The new ParentDish: helping raise kids of all ages
Posts with tag debuff

Warsong Gulch changes may not have helped much

Aloud on the podcast last week, I wondered if the patch 2.4 changes to WSG had made a difference (I haven't been able to make it in there yet -- too busy writing about Hello Kitty Online, of course), and now maxomi is wondering the same thing: since the changes dropped, has WSG actually been fixed?

Unfortunately, from what we're told, the answer is no. The changes, designed to cut off turtling and players who ran around with the flag without capturing it, first made the enemy flag carriers trackable after 45 seconds, and then gave a damage debuff to the flag carrier after ten minutes (which doubled at fifteen). But all the reports from players say that makes no difference -- people still turtle away, even with the tracking and debuff, and eventually both drop the flag and the whole thing resets.

So what's the solution? If you crib some notes from other capture the flag games, a match timer sounds like the best option, and indeed, that's what most people are suggesting. Blizzard would have to determine how long to tune it, but the idea would be that after a given amount of time, if there was no winner, the match would end in a draw, with both sides losing in terms of a reward. It doesn't seem like Blizzard can force players to fight, so the best option overall might be to just call it in a time limit, and keep the matches from going on for long amounts of time.

More AFK concerns in Alterac Valley

Here's more about the upcoming AFK debuff in Alterac Valley. Last week, we talked about what the voting requirements might be to give out the debuff, and there were some really great comments on that post, specifically about an idea to give the debuff out right when players start the battleground. I think that's a great idea, and it would give everyone in the BG an impetus to get right into battle and do what the BGs are meant for: PvP fighting.

But here's another concern, voiced by Fantastiko of Alleria: Currently, as we know it, the debuff won't actually disconnect AFKers from the battleground. If players vote to give them the debuff, and if they don't enter battle within the set time period, all it would do is keep them from gaining honor while AFK. Which means that even if the debuff works as planned, and the 10 people in the Peace Cave get the debuff and gain no honor, your team is still down 10 people. Not good.

So as planned, what exactly will this debuff stop? AFK players can still go AFK, and just hope that no one thinks to report them (when this first starts up, tons of reporting will probably go down, but eventually, people will likely be able to get away with more and more). It seems like the best solution would be to give everyone this debuff when they enter the BG, and have it cancel on combat. And if combat isn't entered, or they are reported, AFKers should be disconnected from the BG completely-- even better, with the "deserter" debuff-- allowing other players to take their place.

Of course, this reporting system is still in the planning stages, so it could be that Blizzard has already reached these conclusions and it is going to be implemented this way. And I'm sure there'll be plenty of testing as well-- we likely won't see the system until 2.3 or even beyond anyway. But the problem with this is that AFKers are crafty-- if there's any way at all that they can gain honor while they go AFK, they'll do it.

Voting requirements for the AFK debuff

One of the choruses we heard at BlizzCon was that Blizzard knows about the AFKers in Alterac, and justice will be handed out. The plan, we've been told, is that it will be handed out in the form of a no-honor debuff, that breaks on combat. In other words, if enough people report you for sitting in the Peace Cave, you don't gain any honor until you get moving and start fighting.

The problem, however, is that we don't know exactly how many people it takes to hand out that debuff. Thunderbein tells the story of an AV where only 20 out of 40 players were actually playing, and so if the number of players that have to "vote" for the debuff is anywhere over 20, no one's getting the debuff in that BG. Hortus replies and says that it's not as high as 30, but how high is it? Can you give someone the with two people? With ten?

And then there's the question of whether we should know at all. What if we learned it was 10 people (in the interest of clarity, I should stress that we don't actually know what it is yet), and a group of 31 AFKers joined up to the BG? Then, nothing is solved at all-- those guys could sit in the Peace Cave all they wanted and gain honor the whole time.

The AFK debuff sounded like the best solution at BlizzCon, but every system can be gamed. Blizzard is going to have to be really careful about setting up the numbers on how the reporting works. And because we'll likely find out whether they tell us or not what the number is, they'll have to watch out for other ways AFK players can get around the punishment.

