WoW has it's share of gimmick fights. I'm not a huge fan of that terminology because it is used as a kind of absolute description when in reality there is a spectrum or a sliding scale. Every encounter has mechanics that force you to play differently for that boss. Sometimes, however, these mechanics so deeply change how you are playing that you feel like you are playing a little mini-game rather than playing WoW.
Obviously vehicles fights are like this because you literally are playing a mini-game, but every other fight falls somewhere on the spectrum. I would describe Chimaeron as a very gimmicky fight, at least for healers. And the mini-game that it asks healers to play? Wrath of the Lich King!
Outside of the feud phase, Chimaeron is a return to the days when people had three health states - full, almost dead and dead. Added to that is the fact that every healer can return someone from almost dead to "full" in less than 1.5 seconds. Inside the feud phase Chimaeron is a massive AoE damage fest. It's Wrath of the Lich King healing split into two parts.
Heroic Chimaeron adds a third Wrath era healing mechanic to the mix - the dire necessity of a Discipline priest. When healing is impossible and everyone is constantly taking damage, Power Word: Shield is the only thing that can save an attempt from a particular kind of relatively minor mistake.
Chimaeron is not a great fight. I think gimmick fights rarely are. The problem with them is that usually heavily favour one class or another. Bringing a Blood Death Knight to Vezax allowed our guild to get the realm first hardmode kill despite being a 10-player guild. A party of one shaman, one holy priest, one hunter and seven holy paladins could have won the heroic Valrithia encounter in under 15 seconds - before any adds could even come into play.
Similarly, because self healing isn't really "priced" for dps classes - that is, some do it for free in amounts significant to Chimaeron and others don't - some dps classes are greatly superior to other for this fight. Saving a healer nearly 6000 mana every time you get spit on is a huge asset for early kills.
But despite not liking gimmick fights, I think Chimaeron was worth making. Gimmick fights are bad because they usually don't work out well. But if the developers never tried crazy ideas just because those ideas rarely work out then the game would be a lot more boring. For that reason, I think Chimaeron deserves a pass.
Showing posts with label review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label review. Show all posts
Friday, March 11, 2011
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Patch 4.0.1 Testing - Druids and General Observations
Just in time before the PTR was taken down and the extended maintenance to implement the new patch started up, I finished my druid testing. I ran into some early problems because of the Thunder Bluff death bug1 and set aside the druid for a long time after getting some initial impressions. I felt like I could write a review but I felt like I owed it to the druid to try Feral after my bad experience with Balance, so yesterday I made a Night Elf and went to it.
Druid (Tauren and Night Elf)
Druids don't play quite as well as Mages or Warlocks at low level. Wrath is more like Smite than it is like Fireball for some reason. When you get moonfire it doesn't really do enough damage to be worth casting, though larger enemy health bars make it just barely worth it by around level 7. It usually ends up doing less damage than a Wrath would have, but with a shorter casting time, and since enemies don't have health that is evenly divisible by your Wrath damage it ends up being as good as another Wrath anyway. At level eight you get to learn six new abilities, and pay the same price to learn each as other classes pay to learn their one level 7 ability. The consequence of this is that you can't afford them. Of course it looks like you can only learn three, since Rake, Claw and Ferocious Bite all all grayed out given that you don't have Cat Form. But once you click to learn Cat Form they all appear, sorted in alphabetical order and your second Learn click learns Claw when you thought it was going to learn Entangling Roots. Could I have avoided this problem by slowing down a moment? Sure. Should first time players be deciding between whether to learn Rake or Ferocious Bite? Probably not.
At level eight Balance druid damage was just terrible. It took me around 4 starfires to kill things, so 14 seconds per kill. I don't know if I played another class that took more than 10 seconds to kill an enemy at level 8. Of course there is Thorns, which ticks for about as much damage as Starfire does, so you can use Moonfire to gather up enemies and then just Thorns them to death while healing yourself and kill things much more efficiently. At level 10 you get your eclipse meter and your Starsurge spell. Starsurge was hitting enemies for around 90% of their health on a fifteen second cooldown. Given that it took me nearly 15 seconds to kill an enemy without Starsurge, I'd just wait out the cooldown for each enemy before engaging this. It was pretty terrible.
Feral played much better. I was killing enemies with Rake + Claw + Bite, followed by waiting for a second Rake tick and a couple of auto-attacks. At level 10 I got Mangle and was very worried that it was going to heavily skew things. I really expected that it would completely obsolete both Rake and Bite, but much to my surprise Mangle only did about 50% more damage than Claw (for 10 less energy, of course). A two point Bite still exceeded a Mangle for damage. The rapid expansion of enemy health between level 10 and 12 meant that I still felt like I was fighting enemies rather than just hitting a button that defeated them. The absurd strength of Regrowth and Rejuv and the fact that I didn't use mana to kill things made me pretty much unstoppable, which, while convenient, isn't something I like in design. Plus there was the fact that even when Feral spec the most efficient way to kill enemies was surely Thorns, which was hitting for 69 at level 12, compared to a mid-40's Mangle.
