Blizzard is updating Legendary items in their next World of Warcraft patch. On live servers right now there is a problem that some Legendaries are extremely effective and others are ... really bad. They have decided that the gap should be closer, and I quite agree. It isn't that they should all be the same, but just that there should be a real argument for using each one depending on your situation and priorities. Each character can only use 2 Legendaries so the balance between them is very important.
For example, as a Retribution Paladin I currently have 2 Legendaries that give me a 5% dps increase. (I don't own either of them, but they exist.) There are also a couple of Legendaries that give decent utility, and then a couple that are absolutely garbage. Generally the people who are really competitive, top tier players all say that the 2 Legendaries that increase dps are good and everything else is irrelevant and has no use. I tend to disagree with that stance because not everyone is pushing the hardest content with barely enough gear.
As an example, there is a Legendary that saves you when you die and gives you a big damage shield. This is excellent in any situation where dying is the problem. However, if you are trying to do a boss that requires 105 dps to beat and you only do 100 dps, then you simply have to take the Legendary that gives 5 dps. You can't take the Legendary that saves you from death because you just have to not die. This is the situation a lot of top raiders are in. They can't win if anyone screws up and they play like crazy so they are doing bosses that their gear is just barely adequate for and that extra 5% is what will let them win.
In my guild though we are doing much easier content. We have a lot of casual players. Most of our kills happen with tons of raiders dead, especially first kills. We don't play over and over until nobody makes a mistake - we just play until we make few enough mistakes overall that we win. In that environment the Legendary that saves you from death is *amazing*. We don't need 105 dps to win. We just need 85, so if you live throughout the entire fight you have done your 100 dps and easily beaten the benchmark. This is a fine scenario. I don't need 10 Legendary options that are competitive for the hardcore raiders, I just need 10 Legendaries that do something useful and have their niche. While using a Legendary like the one that saves you from death you might get mocked by the hardcore types it is still useful for them and great for people in my situation.
That sort of thing doesn't describe all the Legendaries though. For example, one of ones I have is called Chain of Thrayn. It heals anyone I cast a Blessing on for 15% of their health. I have a Blessing to use with it which I can cast about every 30 seconds, so I heal about .5% of a person's health/sec using this ability. A healer heals about 15% of a person's health per second, so this is worth about 3% of a healer. It doesn't sound so bad thus far, but there are a ton of downsides. First off is the problem that I need to take time to cast the blessing, and doing so costs me about 3% of my damage. Then I need to pay attention to other people's health and figure out who I am targetting and that costs me time I could be thinking about other things. It ends up shifting damage to healing in a way that isn't profitable and it costs me brain cycles to do it. Plus if I do this I lose access to that Blessing for other utility. On the flip side it means that if I use that Blessing randomly (which I do, at times) then it is helpful without cost.
The net assessment of this Legendary is that it is absolutely wretched. It provides a modest sized heal very rarely and not when I want it. Compared to 5% bonus damage it is a joke. There simply isn't any circumstance in which this Legendary is actually a solid choice. If they increased the heal to 50% instead of 15% then we would be looking at an item I would actually be excited about.
Blizzard noticed this and is changing Chain of Thrayn to improve my damage by 25% and healing by 70% during Avenging Wrath, which is up about 25% of the time. The new functionality is really interesting and while most people will just use it for damage I think there are a lot of powerful healing applications too. In any case it will be competitive and I won't be sad to own it anymore.
Overall I really approve of the direction they are taking. There are still Legendaries that are kind of niche, and ones that have utility I don't think a lot of people are looking for. However, all the absolutely trash ones are being buffed, and instead of 2 Legendaries standing head and shoulders above the rest there are going to be a bunch of options. I like that, because it means once you have a few Legendaries you will have some good stuff. Nobody will end up with 3 Legendaries and not have a single one that is decent for them. It isn't a great feeling to know that you are doing 10% less damage than you could be and that nothing you can do will change it until you get the perfect drop.
We don't need all Legendaries to be the same. Having some that do wacky but useful things is great. We just need a selection of choices in the top tier so people can do different stuff and be ok, and some fun things for those who really want to branch out. The first iteration of Legendaries failed at this, but the new set actually looks really good.
So far, so good.
