Chill of the Throne and It’s Future

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As Matticus has just reported, Daelo and the Dev Team have unveiled a new mechanic that tanks and healers are going to experience in Icecrown Citadel.

The new mechanic is a skill called “Chill of the Throne”, and it’s applied to all enemies in the zone:

The spell, called Chill of the Throne, will allow creatures to ignore 20% of the dodge chance of their melee target.

Healers have grown accustomed to the heart-attacks caused by massive spike damage and carefully timed cooldowns.  There is a thrill accompanied with the notion of needing to stay on top of things to an extreme degree like that.  However, the reality is “Can the dps kill the boss before the healer runs out of mana spamming their biggest heals?”  We’re pigeon-holed into praying and hoping our heals land at the right time so our main tank doesn’t eat two 25k hits in a row.

Chill of the Throne allows the size of the hits to become smaller, rather than huge hits that hit every so often (via a tank’s mitigation).  If RNG fails, a tank is dead.  We, as healers, now get to heal a steady stream of damage, instead of breaking down with panic attacks.

Where does this go from here?

Devs have been talking about introducing a way to incorporate expertise in new bosses.  Although it seems that system isn’t viable for Icecrown, we may be able to see it in Cataclysm.  The  idea is for bosses to scale in skill, not just in health and damage done.  This could definitely open up more possibilities for damage management in the future.

ThespiusSig

Handling Icewell Radiance

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Props to this guy for coining the term.

Daelo announced earlier in the day the implementation of raid wide buff called Chill of the Throne. What does it do?

The spell, called Chill of the Throne, will allow creatures to ignore 20% of the dodge chance of their melee targets. So if a raid’s main tank had 30% dodge normally, in Icecrown Citadel they will effectively have 10%.

Similar in concept to Sunwell Radiance, the reason it was implemented was to lessen the overall spikiness of incoming tank damage. Spikiness refers to something like a tank taking constant streams of 15k damage here, 14k damage there, and then suddenly plummet after a 44k hit of some sort. Sometimes it was predictable and in other cases it was not. It’s a large and often unpredictable hit that is capable of flooring a player.

I call it the Chuck Norris effect.

For present healers, the current way to deal with this is to use defensive cooldowns in tandem with tanking cooldowns. If tank avoidance isn’t high enough or if cooldowns aren’t used, they can easily get 2 shot in a manner of seconds.

With luck, this will be the last time we’ll ever see a buff like this in the game. Going forward into Cataclysm, the idea is to raise the health pool of tanks. Right now our overall approach to healing is to spam really fast heals, really large heals, or AoE heals depending on the situation.

While tank health pools go up, healing spells will scale up but not as sharply. The ratio of healing done on a tank vs tank health won’t appear to be the same as it is now. Let’s say a Greater Heal can cover 60% of a tank’s health right now. When Cataclysm hits, Greater Heal might only heal for 35% or something. The approach is to make overhealing a real risk to the point where healing spells can’t be spammed just to get through the boss fight.

That’s going to present an interesting change. It feels as if it’s going to be a hybrid between Vanilla-esque healing and TBC-era healing. I daresay those were the two extremes. In Vanilla, you had to rotate out with other healers and regen for a minute before tagging back in. In Burning Crusade, you could get away with Circle of Healing spam. It looks like in Cataclysm, they just might make overhealing mean something again since we can’t spam heals nor can we switch out with other healers to come in for us.

PTR: Fond Friend or Venomous Vixen??

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wizardmario

The PTR.  Public.  Test.  Realm.  It’s been our best friend and our worst enemy.  People will flock to it, and then people will cry outrage or joy at its contents.  Some avoid it like the plague, while others spend more time in its embrace than in the game itself.

I have a huge innate sense of curiosity.  I love learning things.  When it comes to this game, I try to learn everything there is to know (without delving into theory-crafting and copious amounts of number-crunching).  There are different healing styles, different add-on preferences, different philosophies on gameplay.  I’ve learned to love the variety of them all.

However, the idea of the PTR has me torn between love and hate.  I don’t harbour a global hatred for it, but I have my reservations about it.  It is both a blessing and a curse.  And I’ll tell you why.

Friend

Patch Notes have become a huge cornerstone of the WoW community.  We read them every chance we get.  We get Twitter updates about them; entire blog posts are dedicated to them.  They help us get accustomed to our class.  If we need to change our playstyle, we get a heads up.  If our class is getting nerfed to oblivion, we know to spend more time on an alt.

We can see what gear we have to look forward to.  We drool over gear models, agonizing over the ever-changing nature of new tier set bonuses.  Our dreams are peppered with new craftable items, new patterns, new glyphs, new gems/enchants.  It’s like waiting for (insert related holiday with presents)!

In this, I’m a huge fan.  I love having to save up money/gems/mats for new enchants, or re-speccing to take advantage of a new spell bonus or counteracting a nerf.

Foe

I’m averted to the large exploitation of the upcoming raids on the PTR.  I don’t “hate” it, because I understand its purpose.

I get a huge adrenaline high from facing a new boss on my server with my guild, without really knowing what to expect.  I have to think on my feet.  The raid has to be ready to adjust and listen to the raid leader for directions.

Remember the climactic scene of the movie “The Wizard”?  The kid and his nemesis are the in the final battle, about to play a game that no one has ever seen before.  The curtain is lifted….SUPER MARIO 3!!  I was a kid when that movie came out, and I just about crapped my pants.  Neither the kid nor his nemesis had any experience with this game.  Both were going in totally blind.  No tricks, no strategies, just shutup and play.