Overall Grade: C (though I'd give it a D in a heartbeat if I hadn't gone back to play Feral)
Overall Impressions
Quite a few details of low level play have been screwed up inadvertently by the 4.0.1 changes. Most notably, there are quite a few monsters that use player spells on themselves at low level that have become significantly overpowered. Level 6 mobs with around 120 health have Rejuvenation spells that tick for 45. A level 11 mob had a Thorns that did 49. Having to stop attacking and wait for these spells to end is pretty annoying.
Some classes have pretty exciting talents to take at levels 10 and 11, but the excitement around those initial talent points is not going to be there for all classes. Many classes clearly had little thought put into the pre-level 10 experience.
The transition to dual-wielding is a very difficult one. As a Warrior I just happened to complete a quest with no two-handed weapon option shortly before level 10, then saw another quest with a one-handed weapon option. As a shaman when I picked Enhancement my bonus ability was Lava Lash, but I had to go to town and buy a white weapon for my off-hand to be able to dual-wield. This transition was very problematic. Perhaps, given there is no spec that actually supports them anymore, they should simply remove the ability of Shamans to wield two-handed weapons to smooth this out a bit.
Maybe I make too much of this because the first 9 levels are pretty easy anyway, but I do feel like depending on the class and starting area they choose, a new player could end up with very different starting experiences ranging from the polished feeling of a very evolved game to the choppy feeling of a new game that doesn't know what it wants you to do. We all know that a big problem for established MMORPGs is growing the player base when the "real" game is focusing on an end game that gets increasingly farther away for new players each expansion. After playing a Mage I thought the 4.0.1 redesign was a very dramatic step to make the game more friendly to new players while at the same time evolving the end-game experience. After playing the other classes, I'm no longer convinced that this redesign was a huge step forward for new players. It's a step forward for everyone for sure, but maybe not for new players in particular.
Of course, the starting areas themselves will be redesigned when Cataclysm actually launches, so there are more improvements coming. The revamped leveling experience is probably more dependent on those world changes than it is on the mechanical ones being introduced today.
1. You died when you zoned out of Thunder Bluff and your corpse appeared in the graveyard at Thunder Bluff so you couldn't corpse run back and resurrect outside the zone. I assume they've fixed this one.
Druid (Tauren and Night Elf)
Druids don't play quite as well as Mages or Warlocks at low level. Wrath is more like Smite than it is like Fireball for some reason. When you get moonfire it doesn't really do enough damage to be worth casting, though larger enemy health bars make it just barely worth it by around level 7. It usually ends up doing less damage than a Wrath would have, but with a shorter casting time, and since enemies don't have health that is evenly divisible by your Wrath damage it ends up being as good as another Wrath anyway. At level eight you get to learn six new abilities, and pay the same price to learn each as other classes pay to learn their one level 7 ability. The consequence of this is that you can't afford them. Of course it looks like you can only learn three, since Rake, Claw and Ferocious Bite all all grayed out given that you don't have Cat Form. But once you click to learn Cat Form they all appear, sorted in alphabetical order and your second Learn click learns Claw when you thought it was going to learn Entangling Roots. Could I have avoided this problem by slowing down a moment? Sure. Should first time players be deciding between whether to learn Rake or Ferocious Bite? Probably not.
At level eight Balance druid damage was just terrible. It took me around 4 starfires to kill things, so 14 seconds per kill. I don't know if I played another class that took more than 10 seconds to kill an enemy at level 8. Of course there is Thorns, which ticks for about as much damage as Starfire does, so you can use Moonfire to gather up enemies and then just Thorns them to death while healing yourself and kill things much more efficiently. At level 10 you get your eclipse meter and your Starsurge spell. Starsurge was hitting enemies for around 90% of their health on a fifteen second cooldown. Given that it took me nearly 15 seconds to kill an enemy without Starsurge, I'd just wait out the cooldown for each enemy before engaging this. It was pretty terrible.
Feral played much better. I was killing enemies with Rake + Claw + Bite, followed by waiting for a second Rake tick and a couple of auto-attacks. At level 10 I got Mangle and was very worried that it was going to heavily skew things. I really expected that it would completely obsolete both Rake and Bite, but much to my surprise Mangle only did about 50% more damage than Claw (for 10 less energy, of course). A two point Bite still exceeded a Mangle for damage. The rapid expansion of enemy health between level 10 and 12 meant that I still felt like I was fighting enemies rather than just hitting a button that defeated them. The absurd strength of Regrowth and Rejuv and the fact that I didn't use mana to kill things made me pretty much unstoppable, which, while convenient, isn't something I like in design. Plus there was the fact that even when Feral spec the most efficient way to kill enemies was surely Thorns, which was hitting for 69 at level 12, compared to a mid-40's Mangle.
Overall Grade: C (though I'd give it a D in a heartbeat if I hadn't gone back to play Feral)
Overall Impressions
Quite a few details of low level play have been screwed up inadvertently by the 4.0.1 changes. Most notably, there are quite a few monsters that use player spells on themselves at low level that have become significantly overpowered. Level 6 mobs with around 120 health have Rejuvenation spells that tick for 45. A level 11 mob had a Thorns that did 49. Having to stop attacking and wait for these spells to end is pretty annoying.
