Over the course of Warcraft bosses have been getting more and more complex. Back in Molten Core almost every fight was a tank and spank with very few elements to it. Sometimes it would be decurse everyone, stance dance, or don't stand in the fire. Those elements are fine in the beginning but people start learning and you need to throw new twists at them. The first time I stepped in BlackWing Lair the first boss blew my mind. The idea of a room full of constantly spawning adds that had to be kited while having the boss be mind controlled was unheard of. The first couple of times we tried the encounter it almost seemed impossible. As time went on and many wipes later we were able to control the chaos.
Fast forward to the present we now have an encounter like Yogg-Sarron. Coordinating 25 people on this fight seems a very daunting task. On top of that Yogg has 3 distinct phases and very different strategies for each of those phases. We finally downed Yogg the other day and I must say it is a very fun fight. Now that I've done all the normal encounters in Ulduar I am very happy with the direction blizzard went with the dungeon. Every fight always has 7-10 things you have to deal with. Things such as Death Rays, Brain Links, Sanity, Portals, 3 types of Tenticles, Guardians, Illusions, clouds, and a host of other mechanics force you to always be on your toes on this fight. I can't wait to see what is in store for us in the Coliseum and Icecrown Citadel.
Now that we have the isntance cleared its time to start working on hard modes. I have a love hate relationship with achievements and hard modes. The game should be fun and part of the fun is being rewarded for completing difficult tasks in the game. I hate achievements that are difficult for no reason then for the sake of being difficult and have no reward to them. Dward Medium-rare is one of hose achievements where it is just really really stupid idea of an achievement with no real incentive to doing it outside of it being part of a meta achievement to get a mount. We tried this the other day and it boggles my mind that blizzard things this is an idea of a fun achievement. Achievements such as crazy cat lady and Disarmed are examples of good achievements that require skill but are not stupidly designed.
Then there are hard modes. I love them because they reward you for skill but as the name implies they are hard. Most of the bosses will require top notch healing, tanking, and dps. All this has to happen while dealing with all the other factors you have to deal with on the fight. This means there will be a lot of learning associated with downing the encoutner and that means there will be a ton of wipes as well. Wiping is a natural part of raiding but that doesn't make it any more fun. The fun happen when you finally get to that point where you see you are about to do it and everything just falls into place and so does the boss.
In 3.2 Blizzard is changing the way that PVP works a bit. The biggest change that I am excited for and a bit scared of is the resilience change. Currently resilience only reduces chance to be crit and crit damage done. While that helps a lot on burst a lot of damage a person puts out is not always crit damage. When the patch hits resilience will reduce all incoming damage by a percentage. This should be a better system overall because now you can stack crit and it won't be diminished compared to your overall firepower. What really scares me about this change is how is how much of a buff is it for healers. Most healers can usually heal a wounded target to full health in 1 or 2 GCD's.
As a ret paladin there really isn't much I can do about healing. Most of the time when I face off against disc priest and druids they just stand there and tank my damage. The amount of damage they can withstand is insane while having incredible healing capacity without having to actually cast anything. My only real option is to time my stun or repentance at the right time or be doomed to failure. I don't know why I keep doing it but there is nothing that gets me more frustrated in life then Arena. I love it and am always looking forward to the next battle but loosing to something that you can't really control or by bullshit just gets my blood boiling. I hardly ever curse or throw things around but a match that shouldn't end the way it did will make the people around me very scared.
A big change that I am very excited about in the patch is the way badges are changing. When the patch hits every boss that drops any type of badge will only drop emblems of conquest. The exception to this is the coliseum which will drop the new emblems of triumph. There is an issue I have with hard core raiders and this is the fact that they don't want anyone else who didn't go through what they go through to have a chance at having a shot at what they have. I can understand this to a certain extent. There will always be a sense of competition of being the best of what you do. Being the best guild, having the best gear on the server, or having the top dps of your class are things that drive people forward. But once you are ready to step up and get the newest and greatest items why do you care if someone can get your left overs? If you are getting purples from Ulduar why do you care if a new 80 can start getting purples from Naxx? Once we have the coliseum and start gearing out there people will only start getting conquest badges and start gearing up a level behind you.
I think its awesome for me because it gives me a reason to start running heroics and tier 7 content again. I love doing heroics but I am a goal oriented guy. I need a reward for doing something. Its very hard for me to do anything without a carrot being hung in front of me. I am constantly thinking about how I can maximize my character and often times things that are not getting me to that goal is burning up my precious time. Raiding does cause burnout. There is only so much of one thing you can do before you get tired of it. The core raiding roster of a guild now is not going to be the same as it will be 6 months from now. Often times you need to get fresh faces in there to replace the ones you've lost.
If blizzard doesn't give people a chance to get to a descent level of gear they will fall behind and have no chance of getting into a well established guild. Those well established guilds won't get the recruits that can handle the new content and it becomes a vicious cycle of guilds dying out and what was once many guild fighting for first place becomes a handful of guilds with few choices for anyone who wants to get into the raiding game. A lot of hardcore people would be completely find with this because they like the idea of being in an exclusive club just for the privileged. Blizzard knows what keeps people playing and its smart of them to push there newer players to keep playing.
