Why I hate Eye for an Eye

Oh no no, not the talent. If I ever make a PvP build I'm sure I'll pick it up. Oh no, I mean the sinister spreader of memes at Eye for an Eye. He's gone and made me a scrapper, which I guess would make a pretty nice engineering title.

Rules
So, rule thingies... Man, I love copy-paste, I have no clue how I'd indent the numbers. I like that look. Maybe I should just start copying half of all his posts, just for the formatting. And loh and behold, I hit preview to see what it looks like and no indent. DAMN YOU E4E!

1. When accepting this auspicious award, you must write a post bragging about it, including the name of the misguided soul who thinks you deserve such acclaim, and link back to the said person so everyone knows she/he is real.

2. Choose a minimum of seven (7) blogs that you find brilliant in content or design. Or improvise by including bloggers who have no idea who you are because you don’t have seven friends. Show the seven random victims’ names and links and leave a harassing comment informing them that they were prized with Honest Weblog. Well, there’s no prize, but they can keep the nifty icon.

3. List at least ten (10) honest things about yourself. Then pass it on!

So, I am apparently awesome. By that I mean my awesomeness has been confirmed by the receiving of this award. However not to diminish the award, but in normal circumstances the award alone is not poor of awesome. In this case, the award was clearly, non-verbally, given with a message of "this is a more awesome award than usual for a person who is more awesome than usual." He even slipped a $20 bill in the envelope.

Tags
People.. 7 people? Crap. Well I'll just pull out my list of blog links and run down there and see who... Oh. They have it already. Hm...

Flash of Moonfire I just found this blog a few days ago, but I like the writing.
Due to insufficient ranting, I present to you: Ixobelle.
No one seems to have tagged Euripedes over at Critical QQ. His blog is cool, go read it. Bring a snorkel, it's written by a mage. :P
Player vs. Developer always has good posts, sometimes too good, the type that you feel by commenting on for fear of tainting them with a lack of proper writing.
Iapetes because I lack people who are wrong to argue with.
I wish I could add Larisa, but she's taken.

And now I think that has taken out the last of the blogs I read which haven't been awarded already. Uh oh. I could tag random blogs, but that seems dishonest and if there's one thing the internet encourages, it's honesty. Honestly.

Honesty
Honesty! Honesty? Oh come on! This is a microcosm of a society, a mini-society if you will. A virtual one. We're the Tamagachi of society and I am a puppy. Just as you need to feed the dog, so must in society you lie. "How are you?" "Good, how about you?" Honesty would be bad, for one because then we'd start listing all the problems. Honesty means long lists and responses like "tl;dr." Or maybe that's just the result of my writing style. Is bad a style? Oh well... honesty here goes nothing.

1) If no one is around, I often argue with myself. I get very mad if I lose.

2) I dislike things that I'm bad at. This probably explains my views on arenas and healing. There are only a few exceptions, such as chess towards which I am a mostly positive, but apathetic view.

3) I never got past Razorgore in pre-BC.

4) I used to be totally indifferent to bugs: snakes, ants, bees, that sort of thing. Now they scare the crap out of me and I can't remember any experience which would have caused this.

5) I started college as a chemical engineering major, but partially due to excessive WoW, I did poorly, switched majors twice and am now a psychology major and recently added a minor in sociology.

6) I have a constant fear of doing it wrong. For example: are these suppose to sound like my life story in numbered form?

7) My first account was not my own, but was instead loaned by a friend (it was his friend's who didn't play anymore) so I could try WoW. I think it's been sold.

8) I really like lore. I read quests. I usually play with music on, but when I'm leveling somewhere new or doing one of the really deep quests, I turn it off and maybe turn on in-game music.

9) I feel guilty if I spec ret because my paladin was modeled after a prot PvP video from back when reckoning was good. Go look up Zalgradis PvP 3. It's very old, pre-1.9.

10) In retrospect, I used to be laughably bad. At everything. But as I pointed out in class yesterday when debating whether technology was making kids unable to communicate: we all used to be stupid, it's just part of being a few years ago.