Wednesday, November 16, 2016
Monday, November 7, 2016
Failure to be instant, penalty card
The WOW group finder is having some real issues. The way is works in theory is that people sign up for one or more roles - damage, healer, or tank. Then the system groups up 3 damage, 1 healer, 1 tank, and sends them off to do dungeons. Practically speaking there are a lot more than 3 damage folks for each healer or tank so the damage types have to wait in line. What *should* happen is that damage folks wait a long time and there are a few healers or tanks in line, but not both, because as soon as there is at least 1 of each a new group should launch immediately. Blizzard makes this clear to people by offering bonuses to the role that is most needed to get them to queue up, and this works, to a degree. Many people, myself included, sign up for whichever role has the bonus attached.
Recently this has not been happening at all. I have been signing up mostly as a tank when it has the bonus attached and then nothing happens. Obviously since tanks are in demand I should have a group instantly but instead I wait. I go do some quests, chat, run around the city, and then 10 or 15 minutes later I finally get in to a dungeon. This is a complete failure on Blizzard's part. That is 10 or 15 minutes that the healer and 3 damage folks are waiting in line for absolutely no reason. It irritates me, and I am sure it irritates them, and there is no rationale for why this should be.
There are other weird bugs too. Sometimes it tries to assemble a group for me as a healer or tank, and the group fails because one of the damage types is afk and doesn't click YES. Then the system tries again, but this time signing me up as a damage type. This is obviously contrary to the goal of the system, and it usually offers me the damage role without the bonus stuff. I signed up just because I wanted the bonus stuff, so previously I would just decline, which would boot me out of the system and force me to requeue. It turns out though that when I accept the invitation it lets me do damage but still gives me the bonus stuff despite the fact that it said it wouldn't and I didn't perform the role I was supposed to.
They really need to get their asses in gear and fix this. Part of the appeal of signing up as a tank or healer is that I get an instant queue. I can just go do my dungeon without waiting, huzzah! When I have to wait around for a long time for no reason I often just give up, log off, or miss the queue when it pops and then instead of a tank filling out a group Blizzard now has 4 irritated people still waiting.
Waiting isn't fun.
The thing I like about the dungeon finder is the FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT feeling. I just hit a button and then FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT for twenty minutes solid and then leave. I don't have to be social, I just play as hard as I can without screwing around. I am happy to do whatever role is required to make that happen, and Blizzard really should set up the game so people like me can help other people who are from the bad classes that can't do everything. FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT is fun, waiting is unfun.
I don't know what has caused this screwup but it has lasted for a month at least and it is really putting the hurt on the dungeon experience. People like the dungeon finder and it is a big draw for casual players. When it works it is tuned well enough to get overgeared people like me queuing up to help the undergeared and casual players do stuff. When it doesn't work they sit and wait and get grumpy.
Blizzard, you have been put on notice: Fix this.
Recently this has not been happening at all. I have been signing up mostly as a tank when it has the bonus attached and then nothing happens. Obviously since tanks are in demand I should have a group instantly but instead I wait. I go do some quests, chat, run around the city, and then 10 or 15 minutes later I finally get in to a dungeon. This is a complete failure on Blizzard's part. That is 10 or 15 minutes that the healer and 3 damage folks are waiting in line for absolutely no reason. It irritates me, and I am sure it irritates them, and there is no rationale for why this should be.
There are other weird bugs too. Sometimes it tries to assemble a group for me as a healer or tank, and the group fails because one of the damage types is afk and doesn't click YES. Then the system tries again, but this time signing me up as a damage type. This is obviously contrary to the goal of the system, and it usually offers me the damage role without the bonus stuff. I signed up just because I wanted the bonus stuff, so previously I would just decline, which would boot me out of the system and force me to requeue. It turns out though that when I accept the invitation it lets me do damage but still gives me the bonus stuff despite the fact that it said it wouldn't and I didn't perform the role I was supposed to.
They really need to get their asses in gear and fix this. Part of the appeal of signing up as a tank or healer is that I get an instant queue. I can just go do my dungeon without waiting, huzzah! When I have to wait around for a long time for no reason I often just give up, log off, or miss the queue when it pops and then instead of a tank filling out a group Blizzard now has 4 irritated people still waiting.
Waiting isn't fun.