No Man's Land debuff returns to haunt explorers

It looks like an old idea from the TBC Beta has returned to the game. Ever since patch 2.1.2, when you enter "unreachable" areas like Mount Hyjal, you receive a debuff called "No Man's Land" that tells you "You are where you should not be" and teleports you out. Rumor is that it also reports you to a GM for account actions, but that hasn't been corroberated with any evidence.

People who enjoy exploring unreleased/rare content are upset about this change, and have posted threads on both the US and Euro forums. The explorers make some pretty persuasive points. There are no mobs in the unreleased areas, so the players aren't getting any material benefit out of being there. And since most of these areas are found by cliff jumping and regular game mechanics, Blizzard could automatically make them off-limits by changing the terrain or putting in instance gates. It's not like explorers are removing walls to sneak into other areas. Plus, exploration gets us great movies from Noggaholics that help give us an insight as to what Blizz is planning for the future.

I'm a bit of an explorer myself -- I swam around both the bottom of Kalimdor and the top of Eastern Kingdoms before BC, spent a long time cliffwalking to get into Hyjal and see Archimonde's skeleton, and used to lead expeditions to the Caverns of Time and got to watch as certain reckless mages blinked themselves into the abyss ("Summon me quick! Summon me! Summon ... too late.") It makes me sad that you can't do that anymore. If they have to do something about exploring, can't they just bring back the Guardians of Blizzard? Then at least we'd get to watch poorly-informed raid groups attempting to take on invulnerable bosses.

What do you think of this change?

Blood Pact: What is a Warlock?, part 1


Every week Elizabeth Harper contributes Blood Pact, where she tries to share the joy of the Warlock class with her fellow players, Warlock or not.

When I first started playing World of Warcraft, I rolled the ubiquitous Night Elf Hunter. The pet angle appealed to me, and in all the games I'd played previously, I preferred to stay away from close combat and pelt my victims with spells or arrows from a safe distance. However, with so many classes available to me, I couldn't stick with just one -- my second character was a Mage. I spent my first weeks in Azeroth cheerfully hopping between these two characters, but I must admit that neither of the characters made it past level 20. Why? I found out that a friend of mine played on another realm, so I rerolled to join them -- this time as a Warlock.

I didn't know what I was getting in to at the time, I only knew that Warlocks had pets like Hunters and cast spells like Mages. But I've got to tell you, despite the first-glance similarities between the classes, they're not at all alike -- which I learned while leveling mine to 60. (And before you ask -- I played this Warlock prior to the class changes that turned them into tiny gods. Yes, I was a Warlock back when Warlocks were the underdogs.) Perhaps you're not quite sure what to expect from Warlocks -- whether you play with them, are trying to kill them, or are thinking about rolling one yourself. If so, read on as I attempt to explain the essence of the Warlock class.

Continue reading Blood Pact: What is a Warlock?, part 1

Turning up Fade for Priests

Though this idea was put forth before yesterday's tease of a mystery buff, I still think it's a good one. A lot of priests are supporting the idea that when Blizzard looks at fixing Priest spells, Fade should be front and center.

Currently, Fade is meant solely as a PvE spell-- the only thing it does is within the priest's party, so it's useless both solo and in PvP. But Maxx of Jubei'Thos suggests buffing it to make it more viable across the board. Some players say it should, like Feign Death, "untarget" priests who activate it, but Blizzard says that's a no-no because it confuses players without indicating what's happening. Maxx's idea is even better-- make Fade cause magic and physical attacks against the priest to miss 50% of the time (kind of like a Rogue's Evasion).

For people who think that overpowers Fade too much, Maxx has a solution: Fade would also give a debuff. Either it would make the priest miss 50% of the time as well, or it could do something like an anti-shadowform-- nothing but healing spells while Fade is activated. I think it's an interesting idea, and it's worth a look by the devs at least-- Fade is useless in everything but PvE right now, and tweaking it a bit wouldn't hurt. A few priests, however, say there are too many problems already to be messing around with Fade, and I agree with that as well. Neth, fortunately, goes right down the middle-- she likes the Fade idea (and is passing it to the devs), and realizes there are issues with, say, Circle of Healing.

