Where in the World is Spirit Link?

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So, it has certainly been a busy week around the office so to speak. The announcement of the Cataclysm beta has everyone chomping at the bit, eagerly awaiting their invitation to what is sure to be one hell of a party.

Since the announcement of the beta there has been a flood of information. Among that information was many tidbits about Restoration shaman. I did an analysis of those updates over on wow.com feel free to check it out. The one thing that has been missing from all of this information has been Spirit Link.

Spirit Link was the original 51 talent in the restoration tree in the first Wrath of the Lich King beta build. I fell in love with this spell very early on, and was looking forward to using it in a raid. It was, however, not to be. Shortly after the second beta build of Wrath the talent was taken away like a jealous father stealing his daughter away in a tower prison, replaced by our now glorious Riptide. I still pine for Spirit Link however. I often wonder if, when I look up at the lonely stars at night, if  Spirit Link is somewhere looking up at the same stars missing me. Don’t get me wrong, I love Riptide, but my heart still belongs to Spirit Link.

When we got the very first set of class previews, Blizzard developers stated that they were going to try and bring Spirit Link back. The restoration shaman community was incredibly receptive to this, and there was much rejoicing. I know I danced a little bit at the news. So we eagerly awaited the announcement of its presence. When the beta information was released, I am sad to say that Spirit Link is MIA. There have been no official statements as of this post as to why it was not included this round, but I have a few suspicions.

The reason the spell was removed from the Wrath beta is that it was hard to balance. here was the original wording of the spell.

Spirit Link (Rank 1): You link the friendly target with two nearby targets, causing 50% of the damage taken to be distributed to the linked targets. After 2200 damage, the link will sever.

That is pretty interesting right? The problem was two fold here. First, the spell had no duration limit aside from the damage cap. So you could set it on two targets and just let it be. Second, the damage cap was either too low (2200 damage would be one swing from most bosses) or too high. Finding a sweet spot was always a problem as it was either way too weak, or way too powerful.

My guess is that either it is NYI (not yet included) or they are still having problems balancing it.  In the Wrath beta  it could be stacked and made damage mitigation moot. “Non def capped tank? We have three shaman NO PROBLEM!” type deal. I will be highly interested to see if it makes it to live, because I love it so much. If it doesn’t make it to live, it will surely still be the one that got away.  It was interesting and a brand new mechanic to play with. I love it like a fat kid loves cake, and I’m a fat kid that LOVES his cake. As a bonus here’s a video of the spell in use in the Wrath beta.

So what do you guys think? Want to see this spell make it live to Cataclysm? How would you balance it? How would you change it?

Also this week, my buddy shane has written a new Google Chrome extension called Armory Links. It allows you to look anyone up quickly and easily in any of the various armory and gear checking sites. You should check it out, I know I love it and use it frequently.

And if you’re heading to BlizzCon and are interested in custom badge art, be sure to swing by Ginny’s site and check out her stuff. She does great work, and I know she’s working on a custom Lodur piece for me as we speak.

Halion Down and the Failure Rate

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After about two and a half hours of wiping, we managed to secure the Ruby Sanctum (25). I have to say, the amount of coordination and movement made that fight fun for me to heal. Unfortunately, the logs for that encounter don’t appear to be fully functional yet. But all the mechanics, the moving, and other stuff helped reiterate to me that the encounter designers still have tricks up their sleeve. We were one of the few early guilds on the server to have taken him down (possibly the first, but I’m not sure). I suspect other guilds were working furiously on hard mode.

The trash is a nice reminder that we still have crowd control and Misdirects to start pulls. AoEing stuff isn’t always a solution. Hibernate comes in handy here (and don’t forget to split up the trash).

Every once in a while, I get a question that sounds something like this:

Hey Matt, why does your guild suck?

I usually interpret it as “Why is your guild behind on progression?”

There’s a variety of reasons. The biggest one that hit us a month ago was the attendance boss. I knew that I had a window narrowing to take down Lich King otherwise it would become extremely difficult to get things going again. I wasn’t just happy when we killed him. I was immensely relieved. It was a lot of pressure and weight off my shoulders because a kill, even with a 20% buff, was enough to help us get noticed. With some luck, maybe we won’t get stoned by the attendance boss.

The failure rate

I am personally of the belief that every player has some sort of failure rate. That is, that player has a chance where they will cause a mistake that potentially leads to a wipe. Whether it happens to be awareness, computer issues, latency (or the fact that the latest patch just destroys their computer after an hour), for whatever reason that player is going to screw up.

