World of Warcraft: Cataclysm

[idrisz]

because tanking in cata isn’t as face rolling as in wrath.

there are several fights where tanks decides the fight, like steelbender in BRC or golem boss in Stone core.

[Andrew]

I think tanks are also much less likely to queue in the LFD system. As a tank, I can easily get a full or almost full group of skilled people in my guild almost instantly. Sure, I could get instant groups of randoms, but I can no longer carry the entire group by myself, so it could be more painful than it needs to be if I get a bunch of bad people.

[Cal]

Like always? My queue times as a DPS have at times increased by an order of magnitude since December 7. There aren’t just a few tanks, there are practically no tanks queueing as compared to the DPS classes.

So, either Cataclysm attracted new players who prefer playing as DPS to tanks by a margin of somewhere of 5-10:1, or something has changed that makes tanks queue even less than they did before. The reasons vary from player to player, but it’s a huge difference in how a lot of players are used to playing the game.

It’s all well and good to say that Blizzard is changing the rules, but I wonder if there isn’t a certain threshold where people will start voting with their feet.

While I have been sitting here, I was in a 22 minute heroic queue on my warlock. We were queued into Heroic Stonecore. Everyone in the party said they knew the instance. Initial trash pulls went fine with tank marking mobs and appropriate CC applied. We then wiped three times on Corborus. Twice because people took too much AE damage from crystals. Third time because the healer ran out of mana, not sure if he was spending mana too unwisely or if the DPS was again taking too much damage.

The group dissolves after a couple of snotty one-liners from a juvenile mage, and I am back now sitting in a queue which is at the 16 minute mark. Wonderful.

Is it really something blizzard can fix, baring making the heroics have no challenge like wotlk?

As a healer main, and several tank char’s, i no longer use the LFD tool, there are simply too many idiots (mainly dps, sorry!) who can now cause me the expense and time of a wipe. Most expect to be able to AOE their way through, stand in fire and have the healer pull them through the instance or staring at recount wanting to the top DPS.

Im fairly sure im not the only healer/tank player who has realised its generally the DPS who are the weakest links and thus go with friends / guilds only now. If im healing i generally leave the group at the first sign of DPS blaming the healer or tank for their lack of ability in avoiding damage. Weird how it always seems to be the DPs who bitch and moan in groups, when the tanks and healers ahve pretty much insta pop queues if we decide we have had enough of them.

[JM1]

I’m used to mobs that do those things, yes, and I’m used to them not mattering. I doubt this is a lesson I should be learning (likewise, I doubt I should be learning that I’m the most important person in the dungeon and that it doesn’t matter if we lose people so long as I stay alive, and I will stay alive), but it is a lesson the game is teaching me.

How would you have them do it?

[maxle]

No idea. That might be why I’m not a game designer ;)

[Mordrak]

How would you have them do it?

I think part of the problem is recognizing what they are doing. The only way to make it matter is introduce much harsher failstates and more interesting solo encounters in the regular PVE world as well as making normals more like heroics, or at least make the difficulty curve spike earlier.

Stuff like the trials in Azshara is nice, but 75 some odd levels later when the same character is doing Heroic Stonecore, I doubt they are going to make the connection between the shadow trial and the fight where you guide the adds into the void wells.

The other thing I would do personally, if they want encounters to be this fast (and with haste and haste buffs, we can cast very fast indeed), they need to reduce the total number of abilities. Not everyone is playing on a mouse with 5 buttons.

[idrisz]

The other thing I would do personally, if they want encounters to be this fast (and with haste and haste buffs, you’re cast very fast indeed), they need to reduce the total number of abilities. Not everyone is playing on a mouse with 5 buttons.

that’s why there is a keyboard…

[JM1]

They’re not going to make the levelling game harder (and therefore slower for most people) just so that the endgame heroic level dungeons come as less of a shock. It would be hugely counter-productive.

They’ve already gone out of their way to make fights last longer in Cata levelling, to try and make you use more of your abilities, and to expose you to the basic mechanics of these fights before you get there. There’s the normal dungeons to show you most of what you’re going to see in heroics. I’m at a loss as to what more they can realistically do whilst still giving us some challenge.

[Mordrak]

that’s why there is a keyboard…

No shit, really? It’s very easy to fumble around the keyboard when playing games, especially as the pace increases. As the pace increases, it’s easier to make mistakes on something as unwieldy for gaming as a keyboard.

There’s a reason why many people like to use controllers, particularly for action games. The only exception is first person shooters, which have a miniscule amount of abilities to juggle in comparison.

Go take your snark and fuck yourself.

[idrisz]

No shit, really? It’s very easy to fumble around the keyboard when playing games, especially as the pace increases. As the pace increases, it’s easier to make mistakes on something as unwieldy for gaming as a keyboard.

There’s a reason why many people like to use controllers, particularly for action games. The only exception is first person shooters, which have a miniscule amount of abilities to juggle in comparison.

Go take your snark and fuck yourself.

hmm, it’s call not using the default 1-+, but bind the most used skills to key like q/e/r/f/z/x/c, it’s extremely easy to hit those key, unless you are keyboard turning, then I don’t know what to said except play wow with a 360 controller??

[Mordrak]

They’re not going to make the levelling game harder (and therefore slower for most people) just so that the endgame heroic level dungeons come as less of a shock. It would be hugely counter-productive.

I don’t know how that’d be counter productive to teaching people to deal with this kind of learning curve. It would be counter productive to retaining players. You asked what they could do and I honestly think that’s what they could do if they really wanted to teach players who don’t pick up on it as quickly.

[JM1]

Buttons are buttons, be they joypad or keyboard. People can play SF2 to disgusting levels of competence on a joypad and can touch type at ridiculous speeds on a keyboard.

