Raiding in Cataclysm

Was feeling a little burned out and meh about WoW recently. A long weekend away from the game and some silly fun in ICC did a lot to cure that...

And then Blizzard insist on giving me the warm fuzzies. /blush You guys.

So what have we got so far?

1. Ten and twenty-five man raids share a lockout
2. Ten and twenty-five man raids share loot
3. Two tiers of points to replace the current badge system in PvE
4. Two tiers of points to replace the current honour/arena point system in PvP
5. Acquisition of top tier points in both cases are throttled on a weekly basis
6. Lower tier of both can be exchanged at a loss. Buying last season's PvP gear with emblems is old news, but now you can buy the previous raid tier with honour!
7. Twenty-five man raids will drop more loot per capita and may have other nebulous rewards
8. Arena ratings are dead!

So this looks like a barrel of robot pirate monkeys, at least to me. My esteemed colleague doesn't agree, and raises an important point or three. Mainly, what will there be to do after downing the raid boss d'tier each week? Currently, some people very much enjoy being able to raid as much as they like per week - being able to do both ten and twenty-five man runs on the same character doubles the number of raids available to such people.

On the other hand, running both raid sizes doubles your income. More emblems, more loot. The superior drops from the larger raid cheapen the smaller raid (devaluation of drops, and a slightly lower challenge due to better gear), and you halve the time before the emblem vendors have nothing to offer you.

In addition, removing the loot differences has many positive aspects. One of these is that it reduces the development cost of a new raid tier. Whilst I wouldn't bet on item creation being the bottleneck in this process, every man-hour saved can be put to use improving the quantity or quality of other content. This is assuming the loot tables remain roughly the same size as the current model, which seems reasonable if they wish to avoid the VoA lottery experience.

I don't think this is a zero sum situation, but neither do I think it's a clear-cut halving of content. It depends on the amount of stuff we get to play with, and rate of delivery. I do hope there's enough content to satisfy people who really enjoy investing time, but equally I think these are really positive steps overall. And there are always alts.

That said, I'm hugely biased. I don't like big raids, I don't like seeing anomalously nice drops unique to one size (primarily this has taken the form of me lusting after 25-man trinkets, but I'm sure there have been occasions when a larger guild has run smaller raids for the odd well-itemised piece). I don't like the reputation of ten mans being 'easy', and right now I don't care if that has ever been justified (it hasn't, so nyer). Blizzard are making a stand, saying that the only extra challenge in the larger raids will be logistical and we're to be rewarded accordingly.

They're removing the subtle, insistent pressure to do both raid sizes each week. For the drops; for extra emblems; for achievements; because it's the 'real' raid size... all these stupid little niggling voices are rendered null and void.

The PvP changes are nice too. Being able to fully equip a character with PvP gear will be delicious. Bye-bye ratings! Yes, yes, I suck and can't even get to 1800. I don't think I'll be threatening anyone's titles just because I can now get a resi weapon, but it will be a nice little carrot. Two-way exchange between the lower tier PvE and PvP points is a good escape valve, to prevent a repeat of BC (when people abandoned raiding in droves to get 'better' PvP gear in an 'easier' fashion). Being able to minimally gear up for either portion of the game in a manner you enjoy is good.

So, is there anything I don't like in this latest set of announcements?

Of course. I don't like the fact that they're sticking with the Hard Mode = Higher iLevel model. I would greatly prefer that hard modes have unique loot tables, shared between 10 and 25 of course. But this would eat into the time we just saved by having 10 and 25 share the normal loot tables, and could lead to raids doing a boss on normal because his normal loot is more useful, even if they'd rather be working on the hard mode. Maybe an Ulduar-like system where the hard modes drop additional unique loot would fix that, but doesn't help much with the item design task.

I don't like the fact that they only admitted the possibility that raiding enough during the week could free you from the odious duty of the daily random heroic. But then, keeping the player base running heroics has had a few positive effects (starting with there actually being people in the damn things, for a start...). So maybe I'm just bitter. I would be happy to have this go from a daily chore to a few-times-a-week thing, which the throttling may well accomplish for my actively raiding characters.

And... um... yeah, that's it. Overwhelmingly positive about the whole affair. The class previews had me excited, and this makes me think that raiding and PvP will be a whole lot more enjoyable in Cataclysm. More rewarding, less divisive, with extra ponies.

My pony will have tentacles.

Hodgepodge

Icecrown

Eight attempts remaining on Putricide. I'm hoping that enough people log to use those attempts up before the reset. I want that kilt, damnit!