No, in fact, every player is guaranteed to screw up at some point. What separates them? The fact that some people don’t individually screw up as much as compared to others. For example, maybe one player screws up 1 in every 5 raids and another player screws up 1 in every 30 raids. And we’re talking minor things like not running out of fire, not dispelling an effect fast enough (for which I am guilty of), or not using a cooldown at the right time to catastrophic errors like dropping a Defile in the middle of the room or missing a bite on Blood Queen and getting mind controlled. Failure rates are going to fluctuate among players due to all sorts of factors.

After being a GM for over two years now, I think I finally learned an important lesson.

  • No matter how much gear you give a player.
  • No matter how much coaching and training you provide.
  • No matter how many tips, videos, and suggestions you send their way.
  • No matter what kind of technology they invest in.

There is always a chance that their success rate will not increase at all. Not every player is going to improve.

Right now, I’m in the midst of internally reviewing everyone. I don’t expect every player I have now to stay when the expansion debuts. Some will move on and change guilds to suit their style or times. Others will have to deal with life stuff like getting married or school. I know that I will be committing to another expansion for sure. Cutting players is something that I still haven’t quite properly learned how to do. I know the process. I know the words. I wish I knew where the resistance is and how to lessen it. I find myself reviewing players and raids, who stands out and who didn’t.

You know what I realize?

Unfortunately, it’s always the misplays, misclicks and mistakes that are engraved in the memories of raid leaders and officers everywhere. We’re built to remember when people screw up, not when they excel (unless when they really stand out and shine). Do you find it odd that when things go well, when everyone is executing as they should, nothing is really mentioned of it? It’s like like it’s completely expected. It’s just another typical raid night. Things are as it should be. Accomplishments and clutch plays just seem to be taken for granted.

I don’t know where I was going with that.

Besides, we still have several months until the expansion. Even though it may not matter as much anymore, it’s still satisfying for me to take down this stuff on hard mode. I often wonder what it’s like in top 500+ world guilds at this point in time. Would they still be raiding? Have many players burned out? At that level, it seems to me that players would eventually just get… bored. There’s nothing else left to do in the PvE scene until there are new bosses available.

Then again, I think that is a different mentality altogether. I know I’d like to experience it once but I also know I could never sustain the energy or the time required.

Lodur on “Totem Recall”

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In case you haven’t heard yet, there is a Shaman Round Table on the horizon. On July 13th the folks over at Raid Warning will be hosting the latest in their series of round table discussions. You may also remember that back in February Thespius and Matticus were featured on Power Word: Fail the priest round table. I am very happy to inform you all that I have been asked to join in on this installment of their series Totem Recall.

The previous class discussions have been great successes and if you want to listen follow the link above.

I’m really looking forward to this. There is a great lineup and there is sure to be a fantastic series of topics for discussion. I can’t wait!

Want to be involved? Submit your questions for Totem Recall on Raid Warning’s Epic Advice thread and vote for your favorites to be answered on the show!

Here’s the line up for this round table

Joe “Lodur” Perez of  WoW.com and World of Matticus
Rich “Stoneybaby” Maloy of WoW.com and Big Crits
Borsk of Borsked
Jhaman of Castaclysm
Pewter of MentalShaman
Binkenstein of Elitist Jerks
Masanbol of Elitist Jerks

Make sure to swing on by and give it a listen. Should be a great time!

Image courtesy of Raid Warning

Making Dungeons Fun Again

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notank

Want to know a secret? There’s a simple way to make WoW more fun.

Last night I had more fun in a random dungeon than I have for a long time. I was in Stockades, of all places. A Stockades run is usually a pedestrian half hour filled with enemies which aren’t challenging but have vaguely annoying abilities and no loot to make up for it.

The dungeon didn’t magically morph into a Lernean Hydra spitting epics at us. What changed was the group. The tank suddenly left. We were left with a lowish level party of three mages and a priest healer. We also had prison cells full of bad guys cracking their knuckles and asking whether our relatives could stitch this.

We carried on. The three mages had fun using every trick to play mage tennis and help the healer ensure we didn’t become wallpaper paste. The priestie sat there cheerfully swearing as he healed and cackling maniacally every time he physic screamed because he could it saved our clothie hides. Lots of conjured water later we finished the dungeon, all in great spirits.

What does that mean? We don’t need tanks. Nope. Not in 5 man instances.

Right now WoW is based on the ‘holy trinity’ of three roles; tank, healer, DPS. It’s a tradition going back through the MMO and RPG genres. The nay-sayer in me mutters that removing one of the roles would shake the very foundations of the games industry. It wouldn’t; it’s already happening.