Some classes have pretty exciting talents to take at levels 10 and 11, but the excitement around those initial talent points is not going to be there for all classes. Many classes clearly had little thought put into the pre-level 10 experience.
The transition to dual-wielding is a very difficult one. As a Warrior I just happened to complete a quest with no two-handed weapon option shortly before level 10, then saw another quest with a one-handed weapon option. As a shaman when I picked Enhancement my bonus ability was Lava Lash, but I had to go to town and buy a white weapon for my off-hand to be able to dual-wield. This transition was very problematic. Perhaps, given there is no spec that actually supports them anymore, they should simply remove the ability of Shamans to wield two-handed weapons to smooth this out a bit.
Maybe I make too much of this because the first 9 levels are pretty easy anyway, but I do feel like depending on the class and starting area they choose, a new player could end up with very different starting experiences ranging from the polished feeling of a very evolved game to the choppy feeling of a new game that doesn't know what it wants you to do. We all know that a big problem for established MMORPGs is growing the player base when the "real" game is focusing on an end game that gets increasingly farther away for new players each expansion. After playing a Mage I thought the 4.0.1 redesign was a very dramatic step to make the game more friendly to new players while at the same time evolving the end-game experience. After playing the other classes, I'm no longer convinced that this redesign was a huge step forward for new players. It's a step forward for everyone for sure, but maybe not for new players in particular.
Of course, the starting areas themselves will be redesigned when Cataclysm actually launches, so there are more improvements coming. The revamped leveling experience is probably more dependent on those world changes than it is on the mechanical ones being introduced today.
1. You died when you zoned out of Thunder Bluff and your corpse appeared in the graveyard at Thunder Bluff so you couldn't corpse run back and resurrect outside the zone. I assume they've fixed this one.
Friday, October 8, 2010
Patch 4.0.1 Testing - Death Knight and Shaman
Death Knight (Draenei, I think)
For a long time the Death Knight starting area was completely broken and couldn't be played. It wasn't so much that the starting area was broken as that Runeforging was broken. Since your second quest is to use Runeforging on your weapon, you can't continue on with other quests until you do, and until you've completed the initial quests you can't really do anything else, new Death Knights were completely unplayable.
While Death Knights are no longer literally unplayable, the experience of playing one has lost a lot. Starting with Frost Presence, which now increases your runic power generation, instead of the old Blood Presence that healed you, makes a noticeable difference in longevity when running from fight to fight. After a few quests you get your first talent point, and I decided to go frost. Much to my dismay, Frost Strike did about 70% of the damage of Death Coil, so I would be foolish to use it, and none of the first tier talents really made me better at all. I respec'd to Unholy, since obviously have a permanent ghoul would be better than the nothing Frost gave me, but it turned out that the difference between Scourge Strike and Blood Strike was smaller than the difference between Blood Strike and Icy Touch, which left me wishing that my death rune ability turned my frost runes into death runes instead of turning my blood runes into death runes.
I felt the Death Knight experience was actually quite a bit worse than it was before the patch. 10% more runic power is a very lame ability to give to new death knights that have never generated runic power at normal levels and who get pretty much zero utility out of it. Ability tooltips were full of bizarre formulas that didn't actually give you an idea of how good abilities were relative to one another.
Overall Grade: C
Shaman (Troll)
Shaman is actually a really neat class in the early levels. You start with Lightning Bolt, then you get Primal Strike which is a low level substitute for Storm Strike and then you pick up Earth Shock. Until you hit level 10 you really are a hybrid caster/melee, using spells at long range and then clubbing things that get near you. Unfortunately when I chose Elemental at level 10 it was a little disappointing. The specialization ability is Thunderstorm which does about three times the damage of Lightning Bolt but is on a 45 second cooldown. It's supposed to be a mana restoration ability, but every Shaman spell is so cheap that there is no need to get your mana back. I decided to swap to Enhancement to try it out, which meant buying a white fist weapon in Orgrimmar. I like enhancement a lot better but it was not without it's flaws. With an 8 second and a 10 second cooldown on your melee abilities, you really just use each one once per monster, which minimizes the decisions that you make. Unlike other healing classes I've played the first heal they give you is the cheap, efficient heal, which ended up costing about 16 mana when I was level 12. I had about 7 spells on my bar and their total mana cost if I could cast them all at once was less than a quarter of my mana. When I got into one particularly hairy situation I dropped a Searing Totem and chained heals on myself for a minute until two of the four mobs were dead. My heal was weak enough I couldn't even afford a GCD to refresh lightning shield but cheap enough that I could have gone on doing that for much longer than it took for them to die.
Overall Grade: B
For a long time the Death Knight starting area was completely broken and couldn't be played. It wasn't so much that the starting area was broken as that Runeforging was broken. Since your second quest is to use Runeforging on your weapon, you can't continue on with other quests until you do, and until you've completed the initial quests you can't really do anything else, new Death Knights were completely unplayable.
