You can't go home again

In life there are many times where the second, third, or the hundredth time you experience something is actually much better than the first.  For example the first time I got drunk was not memorable at all, but I recall many times after that initial sip of beer where drinking was so fun!  Falling in love is another good example, it might take a few relationships until you meet that perfect someone.  

Video games are not like that, though.  I can't recall a single game that I've played (not counting silly little games on my phone to pass the time, I'm talking about a 40+ hour commitment epic-feeling games here) where the second play-through was better than the first.

Don't get me wrong, the second time you play a game may be easier since you know better what to do and it may have more things you can unlock after beating it for the first time.  But that epic feeling, that tear-welling emotional moment when you finally watch the ending is never there the second time around.  You just can't go home again.

The first game I ever really seriously got into was FF7 (which will always be, to me, the pinnacle of RPG perfection and the benchmark standard for all time).  I was so hooked on it and I spent over 100 hours of gametime (likely a lot more, but the counter only goes up 99:59:59) doing everything in the game - beating all the minigames, breeding the gold chocobo & winning the races, killing all the weapons, collecting every materia, etc.  And when I finally killed Sephiroth and beat the game, well...words can hardly describe how it felt.  Despite the crappy, polygon-ed quality of the ending cinematic (it was 1997, ok?), it was so beautiful.  FF series, overall, are also renowned for amazing in-game music so that had something to do with the beauty as well.  I wept over the fact that I saved the world, and Aeris's sacrifice had not gone in vain.  I was an epic hero and I saved the world.

Almost immediately I made a new file and played through again.  But the second time, while fun, wasn't as great as the first.  Everything was too easy, for one.  And discovering a random treasure chest or a hidden item in the world didn't feel as fun because it wasn't a surprise anymore.  The long dialogue-filled cutscenes felt boring.  The plot twists didn't catch me off-guard.  It was like seeing a really great movie the second time around.  And when the ending cinematic rolled through the second time?  I hardly even felt like watching it all.  It just didn't feel the same as the first time.

The same deal with the scores of other storyline-based games I've played - FF6, FF8, FF9, Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross (amazing game, definitely #2 on my list), Breath of Fire, Neverwinter nights, Skyrim, God of War, Devil May Cry, etc etc.  Most of them were awesome games and I'm not afraid to admit that I cried while watching the ending cinematic to a couple of them.  But the second play-through?  Half of these games I never even had the motivation to see the ending again, and if I did, I certainly didn't get emotional about it.  

And that's the thing about games.  A lot of games tout it's "replayability", saying that even after you beat it once, you an go back through on a different difficulty level, or unlock hidden secrets, or just to earn some more achievements.  And while that might be fun, that amazing, emotional, overwhelmingly epic, "I-did-it-I-saved-the-world-from-evil" feeling is something you can never capture again.  

If only I could selectively wipe my memory.  I'd happily play FF7 over and over again...

A Subtle Change

The big news of the day is...I've gone subtlety.  After nearly 4 years of die-hard assassination I finally had to swap specs.

I really had no choice.  The recent assassination nerf was...brutal, to say the least.  I saw my dps drop at least 20k literally overnight.  Suddenly I went from being #1 on the charts nearly every fight to not even beating the tanks on some fights.  It was really depressing.

The word on the street was that assn spec was overdue for a nerf compared to not only the other two rogue specs, but all the other melee dps as well.  That's apparently according to dps logs, although I can agree based on personal observation as well.

All throughout ToT my dps was always #1 or 2.  I only saw some competition for the top spot on add-heavy fights like Horridon.  A lot of fights in ToT were static for me anyways since my aoe/multi-target dps was weaker than most so I ended up almost never pulling add duty.  Which, of course, ended up skewing the meters towards my favor even more.  But even on fights like Jin-Rokh or Durumuu I was untouchable.

Then came the 5% overall damage reduction nerf.  I guess I didn't realize how big of an impact that would have.  Considering that some other dps classes and specs got buffed at the same time, all of a sudden my dps plummeted in comparison.  The first week of Siege I was still top, then the second week (when the nerf came) suddenly I was bottom.