The complexity of the roles has been simplified over time. Back in the day groups had to be pristinely organised. Each person performed challenging tasks. Support classes were necessary. Contingency plans were useful if the battle went awry.

It was the case for WoW as much as any other game. It wasn’t long ago tanks alone were juggling single-target tanking on four monsters whilst anxiously watching the one nursing a headache and herding the battle round the confused sheep. Before TBC, I gather, it was more tricky. That type of game play taught players to be creative strategists. It’s in that kind of situation that I met and bonded with my guildmates over hours of wipes and brainstorming.

Things are more straightforward now. More generalised; each of the roles is cut-and-dry in WoW. Tanks are there to hold the monsters’ attention. DPS are there to take them down, usually with little mind of what dies first. Healers are there to keep everyone topped off with heals so huge I’d not be surprised if characters feel like they’ve been dunked in the fountain of youth. Of course, there are fights where there are exceptions – sometimes healers get to top the boss’ health off instead, The roles are plain and appear interdependent.

But the roles don’t need each other to function. Last night my group’s DPS did its job – to deal damage – perfectly fine without a tank regulating us. We just had to be a bit more creative, versatile, and able to think on our feet. These are qualities which haven’t really been challenged in Wrath’s standard system but I’d go as far to say that the creative strategist in me opened one drowsy eye while my mana’ed out mage watched the cooldown on frost nova with her robed back to the wall.

Dare I say it, we also had to work as a team, rather than just have the tank glue everything to himself and everyone else sedately press the usual buttons to floor the next pack. We functioned much better as a social group. Usually the members of a group each have a set task and if something untoward – or just unexpected – happens it’s easy for a group of strangers to feel justified in laying blame on a person who failed or made a mistake with their individual task.

Last night, without a tank and with the group’s tasks shared equally, the potential for blame was removed. Everyone could contribute to everything. Even the healing! Us mages didn’t just sit in the fire expecting the healer to keep us all, four clothies, up AoEing 10 mobs at once. I don’t know if any of us would do that under the standard roles but with that jot of creativity and freedom allowed to us, we did what we could to help tank and heal. And when we did wipe? We all laughed and congratulated each other on a good fight.

So there we go. The roles already look a whole lot different to how they did when they were originally conceived in EverQuest or even Breath of Fire. We just need to take the plunge and get rid of one of the canonical roles. Not much to ask, right?

We’re only talking as regards 5 man groups, here, but just think of the ramifications for raids. What would they be? More creative players graduating from instances and more chaos and raids unlike anything we’ve ever known – I wonder if the outcomes would offset one another. I wonder if WoW could even support such a change, or if it would require a whole level playing field.

What do you think – is this a terrible idea which would do irrevocable damage to WoW, or a great one, with modifications?

This is an article by Mimetir, an owl (and resto shaman) of a raid leader on The Venture Co. (EU) You can find my twitter feed here.

Article image originally on flickr, by id-iom.

Real ID Ain’t For Me

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At least, not yet anyway. I just like being able to unplug and do my own thing on WoW without being disturbed. Besides, I’m always idling my guild’s vent server anyway (idling is a term from IRC which means just hanging out). You know how often I get followed around by naked Night Elf Priests who do nothing more than Mana Bonking me?

Anyway, go see Stop‘s post to get the real story on it. But I’m going to swipe his bulleted TLDR version (you’re the best Stop)!

  • People you are Real ID friends with do see your first and last name (the ones set up as your primary contact in battle.net).
  • People you are Real ID friends with do see your character, realm, and zone.
  • People you are Real ID friends with do see what game you are playing – WoW and Starcraft II support Real ID right now. You can safely assume Diablo III will as well.
  • People who you would like to be Real ID friends do need your email address once, or you will need theirs once.
  • People you are Real ID friends with do not see your email address in their friends list, nor do you see theirs.
  • Friends of people you are Real ID friends with do not see your email address in their friends-of-friends list, nor do you see theirs.
  • Read the FAQ before you start freaking out next time, internet.

Anna’s written some of her cautionary thoughts on it as well. Check out Spinks’ post on the subject while you’re at it.

Funny though, my email’s right there on my blog. Twitter’s available. People can find me on Facebook (with minimal effort, but at least include a message or something saying why you’re adding me such as “I read your blog” or “Met you at BlizzCon” otherwise I’m just going to ignore it).

I’m going to let Real ID sit for now as more features and stuff get developed for it. I’ll end up adopting it eventually, I think. Just not right away.