I think I need a new blog name

What's wrong with my current blog name? Well, procs and cons. That should say pros, but, why not show that WoW has ruined my mind and in another example I am unable to type instances... grr... instant-plural.

Procs:
...
I find it slightly funny. It's mostly a reference to when troll racials were incredibly bad: throwing weapon spec being the most notable and probably worst in the game.

It references my year or two or by now maybe three years of posting on the paladin forum, as a troll shaman. Even after I had a paladin, after it was level capped (BC, so 70), even after it was my main, I still posted on my shaman.

I think it's somewhat unique in that it doesn't refer to a class spell or anything at all related to any classes.

It's vague: I think a more specific name would be restrictive. I'd feel like I was off-topic posting about my druid if I had a paladin-related name.

Cons:
It's vague: Some blogs you can tell what they're about by the name. Blessing of Kings, I wonder, might that possibly be about paladins? Player vs. Developer, maybe possibly it's about game design and balance and... see there's a good name, it's open-ended but not ridiculously vague. Or for a vague title which admits its vague, try anything like "World of ___" or "___'s Adventure's in ____" You go to those expecting something a bit here and there. I have no clue what you expect from my title.

It's misleading: You'd think I'd at least talk more about my troll characters or use an accept or something. Oh then there's the address. Trollshaman, and yet I barely ever talk about my shaman, nor do I even play him much. Thinking about it, it's a pretty stupid address.

Now what?
I don't really know what to do. I thought Trollpaladin would make a better address, and it is available last I checked (checking involved for a very short time having a new address). It's not great, but at least it gets across the general paladin idea without totally restricting it to paladins, seeing as they can't be trolls.

For a title, I don't know what to do at all. I'm reluctant to go with something class-related since that's restrictive. I also tend to not read class blogs because they bore me. Oh hey, comments on the class I already play (or don't play and don't care about the latest news about), so what's new? That came off with far more condescension than intended.

I thought of some other ideas, but they tended to be lame or potentially offensive.
Bi-Spectual Hybrid: A role is a role.
Altitis is the Leading Cause of Reroll
A Paladin Killed My Shaman (this one is actually very true, my paladin is the reason my shaman is pretty much just a level 74 DE alt)

What's a blogger to do? Even if I did think of a good name, changing the address might wreck all the links to my blog. At last count I saw three, and one might be wishful thinking. Two broken links is serious business. My name, Klepsacovic isn't taken. Why didn't I just use that in the first place?

Incidentally my paladin is having another identity crisis since hitting things with an axe is a bit addictive, but I'm supposed to be prot (my paladin is loosely modeled after a paladin I saw years back in some PvP videos, back when reckoning was powerful).

Class idea: Chronomancer

I first made a post on this back in July. Since then I've thought of more to add to it. A recent conversation with fellow blogger Iapetes (who needs to post more) made me realize that manipulation of time could potentially affect anything, but especially in the areas of buffs and debuffs. This would be primarily a support class, though it would be capable of soloing.

Any time I give a duration or cooldown, don't take it as an absolute. They're just to give general ideas of "this is a short duration" or "this has a long cooldown."

Damage mitigation and healing
Imagine someone just got hit with 20k damage and died. Maybe it's a warrior on 3D Sarth or just the latest bad mechanic to encourage stam-stacking. Chronomancers would have various ways to deal with this.

Rewind: Chronomancers could, on a cooldown, reverse a fight by 10 seconds, allowing a raid to say "ooh, a bad thing will happen now, tank, pop shield wall this time."

Undo: The last attack didn't happen. This wouldn't undo death, but would act as a powerful heal.

Skip Ahead: Go back to a couple seconds before someone died and bring them to now. Think of it as a combat res with the added convenience of not requiring rebuffing. However debuffs remain, so someone will need to watch that cleanse button.

Time Mirror: Reverse the flow of time for a single spell. This is a proactive version of Undo, being used before the attack (spells only), which will cause it to cast backwards, damaging the caster. Think of spell reflect usable on a specific group member.