Especially with all the +healing to be found in Outland, Fade is losing its utility. It shouldn't be the first priority, but making it more useful would help the Priest class all around.

Return of the Luffa

Answer honestly now: who actually kept the Luffa? The Luffa is a pretty much worthless trinket (except maybe for Rogues who often fight Druids or Warriors) available at level 49 from a quest in Searing Gorge. All it does is remove one bleed effect. It's not a bad trinket when you get it at level 49, but after that, more and more trinkets show up that do so much more that for most players, the Luffa ends up either in the bank, or, more likely, vendored away.

I know I sold it. But those of you who hang on to everything you find in the game have a reason to celebrate: the Luffa is back. Apparently in Karazhan, there's a rogue boss named Moroes who lays down a debuff called "Garrote"-- it's a whopping 1000 damage per 3 seconds for five minutes (or until he dies, as of 2.0.6), which is a lot of damage. And yet, while Stoneform, Divine Shield and Ice Block will all remove it, the only other way you'll get it off is, you guessed it, the ol' Luffa.

If, like me, you did vendor it, don't worry too much-- the Luffa only works sometimes, and the fight's not impossible without it anyway. But a few players are feeling a little regret at tossing away something they'd never thought they'd need. Maybe a future quest in Outland will someday grant us an extra absorbent Luffa for future use.

Update: And here's even more reason to keep it. Commenter Wari asks about Rokmar the Crackler's debuff in the Slave Pens (he drops a bleed that does damage until the player who has it is healed to full), and it looks like the Luffa will clean that annoying buff off too. Who knew the Luffa would be so useful?

Debuff Limit to Change in Expansion

Back at the dawn of time, the debuff limit was 8. That means only 8 debuffs could be on a monster at any given time - which lead to severe restrictions when you had 40 players attacking the same thing in a raid environment. (You would either always have important debuffs being bumped off or you would have very strict raid rules which only allowed certain debuffs to be used by certain players.) And warlocks, whose DOT spells actually made up good portion of their damage done, were reduced to shadowbolting machines. The debuff limit was later doubled, and currently sits at 16, which allows for a lot more flexibility. However, recently the CMs dropped what I consider to be quite the bombshell: in the expansion, in addition to smaller raid size, the debuff limit will be increased again - to 40. Combined with 25-player raids, that's a heck of a lot of debuffs...!

The Debuff Prioritization System

There's a limited number of debuffs that can be placed on any target - currently, the maximum is 16.  This is enough where it's not usually problematic, but in a raid environment it's not difficult to hit that maximum, and when you do, the oldest debuff on the target is bumped off in favor of the new one.  This becomes a bit problematic when, for example, the short-lived "shadow vulnerability" debuff left by a warlock's improved shadow bolt talent starts bumping off more important things.  To fix this, Blizzard has long been working on a system that prioritizes debuffs and leaves the most important ones on, while letting the less useful ones get bumped off.   However, Tseric informs us that the "basic structure" of this prioritization system will be going live in patch 1.11 - to much rejoicing.


