Anyway, we’ve got a decent amount of the guild on Rupture now, it’s sort of like mySpace for Gamers, although specifically for WoW at this point. It’s pretty spiffy, and using an IM client it updates automatically. It was awesome (it blew CTProfiles out of the water on gear alone)… until Blizzard launched The Armory. It’s basically everything WarcraftRealms could ever ask to be, it has info on individual reputations, gear, buffs, arena rankings, guild statistics, except the whole census thing.

Actually, it seems like that’s the only thing The Armory doesn’t have is a full census section. For guilds, it’s really, really cool. Here’s our guild’s stats, all updating as soon as you change a parameter, and looking very cool to boot.

We’ll see what they add to The Armory, it’s really impressive for a start.

Anyway, I updated the links section a bit (notice one thing in the pimpage section ?) and finally added that link I said I was going to… a few months back. Apart from that, not much going on, bouncing between both my characters as of late and have finally taken the plunge and picked up X-Perl, my interface is significantly prettier now.

Oh, and planned Druid talents, although the points in Imp LotP and Nuturing Instinct are basically preference (although I really like Imp LotP). +Healing is more of an endurance stat versus a power stat, so getting +300 on a nearly full heal isn’t that great sounding. Survival of the Fittest is nice, but I may end up swapping the points to Primal Tenacity and either Brutal Impact or Shredding Attacks. It really depends on how useful those talents become, but they’re all quite nice.

A certain someone doesn’t look like she’ll be on tonight, so I’ll probably continue the Druid stuff… next month or so?

That being said, PvE Healing in World of Warcraft is boring as hell. Why? Beacuse it’s just making the bars go up. To be more correct, PvE Healing sucks… hell, for the sake of screwing my point over, PvE sucks as a whole.

Ok, so that being said… can you make supporting abilities more interesting (although healing’s pretty interesting as it is, better then being a DPS bot), possibly better then straight healing at keeping people alive (that whole “Ounce of Prevention, Pound of Cure” thing doesn’t really apply in MMOs). Still, you’re treading on the ground of the TBCs, so that way indeed lies madness.

Honestly, healing in PvP is slightly more interesting, although it really depends on communication (i.e. Teamspeak) and telling the person soaking up the damage to not be retarded. It really comes down to teamwork and not really based on the mechanics. The whole responsibility for keeping people alive is the attraction, and if you actually care about the people you’re working with, that helps… a lot.

Still, if you look at an example of a game without healers like RFO… well RFO’s problem is that Consumables > player abilities in terms of keeping people alive, so that’s kinda fucked up. Rather similar to the debate over Health Pills being nearly as strong as Patcher skills (in the hands of a mediocore player) at keeping someone up. It’s outsourcing in games! (Although it stems back to D&D healing potions being called “Clerics in a Bottle”.)

Don’t know, I’ll have to think over this one, but I’m not sure how you work on making “support” a better “supporter” then a straight healer (just look at CoH with groups really asking for “Empathy” over dedicated Defenders in other areas like CC or buffs) without making the proper healer completely worthless. I think some CU SWG comparisons between Combat Medic and Doctor may be useful here (I’ll have to look the math up again later today).

Abalieno (original comment):

“And in PvP you need immobility. You can have unexpected situations coming out of a proper use of the pieces, but you cannot have new pieces showing up and coming into play.”

Brask Mumei (original comment):

“It is a poor kind of PvP that demands immobility. PvP with fixed, immobile, well understood rules and playgrounds is merely a sport.”

Abalieno (original comment):

“The point is: any other possibility would be simply an exploit. Just the players racing to find the I-Win button and the devs chasing them to patch the holes.

If PvP isn’t “static” then your game will be doomed and completely inaccessible for new players that don’t know how to defend themselves from the “legitimate” exploits.”

Now this of course comes into play with Legion’s experience in MxO. Are CrashKill, or Zero or I exploiting by pushing our skills to their (what we feel to be legal) limits? Clearly some things we thought were kosher like style-switching mid-attack can now be considered an exploit (precedent here, just replace “Buffs do not dynamically update” with “Abilities”).

Still, these are things being clarified just now, two months after the release of CR2.0. Are these what Abalineo would call “legitimate” exploits, things that are deemed legal, but… well, the very essence of the “TankMageGod” (Lum’s arguement against skill-based systems sounds like a normal loadout-building session between Zero and I after all ). After all, being a Duelist and staying in Grab for Y period of time, and doing +20% damage with the Accuracy/Defense bonuses of Grab (and without the -35% damage) is quite overpowering after all.