The thing I like about the dungeon finder is the FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT feeling. I just hit a button and then FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT for twenty minutes solid and then leave. I don't have to be social, I just play as hard as I can without screwing around. I am happy to do whatever role is required to make that happen, and Blizzard really should set up the game so people like me can help other people who are from the bad classes that can't do everything. FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT is fun, waiting is unfun.
I don't know what has caused this screwup but it has lasted for a month at least and it is really putting the hurt on the dungeon experience. People like the dungeon finder and it is a big draw for casual players. When it works it is tuned well enough to get overgeared people like me queuing up to help the undergeared and casual players do stuff. When it doesn't work they sit and wait and get grumpy.
Blizzard, you have been put on notice: Fix this.
Tuesday, November 1, 2016
Kaboom
My character in my current DnD campaign just hit fifth level. This is the big one because I am a wizard and now I get to cast Fireball. Fireball is so much better than my previous best spell it is staggering. My best spell at level four was usually Thunderwave, which hit 9 squares for 14.5 damage. Fireball hits 48 squares for 28 damage. Also instead of being close range it has a massive range. (Thunderwave pushes enemies back, which I have found usually isn't helpful, but it could matter.)
In any case, Fireball does twice the damage over more than five times the area. It is absolutely devastating. There are encounters that almost wiped the group at level four that I could handily win with a single casting of Fireball now that I am level five. The enormous range is also something simply cannot ignore because being able to hit an enemy at 150 feet means I can rain destruction on them for a half dozen rounds before they can get to me, and that is assuming they have a nice flat stretch of ground to work with.
I also have access to Counterspell which lets me simply negate a spell entirely on my opponent's turn. This is a whole new kind of power, one which lets me totally dominate another caster in a battle where it is a single enemy caster as the threat.
It isn't just me that got better at level five though. Many melee characters get a second attack at level five, allowing them to do twice as much damage. That isn't as good as 'twice as much damage and hit five times as many targets' but it is still an immense improvement.
This all makes encounter design a bit nutty. When I think of the fights that were insanely dangerous over the last few sessions all of them would be halfway defeated by a single Fireball, and if the monsters get unlucky it could easily wipe them right out. When I look at the theory behind monsters though they don't assume that fifth level characters are that much more powerful at all. The XP and challenge rating system assumes relatively smooth power increases for the characters but the actual game doesn't work like that at all. It isn't as though you can just put twice as many monsters into encounters and call it done either - they all die to Fireball.
I think this crazy step up in power for our party is just an artifact of the design choices of 5e DnD. They chose to have bounded accuracy so your bonus to hit goes from +6 at level 1 to +13 at level 20. It doesn't go up much, so they can't inflate character power by increasing that. They could continually give big damage bonuses, but instead they chose to give more and more attacks and have the attacks do similar damage. I don't like that solution because the jump between one and two attacks is so enormous and because it leads to longer and longer turns as the game progresses. Having high level characters just drag out combats is not a good design.
They really ought to give people more damage instead. It would mean that you don't have the incredible power jumps that lead to level four being super hard and level five being a cakewalk, and it would prevent drag on high level combat. For example, let people add their stat bonus to their attacks (not with offhand attacks) an additional time at various levels, or double their weapon damage roll. That increases their power but it does it in small chunks and doesn't add clutter in terms of extra dice and added resolution time.
Perhaps the best solution is to simply start characters at level five. That way you avoid the ridiculously dangerous low level time and everyone has lots of dice to roll. You do get more predictability that way, and that is a good way to avoid some of the swinginess (and constant deaths or wipes) that occur in low level play.
Also I am so going to yell FIREBALL constantly now. It will be wonderful.
Thursday, October 20, 2016
Overly attached
In the current version of Heroes By Trade I have a system that controls how people use magical items called Vessels. Characters can attune to Vessels to gain access to their abilities and benefits. This Attunement process is different from Vessel to Vessel - an executioner's axe might require you to chop off the heads of people guilty of treason, a jewel might require you to wear it in your necklace for a year while signing a song to it every day, and a roc's feather might require you to save birds from danger. In this way characters have quests and stories that unfold as they get access to greater abilities.