RESOURCES

Class Columns
Pimp My Profile (1)
(Druid) Shifting Perspectives (40)
(Hunter) Big Red Kitty (33)
(Hunter) Scattered Shots (14)
(Mage) Arcane Brilliance (35)
(Paladin) The Light and How to Swing It (47)
(Priest) Spiritual Guidance (20)
(Rogue) Encrypted Text (33)
(Shaman) Totem Talk (44)
(Warlock) Blood Pact (26)
(Warrior) The Care and Feeding of Warriors (48)
Gameplay
(Arena PvP) Blood Sport (22)
(BG PvP) The Art of War(craft) (21)
(Casual) WoW, Casually (17)
(Engineering) Hoof and Horn Research and Development (17)
(Guild Leadership) Officers' Quarters (55)
(Professions) Insider Trader (56)
(Raid Healing) Raid Rx (17)
(Raiding) Raiding 101 (2)
(Raiding) Ready Check (19)
(Roleplaying) All the World's a Stage (36)
Hybrid Theory (13)
AddOns and UI
AddOn Spotlight (79)
Macro Anatomy (12)
Reader UI of the Week (25)
Reader WoWspace of the week (28)
The Creamy GUI Center (11)
Lore and Stories
Around Azeroth (472)
Barrens Chat (2)
Know your Lore (51)
Tales from the Lion's Pride Inn (14)
WoW Moviewatch (466)
Features
15 Minutes of Fame (18)
About the Bloggers (24)
Ask WoW Insider (55)
Azeroth Security Advisor (1)
Back In The Day (3)
Breakfast topics (675)
Build Shop (34)
Gamers on the Street (19)
Guildwatch (76)
He Said She Said (4)
It came from the Blog (25)
Phat Loot Phriday (86)
Two Bosses Enter (61)
Well Fed Buff (22)
World of WarCrafts (19)
WoW Insider Show (52)
WoW Rookie (36)
[1.Local] (6)
Classes
Death Knight (54)
Druid (264)
Hunter (252)
Mage (156)
Paladin (266)
Priest (219)
Rogue (160)
Shaman (245)
Warlock (172)
Warrior (182)
News
Account Security (10)
AddOns (231)
Analysis / Opinion (2697)
Blizzard (1472)
BlizzCon (184)
Bugs (212)
Burning Crusade (358)
Contests (204)
Economy (183)
Events (366)
Expansions (562)
Fan stuff (821)
Features (606)
Forums (244)
Guilds (461)
Hardware (25)
Humor (723)
Interviews (136)
Lore (265)
Mounts (128)
News items (1403)
NPCs (186)
Odds and ends (1591)
Patches (1112)
Podcasting (73)
Ranking (50)
Realm News (274)
Realm Status (226)
RP (159)
Rumors (32)
Virtual selves (612)
WoW Insider Business (278)
WoW Social Conventions (135)
WoW TCG (49)
Wrath of the Lich King (262)
Strategy
Alts (85)
Arena (167)
Battlegrounds (104)
Bosses (311)
Buffs (114)
Cheats (67)
Classes (285)
Enchants (30)
Factions (146)
Guides (324)
How-tos (362)
Instances (614)
Items (791)
Leveling (246)
Making money (164)
PvP (691)
Quests (342)
Raiding (670)
Talents (120)
Tips (541)
Tricks (215)
Walkthroughs (74)
Media
Comics (63)
Fan art (34)
Galleries (136)
Machinima (541)
Podcasts (52)
Polls (55)
Screenshots (610)
Races
Alliance (103)
Draenei (61)
Dwarves (15)
Gnomes (39)
Human (15)
Night Elves (42)
Horde (102)
Blood Elves (68)
Orcs (25)
Tauren (42)
Trolls (22)
Undead (21)
Professions
Alchemy (75)
Blacksmithing (55)
Cooking (66)
Enchanting (71)
Engineering (106)
First Aid (16)
Fishing (57)
Herbalism (44)
Inscription (10)
Jewelcrafting (78)
Leatherworking (58)
Mining (42)
Skinning (27)
Tailoring (63)
Retired
Azeroth Interrupted (24)
World Wide WoW (8)
/silly (14)

RSS NEWSFEEDS

Powered by Blogsmith

    Featured Galleries

    Magisters' Terrace walkthrough
    Patch 2.4 Sunwell Isle
    Kil'jaeden loot
    It came from the Blog: Mother's Day Event
    It came from the Blog: Children's Week Gallery
    Children's Week: Stormwind
    Children's Week: Orgrimmar
    M'uru loot
    Children's Week: Dornaa's quests

     

    Most Commented On (30 days)

    Recent Comments

    Weblogs, Inc. Network

    Other Weblogs Inc. Network blogs you might be interested in: