On Raiding Disappointment: An Open Letter to Blizzard

When we long for life without difficulties, remind us that oaks grow strong in contrary winds and diamonds are made under pressure - Peter Marshall

Dear Blizzard,

As a subscriber who came to World of Warcraft with the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, Cataclysm represented my first true opportunity to get in on the ground floor of new content. For the first time I felt as if I wasn't lagging behind everyone else and was finally experiencing content the way it was meant to be experienced. I greeted the new expansion with a lot of anticipation and enthusiasm.

Cataclysm introduced many controversial changes, many of which were not received terribly enthusiastically by the community. I, on the other hand (being an avid Kool-Aid drinker), was thrilled with a lot of the changes, and incredibly excited to see the new content, experience the new levelling experience and, most importantly, to progress through the new raids. I understood the need to make the game more accessible, and supported the changes.

In fact, I was very frustrated with a lot of the complaining and the griping coming from the WoW community. Back in March I wrote a post critizing the community for having a "Doom and Gloom" outlook on the current state of the game, saying that people come and go, but the game itself was in a good place.

This week, you proved me wrong, Blizzard. I now feel compelled to add my voice to the chorous of the discontented.


Lord Rhyolith: Call me Admiral McROFLStompyPants



And it's because this week saw the introduction of significant nerfs to the Firelands bosses, crippling each boss - in both normal and heroic modes - anywhere from 15 to 25 percent in damage done and health, as well as simplifying several of the more difficult mechanics. This was done in an unprecedentedly brief time period since the raid was released.

Regardless of what your intention is, the significance of this change is instantly and universally understood by your player base: If you didn't clear Firelands before this nerf, you failed. Here are your free charity epics.

This is the exact same message that was sent regarding Tier 11 when Tier 12 came out. Didn't clear it before? No problem, let me hold your hand and walk you through it. Don't worry, the Internet Dragons are toothless now, so you won't get hurt. Just try to stay awake, okay?

At least back then we had a new, full-difficulty raid tier to busy ourselves with. Reducing the difficulty on previous tier content in order to allow more people to see it makes sense, at least. And it worked; raids were able to go back into Tier 11 and cut through the bosses like a they were barely there, and mechanics that were previously raid killers became irrelevant.

These changes to the current tier are completely inexplicable and inexcusable. They go too far, much too soon.

I mean, it's not as if people were complaining that the Firelands bosses were too hard. Quite the reverse, really; early on a lot of people were complaining that Firelands was decidedly too easy and that Raid Teams were blowing through it far too quickly. And it wasn't just the elite raiding guilds that were expressing this opinion, either.

Our raid team, for instance, is not at the cutting edge of progression. We are never likely to compete for a Realm First but neither are we at the bottom end of progression. We are probably the poster children of your average raiders; a casually-oriented guild that raids 6-8 hours a week. We expect to tackle the encounters, learn them and defeat them as they were originally designed.

Why aren't you giving us the time to do this?

My guild and I have been raiding Firelands from the day it was released. We were a new guild then, still gelling as a team, but we went in and got things done. Some of the encounters were really challenging and tested us; we wiped more than a few times on some of these bosses, which made downing them that much sweeter. I don't cheer out loud - causing my wife to give me strange looks - when we down an easy encounter. No, that is saved for when we overcome a significant obstacle that has stood in our path blocking our progression like an obstinate traffic cop. I like cheering, Blizzard, but where are the obstacles?

Wednesday night we went through Firelands after the nerfs and did six bosses. The difference in the level of difficulty is painfully obvious. It's actually invasive. Bosses that previously required precise play, good communication and teamwork even at good gear levels are now simplistic and easy. Lord Rhyolith, for example, lasted less than 10 seconds into Phase 2. I didn't even have time to get into position before he died. The burn phases of Shannox and Beth'tilac, which were previously heavy-damage phases that required the use of healer and tank cooldowns as well as skillful play to get through, are similarly laughable. As a healer, it seemed like Health Bars barely moved in those phases.

There is no thrill or enjoyment in beating up crippled children, Blizzard, and that's what you've turned these raid bosses into. You might as well give Fandral Staghelm a wool cap and a cane and rename him Tiny Tim. I actually felt sorry for Rageface the other night because he died so quickly, and his whole purpose for living - to Rage on Faces - was no more painful than a puppy dog licking ice cream off your toes. It does not qualify as something to be concerned about any longer. PETA will be hearing about this.

I think that in the pursuit of the noble goal of making the game more accessible to a larger variety of people a large chunk of the challenge of World of Warcraft has been removed. Many aspects of the game have fallen victim to this, with the endgame being the most notable and most damning, but even levelling is now so quick and painless that there is no sense of danger left in the game. Even without heirlooms, enemies fall over dead with little more than a mere glance, and there is a distinct lack of worry that something is actually dangerous. Low level dungeons are, even with poor gear, ridiculously easy, which is especially obvious when the vast majority of boss fights last under 30 seconds.

In fact, there is so little challenge left in WoW that your players are taking it upon themselves to make the game more difficult. Your very intelligent and creative players are coming up with things like the WoW Ironman Challenge and the Naked Dungeon Challenge just so that they have something to do that doesn't involve one-shotting the poor denizens of Dun Morogh on yet another overpowered Alt.

Thomas Paine said, "What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value", and I think that is a lesson that has been forgotten. There is a benefit to difficulties, a benefit of failure. Overcoming adversity is how people learn and improve, and it's how fierce emotional attachments are created. Raiders who raided Molten Core don't look back on the gear that they got with such love and devotion because getting it was easy, but rather because the blood, sweat and sheer red-hot effort that they expended to get it has branded it into their souls.

I think it's time to put the challenge back into the World.

BALANCING ACT

I understand that balancing the many different types of players and trying to make everyone happy is a difficult, if not impossible task. I can't think of a more thankless job that trying to please eleven million people, all of whom want something different, and at the same time trying to feed the corporate overlord's insatiable lust for profits.

I know that there are quite a number of people who are happy with these changes to the raids because it gives them a chance to finally see the content. But I think that there is a difference between seeing the content and experiencing the content.  The idea of merely seeing the content reminds me of a tourist: Someone who comes to visit and see the sights, but wants to have a good, relaxing time and not really get their hands dirty. While experiencing the content implies slogging through the worst that the raid can throw at you and working through the inevitable failures and hardships. These are two very different types of players who want two completely different types of gaming experiences.

However, nerfing current content when there is no alternative, higher-end content available means turning everyone into the Tourist.

I know that Patch 4.3 is brings us the Raid Finder tool and a new difficulty level that caters to the Tourists, PUGers and people who just want to see the content but are, for whatever reason, unable to raid at the normal difficulty levels. I'm sure it's your hope that this elmininates the need for nerfs such as these, and I'm optimistic that it will work very well. But that doesn't change the fact that in this patch, on this raid, you took away my challenge.

We're going into Firelands to kill Ragnaros for the first time this week. Last week it was an exciting prospect, now it's just something to do on a Sunday. Oh, we'll get the achievement, but the accomplishment has been made lesser. Like Roger Maris, I will forever have an asterisk next to my 7/7 achievement.

Sincerely,

Fannon

Dwarven Battle Medic and Dissatisfied Raider.



Ragnaros: Still tough, but 25% less satisfying.

 
 

Holy Paladins in 4.2 - What You Need to Know

The release of Patch 4.2 brings with it the first major new content of Cataclysm: A new raiding tier taking place in a gigantic zone, a new quest hub and dailies with excellent gear rewards, a Legendary Staff for the Mages and Warlocks to fight to the death over, and a new, epic questline advancing the story of Thrall and the Earthen Ring. Not to mention getting a chance to kill Ragnaros once and for all and an opportunity to finally shove all that goddamn dirt that we gathered right in Fandral Staghelm's snarly face. Good times.