While Death Knights are no longer literally unplayable, the experience of playing one has lost a lot. Starting with Frost Presence, which now increases your runic power generation, instead of the old Blood Presence that healed you, makes a noticeable difference in longevity when running from fight to fight. After a few quests you get your first talent point, and I decided to go frost. Much to my dismay, Frost Strike did about 70% of the damage of Death Coil, so I would be foolish to use it, and none of the first tier talents really made me better at all. I respec'd to Unholy, since obviously have a permanent ghoul would be better than the nothing Frost gave me, but it turned out that the difference between Scourge Strike and Blood Strike was smaller than the difference between Blood Strike and Icy Touch, which left me wishing that my death rune ability turned my frost runes into death runes instead of turning my blood runes into death runes.
I felt the Death Knight experience was actually quite a bit worse than it was before the patch. 10% more runic power is a very lame ability to give to new death knights that have never generated runic power at normal levels and who get pretty much zero utility out of it. Ability tooltips were full of bizarre formulas that didn't actually give you an idea of how good abilities were relative to one another.
Overall Grade: C
Shaman (Troll)
Shaman is actually a really neat class in the early levels. You start with Lightning Bolt, then you get Primal Strike which is a low level substitute for Storm Strike and then you pick up Earth Shock. Until you hit level 10 you really are a hybrid caster/melee, using spells at long range and then clubbing things that get near you. Unfortunately when I chose Elemental at level 10 it was a little disappointing. The specialization ability is Thunderstorm which does about three times the damage of Lightning Bolt but is on a 45 second cooldown. It's supposed to be a mana restoration ability, but every Shaman spell is so cheap that there is no need to get your mana back. I decided to swap to Enhancement to try it out, which meant buying a white fist weapon in Orgrimmar. I like enhancement a lot better but it was not without it's flaws. With an 8 second and a 10 second cooldown on your melee abilities, you really just use each one once per monster, which minimizes the decisions that you make. Unlike other healing classes I've played the first heal they give you is the cheap, efficient heal, which ended up costing about 16 mana when I was level 12. I had about 7 spells on my bar and their total mana cost if I could cast them all at once was less than a quarter of my mana. When I got into one particularly hairy situation I dropped a Searing Totem and chained heals on myself for a minute until two of the four mobs were dead. My heal was weak enough I couldn't even afford a GCD to refresh lightning shield but cheap enough that I could have gone on doing that for much longer than it took for them to die.
Overall Grade: B
Friday, October 1, 2010
Patch 4.0.1 Testing - Priest and Hunter
Priest (Night Elf)
Low level priests have a problem. Every class starts with one ability in 4.0.1, and that ability is some way of killing monsters to get you through your first few quests. For priests, it is Smite. What's odd about starting with Smite is that Smite is not actually a viable attack spell for end game content. Every other class starts with an attack that is actually used by the dps spec of that class to kill monsters at maximum level1. That means they start with an attack that is tuned to be effective as an attack. Smite is not meant to be an attack spell for any dps class. This fact shouldn't really have any impact on how good smite is below level 10, but playing a priest it certainly feels like it does. The damage Smite does seems low and barely increases as you level up, despite increasing cast time. Furthermore it costs a lot of mana compared to low level attacks from other classes, and I ended up just standing around waiting for my mana to come back frequently. Because of super-accelerated low level mana regen this would only be for five or six seconds at a time, but standing around doing nothing at level three to wait for mana made for a much less smooth leveling experience. At level nine I finally got Mind Blast which did about three times as much damage as Smite, so killing things became much more bearable, and at level 10 I chose shadow and abandoned Smite completely in favour of Mind Flay. Getting Flash Heal at level 3 didn't make a lot of sense as a choice for a heal. It was quite expensive and healed me for more than double my maximum health. Shadow Word: Pain only ticked for 9 when I got it, while Smite was hitting for 24-ish, meaning it wasn't even worth casting. Priests have very little to do at low level, much of it is bad and costs too much mana.
Overall Grade: C
Hunter (Troll)
As you likely already know, Hunters begin the game with a pet, though they do not have a pet bar until level 10, so the pet is permanently on defensive mode and can't be given commands. They start with Arcane Shot which does a little more damage than an auto-shot and costs 25 focus, with no cooldown. I spent my first couple of levels spamming arcane shot and killing things in about 2 seconds, and picked up Steady Shot at level 3, which takes 2 seconds to cast and regenerates focus. At this point I moved to a Steady Shot followed by two Arcane Shots to kill monsters. Strangely enough on my way to level 10 pretty much all of the abilities I picked up with free to cast, so Arcane Shot was the only thing that actually used focus. That worked out fine, though, as I was using a variety of my buttons, choosing how often to Steady Shot vs. Arcane Shot actually meant gameplay could by optimized somewhat, and around level 6 things started living long enough that my pet actually was involved meaningfully in the fight. At level 10 I chose Marksmanship and got Aimed shot. It cost 50 focus, was a 2.7 second cast and did less damage than 2 arcane shots which cost 25 focus and are instant casts. Since this was terrible I saved up a bit of money and swapped to Survival. Explosive shot also cost 50 focus and also did less damage than 2 arcane shots. I'm actually not quite sure how Explosive Shot is going to work out in the end, since you regen 6 focus per second, it has a 6 second cooldown and costs 50. Even two steady shots in the mean time don't make up the focus to cast it every 6 seconds. It makes it seem like if it is balanced to be worth casting then it would be the only thing that costs focus that you cast. Despite the significant problems with the signature abilities of the talent specs, my hunter played really well. As someone who never really liked hunters, I managed to have a lot of fun. The change from mana to focus was a very good one.
