogu'shan Vaults

Baron Geddon - Living Bomb - Molten Core
High Astromancer Solarian - Wrath of the Astromancer - Tempest Keep









'The Puddle or Cloud'

Defile would quickly take over the entire platform. 

Somewhere in the room, quite often under someone, a puddle or cloud of bad will form and everybody has to get out.  These puddles may or may not have extra bad, for example expanding when you stand in it.

Sometimes they stick around for the fight and you have to put them tightly together to prevent the whole room from flooding, and sometimes it requires you to stand apart so that as few people as possible get hit by it when it forms.

Boss examples:
The Lich King - Defile - Icecrown Citadel

Conclave of Winds (Anshal) - Soothing Breeze - Throne of the Four Winds (reversal, circle heals enemy and pacifies you, not directly damaging.)
Northrend Beasts (Acidmaw) - Slime Pool - Trial of the Crusader (worms drop acid clouds that need to be gotten out of)
Mimiron - Ulduar - Firefighter. So. Much. Fire

One of our raid members still has nightmares about this phrase I think...

'Hide or Die'

The last one for today is the mechanic where something, most often the boss itself, explodes and the only way to survive is to hide behind something. When a boss has this ability it is often combined with players who become blocks of stone or ice so you can hide behind the player.

Sometimes however you have to hide behind the environment, or even behind the boss.

Boss examples:
Sindragosa - Ice Tomb - Icecrown Citadel
Sapphiron - Icebolt - Naxxramas
Shade of Aran -Arcane Explosion - Karazhan (get out of the Arcane Explosion or die)

The Ability I would love to See

'Don't Touch Me'

Of course fights should be about doing something, not about doing nothing. Yet, I would love to see a boss where every hit to the boss will drain life from the hitter and give it to the boss. Some of the Sha should probably work like this. In fact, I was well surprised that we can even beat a 'Sha of Anger' when you have to beat him with more anger and fighting...I had figured this would only feed him.

How to kill the boss then? Simple, by killing his cohorts. Kill the adds, kill the boss. Of course the adds have to be tanked closed to the boss, otherwise the boss goes pissy. There has to be a reasonable risk that if you do it wrong you hit the boss anyways, right?

It would be a nice change to have to carefully pick and chose your abilities. Carefully tank the boss without doing too much damage.

Not being able to do your full rotation because it includes cleaves would naturally piss some dps off, but then, which fight doesn't?

PS: Thanks to Thror for thinking along with the boss examples

The great danger!

Patch 5.1 has now been live a couple of days and it seems to show a bit more what Blizzard has meant all that time when they said that this expansion would be more Alliance vs Horde.

The new dailies are very much pvp flavoured, even if you don't have to flag, or even join in any pvp style play, you do still feel very much that you're fighting horde.

The areas are as gorgeously made as the rest of Pandaria, and the boats are quite real. The daily zone that I went through really did give me the idea as if a battle was fought.

So if the dailies are ok, and there is no pvp, and the art is gorgeous once again, what then is this post about?

Well....I miss the hero aspect.

I wrote a post on wanting to be the hero as a healer and now I don't even feel like a hero with the dailies anymore. In fact this entire expansion doesn't feel as if the players get to be the hero. It feels as if we're all soldiers, playing our little parts, but nobody stands out.

Then again, on the other side nobody stands out either. The other side also has soldiers to beat, but no grand evil. And I think that this is where the problem is for me. There is no big baddie so far.

No common enemy to hate, no the enemy is splintered. Of course there is still Garrosh, who can die in a fire for all I care. And Varian...who can...well not much better (I know they're trying to make him more likeable, he's still an arrogant prick).

But there is no common purpose in the world at the moment. The world is divided, everybody fights their own little battle and that's that.

Now I'm no big lore monkey or anything, but even I felt the threat of Illidan during Burning Crusade. And when we finally beat him...god that felt good. In fact, I am currently doing quests with my monk and it still feels good.

You are not prepared!

And then in wrath there was Arthas. The Lich King was everywhere and Blizzard had made damn sure that everybody would be pestered by him at some point. Quests, dungeons, various raids...we all knew what we were fighting for.

Muradin's dwarves? Doesn't anyone stay dead anymore?

Once we had finally beaten the Lich King into submission (after he had beaten us into submission with his defile quite a few times) the world got turned upside down. Deathwing came flapping by and set the world on fire...quite literally in a lot of places.

I SHALL TEAR THIS WORLD APART!

When Deathwing was defeated there were...pandas?

Huh...yeah, ok, I love the pandas. In fact, I levelled the monk as a panda, shortly went human, but missed the panda so much that she's back to being cuddle and gorgeous. But we cannot really go fight the pandas much.

Well, we can, if they join the other faction we can, but that's not a big baddie. Who then?

The Sha?

Sha of Happiness

I can't help it. The Sha is just not as impressive as our previous big baddies.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see, and hope that this all turns into something badass still.


And otherwise I will just keep on hoping that both Garrosh and Varian tragically find their end or something.