How many Vessels you can Attune to is regulated by the Presence stat. Presence functions much like Charisma does in DnD but I like the name better because this stat also determines how powerful your influence on the world is, and thus how many Vessels you can control. This all worked well, as far as I am concerned.
A couple days ago In The Hat emailed me to suggest that this system might be used to allow people to have familiars by using their Attunement slots on the familiar instead of a Vessel. Wizards having magical pets or rangers having animals that follow them around is a constant trope in fantasy, so it seems quite reasonable to allow this in some fashion. I haven't so far though because as a class function pets are a real problem. They never end up balanced in combat and always end up being broken one way or another. Sometimes they just die to AOE effects and then are useless, other times they are invincible and end up being able to block hallways and doors in ways that just shouldn't be. In extreme cases they end up more powerful than other characters.
However, if a pet or familiar comes into the game using this system it isn't going to be a powerful combatant. It might provide combat bonuses to the character, but mostly it would act as a scout, have magical abilities, give access to skill bonuses, or something like that. It could be really interesting and it would be easy to figure out how good the pet should be by looking at the guidelines for Vessel power. I really like this idea.
I think the idea can be further expanded though. Rather than Attunements being about Vessels with an exception for familiars I think they should be much more broad. For example, if there is a battlefield where a horrible magical battle took place and the battlefield is magical and/or haunted, a character could Attune themselves to that very place. This could grant them substantial powers that are related to the battlefield and which mostly apply only if the character is there. Think of a druid in a sacred grove, a paladin in a holy chapel where a desperate defence against undead took place, or a warlock defending their tower. In these places these characters often manifest special abilities and are much stronger than they would be otherwise.
I wouldn't necessarily expect a lot of players to choose this option because players usually move around a lot. However, having that be a thing would make it possible for the GM to build opponents that truly are terrifyingly dangerous in their lair and not have it wreck the game world otherwise.
Probably the best way to approach it would be to have players Attuned to places gain a small benefit that goes with them, perhaps half of the normal benefit of a Vessel in power, but have a massive benefit worth double what a Vessel normally is that only applies when in the area that the character is Attuned to. This way it doesn't feel worthless under most circumstances but it is truly amazing when that character is in their home base.
This also opens up the possibility of having characters Attune to other things. Rather than pitch Attunement as being about controlling Vessels I could simply say that it gives you power over the world and make controlling Vessels, places with special magic, and familiars as three examples. That gives the GM freedom to decide what other possibilities might exist and a framework for figuring out how powerful those possibilities should be.
I find this especially appealing because it makes Presence awesome. I love the idea of people having this gravitas, this potency, that others can detect and having that be part of the world. For all of Naked Man's criticism of Presence I don't think even he could resist stacking a lot of it if he could see all kinds of really cool stuff you can do with it.
Possibly I should also change the way I do Attunements. Right now they are set up so that you get one Attunement at 3 Presence, 2 Attunements at 7 Presence, 3 Attunements at 11 Presence, and 4 Attunements at 15 Presence. However, instead I could just assign each Vessel, familiar, or magical place a value and say that it takes that much Presence to Attune to it. All current Vessels would convert to taking 4 Presence points to control, but I could easily create new ones that are extremely powerful and require a lot of Presence, or relatively trivial ones that take less.
So many grand new ideas to play with!
How many Vessels you can Attune to is regulated by the Presence stat. Presence functions much like Charisma does in DnD but I like the name better because this stat also determines how powerful your influence on the world is, and thus how many Vessels you can control. This all worked well, as far as I am concerned.
A couple days ago In The Hat emailed me to suggest that this system might be used to allow people to have familiars by using their Attunement slots on the familiar instead of a Vessel. Wizards having magical pets or rangers having animals that follow them around is a constant trope in fantasy, so it seems quite reasonable to allow this in some fashion. I haven't so far though because as a class function pets are a real problem. They never end up balanced in combat and always end up being broken one way or another. Sometimes they just die to AOE effects and then are useless, other times they are invincible and end up being able to block hallways and doors in ways that just shouldn't be. In extreme cases they end up more powerful than other characters.
However, if a pet or familiar comes into the game using this system it isn't going to be a powerful combatant. It might provide combat bonuses to the character, but mostly it would act as a scout, have magical abilities, give access to skill bonuses, or something like that. It could be really interesting and it would be easy to figure out how good the pet should be by looking at the guidelines for Vessel power. I really like this idea.