Overall Grade: B (Would have been an A if Explosive Shot and Aimed Shot weren't such bombs)
1. Warriors instead get a temporary substitute for the attacks they will use that is perfectly serviceable at low levels.
Low level priests have a problem. Every class starts with one ability in 4.0.1, and that ability is some way of killing monsters to get you through your first few quests. For priests, it is Smite. What's odd about starting with Smite is that Smite is not actually a viable attack spell for end game content. Every other class starts with an attack that is actually used by the dps spec of that class to kill monsters at maximum level1. That means they start with an attack that is tuned to be effective as an attack. Smite is not meant to be an attack spell for any dps class. This fact shouldn't really have any impact on how good smite is below level 10, but playing a priest it certainly feels like it does. The damage Smite does seems low and barely increases as you level up, despite increasing cast time. Furthermore it costs a lot of mana compared to low level attacks from other classes, and I ended up just standing around waiting for my mana to come back frequently. Because of super-accelerated low level mana regen this would only be for five or six seconds at a time, but standing around doing nothing at level three to wait for mana made for a much less smooth leveling experience. At level nine I finally got Mind Blast which did about three times as much damage as Smite, so killing things became much more bearable, and at level 10 I chose shadow and abandoned Smite completely in favour of Mind Flay. Getting Flash Heal at level 3 didn't make a lot of sense as a choice for a heal. It was quite expensive and healed me for more than double my maximum health. Shadow Word: Pain only ticked for 9 when I got it, while Smite was hitting for 24-ish, meaning it wasn't even worth casting. Priests have very little to do at low level, much of it is bad and costs too much mana.
Overall Grade: C
Hunter (Troll)
As you likely already know, Hunters begin the game with a pet, though they do not have a pet bar until level 10, so the pet is permanently on defensive mode and can't be given commands. They start with Arcane Shot which does a little more damage than an auto-shot and costs 25 focus, with no cooldown. I spent my first couple of levels spamming arcane shot and killing things in about 2 seconds, and picked up Steady Shot at level 3, which takes 2 seconds to cast and regenerates focus. At this point I moved to a Steady Shot followed by two Arcane Shots to kill monsters. Strangely enough on my way to level 10 pretty much all of the abilities I picked up with free to cast, so Arcane Shot was the only thing that actually used focus. That worked out fine, though, as I was using a variety of my buttons, choosing how often to Steady Shot vs. Arcane Shot actually meant gameplay could by optimized somewhat, and around level 6 things started living long enough that my pet actually was involved meaningfully in the fight. At level 10 I chose Marksmanship and got Aimed shot. It cost 50 focus, was a 2.7 second cast and did less damage than 2 arcane shots which cost 25 focus and are instant casts. Since this was terrible I saved up a bit of money and swapped to Survival. Explosive shot also cost 50 focus and also did less damage than 2 arcane shots. I'm actually not quite sure how Explosive Shot is going to work out in the end, since you regen 6 focus per second, it has a 6 second cooldown and costs 50. Even two steady shots in the mean time don't make up the focus to cast it every 6 seconds. It makes it seem like if it is balanced to be worth casting then it would be the only thing that costs focus that you cast. Despite the significant problems with the signature abilities of the talent specs, my hunter played really well. As someone who never really liked hunters, I managed to have a lot of fun. The change from mana to focus was a very good one.
Overall Grade: B (Would have been an A if Explosive Shot and Aimed Shot weren't such bombs)
1. Warriors instead get a temporary substitute for the attacks they will use that is perfectly serviceable at low levels.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Patch 4.0.1 Testing - Paladin, Rogue and Warrior
The experience of leveling each of these melee classes is very different than the others. Here's my quick summary of what Blizzard got right and what went wrong in terms of the early levels.
Rogue (Gnome)
Rogues start off well enough. One of the best changes they made is that at low level a one combo point Eviscerate hits for more than a Sinister Strike. At level three you are fighting boars by alternating Eviscerate and Sinister Strike. At seven it was two Sinister Strikes per Eviscerate. At level eight you get Ambush and everything goes pretty wonky. Ambush tends to half-kill things, so Ambush + Eviscerate and auto-attacks are all I used. Sometimes I would be waiting five seconds for stealth to cool down before proceeding to the next mob. I was having so much fun with Ambush that I picked Subtlety at level 10 and proceeded on to Loch Moden. Unfortunately I very quickly started to feel like a one-trick pony. With the early talents in Subtlety I got critical Ambushes as often as I didn't, which meant one-shotting things. When I didn't one shot things a critical Eviscerate would finish them off. When that didn't happen it was amazing how slow and painful it was to finish them off. Fighting two enemies at a time was right out of the question unless I had Evasion up, and not even that secure with it. A 70% dodge chance pretty much guarantees the win against a single guy even without getting to lead with Ambush, but the fight takes a long time and I still take a lot of damage. With Sap at level 12 I got extra flexibility in what I could do, but in Loch Modan, which is rather crowded with Troggs and Kobolds, I was dying an awful lot. Maybe this would have turned out better with Combat, but Rogues felt very weak compared to other classes for almost all applications, except for obliterating single targets for which they were grossly overpowered.