{◕ ◡ ◕}

25 vs 10man

We love 25 player raiding. We also love 10 player raiding. We have people on the team that do both, depending on who they are. We aren't really satisfied with the state of 25 player raiding right now. Our goal when we made the raid changes at the start of Cataclysm that unified the 10 and 25 player lockouts was to let players choose the raid size that they preferred and make it a fair choice. 

At the time, we were responding to feedback from many players who preferred 10 player raiding and felt pressured to do 25s because they offered such better loot. The reality, something we failed to properly account for, is the logistical burdens of maintaining a 25 player roster. Those burdens are borne almost exclusively by the officers, raid leaders, and guild leaders of those groups. Those pressures are such that it tends to cause those groups to splinter into 10s. Before there was the carrot of 25s give you the best loot in the game, which was enough to get guilds to push through those stresses by recruiting more or making it work. 

Now it is easy to say, well, we only have 21 people on at raid time, let's just do 10 mans instead of cancelling the raid. Then you go down the road to transitioning to a 10 player guild. It isn't a reflection of what our players want, but what is simplest for the guild leadership. We are looking at trying to better incentivize 25s, recognizing that for it to be a fair choice, there needs to be something to compensate for that additional logistical burden.

A blue poster posted this a couple of days ago. I picked it up from MMO-Champion from this post, and I immediately saved it as a draft. Knowing that it was something I wanted to speak my mind about when I would have the time.

Overall this statement tells me that there will be a higher loot level again at some point for 25s. Especially with tests going on already with 10s and 25s being separate lockouts again.

If the burden is completely on the raidleader/officers/guildleaders, and those people are done with the catherding, what is the problem of them turning to do 10s instead of 25s?

If the general raider is not willing to step up to do the extra work, why should they be the ones rewarded? Attendance bonus?

"There needs to be something to compensate for logistical burden."
I disagree. Obviously people would prefer not to do this. 

Obviously people prefer to do 10s. Because there is currently nothing holding them from 25s. 

Yet, they don't.

Why do they need to be pushed into doing the 25s anyways? Why is it so important that the 25s are more popular than they are now? It feels like these people need to be bribed into doing something they would prefer not to do.

If I would not get paid for my job, I would not work either. So does this mean that I prefer working over doing something else? No. If given a choice and having everything even I would much prefer to do only the things I want to do, and not go to work. And I like my job, but there are still quite a few things I would like doing better.

So are the 25s supposed to be like work? Are players supposed to be pushed into 25s? But if they are obviously not fun enough without the extra incentive of 'salary' why would Blizzard want to push people in that direction?

To me it seems that currently people can decide to do 25s if they prefer that size. It seems to me that the fact that so many 25s have fallen apart is proof that the leadership prefers 10s over 25s. And to be honest, it's also proof that the players prefer 10s. Because if they would be so hung up on doing 25s, why do they not put in the extra time and energy to get that done?

Frankly, if you're a player who wants this or that, but is not willing to put the energy in to get that going or at the very least help the leadership to get that going. Then you have not much to want. You have to be happy with what the people who are willing to step up get done, and be happy that you can tag along.

If anything at all does happen, the leadership should be appreciated, not the whole raid. If you want the leaders in World of Warcraft to step up and do more, reward them. Not the whole 25 man, just because it is a 25man.

How about just giving the raid 1 item per boss kill? 10s and 25s. An item that the raid can reward to the players they feel have deserved it most. That the raid can give back to their leadership or whomever stepped up.

An item that does not effect the effectiveness of raiding mind you. Or maybe only after a long time of saving up. So having to save up say 20 of this or that item will get you the extra special reward.

Or maybe Blizz should introduce 20mans? 2 times 10 after all. If guilds have to transfer back from 10 to 25 that means 3 groups of 10, with 5 people left by the wayside.

In the end I don't know how Blizzard will get what they want, I know even less why on earth they want it. I do know that in the end the players won't be happy with it anyways.

Current WoW Mood:

The current state of healing

I spoke about off-spec healing, and while writing I found that I was meandering into a post about,  what I believe, are currently some of the major issues with healing.

So I finished that post, and today I'll continue with where I left off.

What is the current state of healing?

To be honest I am not entirely sure. What I can personally see is that LFRs seem to always be waiting for healers to fill up the group. What I can also see is that I would get the incentive baggy about 50% of the time if I would join solo as a healer. I see this as often, if not more often than the tank baggy.

If I look at my feelings about healing, and explore them on a deeper level I think that there are a couple of reasons for this.

A healer is no longer the hero. This is partly due to off-spec healers, but I think the biggest reason for this is the way Blizzard has currently designed healers.

I am often told that numbers do not matter. I can do a boatload of healing, but if I heal the wrong people...But, if my success is not measured in healing numbers, than how do I know if I am succesful?

If my success is measured in keeping the raid alive, but I have no influence over who lives and dies, other than doing my normal rotation as good as I can and shouting at people to not stand in the bad, than how do I measure my success?