But with this patch, as always, come a lot of changes, balances and tweaks to the classes. Holy Paladin's are getting off pretty easy this time around; avoiding drastic changes but getting some quality of life changes, a couple of buffs and of course, getting the mana cost of our direct heals nerfed yet again.

I have put together a list of all the changes in this patch that are relevant to Paladins of the Holy persuasion, along with my comments. Full Patch Notes are here: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/2993743

GENERAL HEALING CHANGES

• All healing critical strikes now heal for 2 times a normal heal (+100%), up from 1.5 times a normal heal (+50%).

A straightforward buff to all healers throughput, and an attempt to make Critical Strike rating a desirable secondary stat for healing. I'm still not completely sold on the viability of Crit as a stat for Holy Paladin healing, but I'm not going to say no to any extra 50% buff that Blizzard is willing to give me. Since Blizzard is doing everything they can do to force us away from Divine Light and to the smaller, more efficient Holy Light, this is a very welcome increase to our healing that will help make up for the fact that we'll be less able to spam our biggest heal.

I am, however, looking forward to seeing those big, juicy Divine Light crits.


FROM THE "HOLY CRAP IT'S ABOUT TIME" FILE

• All class abilities which place a buff on friendly targets no longer generate any threat. This goes for raid-wide buffs like Mark of the Wild and Power Word: Fortitude, as well as triggered effects such as Blessed Resilience or Fingers of Frost, and single-target buffs like Dark Intent and Hysteria. The exception is buffs which directly cause healing or damage, such as Thorns or Renew. Abilities such as these still generate normal threat.

This is a really small change, but it's one of those blindingly obvious, "why wasn't it like this in the first place" changes. It happened rarely, but every now and then I would refresh Beacon of Light or a Blessing just as the boss is being pulled and get aggro. I'm not really sure why a boss would think that Beacon of Light is a threat and want to rearrange my face, but it's been known to occur. This is just a quality of life change, really, but it will make your tank's life just that much easier and may prevent you from getting your head pounded into the ground on occasion.

CHANGES TO HOLY PALADINS

• Divine Light mana cost has been increased to 35% of base mana, up from 30%.
• Flash of Light mana cost has been increased to 31% of base mana, up from 27%.
• Holy Light mana cost has been increased to 12% of base mana, up from 10%.

Okay, ouch, this hurts. In a recent article on the official WoW blog, Ghostcrawler said "We concluded PvE Holy paladins were ending fights with too much mana relative to other healers, so we raised the mana cost of their single-target heals" and this change steps in to correct this. 

If I was to look at our mana situation objectively and not as a completely partisan class zealot, I would tend to agree and I think that these changes are reasonable. Looking at other healers, Paladin's have it enormously easier when it comes to mana. Often during raids I'll hear a healer call out for an Innervate or a Hymn of Hope while I'm sitting pretty with 80% mana having done about the same amount of healing. So while the zealot in me is storming through the house knocking holes in the drywall, I can appreciate that this is designed to bring Paladins to the same level as the rest of the healers and I think I'm okay with that.

 The Divine Light increase stings though... a 17% increase is a big jump.

Delicious, but
unhelpful
while healing.

• Holy Shock mana cost has been decreased to 7% of base mana, down from 8%. 

A small buff to make up for the last one. I don't think that making Holy Shock cheaper is going to have any effect on my Mana as the cost now is unnoticeable and I'm already casting it on cooldown as much as I can anyway. So, thank you, Blizzard, for doing the equivalent of tossing a Gummi Bear to a starving man.

Still, a Buff is a Buff.

• Beacon of Light can no longer be dispelled. In addition, it now transfers 100% of the heal from Holy Light, but still 50% of the heal from other spells.

Beacon of Light can no longer be dispelled, which I assume is going to be great for PVP. I've never run into this as a problem, so I will refrain from commenting further.

However, the transfer of 100% of Holy Light to the Beacon target is a fabulous change that I am very happy to see. 