I think the idea can be further expanded though. Rather than Attunements being about Vessels with an exception for familiars I think they should be much more broad. For example, if there is a battlefield where a horrible magical battle took place and the battlefield is magical and/or haunted, a character could Attune themselves to that very place. This could grant them substantial powers that are related to the battlefield and which mostly apply only if the character is there. Think of a druid in a sacred grove, a paladin in a holy chapel where a desperate defence against undead took place, or a warlock defending their tower. In these places these characters often manifest special abilities and are much stronger than they would be otherwise.
I wouldn't necessarily expect a lot of players to choose this option because players usually move around a lot. However, having that be a thing would make it possible for the GM to build opponents that truly are terrifyingly dangerous in their lair and not have it wreck the game world otherwise.
Probably the best way to approach it would be to have players Attuned to places gain a small benefit that goes with them, perhaps half of the normal benefit of a Vessel in power, but have a massive benefit worth double what a Vessel normally is that only applies when in the area that the character is Attuned to. This way it doesn't feel worthless under most circumstances but it is truly amazing when that character is in their home base.
This also opens up the possibility of having characters Attune to other things. Rather than pitch Attunement as being about controlling Vessels I could simply say that it gives you power over the world and make controlling Vessels, places with special magic, and familiars as three examples. That gives the GM freedom to decide what other possibilities might exist and a framework for figuring out how powerful those possibilities should be.
I find this especially appealing because it makes Presence awesome. I love the idea of people having this gravitas, this potency, that others can detect and having that be part of the world. For all of Naked Man's criticism of Presence I don't think even he could resist stacking a lot of it if he could see all kinds of really cool stuff you can do with it.
Possibly I should also change the way I do Attunements. Right now they are set up so that you get one Attunement at 3 Presence, 2 Attunements at 7 Presence, 3 Attunements at 11 Presence, and 4 Attunements at 15 Presence. However, instead I could just assign each Vessel, familiar, or magical place a value and say that it takes that much Presence to Attune to it. All current Vessels would convert to taking 4 Presence points to control, but I could easily create new ones that are extremely powerful and require a lot of Presence, or relatively trivial ones that take less.
So many grand new ideas to play with!
Monday, October 17, 2016
Heal me
Years ago I got myself in a lot of hot water fighting about healing in raids. At the time I was a retribution paladin in WOW and the fight was about whether or not I should reduce my damage dealt in order to provide healing to the raid. I was advocating for the use of Glyph of Divine Storm that randomly spewed healing onto the raid to the tune of about 3% of a healer's output, which required me to give up Glyph of Exorcism which increased my damage by about .5%. There was much disagreement and shouting and gnashing of teeth.
That debate has come again.
This time it isn't even close. I am totally right. But people don't seem to believe it, even still.
The details are the talent choice for Retribution paladins at level 75. One choice is a really piss poor attack that is basically only useful for levelling early on and solo world content. The other choice is a spell that is only good when you are being attacked in melee... so really only useful for levelling and solo world content. The third choice is Word of Glory, a very powerful heal that is comparable to big healing cooldowns like Tranquility or Healing Tide Totem.
And the professionals basically all say you can just take whatever because none of them are any good.
The thing is, Word of Glory requires that you give up damage to use it. You replace a usage of your best finishing move with a Word of Glory cast. To evaluate how good this is, I figured out over the course of a raid how much each ability would do. If I use Word of Glory as often as possible I will output about 18% of a healer's total output. Each usage is about half as powerful as a major healing cooldown, but I can use it a lot more often and I can use it twice in a row if I want.
Doing this costs me about 4.5% of my damage. That isn't nothing, but it means that I am actually outputting a serious amount of healing that can potentially change the course of the encounter. In the original debate years ago I was getting a better ROI - I got six times as much healing per dps (3% from .5%) whereas now it is only about four times as much healing per dps (18% from 4.5%). The big difference this time though is that the healing is controllable. Word of Glory has a 1 minute cooldown and can accumulate up to 2 charges so I don't just spew out healing randomly, I save it for when something terrible happens and then pump it out. This is basically the best kind of healing because I let the healers do their thing for most of the raid but when disaster happens or the one really awful ability hits I can step up and deliver a really serious amount of help.
This to me seems like a no brainer. You don't have to cast Word of Glory on any given boss if it isn't going to be helpful, so taking it has little cost. If healing is being solid, you can just keep on doing damage. However, the ability to pound out a really big chunk of healing on demand when the situation calls for it is extremely powerful and raids really ought to be taking advantage of it.
The fact that Holy paladins don't have a good big healing cooldown like this is a real factor, but people don't seem to have noticed that you can just get a Ret paladin to do that in many circumstances. If a healer didn't bother to talent for a great healing cooldown (especially when the alternative is pratically irrelevant) they would be pilloried, but apparently Ret paladins aren't expected to.
This all goes back to arguments about raid slots years ago. Hybrids like paladins were often brought on raids for their utility and they had lower damage to compensate. Eventually Blizzard decided that this was a poor design and they decided to give everyone comparable damage and utility instead. Getting there took a lot of crying from hybrid damage dealers, and there was a huge pushback against the idea that they should sacrifice damage for defence or buffs. I get that. It sucks to be a damage dealer and to see everyone else dominate you on the meters. It feels good to look at your numbers and see that you are keeping up. Some people can feel good about protecting and buffing, others not so much.
But this mindset of 'damage dealers should ignore healing' is not ideal for pushing the hardest content. At some point you absolutely have to figure out how to squeeze the absolute most out of your raiders and when you have the option to bring some really powerful stuff to the table at a cost of damage you have to consider it. Sometimes it is the wrong move, certainly, but other times you give up a single offensive cast to have someone in your raid live instead of die and then it is a massive win. People are just letting themselves get too locked into the idea that healers do healing and dps do damage instead of thinking that there is damage to be done and healing to be done and you just have to figure out the best way to cope with that.
Yes, it sucks to give up damage and lose your spot on the damage meter. Yes, noticing when the raid takes damage is annoying because you only want to focus on dps. But at some point you need to realize that you win when the boss is dead, not when you are on top of the meter, and this means that you absolutely need to use tools like Word of Glory. It isn't a small thing, it is really powerful, and ignoring it is a real waste.
That debate has come again.
This time it isn't even close. I am totally right. But people don't seem to believe it, even still.
The details are the talent choice for Retribution paladins at level 75. One choice is a really piss poor attack that is basically only useful for levelling early on and solo world content. The other choice is a spell that is only good when you are being attacked in melee... so really only useful for levelling and solo world content. The third choice is Word of Glory, a very powerful heal that is comparable to big healing cooldowns like Tranquility or Healing Tide Totem.
And the professionals basically all say you can just take whatever because none of them are any good.
The thing is, Word of Glory requires that you give up damage to use it. You replace a usage of your best finishing move with a Word of Glory cast. To evaluate how good this is, I figured out over the course of a raid how much each ability would do. If I use Word of Glory as often as possible I will output about 18% of a healer's total output. Each usage is about half as powerful as a major healing cooldown, but I can use it a lot more often and I can use it twice in a row if I want.
Doing this costs me about 4.5% of my damage. That isn't nothing, but it means that I am actually outputting a serious amount of healing that can potentially change the course of the encounter. In the original debate years ago I was getting a better ROI - I got six times as much healing per dps (3% from .5%) whereas now it is only about four times as much healing per dps (18% from 4.5%). The big difference this time though is that the healing is controllable. Word of Glory has a 1 minute cooldown and can accumulate up to 2 charges so I don't just spew out healing randomly, I save it for when something terrible happens and then pump it out. This is basically the best kind of healing because I let the healers do their thing for most of the raid but when disaster happens or the one really awful ability hits I can step up and deliver a really serious amount of help.
This to me seems like a no brainer. You don't have to cast Word of Glory on any given boss if it isn't going to be helpful, so taking it has little cost. If healing is being solid, you can just keep on doing damage. However, the ability to pound out a really big chunk of healing on demand when the situation calls for it is extremely powerful and raids really ought to be taking advantage of it.
The fact that Holy paladins don't have a good big healing cooldown like this is a real factor, but people don't seem to have noticed that you can just get a Ret paladin to do that in many circumstances. If a healer didn't bother to talent for a great healing cooldown (especially when the alternative is pratically irrelevant) they would be pilloried, but apparently Ret paladins aren't expected to.