If keeping your feet out of the fire is an individual success, than I'm back to how do you measure the healer's success?

Let me list some things that I believe could help the healer position in the game.

Dps heals should be just that, dps heals. 

Limit the healing dps can do to self-heal only. And then only so much what they need in emergencies, so they can live a few seconds longer until the healer comes by and does the actual healer job. Dps should not be the ones responsible for healing, they should keep themselves out of trouble as much as possible, and be able to survive a moment while the healer is busy elsewhere, that's their job.

Find a way to bring the saviour aspect back to the healer role. 

We need more woah! moments in the healer specs, instead of rotation. It will give the healers their sense of importancy back, and it might even make more people chose for the healer role. I haven't had a woah! healer moment since Icecrown btw. Lifegrip was fun in Cata, but I don't need to be a healer for that.

And even my biggest woah! heal as a monk, Revival, is used only in specific moments of the fight since the fights are built around having spells like that. As long as that is true, it is not a save people's asses move, it is a rotational move.

People should die, guaranteed, if they try certain things without a healer. 

This comes with the whole, healers should be important thing. If you do not have the amount of healing only a healer can put out, the damage should be too big to live through. After all, nobody would think of going into a raid without a tank, right? Right. Healers should be necesary.

Don't get me wrong, I'm really glad that we can 2-heal the whole of Mogu'Shan Vaults, but it's pretty bad for the healer population if Blizzard starts building their encounters around having only 2 healers instead of 3 because there are not enough healers. I would rather have them spend that design time and thinking in how to make it such that enough people will want to be a healer.

Solve the cause, instead of the symptom.

Kill Mana Management. 

I mentioned it earlier, but mana management is NOT fun. And only since mana management was back with a vengeance in Cata, there's a shortage of healers everywhere.

Healing, in my opinion, should be about saving people. About finding the right tool for the right situation. And if you screw up in finding the correct tool, or using it correctly, on the person who needs it, people die. Simple as that.

Healing should not be about carefully pre-planning the entire fight in your head. Holding back at times because you know if you don't it will be a wipe at a later moment anyways due to mana shortage.

I let one of the tanks die this weekend on Will of the Emperor because if I had saved him, he would've fallen over 20 seconds later anyway due to me being oom. I made the conscious choice of using mana efficient spells because otherwise I would not be able to keep up enough healing for the fight so I hoped he would pull through with the smaller heals. Not fun.

Should it go back to whack-a-mole? Maybe sometimes, yes. Should it go back to one-button healing only? No, but that's easily preventable. If one heal is dependent on the other heal to work properly (combos) healers cannot possibly be a one-button healer.

Should there be no watching your mana bar at all? Nah, if you go overboard you should run out of mana still. However, if the heals are tuned differently you should just be able to react to what the fight calls for, without worrying about your mana bar.

What I miss most?

I wish I was able to heal when needed. I wish I was able to react to the fight, without having to sit back and just let the damage happen because I will be out of mana if I don't sit back.

I am capable of more, but my character is not, and I find that endlessly frustrating.

I wish I wish...but oh well.

Off-Spec Healing, good or bad?

On MMO-Champion I was reading some blue responses about off-spec healing. Curious to the rest of the conversation I went to the forums, and read the rest as well.

Since I need an authenticator to log in to the forums, and am at work now without one, I figured I would share my opinions here.

Off-spec healing will be nerfed.

I personally quite like the fact that my dps can also be held responsible for their own health. I also like that they can throw an emergency heal every now and then.

I also believe that these emergency heals need to be big enough to make a difference.

I do not believe that they should be able to replace the healers.

What is wrong with the current model then?

I think what is wrong is not so much the off-heals being too strong. I think comparably the healers are just not strong enough. 

As a healer I want to be the saviour. When I specced healer I chose to be the saviour. I gave up being able to do damage to be the saviour. I am not the hero at the front, I am sitting quietly in the back running my rotation until it is time to shine and save someone from something incoming.

But Blizzard has completely taken out that second part 'save someone from something incoming'.

Healers are rotational now, not saviours. They do not get to shine anymore by making spectacular saves.

In fact, Blizz gave the save the raid's ass part to the dps. 

How the ratio heals/off-spec heals should be. 

I believe that this is the biggest problem for healers nowadays. Not that off-spec healers are taking their place, no, they simply have no glory moments of their own. In their aim to make the healing less of a whack-a-mole game Blizzard has also taken the glorious saves from the healer out.

Sure, you can throw in a guardian angel, a revival, or a pallie bubble at the right time. However, fights are build such that the right time for these abilities is pre-programmed nowadays.

Yaknow, that big ability that the boss does and everybody needs to press their cooldown button at that specific moment? Yes, that, not a 'nice save', pre-programmed.

Lets face it, healing is hard, healing is thankless, and healing takes a specific type of person. There is always a shortage of healers nowadays.

I sacrificed things to be the saviour, and Blizzard gives it away for free to the dps. 

What should they do to fix this then? Well, I do have some ideas, but this would be another monster post if I put them in here, so those will be for tomorrow.