I've started playing a cleric tank a little bit more. I'm liking the soloability and of course the ability to tank an instance. I've only done the first instance "Iron Tomb" on my cleric, but other than being a little squishy for the second half trash I've been going ok. I like that I've been through the dungeon as DPS first, no responsibility other than pew pew and learning the instance. Now that I have the responsibility of being the tank it's not so stressful.
The cleric Justicar soul gives you all the tools to tank, it works and IMO it works very well. My other souls are the melee DPS cleric souls of Shaman and Druid, some of their early tree abilities benefit a tank with some endurance and damage reduction. About halfway up the tree there are a number of abilities that help with block or give you an ability when wielding a shield. From what I've seen the benefit to using the shield doesn't seem to outweigh the additional DPS, though perhaps when instancing the loss in DPS wouldn't hurt as much.
Cleric shields don't get as much armor or tanking stats as Warrior shields, they are also missing the spellpower that you would get in other caster off-hands. It just seems that using a shield as a cleric is a net loss compared to other options. Currently my tree is avoiding the shield talents and I just whip around a staff catching up to 5 mobs in my path with "Even Justice". I've made sure to have the pure damage reduction 3% per point spent in the Justicar and the 3% for 3 points in Shaman. Perhaps when my cleric gets to Deepstrike Mine I'll experiment with a different role using the shield and get some feedback from the healer to my survivability and from the DPS regarding my aggro control.
Has anyone else seen any discussions regarding this point?
P.S. Vacation for me starts tomorrow, I'm going away so updates or comments may be sparse for a week or so.
Showing posts with label opinion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label opinion. Show all posts
Monday, March 21, 2011
Monday, March 7, 2011
More Bartle
Well a couple days ago I managed to drum up a bunch of reads when I posted my blog URL into some WoW forum discussions on how to "fix" WoW. In one of those forums I got one response of "I liked your post and agree with it". It would have been nice to get a couple of comments on the blog itself, but I'll take what I can get. I've done a little moving around of stuff around here, removed my WoW armory and moved TJ down into a lower link bracket since her stuff is now mostly about her pregnancy, congrats TJ!!!
I'm sure most people have seen or taken those personality tests, the ones that confirm in your mind what type of person you are. I assumed there was one out there for Bartle's archetypes, so I did a search and found this one.
http://www.gamerdna.com/quizzes/bartle-test-of-gamer-psychology
I found that according to their test I'm an Explorer being driven by achievement:
Description:
It's not so much the wandering around and poking about, but that euphoric eureka moment the Explorer strives for. The joys of discovery do not necessarily involve geography, real or virtual. They may derive from the mental road less traveled, the uncovering of esoteric or hidden knowledge and it's creative application. Explorers make great theory crafters. The most infinitesimal bit of newness can deliver the most delicious zing to an Explorer.
What did you test out to be?
I'm sure most people have seen or taken those personality tests, the ones that confirm in your mind what type of person you are. I assumed there was one out there for Bartle's archetypes, so I did a search and found this one.
http://www.gamerdna.com/quizzes/bartle-test-of-gamer-psychology
I found that according to their test I'm an Explorer being driven by achievement:
Description:
It's not so much the wandering around and poking about, but that euphoric eureka moment the Explorer strives for. The joys of discovery do not necessarily involve geography, real or virtual. They may derive from the mental road less traveled, the uncovering of esoteric or hidden knowledge and it's creative application. Explorers make great theory crafters. The most infinitesimal bit of newness can deliver the most delicious zing to an Explorer.
What did you test out to be?
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Rift - Why I think it will be a success
OK, in case it wasn't obvious by my last posts I became enamoured of Rift. I absolutely love the game and took a vacation day on Friday to play.
The first problem which is a carryover from Thursday headstart launch was that most of the servers were full, users would have to queue to get into the game. Trion was very diligent in deploying new servers and allowing new players to get into the game quickly. The only issue was on those servers that were identified by the user base as being the prime servers. These servers were chosen by a large amount of guilds as their playground and I'm sure a lot of players decided they wanted to play on a popular server. There have been many complaints but in most cases the player was rebuked by the community at large who pointed out that there are servers that are not full and without queues available to them.
On the positive side the game is as smooth if not smoother than beta, the gameplay is still as fun as I remember and the development team is responsive and helpful. One thing that struck me is that this game seemed to strike a chord with me, I seemed to be more thoroughly entertained by a game than ever before. It made me wonder what they did in this game that was different or better than the current king of the MMO world, so here are my thoughts on that matter.