Buffs
Obviously haste would be a standard buff.

Fast Forward: The next ten seconds are recorded and then repeated when the recording is over. This is their Bloodlust, but potentially much more powerful. Use this with every single cooldown you can imagine because it acts as 200% DPS for 10 seconds. There is a big risk though: it also records damage and healing on players, so if your tank isn't being kept topped off properly, he may be dead after the Fast Forward, along with anyone standing in a fire or anything else bad. This would have a sufficiently long cooldown to be unusable in arenas.

Generic single-target haste buff: Attack or cast faster.

Simpler Times: Delevel an ally, reducing all base stats. This is bad right? Well, not exactly. Throw it on a caster and when their base mana drops, so do their spell costs. The efficiency gain will offset the slightly lower stats.

Remember the Good Times: Grants the Nostalgia buff, making the target immune to fear effects.

It's Time: Resets all cooldowns on friendly players.

Debuffs
Show Death: Show the target when and how they will die, fearing them.

Delevel: Lower the target's level, but rather than affecting stats, it affects the hit table. This acts as both a damage reduction for them due to higher relative miss, crit, etc. and a damage buff for the group due to the opposite.

Premature Aging: The target ages rapidly, snaring it and reducing all stats derived from agility: dodge, crit, and armor.

Freeze Time: All enemies are frozen for 4 seconds, making them immune to all damage and unable to attack. If there are multiple Chronomancers in combat (or even out of combat if its arena), the spell will last for 4 seconds for each Chronomancer. Chronomancers are immune to time stop.

See You Later: Moves the target into the future, making them unable to attack or take damage for 6 seconds. This can also be used on allies and could be helpful for things such as surviving a large AoE when at low health.

Random abilities
Teamwork: Summons a future and past self to fight with the caster for 20 seconds. If the past self dies, the caster dies. In addition, the present and future selves are weakened by having too many selves at the same time. However both selves are hard to damage, frequently using most known abilities, especially Time Mirror. The benefit is more damage, but at an elevated risk of death since you now have two ways to die.

Get It Over With: Accelerates the speed at which a CC ends. It will not remove the CC, but it can turn a full fear into only a second or two.

Save: The Chronomancer can save a time and if desired, bring the raid back to that time. Think of it as a convenience spell: save before a boss fight and you won't have to run back after a wipe, save after the long rant at the start and you skip that next time. Or use it to reduce risk: save before a phase transition that you're still learning and then you won't need to repeat previous phases and risk earlier deaths.

Past Situation: This would be the primary nuke. It would work by grabbing energy from way the past and throwing it at enemies. The damage time is random and the value will vary more than a normal spell cast. This is because the caster just grabs whatever is going on at the time rather than searching around for the most destructive damage. This could also be used to grab enemy attacks from earlier in the fight and throw them back, so Chronomancer damage types would depend greatly on luck and the mob they're fighting.

For resources, I think an energy bar would work best. I don't want any scaling regen mechanic since the abilities are far too powerful to spam.

Nerd raging about old world content

Warning: contains nerd raging and old content. I will try to avoid swearing.

Naxx is clearly too easy. How can I tell? Take someone that has cleared Naxx and stick them in an old world raid and they will fail completely. I'd say they'd fail over and over, but they'd have left after one wipe. This has happened over and over. I'll go over some common failures.

Molten Core
Core hound packs must die within a few seconds of each other. Apparently this is too complex for DPS to understand. They pick a dog and stay on it. And stay on it. And as dogs res each other and I call for them to stop DPS, they stay on it. Eventually I started just soloing the packs.

Shazzrah: Is purge/dispel/shield slam really that hard? He can still hurt if you're letting him deal 50 or 100% more damage, I forgot which. The point is, it's a simple task and still people fail horribly.

Gehennas, Magmadar: Don't stand in the fire. Is that too complex?