There are other things as well such as gear drops that I won't go into, because bad gear was never a limiting factor for me when I played assassination.  In fact, I went through all of ToT using daggers from Terrace while other people had thunderforged weapons so I don't think it's all about gear.

Anyways, so I respecced that very week to subtlety.  I would've preferred to play combat as the rotation is simpler than sub but sadly I had no slow MH weapons.  Not a single one.  So I had to go sub.  *gulp*

Subtlety spec was a huge step up in difficulty for me.  I guess I never realized what a truly brain-dead spec assassination was until I tried a spec that actually requires all of your focus.

With assassination there are exactly 2 buffs you want to maintain in your rotation: slice and dice and rupture.  But in reality, you don't even have to think about maintaining SnD because it gets automatically refreshed by your envenom, which is your main finishing move that you cast all the time.  Rupture is the only thing you need to worry about, and with the tier 6 talent Anticipation, keeping enough combo points around to make sure rupture never drops was no problem either.

With Subtlety you have to maintain SnD, rupture, hemo, and to the extent you can, Find Weakness.  None of these buffs refresh automatically meaning you have to keep an eye on all of them at all times.  Hemo is easily refreshed but it's not as strong of a combo point generator as backstab so you want to avoid spamming it.  You can't maintain FW full time as it's only up right after a stealth opener (meaning I would have to vanish or use shadow dance) but you want to maximize its uptime.

Which brings me to another thing - using CDs.  With assn all your cooldowns are the "activate and then not worry about it" type.  Vendetta, shadow blades, and vanish.  Vendetta and SB you just set it and forget it.  Vanish is a small dps boost in that you can get a free ambush, so I usually just saved it for an aggro drop.  To maximize dps I simply timed all my CDs to go off at the same time, preferably in conjunction with a bloodlust.  On fights like Jin Rokh or Durumuu where we lusted on pull my dps would easily break the 500k mark just by stacking multiple CDs + lust + potion.

Subtlety is a lot more...subtle.  All my CDs are focused on getting the find weakness buff and maximizing its uptime.  Which means I always want to open out of stealth and start the buff going.  Then you have to use your CDs one by one, making sure that it doesn't overlap too much and waste your FW uptime.  For instance, you wouldn't want to use Shadow Dance and then vanish right after that when you still have 5 seconds left on your FW.  You want to be smart about cycling through your CDs.

My opener is always ambush x 2 (tier 1 talent subterfuge makes this possible), get all my buffs going then start shadow dance when FW runs out.  Shadow Dance is tricky because you want to make sure you're almost capped on energy before you start (to allow you to spam ambush as much as possible) and you want to make sure you're behind the boss. When FW from shadow dance runs out, vanish and ambush x 2 (again, want to cap energy before so you can get both ambushes).  Use Preparation to reset vanish and use again once FW runs out.  Then use shadow blades -  you don't want it to overlap with FW because SB allows you to bypass armor anyways.  Once SB runs out, the cooldown on shadow dance should be almost finished, at which point you SD again.  After that it's about using whatever CDs come off cooldown first.  All the while maintaining SnD, rupture, and hemo and keeping an eye on your anticipation stacks to make sure you're not capping out combo points from Honor Among Thieves proc.

You see how long it took me to explain all that?  Here's the assassination rotation: Open out of stealth, ambush, use combo points to start SnD.  Get 5 combo points with mutilate, use rupture.  Use SB and Vendetta either on pull or on bloodlust.  Keep up rupture.

Another big thing is stat priorities.  With assn I used a mastery build, which increases the flat damage of your poisons.  My energy regen was slow, but my poisons hit hard and made up the bulk of my damage.  Which meant I had reliable damage output through deadly poison and envenom, and the pace of combat was relatively slow.  I never had to worry about capping energy because of the slow regen.

With sub, I use a haste build, which means my energy regens really fast.  I'm constantly trying to spam as much backstab as possible to make sure I'm not capping.  My poisons don't hit as hard and instead I'm relying on increased trinket and meta gem procs due to the high haste.  So my damage is spikey - sometimes when everything procs at once it skyrockets and sometimes when nothing procs it's very low.  I see as much as a 40k difference in two different attempts at the exact same fight.