Overall Grade: D
Paladin (Blood Elf)
The Paladin was a tale of extremes. The first thing you notice when you start playing a paladin is that every time you Crusader Strike your enemy (which is every 4.5 seconds), scrolling text appears to let you know that you gained 1 Holy Power. If I were a newcomer to the game in 4.0, rather than someone who is keeping up with all the forums, then by the time I hit level 5 I would figure I had well over 100 holy power and wonder what I was supposed to do with it. When you hit level 9 you finally learn Word of Glory and get your Holy Power bar under your unit frame, plus a brief explanation of how it works. At level 8 I was struggling a lot with enemies. My damage was quite low and it took me a long time to beat things. Word of Glory solved that by healing me for more than my max health. A free max health heal every 13.5 seconds really reverses your fortunes in a lot of battles. The option to instead take a free 75% heal every 9 seconds is handy too. So at level 9 I became totally invincible, but it was still slow to kill enemies. This might be because of the selection of weapons available to me from starting quests (no two-handed weapons from early quests). Since I was using a one handed weapon and shield at level 10 I figured I'd give protection a try rather than go with the obvious Retribution. Protection is an insane mess. I was fighting enemies with around 160-180 health. My Crusader Strike hit for 15-19. My Avengers shield hit for 150-160. I would gather three guys up and one shot them all with the shield, or at least leave them one auto-attack from death. If I got too many guys by accident I always had my instant cast, free, full heals to fall back on. Basically I was invincible, had a 24 second cooldown on my instant-cast three-target instant-death spell, and otherwise was nearly useless. After shaking my head at this for a bit I switched to retribution (only a 17s respec fee!) and tried that out. I ended up still using a one-hander because I got a green from a quest that had significantly more dps than any two-hander I could find. Templar's Verdict was pretty disappointing, doing only a little more damage than Crusader Strike with three holy power (I don't understand why or how, but that's what happened) and so I mostly just stuck with my Words of Glory and hitting people. My damage was quite a bit higher and I didn't have a move that did 90% of my enemies' health on a long cooldown so the game played a lot better. Still, being relatively low damage and at the same time completely invincible is not compelling gameplay. I have to admit that this experience probably would have been greatly improved by simply changing some quest rewards.
Overall Grade: C (if I was grading Prot, I would give it an F)
Warrior (Draenei)
Warriors begin with a new ability called Strike. It costs 20 rage and makes you hit your enemy. It also shares a cooldown with Bloodthirst, Mortal Strike and Shield Slam, so you retire it immediately at level 10. This is a really good idea and solves a problem that exists with several other classes. Warriors are supposed to have a hard-hitting ability to dump their rage into, but the ability they get is chosen by their talent spec. Similarly, paladins are supposed to have a Holy Power dump, but their primary Holy Power dump is chosen by their talent spec. For warriors, the solution was to give you a low level hold-over ability. For paladins, I don't know that any solution was even contemplated.
At level three warriors get charge and at level five they get Victory Rush. Victory Rush now heals you for a significant percentage of your maximum health so you can happily run from enemy to enemy and fight away. Of course at low level health regenerates so fast out of combat this doesn't matter at all, but it was pretty great for getting me through a fight with two enemies, especially when extra enemies added in midway through the fight. Rend has been improved in that it appears to get a tick immediately when applied. This made it useful when first learned even though enemies generally die pretty quickly at level seven. With charge keeping me moving and three different buttons that I actively used in combat, low level warriors are fairly simple, but not boring to play. There is some optimization to do in your button presses, but anyone who just hit their buttons would beat enemies at low level. I had just picked up a couple of one-handed weapons from quests with no two-handed alternative, so at level 10 I chose Fury. Bloodthirst did about 30% more damage than Strike, which seemed like a nice trade-up, but not fundamentally game changing. The small amount of healing from it also helped when I got in difficult situations. Usually I felt a little bit invincible because Victory Rush healing made it so I could beat an unlimited number of enemies in a row. But if I hadn't been careful in the Furbolg cave I easily could have engaged too many Owlbeasts at the same time and died. Every ability seemed to fit its niche very well. Thunderclap, for example, did enough damage that it was worth it to hit it when I was fighting more than one thing, but not worth hitting against one enemy.
Oh, and I don't know how long it's been this way, but they removed the damage penalty from Titan's Grip. I am thrilled.
Overall Grade: A
Rogue (Gnome)
Rogues start off well enough. One of the best changes they made is that at low level a one combo point Eviscerate hits for more than a Sinister Strike. At level three you are fighting boars by alternating Eviscerate and Sinister Strike. At seven it was two Sinister Strikes per Eviscerate. At level eight you get Ambush and everything goes pretty wonky. Ambush tends to half-kill things, so Ambush + Eviscerate and auto-attacks are all I used. Sometimes I would be waiting five seconds for stealth to cool down before proceeding to the next mob. I was having so much fun with Ambush that I picked Subtlety at level 10 and proceeded on to Loch Moden. Unfortunately I very quickly started to feel like a one-trick pony. With the early talents in Subtlety I got critical Ambushes as often as I didn't, which meant one-shotting things. When I didn't one shot things a critical Eviscerate would finish them off. When that didn't happen it was amazing how slow and painful it was to finish them off. Fighting two enemies at a time was right out of the question unless I had Evasion up, and not even that secure with it. A 70% dodge chance pretty much guarantees the win against a single guy even without getting to lead with Ambush, but the fight takes a long time and I still take a lot of damage. With Sap at level 12 I got extra flexibility in what I could do, but in Loch Modan, which is rather crowded with Troggs and Kobolds, I was dying an awful lot. Maybe this would have turned out better with Combat, but Rogues felt very weak compared to other classes for almost all applications, except for obliterating single targets for which they were grossly overpowered.
