January Blog Posts

Summary

• Showing that threat management tools are very disparate amongst classes
• Pointing out that Blizzard has said "threat management will be noticeably harder in Ulduar"
• Positing the question: is there a point to equal DPS, given the first two points?

Stealing from Lhivera, who did the analysis without cooldowns considered here:

(this does ignore soulshatter, a ~1.5 second cost, 35%-effective threat reduction and invisibility, a ~5 second cost, ~70%-effective threat reduction *if* you don't get hit by any damage in the first 3 seconds.)

Threat per point of damage, from best to worst:
0.60: Arcane
0.70: Demonology
0.79: Destruction
0.81: Frost
0.86: Affliction
0.90: Fire

The Problem with Threat

One problem is whenever you try to talk about it, you get lots of:

• l2p!
• lolz use md
• ur tanks suxxorz
  

But I truly think there are some threat management issues in the game right now, specifically enhanacement shaman, mages, and warlocks.

It's not that fights are undoable at all -- they're quite doable, and your tanks can just gear for more threat rather than mitigation.

But looking ahead to Ulduar, we've been told threat management will be a bigger part of the game. Looking at things as they are now, this raises a lot of concerns in my mind about how threat works for some classes in the game.

Enhancement Shaman

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Tonight was our second run at a 2-3 healer Naxxramas. The two WWS's are:

Sunday: 1/25: 2-3 Healer Naxx
Tuesday: 1/27: 2-3 Healer Naxx (Round II)

It was a lot of fun to let loose and relax, and actually far easier than we expected. I predict many more nights of healers and tanks respecing to DPS.

In response to the many questions I've been getting lately about how to play an Arcane mage, I put together a video and strategy page.

The strat page is: ArcaneMage, and it has an embedded YouTube video on it. But if you want to just take a glance, it's below:

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Arcane Missiles now again benefits from the +3% per AB stack benefit on the AB glyph.

Your optimal DPS cycles are still the same as before: ABx3, ABarr. Doing MBAM, ABarr on a 3-stack when MBarr procs.

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No official details yet but it seems that:

• The "arcane shatter combo" was fixed, you no longer can get the AB buff on AM and Abarr both
• The Arcane Blast glyph has been changed, perhaps to 0% (i.e. it may be useless)

The latest estimations from this nerf put pure arcane on par with FFB now, perhaps very slightly (~50 dps) ahead (but not providing scorch) if FFb has Rune of Razorice from a friendly DK.

If you do not have a DK with Razorice on raids, then Arcane will be further ahead of FFb.

UPDATE 8:44 PST: Kevan of Silvermoon Crusaders is estimating that perhaps the glyphed damage no longer affects AM, but just affects AB and ABarr. I only tested with AM (since it doesn't have a damage range), but he tested with all spells and it seems that the glyph may now be +3% per stack on AB and ABarr only.

UPDATE 2/27: Since it seems this page has gotten linked, I'll edit it: the AB glyph was hotfixed tonight to provide the +3% to on each stack to AM as well. This does not change the rotations linked below however.

UPDATE 2/27: I made a video and guide to playing the new arcane: ArcaneMage.

If so, then arcane > FFb, probably by a big enough margin to care, but with it still not providing scorch *and* with arcane/scorch no longer being a viable build, having to provide scorch will still involve a full respec and reglyphing (who said mages weren't hybrids?)

The ideal arcane mage rotation is now:

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It's not about WoW, but I found this article on Tabula Rasa to be particularly interesting, just from the perspective of "how things can go horribly wrong."

We need to talk about Tabula Rasa; when will we talk about Tabula Rasa?

Written by Adam Martin, formerly CTO of NCsoft Europe, it's full of lots of good information even if you're like me and never played Tabula Rasa in any form.

Particularly interesting quotes to me:

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This song is all over the WoW sites, I'm adding nothing to the internet by posting it here.

And half the people reading this probably weren't even playing when Captain P was around.

And this isn't even about raiding. And it's long.

But, my god, this has sent me down memory lane today and, I do confess, a tear in my eye because oh man do I love this song. I wasn't even playing WoW anymore when it came out: I'd hit 60, disliked what there was of the 'end' game at the time ("Molten Bore" indeed), and gone back to EverQuest where I was leading my guild and still having fun.

Having played EverQuest, I was very familiar with boats breaking, and when I heard about it in WoW (I was playing alts casually but the game still hadn't 'stuck' with me) I actually made an alliance character to go and meet Captain Placeholder.

(other fun memories of very early WoW: anyone else remember the crossteaming on one of the PvP servers where a horde and alliance guild teamed up to make lower barrens a 'toll' zone, long before the flightpath to camp T?)

Well, when Captain Placeholder was removed from the game, I knew a little bit of fun had left the game -- but then Eledainn created this delicious, delightful, fabulous song. And I've pulled it up on occasion since then just to listen and reminisce.

Raise a glass and toast to lost innocence and noobishness in us all.

Below is first the original version by Eledainn, and then the updated version from Cranius (I prefer Eledainn's singing, but Cranius did a good job on the graphics):

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Okay so technically this isn't about raiding, nor is it useful. But it's a thing of beauty and shows just how creative players can be.

The magic, for the non-mages in the audience, is twofold:

Incanter's Absorption (mage arcane talent)
When you absorb damage your spell damage is increased by 15% of the amount absorbed for 10 sec.

Bone Armor (cast by Deathchill Knights, spellstealable)
Encases the caster in bone armor, absorbing 1.2e+006 damage for 1 min. While the armor holds, spellcasting cannot be interrupted by Physical attacks.

My favorite quote was during 4 Hoursemen:

The mark does 143k damage at 63 stacks. The more you know...

Video below (see 500k pyroblasts!):

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