I'm not sure how everyone else does it, but when I'm healing and responsible to keep a tank up, I still rely on my Beacon of Light to do a lot of the heavy lifting for me. At 50% transfer, Holy Light was next to useless when trying to keep a tank up through the Beacon, forcing a lot of Divine Light casts on Raid members that, strictly speaking, could likely have been kept up with a Holy Light. With Blizzard doing whatever they can to get us away from spam casting Divine Light, this will allow us to cast our ultra-efficient Holy Light more often and have it be effective in more situations.

• Illuminated Healing (Mastery) has been adjusted slightly so that if a paladin refreshes an existing copy of his or her own Illuminated Healing on a target, the new absorption amount will be added into the old absorption amount and the duration will be reset. The total absorption created can never exceed 1/3 of the casting paladin's health.

I posted in depth about this change in my previous article: Illuminated Healing in 4.2: New! Improved! 100% More Shiny!.

I think that the buff to our Mastery coupled with the improvement to Critical Heals and the change to Holy Light will go a long way to make a Crit and Mastery gearing strategy viable for Tank healing in Raids, and I'm very intrigued to check the numbers out. I think some more research is needed on this one before it can be fully understood. As of now, however, I am going to stick with my previous Haste-heavy build.

• Infusion of Light can now lower the cast time of Flash of Light by 0.75/1.5 seconds, in addition to Holy Light and Divine Light. In addition, the old Denounce spell overlay effect has been transferred to Infusion of Light since Denounce is no longer a proc.

Nobody uses Flash of Light. It doesn't heal enough to compete with Divine Light, it's too expensive to compete with Holy Light and isn't fast enough to make it worth casting over either of them. 

If only it was instant I might actually use it.

What's that? Infusion of Light now reduces the cast time by 1.5 seconds? Ahh. I see. Right. Carry on then.

• Speed of Light now increases movement speed when Holy Radiance or Divine Protection are cast. In addition, this talent now reduces the cooldown of Holy Radiance by 13/26/40 seconds, up from 10/20/30.

This buff is nice, but not, I think, in the way Blizzard intended. I think that they view this as allowing us to use Holy Radiance more often, and therefore being more effective at AOE healing, which is true. However, I have rarely found that Holy Radiance is on cooldown when I need it, and I'm not sure how it being available 10 seconds earlier will change things dramatically. But it may allow us to move a Talent Point from this and put it elsewhere and still have virtually the same cooldown as before.

Actually, the thing that I am excited about with this change is having the Speed of Light movement increase be activated by both Holy Radiance and Divine Protection. It makes a lot of sense, actually, because when I need to quickly move out the fire Divine Protection's damage reduction is also likely to come in handy, not to mention save me the mana cost of Holy Radiance (which ain't cheap).

• Walk in the Light now improves Word of Glory healing by 30%, in addition to its current effects.

Sweet Merciful Neptulon! An actual, no-bullshit BUFF! In Ghostcrawler's words: "We buffed Word of Glory for three reasons: We felt Holy Power was mattering less to Holy paladins than it did at Cataclysm launch. We wanted to provide more uninterruptible healing in PvP. We knew Light of Dawn was trumping Word of Glory in almost all cases in 25-player raids". Excellent.

As a 10-man raider, I use Word of Glory a lot, and this buff makes it's use in 10-mans a complete no-brainer, as well as making it a viable option in 25-man content. Consider this slavering class zealot pleased. I almost regret the car bomb I put under Ghostcrawler's minivan for the mana nerfs. Almost.

BUFF TO PURE AWESOME

• Players are once again free to dance in combat (without causing graphic errors). Other animations, such as attacks, will take precedence over dancing. The dance animation will be suppressed until the higher priority animation is complete. Fun has been unnerfed.

Can there be anything better than dancing while healing a boss encounter? I don't think so. Trash mobs will flee from the shear magnitude of my dance machismo, and Bosses will cower from my epic arabesques and drop their epic loot as I do a plate armour version of The Hustle. So You Think You Can Dance will have nothing compared to my Holy Warrior hoe-downs.