Richard Bartle broke down rpg gamers into four psychological types: Achievers, Explorers, Socializers and Killers. His article can be found here: http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm
Quickly:
Achievers regard rising in levels and overcoming the game as their main goal
Explorers love to wander and discover previously undiscovered areas of the game
Socializers are interested in people, and what they have to say
Killers get their kicks from imposing themselves on others
Most MMOs attempt to satisfy each type of gamer and each player archetypes have some form of support. The real question is how well each type of player is supported and how each type of play has been "incentivized". Please remember that pretty much everyone is a combination of all four types, desiring some form of each playstyle in their game. Rift seems to have managed to support each type of player pretty well. I was going to try and describe the pros of Rift, but in order to contrast the statement I'll have to compare to the current king MMO, WoW.
When the game was first release WoW took the existing MMO model and "perfected" it. They streamlined the questing so that a person didn't have to stumble upon a quest or at the very least have a list of key words to say to an NPC for them to let you know what you needed to do for them. They also created the "list" of quests in your quest log that you are currently working on. There were probably many other improvements made to the MMO genre, these are just a few that came to mind. WoW was made for all of the player archetypes, each type seemed to be well represented. Over time though WoW has reduced the amount of satisfaction given to a few of the archetypes.
Rift has has built upon the user experience that players got in WoW, and perfected the way the different player archetypes were supported. Explorers are given artifacts to find as well as puzzles in the open world and other hidden caches of items. And as any new MMO the ability to discover a new world for yourself feeds the explorer. For the achiever rift has a common achievment system where a player gets credit for doing something first as well as completing all of the quests in a given area. Players are also given access to titles if particular questlines are completed and I'm sure there are other achievment based items that I can't recall at the moment. The game provides standard MMO socialization as well a newer mechanic to support socialization with their rift events and public groups, apparently this type of system was used in Warhammer Online, I never played that game. And the killers are supported by the contested areas after lvl 20 as well as warfronts which are team based PvP instances that have a winning condition.
In conclusion Trion has put together a solid fun game here, almost everything I've read has been positive. They appear to be responsive to game issues and have done a very good job managing this rollout.
My next post might touch on what Blizzard did wrong since the beginning.
The first problem which is a carryover from Thursday headstart launch was that most of the servers were full, users would have to queue to get into the game. Trion was very diligent in deploying new servers and allowing new players to get into the game quickly. The only issue was on those servers that were identified by the user base as being the prime servers. These servers were chosen by a large amount of guilds as their playground and I'm sure a lot of players decided they wanted to play on a popular server. There have been many complaints but in most cases the player was rebuked by the community at large who pointed out that there are servers that are not full and without queues available to them.
On the positive side the game is as smooth if not smoother than beta, the gameplay is still as fun as I remember and the development team is responsive and helpful. One thing that struck me is that this game seemed to strike a chord with me, I seemed to be more thoroughly entertained by a game than ever before. It made me wonder what they did in this game that was different or better than the current king of the MMO world, so here are my thoughts on that matter.
Richard Bartle broke down rpg gamers into four psychological types: Achievers, Explorers, Socializers and Killers. His article can be found here: http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm
Quickly:
Achievers regard rising in levels and overcoming the game as their main goal
Explorers love to wander and discover previously undiscovered areas of the game
Socializers are interested in people, and what they have to say
Killers get their kicks from imposing themselves on others
Most MMOs attempt to satisfy each type of gamer and each player archetypes have some form of support. The real question is how well each type of player is supported and how each type of play has been "incentivized". Please remember that pretty much everyone is a combination of all four types, desiring some form of each playstyle in their game. Rift seems to have managed to support each type of player pretty well. I was going to try and describe the pros of Rift, but in order to contrast the statement I'll have to compare to the current king MMO, WoW.
When the game was first release WoW took the existing MMO model and "perfected" it. They streamlined the questing so that a person didn't have to stumble upon a quest or at the very least have a list of key words to say to an NPC for them to let you know what you needed to do for them. They also created the "list" of quests in your quest log that you are currently working on. There were probably many other improvements made to the MMO genre, these are just a few that came to mind. WoW was made for all of the player archetypes, each type seemed to be well represented. Over time though WoW has reduced the amount of satisfaction given to a few of the archetypes.
Rift has has built upon the user experience that players got in WoW, and perfected the way the different player archetypes were supported. Explorers are given artifacts to find as well as puzzles in the open world and other hidden caches of items. And as any new MMO the ability to discover a new world for yourself feeds the explorer. For the achiever rift has a common achievment system where a player gets credit for doing something first as well as completing all of the quests in a given area. Players are also given access to titles if particular questlines are completed and I'm sure there are other achievment based items that I can't recall at the moment. The game provides standard MMO socialization as well a newer mechanic to support socialization with their rift events and public groups, apparently this type of system was used in Warhammer Online, I never played that game. And the killers are supported by the contested areas after lvl 20 as well as warfronts which are team based PvP instances that have a winning condition.