On the subject of loot, there's an aweful lot of haste/MP5 mail in there. As in, far too much. The haste is nice, and as a Solace still eludes me the MP5 isn't worthless, but I'd really rather have some haste/crit options. I'm not really assembling a personal BiS list just yet, but trying to look ahead and pick out where I want offset gear and how I should prioritise tier acquisition. I'm thinking that I'll pick up the two-piece bonus with the chest, a direct upgrade from T9.232. That will break my T9 set bonus, making it a little less painful to pick up the horribly itemised T10 gloves (cheap!) and then the headpiece, which is a slight upgrade from the Gunship helm, to complete the four-piece. If the Rippling Flesh Kilt still eludes me by then, the crafted mail legs are very nice and the boots aren't half-bad either. The emblem trinket is a nice upgrade from Sif's Remembrance, and the mail/cloth emblem gloves will be good for fights where 4T10 isn't useful.

Yep, I do think that given our usual raiding lineup and healing assignments, 4T10 will be worth wearing the crappy gloves. Three pieces are nicely itemised anyway, so it won't be that much of a hardship.

And to whinge a little: why are none of the items with fun procs available in the ten man version? I really appreciate that with the addition of hard modes I can pick up 264 gear from my preferred raiding environment, and I really like that the ten man trinkets are not completely awful this time (TotC, I'm looking at you). But I'd quite like an Althor's Abacus, or a Trauma, and I'm unlikely to ever get them due to the weird ongoing 10/25 loot dichotomy. It seems like it'd be interesting to allow the normal twenty-five man versions (item level 264) to drop in ten-man heroic fights, at least for the stuff that isn't represented in ten-man normal (funky trinkets and weapons with procs, at this point). Or, y'know, make some ten-man items with the same kind of fun principles. Larger guilds end up roflstomping the smaller raids anyway for emblems, achievements and the odd bit of well-itemised gear, so I can't see much of a flaw in spreading the goodies a bit.



Tanking

Levelling with the LFG tool is proving very interesting. Close to level 55 now, with only a few spates of questing/profession training interspersing dungeon runs. So far, it's not gone too badly. Had an... interesting experience with the Sunken Temple, where we did the lower area first (ever tried communicating the order of statues to click on to an almost silent pug? The ret just kept following me, everyone else stood where asked but seemed incapable of clicking the statues... sigh. Thankfully the healer was (a) from my realm and (b) entirely competant, so we just did the lighting up ourselves). By the time we'd done all this, killed the ugly troll dude, run back upstairs, killed the six guys keeping the barrier up and cleared the dragonkin from the central chamber it was getting a bit late, so we I rushed a bit when we got to the Prophet. Pulled one group of the trash, killed, waited for ghosts to dissipate. Emboldened by several large pulls earlier in the instance, I grabbed two groups this time... but didn't move them very much, in a tragic error of judgement. Melee DPS charge in, start their face-beating, and promptly get feared.

Crap. I'd forgotten about that. Crapcrapcrap.

Both make fear-inspired beelines to two separate trash groups, who I rush forward to collect in full panic-mode. I'm now tanking an ungodly number of the things in the middle of the room, the healer is in full manic heal-spam, everyone's desperately using every cooldown they have...

Then the DPS get feared again, and one runs straight to the boss. By this time the entire room is aggro'd, a large number not on me, and the bosses joining in just hasten the inevitable. Not my finest tanking moment, although everyone (who spoke at all) had the good grace to gently poke fun rather than get nasty. On the way back trash started to respawn literally as I was running through it so we called the run without killing the Prophet or Eranikus. Eh, well.

Point. I had a point here, what was it... aha! Yes, I remember now.

The classic instances are in many cases brutal. At best they can just deal harshly with those that do not approach with caution (see above, or Princess in Maraudon...), but at worst they're downright evil. Zul'Farrak with the mobs who polymorph the tank, for example, with subsequent complete chaos as they drop threat. Horrible. Eranikus with his absurd sleep ability. And I'd almost forgotten the joys of ubiquitous mobs that flee on low health, leading to hilarious results in BRD. Silences, stuns and disarms feel common and awfully long in duration for their frequency.

Of course, an awful lot of this can be negated by choice of tank (hello druids!) or with snappy dispels from an appropriate class, and smart DPS is always a plus. But when you're pugging your way up the levels those are the exception rather than the rule, and watching your party get nommed by things while you, as tank, are CC'd is... unpleasant.

Thing is, it's often a lot of fun. It encourages good play when people work together, and at least strongly impresses the limits of your own class when they don't. All good stuff, for a levelling tank. I seem to recall TBC dungeons continuing to be somewhat evil (MgT anyone?), but throughout WotLK there are far fewer situations where a tank gets CCd. In fact, I'm so used to seeing lines such as "... and the boss will never use this ability on his current aggro target" that I was starting to think of the alternative as unfair.

For shame.