During the end of Burning Crusade I had to change my hours at work for a promotion. Unfortunately there were no late night raiding guilds at that point and there wasn't much I could do even though I loved raiding. With every new patch blizzard kept giving me ways to improve my character. With the introduction of the isle and new badge rewards I constantly had a reason to keep playing and bring my character up to a descent level. With the way Conquest badges will work there are tons of people out there like me who have no way of gearing up to return to their toons and have a reason to play the characters they love.
Fast forward to the present we now have an encounter like Yogg-Sarron. Coordinating 25 people on this fight seems a very daunting task. On top of that Yogg has 3 distinct phases and very different strategies for each of those phases. We finally downed Yogg the other day and I must say it is a very fun fight. Now that I've done all the normal encounters in Ulduar I am very happy with the direction blizzard went with the dungeon. Every fight always has 7-10 things you have to deal with. Things such as Death Rays, Brain Links, Sanity, Portals, 3 types of Tenticles, Guardians, Illusions, clouds, and a host of other mechanics force you to always be on your toes on this fight. I can't wait to see what is in store for us in the Coliseum and Icecrown Citadel.
Now that we have the isntance cleared its time to start working on hard modes. I have a love hate relationship with achievements and hard modes. The game should be fun and part of the fun is being rewarded for completing difficult tasks in the game. I hate achievements that are difficult for no reason then for the sake of being difficult and have no reward to them. Dward Medium-rare is one of hose achievements where it is just really really stupid idea of an achievement with no real incentive to doing it outside of it being part of a meta achievement to get a mount. We tried this the other day and it boggles my mind that blizzard things this is an idea of a fun achievement. Achievements such as crazy cat lady and Disarmed are examples of good achievements that require skill but are not stupidly designed.
Then there are hard modes. I love them because they reward you for skill but as the name implies they are hard. Most of the bosses will require top notch healing, tanking, and dps. All this has to happen while dealing with all the other factors you have to deal with on the fight. This means there will be a lot of learning associated with downing the encoutner and that means there will be a ton of wipes as well. Wiping is a natural part of raiding but that doesn't make it any more fun. The fun happen when you finally get to that point where you see you are about to do it and everything just falls into place and so does the boss.
In 3.2 Blizzard is changing the way that PVP works a bit. The biggest change that I am excited for and a bit scared of is the resilience change. Currently resilience only reduces chance to be crit and crit damage done. While that helps a lot on burst a lot of damage a person puts out is not always crit damage. When the patch hits resilience will reduce all incoming damage by a percentage. This should be a better system overall because now you can stack crit and it won't be diminished compared to your overall firepower. What really scares me about this change is how is how much of a buff is it for healers. Most healers can usually heal a wounded target to full health in 1 or 2 GCD's.
As a ret paladin there really isn't much I can do about healing. Most of the time when I face off against disc priest and druids they just stand there and tank my damage. The amount of damage they can withstand is insane while having incredible healing capacity without having to actually cast anything. My only real option is to time my stun or repentance at the right time or be doomed to failure. I don't know why I keep doing it but there is nothing that gets me more frustrated in life then Arena. I love it and am always looking forward to the next battle but loosing to something that you can't really control or by bullshit just gets my blood boiling. I hardly ever curse or throw things around but a match that shouldn't end the way it did will make the people around me very scared.
A big change that I am very excited about in the patch is the way badges are changing. When the patch hits every boss that drops any type of badge will only drop emblems of conquest. The exception to this is the coliseum which will drop the new emblems of triumph. There is an issue I have with hard core raiders and this is the fact that they don't want anyone else who didn't go through what they go through to have a chance at having a shot at what they have. I can understand this to a certain extent. There will always be a sense of competition of being the best of what you do. Being the best guild, having the best gear on the server, or having the top dps of your class are things that drive people forward. But once you are ready to step up and get the newest and greatest items why do you care if someone can get your left overs? If you are getting purples from Ulduar why do you care if a new 80 can start getting purples from Naxx? Once we have the coliseum and start gearing out there people will only start getting conquest badges and start gearing up a level behind you.
I think its awesome for me because it gives me a reason to start running heroics and tier 7 content again. I love doing heroics but I am a goal oriented guy. I need a reward for doing something. Its very hard for me to do anything without a carrot being hung in front of me. I am constantly thinking about how I can maximize my character and often times things that are not getting me to that goal is burning up my precious time. Raiding does cause burnout. There is only so much of one thing you can do before you get tired of it. The core raiding roster of a guild now is not going to be the same as it will be 6 months from now. Often times you need to get fresh faces in there to replace the ones you've lost.
If blizzard doesn't give people a chance to get to a descent level of gear they will fall behind and have no chance of getting into a well established guild. Those well established guilds won't get the recruits that can handle the new content and it becomes a vicious cycle of guilds dying out and what was once many guild fighting for first place becomes a handful of guilds with few choices for anyone who wants to get into the raiding game. A lot of hardcore people would be completely find with this because they like the idea of being in an exclusive club just for the privileged. Blizzard knows what keeps people playing and its smart of them to push there newer players to keep playing.
During the end of Burning Crusade I had to change my hours at work for a promotion. Unfortunately there were no late night raiding guilds at that point and there wasn't much I could do even though I loved raiding. With every new patch blizzard kept giving me ways to improve my character. With the introduction of the isle and new badge rewards I constantly had a reason to keep playing and bring my character up to a descent level. With the way Conquest badges will work there are tons of people out there like me who have no way of gearing up to return to their toons and have a reason to play the characters they love.
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