Blackwing Lair
Don't stand in front of the dragons that do Shadowflame. I will tell you which ones. Don't stand in front of them. IT IS NOT COMPLEX. Also heal me rather than running around the corner because you're afraid of flame buffet. Yes, this happened and was the last straw to trigger this post, I kept dying because the healers were around the corner and the elemental shaman was too busy throwing lightning bolts. If I detect fail like that again I'm turning him towards the raid and bubble-hearthing.

Suppression Room: Keep moving. No really, keep moving. I know it's slow, but keep moving. Move. Move, move, move. I don't care that a whelp is biting you, keep moving so you don't fall behind. Now put your back to a wall so you don't get knocked off the edge.

Temple of Ahn'qiraj
Don't kill the MCed person.

Follow me so you stop getting lost. How hard is it to follow someone? Every time, someone gets lost. I don't know how. I mean, is it that complex to follow someone?

Interrupt the heal. Yes I know you're probably all the same noobs that want everyone in the game to have MS just because you're too terrible to interrupt heals, but for the love of god, INTERRUPT THE HEALS!

Stop complaining about mobs with whirlwind. Just don't stand next to them. If they attack you, run to the tank. Tanking classes, use your damn taunts. Yes, DKs, I know you're blood, but first of all, blood can tank, second of all, it's a level 60 mob and you wear plate, so taunt. Idiots.

Stop asking "why do you keep needing X?" Do you know what it is for? No? Then WTF do you care? I'll humor you. These are part of an old system of gear distribution. They are useless unless you have one of the tokens. If you get a token and don't drop raid the second C'thun dies, I just might give you all the little bits you need. Of course they're still useless because none of you have the slightest bit of rep because you just want to get run through once for the achievement and in the process get full 2.5, except you don't know what 2.5 is. And on that note, STOP NEEDING ON EVERYTHING THAT DROPS WHEN HALF THE TIME YOU CAN'T EVEN USE IT.

Twin Emperors: Stop asking why they are healing. Stop telling me to just pull. Stop AoEing the bugs. Stop using DoTs. Stop failing at listening. You know why I am taking so much time to explain the fight? Because it's almost complex. In fact, if not for the level difference, even ignoring gear requirements, it's harder than any fight in Naxx. Due to our level, it's not as complex as it used to be, but somehow people still fail.

Here's the idea: I tank one one side, another paladin tanks on the other. They go back and forth and they die. Heal us, kill bugs if they get mean, don't AoE, don't use DoTs because they screw up aggro. Don't lie to me as say you didn't use rupture when I can not only see it on the mob, but right after the teleport in runs straight towards you.

C'thun: Don't all run in at once after I say to wait. Pick up the damn cues and notice that no one else is inside the room, so don't go in. Hunters, don't do retarded crap with feign death. Kill the tentacles, kill him, don't stand in front of or behind him during glare, spread out. Yes don't stand behind, it's a bug, deal with it.

Angry Paladin is Angry
Why are people unable to do content 20 levels old? By now the fights are much simpler and half of them can be facerolled. But any fight which requires anything more than facerolling, people fail completely. Then they all leave. I think this is because of Naxx. It's too easy. People get mad if a boss takes more than one attempt. Should Naxx be hard? Not exactly. It is an intro raid after all. But as it is currently, it's far too easy. Maybe 20% harder would work? Whatever it is, a boss should not be a one-shot on the first attempt unless it's intentionally the one easy boss per raid. I think 2-3 attempts is a decent target for an intro raid. It's enough to challenge but not so much that it's an awful time sink with 100g+ repair bills and massive consumable requirements and all that.

Make Classic Raider a requirement to enter Ulduar. Make people do a challenging fight for once, especially a challenging fight that isn't just there to hand out loot. I did Kael'thas with my guild Wednesday night. It was a lot of fun. We died a couple times while learning it, but that just makes it more fun. I was happy when I died and when we wiped. Sure I wouldn't have wanted to wipe for three hours, but a couple wipes make the end result more worth it.

Bring back downranking, but nerf it

I hate trying to start posts. I want to just repeat my title. It feels like a good first sentence. It gets to the point and doesn't ramble, unlike everything else I write.

So yes, why would I want this?