HOLY PALADIN GEAR LIST FOR 4.2

I will defer to the experts on this one: Kurn put together a great list of Holy Paladin Firelands gear. She and I generally agree on gearing and stat weights (by that, of course, I mean that I read her stuff and say, "Yeah, that makes a lot more sense than what I was thinking"), and I'll probably be using her guide myself, so I see no point in duplicating it here. Go visit her!

   

Light of Fizzle Update: Stealth Nerf Stealthily Unnerfed.

As I'm sure most of my readers have already discovered from far more reliable sources (Kurn, Ophelie), it seems that Blizzard has decided to unnerf (de-nerf? Antinerf?) Light of Dawn just as sneakily as they nerfed it before.

As others have I have confirmed that Light of Dawn is, in fact, still transferring through Beacon of Light.  It seems that this change has been reverted.  This doesn't really make a lot of sense, especially considering how quickly things were turned around.

I have a theory, however.

It's one of two things:

It's possible that Blizzard heard the outcry from the community and reversed the change.  This would mean that the WoW developers are listening to their players and as much as they are trying to balance the classes, they are willing to reverse a change that the player base can make a legitimate argument against.  In this case, the idea that this change might cause Paladins to lose a lot of their versatility may have been persuasive enough to cause Blizzard to change it back.  Or, perhaps they are just sick of all the wailing and gnashing of teeth; we paladins are a boisterous, vocal lot, after all, and are willing to rise up in armed revolt over the least little nerf.

Either way, the idea that Blizzard listens to the concerns of their player base and is responsive to their feedback is so optimistic that it almost borders on silly.  There is no way that we have things that good, is there?

The other option is that Blizzard has taken the idea of beta testing to a whole other level.  All developers will beta test new features or changes to the game before they are released to ensure that they work before they make the change.  This way they can prevent mistakes and improve quality.

I think that Blizzard, on the other hand,  is pioneering something different:  Blizzard has started beta testing patch notes.  Yes, in order to ensure that they produce the best patch notes possible, they are releasing potential changes to the notes before they release the actual notes.  By releasing a beta patch note they can see how it looks, play with the fonts and colours to ensure that their notes are the absolute best in the industry.

It's a brave new world.

Light of Fizzle - Stealth Nerf in 4.0.6a

UPDATE:  It appears that this change has been reverted.  Check out my latest post for more.


Oh, those sneaky Blizzard folks are at it again.

They snuck in a small patch last night, 4.0.6a, with a few more untested and surprise changes to the classes.  This was quite unexpected, considering that they had close to a month to test this patch on the PTR.

But the change of interest to the Holy Paladins is a big one:

Beacon of Light no longer triggers from Light of Dawn.

This is very interesting, actually.  This is now the second time that they have stealthily nerfed Light of Dawn for being too good.  I talked about the first round of nerfs in my Tower of Fizzle post, in which I suggested that instead of removing Holy Light's synergy with Tower of Radiance, preventing Light of Dawn from transferring through the Beacon of Light was a better way to go.

I'm gratified that Blizzard seems to be listening to me, but, err, I didn't mean for you to do both!

As of right now, Light of Dawn is a very small heal.  It's tiny, in fact.  So much so that the only compelling reason to cast is was the fact that it transferred 50% of it's heals to the Beacon target.  It turns out that one-half of five or six little heals adds up to one big heal on the Beacon, which apparently is unbalanced.

What makes this truly intriguing is that in response the the outcry after the first round of nerfs,  Nethaera posted on the official forums (I think it was Nethaera on this thread, but I'll have to check later.  Sadly, the official forums are blocked at work. Look for an update later today) saying that it is specifically intended that Light of Dawn transfer through the Beacon.

