The Glade 4.0

I am *so* glad I've always used blood spec for tanking. I do it in blood presence now, instead of frost presence, but it's more-or-less the same for me now as it was before the patch.

Also, my affliction warlock hasn't changed much and while my protection paladin's rotation has been radically altered, he's actually a lot more fun to play than he was before.

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Go back to zero, take a pill, and get well ~ Lemmy Kilmister

Im in the other school then. I like the simple rotation, it let me keep an eye on OTHER things going on (health bars, boss abilities, etc)...

but I'll adapt

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969 was actually a bit annoying for me. I suppose I needed to rearrange my abilities, but I kinda prefer the new one.

Blood tanking.. it'll be better once I get constant Rune Strike. that's what I keep thinking.

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Grenade 3 Sports Drink. It's fire in the hole.. Your hole!

The "more fun" and "altered rotation" aren't directly linked in my mind. They just happen to both be true from my perspective. I think if not for the "more fun" element of the changes, I'd be right pissed about the rotation because it's taking a lot of getting used to.

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Go back to zero, take a pill, and get well ~ Lemmy Kilmister

The rotations of all classes I play were made more complicated, and I think it's retarded. Don't get me wrong, a couple of them needed it (mut rogue, arcane mage). But I don't really like having to pay attention to so many buttons and icons. I'd rather get to watch the action and hit a couple buttons, instead of having an entire bar to watch. Give me 2 buttons to hit with regularity, another couple to hit at least once a fight, and maybe 3-4 more that are situational. Even a couple that I may have to switch out for regularly used buttons depending on fights. Oh while I'm at it, make everyone's buffs auras already so we can stop casting them all the dam time. Rogue poisons should also be made runeforge-like, so you only have to apply them once.

It really just feels like they made it more complicated because they could, which really annoys me. It's starting to feel like I'm not playing a game, and that I'm just hitting buttons in the order I'm told I need to by the number crunchers. I'm betting the new way of playing is going to turn off a lot of players, especially those that are truly casual who don't want to have to study their classes in online sites to know how to play. At this point I would be totally lost on a couple of my characters if I hadn't downloaded a spell priority addon.

And before anyone mentions it, yes arcane mages are one button wonders right now. That's due to mana regen and such at 80, and won't be true any longer at 85. Though from what I'm reading, they're going to be almost exactly what I'm looking for come level 85. I'd rather not switch mains, but I think I'm finally getting the hang of my mut rogue again, so it won't be necessary.

Hm. Simplifying dps for a net positive in quality of life? Perhaps. Everyone's going to have their own sweet spot, which makes it a hard target to hit.

I do think the required research part of raiding is a bit overblown. It is required if you want to raid and get stuff done, but I don't think it takes a lot of effort or time to get the basics down... at least not in the research phase. Actually developing the muscle memory and/or pinning down what your focus needs to be on can take some time depending on spec. I've had an oft-used feral dps offspec for half a year now and I still occasionally find little things to smooth out or improve dps.

I think from a developer's point of view, the best solution is one that I think is in place, at least for a few specs: diminishing returns on your efforts. If a player can go to EJ or whatever, get their 6 step priority list or whatever, and do a decent job of executing it, they should do pretty good dps. Great players that can go above and beyond the basics should be noticeably ahead of them, but not significantly farther ahead.

I have noticed this when going through some excessive simming for my Enh Shaman about 6 months ago. Enh Shamans have a pretty solid simming community, including a well-maintained program just for the spec. After playing around with it for awhile I saw that switching around the priority order of some abilities made such tiny gains. What's more, the actual optimal priority would change a lot based on my current gear (implication: ability X and Y scale differently, but with any reasonable gear setup they're close to equal). Result? The player that puts the time in simming will do slightly better, but it's not even a major difference so long as the player who doesn't sim has a rough idea of where the abilities should fall in the priority list.

I know Feral has some small things that aren't really important and may only lead to a few hundred dps gained. Spend some time with the spec and do ~14k dps. Nail these small things and do.... 14.5k? 15k?

Theorycrafting tends to also be overblown a little in the sense that there really are very few encounters that meet theorycrafting's parameters. I've only rarely seen a sim, for example, that doesn't assume every fight is Patchwerk. I don't blame the sim makers, really... it's sort of an impossible task they're faced with, and at least they're getting a useful product out there instead of just quitting in the fact of the impossible task. But IMO what ends up truly separating the decent players from the great players is being able to adjust their dpsing to the fight at hand. Most bosses throw a wrench into the mix, and if you are following a typical EJ sort of information to the letter, you are likely missing out on dps somewhere. DPSing Blood Beasts, Volatile Oozes, Bone Spikes, a Blood Prince when there is 10 seconds left until Invocation of Blood switches, etc etc etc should all be handled differently... and the research out there for these situations is slim to none.

Final suggestion that isn't really a valid argument against focus on theorycraft, considering doing your research still helps: most wipes aren't caused by dps being too low. Especially not in the trickier fights. Or sometimes not in the case of trickier fights, as I, on November the 3rd of 2010, wiped twice in a row to that boss in heroic Violet Hold who summons those really slow energy orbs that AE stuff near them. That boss you are supposed to kite. Which the tank didn't kite, but instead linked the damage done/taken in party chat for each player after the healer suggested he needs to move. Cause apparently dps is supposed to trump playing correctly. grumble grumble.

edit: and just for the sake of clarity, I am indeed someone who obviously theorycrafts quite a bit to spend time downloading and tweaking sims for an alt. :p I recognize its value. I just don't think it makes significant gains over the basic research which does not take much time at all. Having that extra few steps to take probably keeps a significant portion of raiders interested, whereas limiting the complexity takes that option away from them and basically skillcaps all players to a level that anyone can reach with a modicum of effort. I don't think that's a good thing, so long as balance (for normal modes, at least) do not require that going above and beyond. I'm perfectly fine with HLK25 being something that's totally out of my reach as a result in part of this existing in game atm. :p