It’s that mentality that I crave for the community when it comes to releasing a new raid.  The new content is released and has been tested by a representative sample of the community under a confidentiality clause.  My team goes in on patch day, bags filled with flask/food, ready to conquer.  Our gold stash resembles Scrooge McDuck’s money pit in “Duck Tales”.  Let’s learn this boss our way.  We can be as hardcore as we want to be.

The Toss-up

In spite of all my rantings, I understand that living on the cutting edge of raiding needs every advantage.  World and Server Firsts are a big deal to a lot of guilds.  They need that edge–the ability to practice something, even if it’s not in it’s final form.  Guilds can strategize what needs to happen before the boss actually hits the live servers.

My proposal, though, is to assign a smattering of raiders the ability to do a closed testing of these bosses.  Start the difficulty of the bosses high and slowly bring it down as needed, but not so much to make the boss one or two-shottable.  Keep in mind it isn’t too interesting for us to go in and down bosses in our current gear.

My random thought of the day: Would we complain as much about the ease of boss killings if we didn’t have a head start?  A marathon is a piece of cake if you only have to run a small portion of it on the actual day, right?

What do you think?  Would you rather train in the PTR, or save the workout for after a new raid goes live?  How do you feel about the ability to test and learn a boss ahead of time?

ThespiusSig

PTR Live: Gunship Battle

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You can read my full impressions of the encounter over at WoW.com.

Hope this works.

16:54 – Clearing trash right now. Reminds me of faction champs.
17:20 – Two attempts on the boat.
17:23 – Going to zerg Saurfang
17:25 – Nevermind, Saurfang gains more health back than we can DPS.
17:27 – Yeah, encounter’s over. There’s no way we can finish it. The cannons are bugged. Don’t seem to be damaging the other boat.

Video clips at Ustream

Two Applicant Paths Diverged in an Azerothian Wood

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crazy

Once you decide you’ve reached the raid-ready threshold, it’s time to find a place to do that.  Aside from the risky and unpredictable nature of PUGs, the most plausable option is a raiding guild.  Whether casual, progression, or hardcore elite, you’re bound to encounter some form of an application process.

The process always varies from guild to guild.  Each one is slightly different, but I’ve always seen three common practices:

  1. (Trade Chat) “Lvl 80 LF Raiding Guild” -> “So-and-so has invited you to join the guild: Such-and-such”
  2. An application of varying length, seemingly focused on gear, skill, and experience.
  3. The Applicant Period -> Includes a formal application, and a “waiting period” or “trial period”.

The first of the three is relatively self-explanatory, and is usually frowned upon.  I don’t take raiders seriously that look for guilds that way, and I don’t instill a lot of confidence in raiding guilds that subscribe to that method.  This is all just from personal experience.

Just like I’d apply for a job to pay my bills, I’m applying to a guild to fulfill my raiding passion.  I want to know that the guild I’m vying to be a part of isn’t accepting just any ol’ package of pixels.  I’d be really worried about credibility if the guild just said “Yes!” without screening me or requiring any sort of “test drive.”

My personal preference is the 3rd option.  Every guild leader has their own preference, and that’s absolutely encouraged.  Each guild is obviously different.  My choice is based on permanence and personality.

I’m hugely averted to what are known as “guild hoppers”.  I’ve never been one, and I get a pit in my stomach anytime I come across someone that might be one.  I look at my guild as a family–people who work together to achieve a common goal because they enjoy that camaraderie and team work.  I invest in you, you invest in me.  Someone that sees guilds as stepping stones to higher echelons don’t interest me.  I feel it’s selfish and takes away from the “community” that I’m so fond of.

Secondly, if we are going to be spending large amounts of time together, I have to get along with you.  We have to be able to crack jokes, share stories, and simply enjoy each other’s company.  I’m not too keen on running with someone that is demeaning to other players or constantly fluffs their own ego at the expense of others.  Admittedly, if I don’t wanna hang out with you, I’m probably not going to jump up and down at the chance to raid with you.

As you know, I’m one of the Discipline Priests on Lodur’s healing team in Unpossible.  Their application process is a rather complex one, but its payoff is knowing they’re a great fit for me, and I’m a good fit for them.  It was because of their application process that I got excited, because it’s near identical to my casual guild, Team Sport.

To summarize, an interested Applicant must acquire a Sponsor.  This is done through gaming and socializing via a chat channel made specifically for the guild.  It is the Sponsor’s job to get the Applicant invited to off-night raids and bring them along on heroics or other guild activities.  This is designed to get the guild acquainted with the Applicant.

The Sponsor then solicits enough votes from the guild (along with the Applicant’s Class Lead) to invite the Applicant into the guild on a trial basis.  This begins a month period where the the guild and the Applicant get to know each other.  The Applicant can be invited into raids and has access to loot drops.  At the end of the month, the guild votes again whether the Applicant becomes a full member or not.

At any point, I can withdraw.  If I don’t feel like this guild is what I want, then I can move on.

What an application process like this does is allows me to know what I’m getting myself into before I’m fully in the mix.  It lets them sniff me out and make sure that I’m not a “guild hopper” or someone there to grab gear and run.  Like I said, I’m into the family-style guilds.  This, I feel, promotes that.

What about you?  What kind of guild process you feel best fits your style?  Are there certain styles that attract or deter you from joining a guild?

ThespiusSig