Overall Grade: D
Paladin (Blood Elf)
The Paladin was a tale of extremes. The first thing you notice when you start playing a paladin is that every time you Crusader Strike your enemy (which is every 4.5 seconds), scrolling text appears to let you know that you gained 1 Holy Power. If I were a newcomer to the game in 4.0, rather than someone who is keeping up with all the forums, then by the time I hit level 5 I would figure I had well over 100 holy power and wonder what I was supposed to do with it. When you hit level 9 you finally learn Word of Glory and get your Holy Power bar under your unit frame, plus a brief explanation of how it works. At level 8 I was struggling a lot with enemies. My damage was quite low and it took me a long time to beat things. Word of Glory solved that by healing me for more than my max health. A free max health heal every 13.5 seconds really reverses your fortunes in a lot of battles. The option to instead take a free 75% heal every 9 seconds is handy too. So at level 9 I became totally invincible, but it was still slow to kill enemies. This might be because of the selection of weapons available to me from starting quests (no two-handed weapons from early quests). Since I was using a one handed weapon and shield at level 10 I figured I'd give protection a try rather than go with the obvious Retribution. Protection is an insane mess. I was fighting enemies with around 160-180 health. My Crusader Strike hit for 15-19. My Avengers shield hit for 150-160. I would gather three guys up and one shot them all with the shield, or at least leave them one auto-attack from death. If I got too many guys by accident I always had my instant cast, free, full heals to fall back on. Basically I was invincible, had a 24 second cooldown on my instant-cast three-target instant-death spell, and otherwise was nearly useless. After shaking my head at this for a bit I switched to retribution (only a 17s respec fee!) and tried that out. I ended up still using a one-hander because I got a green from a quest that had significantly more dps than any two-hander I could find. Templar's Verdict was pretty disappointing, doing only a little more damage than Crusader Strike with three holy power (I don't understand why or how, but that's what happened) and so I mostly just stuck with my Words of Glory and hitting people. My damage was quite a bit higher and I didn't have a move that did 90% of my enemies' health on a long cooldown so the game played a lot better. Still, being relatively low damage and at the same time completely invincible is not compelling gameplay. I have to admit that this experience probably would have been greatly improved by simply changing some quest rewards.
Overall Grade: C (if I was grading Prot, I would give it an F)
Warrior (Draenei)
Warriors begin with a new ability called Strike. It costs 20 rage and makes you hit your enemy. It also shares a cooldown with Bloodthirst, Mortal Strike and Shield Slam, so you retire it immediately at level 10. This is a really good idea and solves a problem that exists with several other classes. Warriors are supposed to have a hard-hitting ability to dump their rage into, but the ability they get is chosen by their talent spec. Similarly, paladins are supposed to have a Holy Power dump, but their primary Holy Power dump is chosen by their talent spec. For warriors, the solution was to give you a low level hold-over ability. For paladins, I don't know that any solution was even contemplated.
At level three warriors get charge and at level five they get Victory Rush. Victory Rush now heals you for a significant percentage of your maximum health so you can happily run from enemy to enemy and fight away. Of course at low level health regenerates so fast out of combat this doesn't matter at all, but it was pretty great for getting me through a fight with two enemies, especially when extra enemies added in midway through the fight. Rend has been improved in that it appears to get a tick immediately when applied. This made it useful when first learned even though enemies generally die pretty quickly at level seven. With charge keeping me moving and three different buttons that I actively used in combat, low level warriors are fairly simple, but not boring to play. There is some optimization to do in your button presses, but anyone who just hit their buttons would beat enemies at low level. I had just picked up a couple of one-handed weapons from quests with no two-handed alternative, so at level 10 I chose Fury. Bloodthirst did about 30% more damage than Strike, which seemed like a nice trade-up, but not fundamentally game changing. The small amount of healing from it also helped when I got in difficult situations. Usually I felt a little bit invincible because Victory Rush healing made it so I could beat an unlimited number of enemies in a row. But if I hadn't been careful in the Furbolg cave I easily could have engaged too many Owlbeasts at the same time and died. Every ability seemed to fit its niche very well. Thunderclap, for example, did enough damage that it was worth it to hit it when I was fighting more than one thing, but not worth hitting against one enemy.
Oh, and I don't know how long it's been this way, but they removed the damage penalty from Titan's Grip. I am thrilled.