Why downrank?
Sometimes you just don't need a big heal. Sometimes even flash heal is too big.

This thought was brought on by a recent SFK run on my druid. A 41 shaman was running a warlock and I tagged along. It was pretty slow, partially because the shaman wasn't very good (strange spec, strange gear, and just slow moving). He kept telling me to heal because "I'm the weakest one." That seemed strange, since there wasn't much to heal. I thought, why not have him heal, I'd pull a bunch and tank it while the warlock was AoE. That sounded fast. But the shaman didn't seem interested.

In retrospect it wouldn't have worked well. The overhealing would have been massive and as a result the shaman might have been unable to keep up. Downranking would have helped then and I think it would help a lot now.

What's the nerf?
Downranking was removed, at least as far as I know, because it was giving ridiculous efficiencies. Lower ranks gained less from +healing, but not enough to offset the lower mana costs. So why not have the total healing reduced directly in proportion to the lower mana cost? This would mean no gain in efficiency. Instead healers could use this to reduce healing output for a lower mana cost. Currently this is possible, the it either involves changing spells or delaying casts. Neither is very good.

Changing spells, for example HL to FoL, will result in much lower spending but also much lower output. This is frying pan to fire: massive overhealing to massive underhealing (also known as a dead tank). Mixing would reduce the effect, such as alternating FoL and HL, but then this just means sometimes you underheal and sometimes you overheal. With luck the tank won't die from the underhealing times, but luck isn't always nice.

Delaying casts is even worse. Tanks tend to need healing now, or at least 1.5 seconds from now. Delaying heals means they don't get that heal. Even if the healing averages out properly, tanks don't live by average; they die by extremes.

Downranking would also allow for more flexibility. Do you want to skimp on regen, stack SP, and downrank? Or do you want to go for more regen and use higher rank heals? Maybe go somewhere in the middle and balance the two with a fairly high rank. This would also help to make Ulduar gear (at least as I remember it a couple weeks ago) more attractive. Downranking makes crit less effective compared to mana/5 and allows for an actual choice between the two rather than just crit>mana/5.

In the reverse direction, how about talents with effects like "increases healing by 50% and mana costs by 50%, lasts X seconds." Bad things are happening and you can respond to them, but this isn't something to spam. Or maybe it allows regen to be an output stat as well since it would allow a player to use this cooldown more often.

Maybe this is just the wishful thinking of a bad healer who wishes the game was more accommodating of his lack of skill.

Totem-stomping macros, not working as intended

This GC quote comes from a thread on the DPS forum titled: In defense of Totem Stomping Macros

From our POV, there is no defense of totem-stomping macros.

If you want to take the time to give your pet a command and a target to kill a totem, great. But to be able to neutralize a core mechanic of the class so easily because you are clever enough to copy a macro off of the Internet is not skill.

The only reason they still exist are technical limitations, not because we like the design. (And please don't feel the need to offer your technical suggestions. :) )

The OP argues that easily killing totems with almost no effort due to macroed pet commands is just balance, it's the counter to totems. This argument isn't too bad, except that it fails to distinguish between "counter" and "trivialize." A macroed pet could potentially kill totems as fast as they are created and suffer only a small DPS loss from the pet being busy.

But perhaps this isn't all that different from an enhancement shaman purging buffs. Or maybe it is. The two other specs of shamans would suffer DPS or healing losses from purging, due to being unable to cast. In addition, there are many dispel resist talents or even some talents which reactively punish dispel, such as unstable affliction or life bloom. In contrast totems have no defense against one-shotting by a pet.

Are there solutions? Totem stomper macros could be disabled by blocking anything at all like the names of totems form macros. But that would hurt shamans as well. References to attacking totems could be banned, but that would be very complex and probably end up just being the first solution.

The simplest is just to buff totems: give them enough health to survive a hit or two. Maybe give them 10% of the shaman's health. That would give them 1.5-2k health, or something, I have no clue how much health a PvP shaman has. The number can be adjusted, but the idea is that a wand or pet cannot one-shot the totem but a melee attack or a spell will have no difficulty at all. This makes totems easy to kill, but not free to kill. That seems balanced to me.