In conclusion Trion has put together a solid fun game here, almost everything I've read has been positive. They appear to be responsive to game issues and have done a very good job managing this rollout.
My next post might touch on what Blizzard did wrong since the beginning.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Ooh now I have something to write about.
With Ulduar's release I think you could tell by some of my earlier posts that I was very happy to finally be challenged by the game again. I thought that finally Blizzard realized their mistake with Naxx and was going to give the skilled raiders ( and they don't have to be hardcore ) what they were looking for.
Now I assumed after a bit of time, perhaps 2 months prior to the next raid instance release, they would start making the encounters easier and allow some of the less capable people to raid further into Ulduar.
But alas, this is not the case. As posted in this thread http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=16474158165&sid=1 Blizzard will start the nerfing early and apparently often. Why just in my previous blog I was complaining about Auriaya, but in the end I hope you got the impression that it was a challenge I enjoyed and embraced and obviously would be going back for more beatings until we overcame the challenge.
According to this thread http://forums.worldofwarcraft.comthread.html?topicId=16473764809&sid=1 the first five bosses and the one that I'm pretty sure we'll beat this week are still too hard. What? We are by no means a "Hardcore" guild, we raid for nine hours a week. Eighteen hours of learning to beat five bosses, is that hard? We by no means expected to skate on through, saving the world from Yogg-Saron in the matter of two weeks of raiding. What we got was what most of my guild expected, a steady challenge of progression through a difficult raid instance.
Why is Blizzard doing this? Were they losing people from the game because they couldn't get through Ulduar? Hell, I've recently gone into Naxx with my alts and there are still people who can't do the fights there. Naxx is more than enough challenge for that group of raiders.
I don't know what Blizzard is thinking, or if they are thinking. I have already canceled my account, it ends in June. At this point I don't know if I will be reactivating it, I was planning on doing that, but now I'm happy I didn't. If the nerfs continue as hard as they have I know I won't.
Blizzard, please slow down on the nerfs, the really casual players will get there eventually. Most of them still need to figure out Naxx.
Now I assumed after a bit of time, perhaps 2 months prior to the next raid instance release, they would start making the encounters easier and allow some of the less capable people to raid further into Ulduar.
But alas, this is not the case. As posted in this thread http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=16474158165&sid=1 Blizzard will start the nerfing early and apparently often. Why just in my previous blog I was complaining about Auriaya, but in the end I hope you got the impression that it was a challenge I enjoyed and embraced and obviously would be going back for more beatings until we overcame the challenge.
According to this thread http://forums.worldofwarcraft.comthread.html?topicId=16473764809&sid=1 the first five bosses and the one that I'm pretty sure we'll beat this week are still too hard. What? We are by no means a "Hardcore" guild, we raid for nine hours a week. Eighteen hours of learning to beat five bosses, is that hard? We by no means expected to skate on through, saving the world from Yogg-Saron in the matter of two weeks of raiding. What we got was what most of my guild expected, a steady challenge of progression through a difficult raid instance.
Why is Blizzard doing this? Were they losing people from the game because they couldn't get through Ulduar? Hell, I've recently gone into Naxx with my alts and there are still people who can't do the fights there. Naxx is more than enough challenge for that group of raiders.
I don't know what Blizzard is thinking, or if they are thinking. I have already canceled my account, it ends in June. At this point I don't know if I will be reactivating it, I was planning on doing that, but now I'm happy I didn't. If the nerfs continue as hard as they have I know I won't.
Blizzard, please slow down on the nerfs, the really casual players will get there eventually. Most of them still need to figure out Naxx.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Pally tank wishlist from the first 6 bosses in Ulduar:
Here is my current Gear:
Valorous Redemption Faceguard
Boundless Ambition
Valorous Redemption Shoulderguards
Platinum Mesh Cloak
Valorous Redemption Breastplate
Bindings of the Hapless Prey
Valorous Redemption Handguards
Ablative Chitin Girdle
Valorous Redemption Legguards
Sabatons of Endurance
Sand-Worn Band
Signet of the Earthshaker
Essence of Gossamer
Repelling Charge
Last Laugh
Wall of Terror
Here are some of the items that I am looking for out of Ulduar
Flame Leviathan
Mimiron's Inferno Couplings-These are a definite upgrade over what I am currently wearing, my Bindings of the Hapless Prey can be relegated to my block set.