Now, how do you fix that? Do you force these grey-area issues into common use so they must be addressed. I tried that with the Sidekick Combo thing, and well, besides almost getting me the boot from the guild (slight exageration, but not by much…), it wasn’t fixed until CR2.0. Well, the Developers are only going to publish rules through negation (you can’t do this, that, and that other thing with your tongue, etc.), so then is it not up to the player base to make a set of “rules” (as close as possible, meaning what the community accepts as “kosher”, like the uber-DoTed weapons in pre-CU SWG and how there was a soft boycott of them, on Gorath at least).

Still, wouldn’t that mean breaking the lovely information embargo? Yeah it would… wouldn’t it. And of course the guild stands little to gain from a community drive to understand the new combat system, I’m pretty confident we’re on the bleeding edge of that.

Then again, this is bigger then the guild, this is a whole game that could be aided by turning PvP in a codefied sport, not some weirdo hack-rampant Diablo II server.

Embargos not withstanding, the only way for this not to be another Sidekick Combo is that a) the Developers fix things that are obviously broken (and judging from their responses on Dynamic Buffs, this could be another one of those things that takes forever to fix), b) the community to take their ball and go home if things go to shit. Both of these are terrible options…

so apart from pure scientifc purposes, there’s just about no upside. Works for me since the research is what I care about, but that would hardly suade the guild(s). Funnily enough, issue of releasing information (in MxO specifically) has been near the forefront of my mind for the better part of a year (the Sidekick Combo post is a year-old in a week)…

So, MxO’s already inaccessable to those outside the PvP elite, and it’s pretty obvious it’s doomed. FTW!

duke it out in the forums, with special Asian (non-schoolgirl ) guests

We’ve had a sort of long-running discussion of “what’s next” in the guild (the sort of culmination of round 1, Lost and Finding) that sort of petered out after a few of us got into WoW and then Matrix got its combat revamp on, but it picked up in the past couple of days thanks to 40.

“When patch 1.11 releases, Innervate will become a base ability for all Druids, trainable at level 40. Once the patch is live, any Druid who formerly had the Innervate talent will instead have the “Swiftmend” talent, which has been added to the Druid Restoration tree, replacing Innervate as the 31 point talent. This new ability will consume a Rejuvenation or Regrowth effect to produce an instant heal.”

That’s… awesome. Basically, what I understand Swiftmend to be is that it basically takes a Rejuv or the HoT portion Regrowth and well… instant heals (we don’t know anything past that ). I’m not exactly sure why some people are pitching a fit, considering that every spec is getting a new ability. I also don’t see why people are bitching about how “it’s not worth it to go down more then 21pts. in Resto”, uh…

Improved Regrowth + Nature’s Grace anyone?

Gift of Nature when you aren’t wearing massive +Healing gear?

Tranquil Spirit + Moonglow?

Yeah… no reason at all to go past Nature’s Swiftness, none at all .

We still need to see how Swiftmend works and if they’re going to do stuff with Innervate, but having another “oh shit, our Priest is a dumbass” button will be very nice.

I recently changed from Balance over to the cookie-cutter Feral + Nature’s Switfness mainly because, when I got Moonkin Form, it really wasn’t that helpful. I found myself really liking the healing role in AV, and I only really used Moonfire since I didn’t really feel like getting counter-spelled every time I tried Starfire (and Wrath was too mana-ineffecient for my liking). I didn’t want to switch to Balance w/ NS since then I’d be gimping Cat and Bear way too much.

On the PvE side though, it was even worse for Balance. If we didn’t have a Mage in the party, I’d be having to sit down and drink pretty often and burn like a stack of level 45 water/run. In addition, I hated having to burn a chunk of mana to heal and then not be able to do any damage if I didn’t have enough mana to go into Cat (on top of that, would be do shit damage in my Caster gear). On the aggro front, while yes, I don’t have any way to reduce my threat from spells, I was in Plate, so I wasn’t totally fucked when I pulled aggro. Later on though… yeah, that would present itself to be a problem.