Ret tanking

To start off: I am not going to worry about dev intention or not. They can decide if they want ret to be able to tank. This is purely about its ability to tank.

This is mostly based off my experience a few minutes ago tanking VoA as ret.

Aggro
I'm not too concerned about aggro. Ret is definitely lower than prot. A lot lower. But, I think it's high enough. People might have to hold back at high gear levels, but it's not as if they're reduced to wanding.

Still, scaling is a concern. So much damage is based on crits and tanking gear lacks crit. In addition, SoV doesn't crit (well okay, the instant 4 damage can crit), so all the crit multipliers have a reduced effect. With the change of DS to physical, ret lost a big piece of holy damage and at this point is going to be doing quite a lot of physical, so the RF multiplier is weakened. Fortunately both specs get divine strength, so that scaling at least remains intact.

Adding RV to CS may help, increasing the chances that the holy DoT will stay rolling.

Mitigation
Ret takes more damage. It's a lot more. This is completely okay, after all, prot is the tanking tree. However I think ret in proper tanking gear can survive in easier content (such as VoA) or when overgeared (I was also overgeared).

Rotation
Ret can pretty much use a modified 6-9 rotation. CS, judge, SotR, consecrate, CS, DS, SotR... It's not quite 6-9 since DS is 10, but with lag and slow reactions it fits.

Mana
This is a problem. I was feeling a noticeable shortage of mana even with DP. JotW wasn't enough. SA wasn't enough. I was losing mana pretty fast where as prot I'd stay about even or slowly fall. I think the biggest thing is the lack of BoS. It will get much worse when SA becomes a talent. Will buffed JotW offset this? I doubt it.

Overall I think ret is able to offtank if geared properly, but with 3.1 and SA moving to a talent I see potential trouble coming up.

Naxxramas and Retribution

Monday night my guild needed another for Malygos and I got in, partially due to having no paladins. I went ret for it. That gave me my first kill and the title Champion of the Frozen Wastes. Woo.

Last night we started Naxx 25 and again I went as ret. It was fun in a useless sort of way. By that I mean, as prot I had to be on top of things all the time, leading the pack, knowing everything. As ret, as DPS, I pretty much follow the assist, killing as I go. It's relaxing to have lower pressure.

Loot-wise I made off pretty well. I won a holy neck which I'll use as a FoL neck: comparison with badge neck. Though I wonder if it's just a straight upgrade even for HL. I got some blocking gloves which I plan to use mostly instead of T7: comparison. Then there was a tanking neck which was just a straight upgrade from the badge neck: comparison.

Then there are the 7.5 legs. These are a source of difficulty for me. I won them uncontested and with an offspec 'bid'. At the time I'd planned to use them for ret. However after the fact I realized I only had T7 for prot, so really they could be an upgrade for prot as well. So now I'm split. Do I do main (prot) or secondary (ret)? If I'd said they were for main it would be obvious: they go to prot. But I got them for ret. I also have the T7 glove token from a PUG, so I could get two pieces of the ret set instantly. Is that a big enough upgrade to balance the main spec upgrade?
Ret gloves
Ret pants
Prot pants

Maybe if I'm lucky VoA will give me ret pants so I don't need to decide.

In related news I finally saw, and won, the axe from H HoL.

I applied the lessons I learned from all my druid's macros to my paladin. The result is a much cleared UI. I took out 2-3 bars: around 30 buttons. My hotkeys are now move convenient. I changed some to consider the ease of use of modifiers with different button positions. Many are now macros. The only problem I have now is that 1 is mouseover cleanse and crusader strike, so I have to either place my cursor over a spell or hold down right click, otherwise people tend to wander across my cursor and 1 switched to cleanse and I can't CS anymore. I consider this a small loss compared to the huge overall improvements. Now I just need to figure out a good way to do BoF and BoP. Oh yea, and in the fail department, e used to be CS and ctrl-e was HoW. Now those are taunt and AoE taunt. This has caused some confusion.