This all goes back to arguments about raid slots years ago. Hybrids like paladins were often brought on raids for their utility and they had lower damage to compensate. Eventually Blizzard decided that this was a poor design and they decided to give everyone comparable damage and utility instead. Getting there took a lot of crying from hybrid damage dealers, and there was a huge pushback against the idea that they should sacrifice damage for defence or buffs. I get that. It sucks to be a damage dealer and to see everyone else dominate you on the meters. It feels good to look at your numbers and see that you are keeping up. Some people can feel good about protecting and buffing, others not so much.
But this mindset of 'damage dealers should ignore healing' is not ideal for pushing the hardest content. At some point you absolutely have to figure out how to squeeze the absolute most out of your raiders and when you have the option to bring some really powerful stuff to the table at a cost of damage you have to consider it. Sometimes it is the wrong move, certainly, but other times you give up a single offensive cast to have someone in your raid live instead of die and then it is a massive win. People are just letting themselves get too locked into the idea that healers do healing and dps do damage instead of thinking that there is damage to be done and healing to be done and you just have to figure out the best way to cope with that.
Yes, it sucks to give up damage and lose your spot on the damage meter. Yes, noticing when the raid takes damage is annoying because you only want to focus on dps. But at some point you need to realize that you win when the boss is dead, not when you are on top of the meter, and this means that you absolutely need to use tools like Word of Glory. It isn't a small thing, it is really powerful, and ignoring it is a real waste.
Monday, October 10, 2016
More damage
Last night I was playing WOW and ended up in a guild group going to do Mythic Court of Stars Rank 4. I was not optimistic about our group's ability to beat the timer, but I figured we would at least pick up some loot. This was largely because the dps requirement to beat this dungeon is fairly high and we didn't have enough people who really crank it out. Nonetheless we finally found a healer after sitting around for quite some time and off we went.
It was messy. We made it through the first chunks of trash but there were some wipes, largely due to accidentally getting two groups at a time. The healing was a mess and our healer was constantly out of mana so I ended up healing the group up a lot between pulls even though I was specced for damage. I was amazed at how hard the trash hit, because people were just dying too much.
We downed the first boss without that much difficulty and moved on through the dungeon. A few pulls after the first boss we wiped again and somebody asked
"uh, wait, who is healing?"
So we all looked at the party and realized that the 'healer' we had added in as our fifth was in fact specced for damage and hadn't been healing at all. He thought *I* was healing. Then I looked at the damage meters and realized that yes, there are clearly five people attacking and nobody healing.
You might think that at this point since we had three people in the group with healer offspecs we would be fine. You would be wrong.
Unfortunately all three damage dealers who had that option had no practice and no gear for their healer setup. I am set up as dps/tank and the other two only dps. Undoubtedly it would have been easier to do the dungeon with a bad healer than no healer, but not much, since all the enemies would die slower.
We all laughed at ourselves a lot. "These enemies hit hard" we had said. "This dungeon is brutal" we had said. But nobody wondered why they dipped down to 10% health and then just sat there!
We ended up just giving up. I feel okay with this because it was hilarious and silly and it made me laugh a lot. How can you be bitter about such an absurd outcome?
So to everyone out there - You can do difficult dungeons without a healer. People will die a lot. It might be really fun.
It was messy. We made it through the first chunks of trash but there were some wipes, largely due to accidentally getting two groups at a time. The healing was a mess and our healer was constantly out of mana so I ended up healing the group up a lot between pulls even though I was specced for damage. I was amazed at how hard the trash hit, because people were just dying too much.
We downed the first boss without that much difficulty and moved on through the dungeon. A few pulls after the first boss we wiped again and somebody asked
"uh, wait, who is healing?"
So we all looked at the party and realized that the 'healer' we had added in as our fifth was in fact specced for damage and hadn't been healing at all. He thought *I* was healing. Then I looked at the damage meters and realized that yes, there are clearly five people attacking and nobody healing.
You might think that at this point since we had three people in the group with healer offspecs we would be fine. You would be wrong.