In the end, Balance simply wasn’t working out so bounced builds around for a couple days. A while ago I stated that I wasn’t a big fan of Druid builds without 31 point talents, simply because I felt they let the Druid support the group passively. The problem with that being that Moonkin and Leader of the Pack both a) weren’t that great for bonuses, and b) required me to stay in a certain form for them to work. With Innverate, the problem was different: I’d only be using it on either myself, Priests, or another Druid in the sorts of runs I’m doing. Mages can Evocate (and are going to get that trainable in 1.11) and don’t have to blow 1g/run on water, Warlocks can Life Tap, Paladins are obscenely mana effecient, and Hunters don’t need mountains of it to do their thing. That leaves the Priests, or another Resto or Balance Druid… yeah, I’m going down that far a tree for those situations.

All 31s were out, and I needed at least 13-15 points in Feral I felt (now I know Mage’s pain in regards to Arcane) so I was left with one build: 0/30/21, the cookie-cutterest of cookie-cutter builds, and for good reason. Heart of the Wild rocks, my Cat is now up to a point where I’ve actually been brought into a group as a DPS swing-man (DPS, OT, and Backup Healer), and I’m an even better healer in Alterac then before (and I don’t have the very situational Moonkin pigeon-holing me). Overall, I’m pretty happy with it, and I’m sure I’ll love NS when I hit 60.

Do I miss stuff in Balance? Yeah, Moonkin was fun for throwing up Barkskin and hitting a group of Horde with Hurricane, but I can leave the AoEs to the classes with kamakize instant-casts. Nature’s Grace was cool for when I crit, but I never felt it hit at the time I needed it (same feeling I had with OOC). Moonglow was really nice for cheaper spells, but HotW sort of counters that with more Mana to start out with. Finally, better Imp. Moonfire and Starfire were nice, although Starfire Stun proc’d once in a million years, and the gimpier Moonfire is balanced out with my new Insect Swarm.

Now just to like… actually get 60 and stuff.

(You learn something new every day.)

Was linked to this article from the WoW boards, kind of sums up all the problems with DKP.

I mean, we’ve done a ton of the instances in the HK series over the past six months or so, and never had a problem with loot, it was just “if you want/need it, roll for it”. The most complex thing we did when we first started was sort of define who “needed” what, and if you already had a weapon, you’d pass on it. Zero, Skaald, Kreamy and I did a couple Mara runs (or SM runs, a few levels back) and Skaald and I would just roll on something if we both needed it.

Did we care of this was Ruso’s first time doing HK and the cloak dropped? Nope.

I just really have to agree where the hardcore leadership just decided to rig a system so they could get all their shit, and every leadership group since decided, “Hey, it helped those guys get all their shit, we should use it to!”

That’s why I’m glad that Legion (with whatever damn name it uses in a game) has always been able to get things done with the guys we have, and in WoW (with the next patch) we’ll be able to do it there (go go Tier .5 sets + PvP stuff).

It’s the sort of thing where I like to know what something is supposed to do before I do it, and there’s always been this sort of ghetto-ass secret knowledge sort of atmosphere in Matrix. When I look over at WoW, I can look on Thottbot as to what they’re wearing, and they post on the forums and disect their talent builds.

I look at RogueSpot and while I disagree with them a lot of the time, I don’t see anything like that for MxO, I don’t even see this. Now you may be wondering, well Cal, if you’re such a fucking genious and have all this free time, why don’t you go and do it?

I am, although the extent of this and exactly how many Rockstars I’m gonna need depend on the kind of response I get to that vision thread, because whatever Dev help I get is gonna go a long way to making a full guide to the CR2.0 available to everyone, on CR2.0 launch-day a possiblity.

I’ll also need help, especially with MA/Gunman and Proxy/Utlity Coder as I’m pretty rusty in those areas, if you want to lend a hand, comment or toss me an email at caladein2 [at] gmail [dot] com.

Also, that reminds me I should make a Contact page on the thingy *does that now, hopefully*.

Also, I got Thunderbird working with RSS (thus ditching Google Reader), so far it’s pretty solid. I find it superior to Reader by well… an order of magnitude, easy. (I love how I can easily set up feeds for the MxO/SWG forums, got the Dev/Character Trackers up along with their announcements boards making life really easy.)

On the WoW front, I found that Census+ won’t auto-census if you don’t have the minimap button enabled (not like it’s prime real estate anyway).

Finally before I run off again, semi-final build for Antara (31/15/5), although the two points in Brutal Impact are up for placement elsewhere (canidates are Improved Nature’s Grasp (2/5), Sharpened Claws (2/3), Improved Enrage (2/2), or even Nature’s Focus (2/5)). Still, this is as confident with a build as I’ve felt in sometime.

Awaaaaaaaay!