The Leviathan's Coil-is a better tanking ring Signet of the Earthshaker due to the avoidance, again the signet can go into my block set bag.
Titanguard-This is a very minor upgrade, once tanks who have a genuine interest in it have a chance I may consider taking it.
Razorscale
Dragonslayer's Brace-once these drop to me I completely replace Bindings of the Hapless Prey
Ignis the Furnacemaster
Chared Saronite Greaves-Definitely an upgrade, I give up expertise for hit.
Heart of Iron-Yes Please.
Plans: Indestructible Plate Girdle-More avoidance, definitely a win.
XT-002
Shoulderplates of the Deconstructor Definitely an upgrade and as a plus it moves me one step away from power ranger.
Signet of the Earthshaker-I've already gotten this one, as mentioned earlier it will become a piece of my block set.
Assembly of Iron
Handguards of the Enclave-A block set upgrade and sidegrade for single tanking. If I needed my current gauntlets to keep a T7.5 set bonus I easily would.
Plans: Indestructible Plate Girdle-See my comment above
Kologarn- Cache of Living Stone
Necklace of Unerring Mettle-A sidegrade for single tanking, useful for a block set.
Saronite Plated Legguards-Definitely an upgrade, I think you've caught onto my dislike for block for my main tanking set.
Auriaya
Platinum Band of the Aesir
Cloak of the Makers-The Platinum Mesh Cloak's big brother, easy choice.
Unbreakable Chestguard-Since the Paldin T7.5 Set piece is basically the lower iLvl version of this I would have to consider it.
Plans: Spiked Deathgdealers- A better piece than Chared Saronite Greaves, we get 2 gem slots to make up for 25 stamina ( win! ) and more avoidance instead of the hit.
So that's what I'm looking for in gear. I will probably find a way to keep my 2pc T7.5 set for a while until I get a chance to see some T8. I will be praying for those blacksmith recipes each time I go, I'm betting some will even be a money maker.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Well here's a rant of mine....
I assume others around the game have said this, I know that 25th November did but...
The new expansion is too easy.
I liked what they ended up doing with BC where they would have the leading edge of content to be a bit more challenging, then once the next tier of content came out they would re-adjust the earlier content. It allowed those who needed it to have a sense of accomplishment and those who just wanted to see new things their chance to see it a little later.
I've basically got one character well geared and I have no reason to play him except for 25 man raids and dailys. I'm expecting my hunter will go the same way, though a bit slower as he's not my raider and will not be getting the naxx25 level gear as quickly.
Once thing that I am also finding that once someone hits level 80 they are not necessarily ready for heroics, even though most think it is their Blizzard given right to jump into a heroic at first ding. I am also seeing similar things with Naxx, just because you're 80 does not mean you're ready. I know I wasn't uncrittable when I hit 80, I still needed to pick up a few blacksmithing epics as well as a decent tanking weapon.
I think it was patch 2.3 that they reduced the requirements for heroics to honored with the faction rather than revered. I can understand why people who were playing alts really like this change, but it also allowed people who were not geared enough or experienced enough for heroics to enter the LFG pool for them.
Which is more frustrating? Finding a group that is just not ready for a heroic and wipe constantly, or having to get your alt geared through instancing and maybe having to run a few more times for the rep to get into the heroic?
I prefer the latter.
Let me know what you think.
The new expansion is too easy.
I liked what they ended up doing with BC where they would have the leading edge of content to be a bit more challenging, then once the next tier of content came out they would re-adjust the earlier content. It allowed those who needed it to have a sense of accomplishment and those who just wanted to see new things their chance to see it a little later.
I've basically got one character well geared and I have no reason to play him except for 25 man raids and dailys. I'm expecting my hunter will go the same way, though a bit slower as he's not my raider and will not be getting the naxx25 level gear as quickly.
Once thing that I am also finding that once someone hits level 80 they are not necessarily ready for heroics, even though most think it is their Blizzard given right to jump into a heroic at first ding. I am also seeing similar things with Naxx, just because you're 80 does not mean you're ready. I know I wasn't uncrittable when I hit 80, I still needed to pick up a few blacksmithing epics as well as a decent tanking weapon.
I think it was patch 2.3 that they reduced the requirements for heroics to honored with the faction rather than revered. I can understand why people who were playing alts really like this change, but it also allowed people who were not geared enough or experienced enough for heroics to enter the LFG pool for them.
Which is more frustrating? Finding a group that is just not ready for a heroic and wipe constantly, or having to get your alt geared through instancing and maybe having to run a few more times for the rep to get into the heroic?
I prefer the latter.
Let me know what you think.
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