Certainly having various things bound around WASD is nothing new - that was how we did our team binds back in the QW days, and that was a lot quicker than WoW!

[JM1]

I don’t know how that’d be counter productive to teaching people to deal with this kind of learning curve. It would be counter productive to retaining players. You asked what they could do and I honestly think that’s what they could do if they really wanted to teach players who don’t pick up on it as quickly.

I honestly don’t think those players would even get as far as level 85 heroics in that situation.

[Athryn]

While I have been sitting here, I was in a 22 minute heroic queue on my warlock. We were queued into Heroic Stonecore. Everyone in the party said they knew the instance. Initial trash pulls went fine with tank marking mobs and appropriate CC applied. We then wiped three times on Corborus. Twice because people took too much AE damage from crystals. Third time because the healer ran out of mana, not sure if he was spending mana too unwisely or if the DPS was again taking too much damage.

The group dissolves after a couple of snotty one-liners from a juvenile mage, and I am back now sitting in a queue which is at the 16 minute mark. Wonderful.

I wish we had those queue times, it’s 40 to 45 minutes for dps on my group of servers.

[Mordrak]

hmm, it’s call not using the default 1-+, but bind the most used skills to key like q/e/r/f/z/x/c, it’s extremely easy to hit those key, unless you are keyboard turning, then I don’t know what to said except play wow with a 360 controller??

If that works for you great, but that won’t work for me. Right now, 1-4 are macro’d to share 2 abilities each and that’s about the best I can work with now as far as maintaining speed. Q and E might be feasible. R/f/x/c are way too out of the way relative to 1-4 as far as contorting my fingers to match to be any use. I’m sorry I’m not a 100% accurate without looking down keyboard user or looking at my hot bars.

For whatever reason, I need it to visually match my keys if I can. I don’t know how else to explain it. I’d consider using a controller actually, if it weren’t for the camera. The game is not designed around a consistent camera and I’ve always been shit with thumbstick cameras unless it’s very simple.

[idrisz]

also if you have problem with r/f/x/c, instead use wasd, use esdf, then you free up more space on your left side.

[Mordrak]

I honestly don’t think those players would even get as far as level 85 heroics in that situation.

I’m one of them. Honestly, if I very rarely have to look at the interface, and I could play it like an action game… the fights aren’t that bad. They certainly don’t look it from youtube videos, but in the moment, simple miss-presses, getting my bearings after having to click something, etc can really throw me off on my dps.

If I focus on DPS, I miss things that blend in with the environment visually (like the whirlpool tornadoes in throne of tides).

[JM1]

If that works for you great, but that won’t work for me. Right now, 1-4 are macro’d to share 2 abilities each and that’s about the best I can work with now. Q and E might be feasible. R/f/x/c are way too out of the way relative to 1-4 as far as contorting my fingers to match to be any use.

Hmm, interesting. Here’s how it works for my WASD setup.

Middle finger: W, S, 1-5, X, Z. 6+ if I need them but it’s a rarity.
Index finger: D, E, R, F, C, V. G/T are for stuff I don’t need instantly.
Ring finger: A, Q, also Z, Tab
little finger: Shift, Ctrl (for macros)
Thumb: space

Pretty much all of those come naturally to me under pressure. Yay for muscle memory :)

[JM1]

I’m one of them. Honestly, if I very rarely have to look at the interface, and I could play it like an action game… the fights aren’t that bad. They certainly don’t look it from youtube videos, but in the moment, simple miss-presses, getting your bearings after having to click something, etc can really throw me off on my dps.

If I focus on DPS, I miss things that blend in with the environment visually (like the whirlpool tornadoes in throne of tides.

By that situation I meant “if the whole game was made harder”.

I appreciate what you’re saying because I was a lot like that myself, and I put a lot of work into making my UI as clear as possible and cleaning up my bars etc so that I had everything I needed close by and became comfortable with my setup. Then I was able to concentrate more on what was actually going on onscreen.

But I certainly remember the frustration of the difficulty in some areas of vanilla WoW levelling, and having the entire experience be like that would, IMO, stop a lot of people getting to 85 (and heroics) anyway.

Have you done any raiding? I’m curious as to what you though of the raids in previous expansions. The heroics feel a lot like 5-man raids to me in some cases.

[AaronSofaer]

hmm, it’s call not using the default 1-+, but bind the most used skills to key like q/e/r/f/z/x/c, it’s extremely easy to hit those key, unless you are keyboard turning, then I don’t know what to said except play wow with a 360 controller??

Let’s see what abilities I have that are useful in a raid encounter on my Druid (since I’m on him right now).

Main Action Bar (to =, in no particular order): Starsurge, Insect Swarm, Moonfire, Starfire, Wrath, Wild Mushrooms, Detonate Wild Mushrooms, Root, Hurricane, Regrowth, Cyclone, Lifebloom, and my trinkets/Lifeblood. Alt-Bar One (Ctrl-c, z, s-D, a-1 through a-4, x, s-v, v, alt-):
Starfall, Boomkin Form, Dispel, Cat-Dash, Solar Beam, Nature’s Grasp, Typhoon, Innervate, Treants, Rebirth
Alt-Bar Two (Mouswheel +ctrl/alt, alt-Q, alt-W, more mouse buttons):
Thorns, Barkskin, Warstomp, Hibernate, Soothe, Tranquility, Faerie Fire

That’s 31 abilities which are useful in combat. It doesn’t count out-of-combat abilities, of which I have seven which I need handy at any given point (Flight Form, ground mount, aquatic form, Revive, Mana Cakes, Pineapple Punch for when there are no Mages, my Alch non-consumed potion), and it doesn’t include healthstones, mana potions, and healing potions, which I haven’t bound yet because I’ve yet to have them/use them.

That’s a huge number of abilities. Huge.