This means that, with this most recent change, Blizzard has reversed a fundamental design philosophy of Paladin healing, more than likely due to it being too mana efficient.  This change is one more nail in the coffin of the whole Holy Power experiment, which in my opinion is a complete and utter failure.  I'm not sure how Blizzard expected giving Paladins free heals not to lead to mana efficiency.  Isn't that the whole point of a free heal in the first place?  It seems to me that the Holy Power concept has caused more grief and problems for the Holy spec than it has solved, and with this change Paladin healing simply has no synergy whatsoever.  It is now just a random collection of spells that you can cast, and you should keep a Post-It note on your screen with a list of what does and does not transfer to the Beacon or generate Holy Power.

Not that Holy Power is all that useful anymore.

You know what?  I think I'm okay with this change.  A zen-like feeling of calm and peace is washing away the nerdrage that I was feeling last night when I heard of this change.  I've entered a chakra-like state of bliss and serenity.  It's okay, honestly.  Blizzard has spoken from on high and said, "You know that whole 'Paladin raid-healing' thing we were playing around with?  Yeah, just forget about it".

Holy Paladins are single target healers again.  It's official.

We're all back in our old comfort zone.  You'll hear a lot of raid leaders again saying:

"Holy Paladin in the raid?  Just stick him on the tanks.  They're not as good as they used to be, but they are good tank healers. 

And it's not like they can do anything else anyway."

Tower of Fizzle

Update:  In addition to the Tower of Radiance nerf, Blizzard also reduced the healing from Light of Dawn by 40%.  Full details of the patch are found on the Official WOW Blog.

This blue post on the official forums from Nethaera confirms that a hotfix was implemented today that nerfs Tower of Radiance to no longer generate Holy Power when casting Holy Light on your Beacon of Light target.

The reasoning is that by using Holy Light (an ultra-efficient, low output heal) to generate 3 Holy Power and then casting Light of Dawn was far too efficient and that many Holy Paladins were being too successful in casting only those two spells.  HL, HL, HL, LoD equals massive healing on your Beacon target.

Ok, I get that.  That makes sense.  I am not looking to have my Paladin overpowered with regards to mana efficiency.  What bugs me about this is that it is not just a nerf to our mana efficiency, but it’s also a nerf to our total healing output.  With Holy Power being generated up to three times more slowly (2 Holy Lights + 1 Holy Shock equals approximately 4 seconds vs. 3 Holy Shocks with a 6 second cooldown equals 12 seconds), we no longer get to use two of our biggest heals nearly as often without decimating our mana pool resulting in a drop to our potential healing output.

I think a simpler solution would have been to change Light of Dawn itself.  By simply changing it to no longer transfer it’s healing I think this problem goes away.  As Light of Dawn is not a terribly strong heal by itself, this change removes the temptation to cast nothing but Light of Dawn while still leaving the ability to build up Holy Power through Holy Light, which is was an excellent strategy when damage is coming in slowly.  If a free heal is causing the problem then change the free heal, not the underlying class healing mechanics.

Netaera goes on to say that the purpose of Tower of Radiance is to make direct healing the beacon target less punitive.  Now it seems like casting Holy Light itself is punitive and not worth the global cooldown nor the cast time.  It certainly doesn’t heal for much, nor is it quick enough to be worth spamming during heavy damage.  Previously, during moments of slow damage you could cast three HLs on your beacon target to get full on Holy Power and have an instant heal available for when the damage started to come fast again.  Now that you can’t do that, it seems like the only purpose for Holy Light is to make yourself look busy so that the DPSers don’t call you a slacker.

The whole concept of Holy Power seems to really be forced onto the Holy Paladin healing style.  It works reasonably well with Retribution because you have a lot of different ways to get Holy Power and you have several different ways of using it.  With Holy, it just doesn’t seem to work.  Adding the mechanic was supposed to add complexity to the spec and introduce some interesting choices with your spell selection.  I don’t think it accomplished this.  I fear that with this change they have removed what little synergy that existed between the spells entirely leaving us with many spells, none of which really work together well.  We have a bigger tool box than we did before Cataclysm, but is our class more fun or interesting to play?

Full text of the Blue Post after the break.