Overall Grade: A
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Patch 4.0.1 Testing - Mage and Warlock
I have started testing the initial leveling experiences for each class on the PTR to get a feel for what they have done to improve the game for new players. A lot of the new features are pretty impressive, including some pretty decent tutorials. I assume that this will be even better with the new cataclysm zones since some of the initial quests are being reworked, but already I'm pretty impressed with how deep they were willing to go into tossing out old ideas to bring in new, better ones.
In this review I don't want to get too hung up on bugs, since bugs get fixed. It's more the intentional design decisions. Of course sometimes bugs have a significant impact on how a class plays and mar my ability to evaluate it properly, but I can still get the gist.
I'm going to be giving each class a letter grade based for the early play experience. What this grade means exactly is hard to say. I would like to say I'm grading based on the current experience and not on my perception of how much they have improved, but I think it would be dishonest to suggest I could completely separate those ideas, so lets say it will be heavily weighted to the current state with some acknowledgement of history. It's also impossible to escape the fact that I just like some classes better than others, but what can you do?
So far I have played Warlock and Mage. My warrior and paladin were both erased when the servers were renewed on Saturday and I'll have to start them again since I don't think I can give a reasonable review without getting to at least level 12 or so.
Warlock (Human)
It was nice to start with a pet right away, even without full control of it. Initial DoTs are quite powerful, allowing you to start two-dotting enemies at level four. Voidwalker is also much improved, as torment is now a strike that does significant damage in addition to increasing threat. At level 10 I chose destruction and was disappointed that Conflagrate is bugged (the damage is very low). Also, it is strange that as destruction Immolate takes over Shadow Bolt as your nuke. There wasn't much cool to look forward to in terms of talents until relatively high level. Mana was a consideration if I ran from mob to mob two-dotting but not really one if I nuked down one mob at a time. Not a huge change from how leveling felt with a warlock before the patch, but warlock leveling was always pretty fun.
Mage (Blood Elf)
Fireball is a real beating at level 1, dealing over 30 damage and allowing you to go on two shotting everything until you learn Fire Blast, which does about the same damage as an instant. Very quickly you get arcane missiles and start proc watching, making combat feel much more interactive than it would just spamming one spell. At level 10 I chose Arcane and even without yet having Arcane Blast it felt pretty good. Fights were quite variable depending on missile procs and every now and then a mob be reduced to a health value between Fire Blast and Arcane Barrage and my best action would actually be to just run past them for a second before finishing them off. After the first few levels I always wanted to have multiple attack spells on my bar and had lots of room to make good and bad choices between them. My first couple of talent points weren't that exciting, but the tier two talents were very enticing. Mana became a minor consideration in the mid teens when I found that when monster hunting I would run out of mana slightly before my second Evocation cooldown. So given nearly continuous combat I stopped to get my mana back about every 8 minutes, which felt pretty good. I played to level 21 because I was having such a good time.
In this review I don't want to get too hung up on bugs, since bugs get fixed. It's more the intentional design decisions. Of course sometimes bugs have a significant impact on how a class plays and mar my ability to evaluate it properly, but I can still get the gist.
I'm going to be giving each class a letter grade based for the early play experience. What this grade means exactly is hard to say. I would like to say I'm grading based on the current experience and not on my perception of how much they have improved, but I think it would be dishonest to suggest I could completely separate those ideas, so lets say it will be heavily weighted to the current state with some acknowledgement of history. It's also impossible to escape the fact that I just like some classes better than others, but what can you do?
So far I have played Warlock and Mage. My warrior and paladin were both erased when the servers were renewed on Saturday and I'll have to start them again since I don't think I can give a reasonable review without getting to at least level 12 or so.
Warlock (Human)
It was nice to start with a pet right away, even without full control of it. Initial DoTs are quite powerful, allowing you to start two-dotting enemies at level four. Voidwalker is also much improved, as torment is now a strike that does significant damage in addition to increasing threat. At level 10 I chose destruction and was disappointed that Conflagrate is bugged (the damage is very low). Also, it is strange that as destruction Immolate takes over Shadow Bolt as your nuke. There wasn't much cool to look forward to in terms of talents until relatively high level. Mana was a consideration if I ran from mob to mob two-dotting but not really one if I nuked down one mob at a time. Not a huge change from how leveling felt with a warlock before the patch, but warlock leveling was always pretty fun.
Overall grade: B
Mage (Blood Elf)
Fireball is a real beating at level 1, dealing over 30 damage and allowing you to go on two shotting everything until you learn Fire Blast, which does about the same damage as an instant. Very quickly you get arcane missiles and start proc watching, making combat feel much more interactive than it would just spamming one spell. At level 10 I chose Arcane and even without yet having Arcane Blast it felt pretty good. Fights were quite variable depending on missile procs and every now and then a mob be reduced to a health value between Fire Blast and Arcane Barrage and my best action would actually be to just run past them for a second before finishing them off. After the first few levels I always wanted to have multiple attack spells on my bar and had lots of room to make good and bad choices between them. My first couple of talent points weren't that exciting, but the tier two talents were very enticing. Mana became a minor consideration in the mid teens when I found that when monster hunting I would run out of mana slightly before my second Evocation cooldown. So given nearly continuous combat I stopped to get my mana back about every 8 minutes, which felt pretty good. I played to level 21 because I was having such a good time.
Overall grade: A
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