Unfortunately all three damage dealers who had that option had no practice and no gear for their healer setup. I am set up as dps/tank and the other two only dps. Undoubtedly it would have been easier to do the dungeon with a bad healer than no healer, but not much, since all the enemies would die slower.
We all laughed at ourselves a lot. "These enemies hit hard" we had said. "This dungeon is brutal" we had said. But nobody wondered why they dipped down to 10% health and then just sat there!
We ended up just giving up. I feel okay with this because it was hilarious and silly and it made me laugh a lot. How can you be bitter about such an absurd outcome?
So to everyone out there - You can do difficult dungeons without a healer. People will die a lot. It might be really fun.
Tuesday, October 4, 2016
Teachings
I have been playing a lot of Castles of Mad King Ludwig lately. Most of my games have been with people who don't know the game and so there has been a lot of teaching. Castles has a lot of complexity to it so I find that teaching the entire ruleset ends up being too much for people and they suffer from analysis paralysis.
The trick for me was to figure if it made sense to teach the entire game to new players or if instead I should cut corners to make it simpler. I don't want to teach them bad habits or strategy by cutting out rules, and I don't want to make the game trivial. I am hunting for a way to teach the game to people so that they understand how it plays without having so much to think about.
I ended up making two changes to the game and I think they are the right ones. The first change is to bonus cards. Normally at the beginning of the game you get three bonus cards and keep two of them, and then sometimes during the game you gain two more of them and keep one of the two. I decided to just deal out the cards to people without choice - instead of three choose two, you just get two. Instead of two choose one, you just get one.
This basically keeps the gameplay the same but means that players don't have to start picking cards and making choices before they have any idea at all what those choices mean. It also means that I don't have to explain all the cards to everyone ahead of time - they can just muddle through and get their points at the end. It does make the game more random but since they are playing against *cough* the second best player in the world *cough* that is good for them.
The other change I made is the random ranked bonuses that happen at game end. In the base game four tiles are chosen randomly, each of which gives a particular type of thing that will grant bonus points at game end based on which player has the most of them. What I did with my training version of the game is simply keep those ranked bonuses hidden. At the end of the game we flip them over and lots of people get bonus points but people can't actually work towards them during the game.
This also pushes rules explanations to the end of the game which is a thing I like. I often find that games that start with an enormous rules speech are frustrating for everyone when people really just want to get in there and start doing things.
Again the game gets more random with this change, but I think it helps make things simpler for the newbs and gets them into the fun of building a castle without quite so much calculation. In their second game of course I would play by the standard rules.
If anyone has other ideas for teaching Castles or any other game please do feel free to comment, as is is a thing I am curious about.
The trick for me was to figure if it made sense to teach the entire game to new players or if instead I should cut corners to make it simpler. I don't want to teach them bad habits or strategy by cutting out rules, and I don't want to make the game trivial. I am hunting for a way to teach the game to people so that they understand how it plays without having so much to think about.
I ended up making two changes to the game and I think they are the right ones. The first change is to bonus cards. Normally at the beginning of the game you get three bonus cards and keep two of them, and then sometimes during the game you gain two more of them and keep one of the two. I decided to just deal out the cards to people without choice - instead of three choose two, you just get two. Instead of two choose one, you just get one.
This basically keeps the gameplay the same but means that players don't have to start picking cards and making choices before they have any idea at all what those choices mean. It also means that I don't have to explain all the cards to everyone ahead of time - they can just muddle through and get their points at the end. It does make the game more random but since they are playing against *cough* the second best player in the world *cough* that is good for them.
The other change I made is the random ranked bonuses that happen at game end. In the base game four tiles are chosen randomly, each of which gives a particular type of thing that will grant bonus points at game end based on which player has the most of them. What I did with my training version of the game is simply keep those ranked bonuses hidden. At the end of the game we flip them over and lots of people get bonus points but people can't actually work towards them during the game.
This also pushes rules explanations to the end of the game which is a thing I like. I often find that games that start with an enormous rules speech are frustrating for everyone when people really just want to get in there and start doing things.
Again the game gets more random with this change, but I think it helps make things simpler for the newbs and gets them into the fun of building a castle without quite so much calculation. In their second game of course I would play by the standard rules.
If anyone has other ideas for teaching Castles or any other game please do feel free to comment, as is is a thing I am curious about.
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