Positioning is also a huge deal.  I remember back in Dragon Soul everyone complained that they couldn't play sub because of the Ultraxion fight, where you're literally stuck in front of the boss with nowhere else to go.  Well, I'm glad there really aren't any fights like that in SoO and I can manage to get behind the boss 95% of the time.  Because you can't use ambush or backstab unless you're behind, which is incredibly crucial to my rotation and damage.  Hemo is useable in front, but so much weaker compared to backstab.  Mutilate has no positioning requirement which made assn so much simpler.

It took me two weeks of trial and error to finally get comfortable with subtely.  I think I've got the basics down as far as rotation and buff uptimes, I just need to fine tune and really learn the gritty little details to squeeze out the extra 5k dps.  With assassination everything was muscle memory  for me, whereas I've got a ways to go with sub spec.

But already I'm seeing some improvements.  For instance I finally got back on the top of the charts on Iron Juggernaut (completely static fight) and Malkorok (mostly static except for avoiding ground effects).  I'm also learning some of the severe limitations of the spec - mainly it's very poor for add-heavy fights and target-switching fights.  Since there are so many buffs to keep up and the damage ramps pretty slowly, target switching is really a dps killer.  Fights like Galakras and Spoils of Pandaria really suck for me as there isn't really a "main target" and there's nothing for me to build CPs on.

I'm considering going back to assn for those fights, but staying haste-heavy stat wise.  The damage output won't be much better than sub but at least the rotation will be simpler.  I'd love to go combat but currently I still don't have decent weapons, plus I don't think I have it in me to learn a third rogue spec!

I'm back, baby

The hiatus is over, in case anyone cared!

A little over a year ago, I stopped blogging about my wow adventures.  Mainly it was due to the fact that D3 was going full steam at that point and Cataclysm was in its dying throes.  It was those last few painful months of an expansion's lifespan where everyone has cleared the latest content and were just waiting around leveling alts or running old content until the next xpac dropped.

So it was a boring time for me.  I was planning on continuing the blog around Diablo, but D3 was such a sad sad disappointment that...I really don't even want to go into it.  Maybe it will redeem itself with the Reaper of Souls (remember how vastly more awesome D2: Lord of Destruction was compared to original D2?) but I'm not holding my breath.

Anyways, MoP.  It seems like it's been out forever and people are already waiting around for the next xpac.  But really, it's only been out a year.  I know this because right around when it dropped people were staying up till midnight to log in, but I couldn't because it was the first day of classes...

Overall MoP has been a successful expansion for all the wrong reasons.  The shift towards catering to casuals has been more and more aggressive.  With the introduction of scenarios, LFR at all tiers of raiding, and now flex raiding, it seems like organized guilds are almost a thing of the past.  With addons like O-Queue you can clear the raid using flex and get all the gear you want.  Do a couple heroic scenarios and you can cap valor in one day.  Zones like timeless isle makes it easier than microwaving a burrito to gear out your alts in near-current tier stuff.  Who would bother with alt raid nights these days?

This is not to say I have not bought into all of this either.  Well of course I'm going to run flex and LFR and all that at a chance to get tier tokens or that one trinket that never drops in raid.  And of course I'll send out BoA gear to all my alts like everyone else.  If you can't beat them...

At the least the raids have been more or less interesting.  The first tier was pretty disappointing but progressively raid design has gotten better, imo.  I enjoyed how Blizz stuck true to the "theme" of the dungeon in both heart of fear and Terrace (although the latter felt just a little bit like Trial of Crusader...the big circular platforms and lack of adds, if you know what I mean.).  Throne of Thunder was really fun, with interesting fight mechanics (Durumu took the meaning of cutter beam to new heights, and Animus was certainly creative, if a bit of a pain in the ass) and a full-length raid with plenty of challenge.

So far Siege of Orgrimmar has yet to disappint.  With 14 bosses, multiple trash packs and many different fight zones (you start all the way from Pandaria and make your way into the underbelly of Org) and a gradual difficulty slope, I think it's going to keep me entertained at least for the next couple months.

What's next for WoW?  Who knows.  I haven't kept up with all the forum gossip about the new xpac, so I literally have no clue what it may be.  Personally I think the Emerald Dream would be interesting.  As long as we don't get sent into any more underwater zones I think I'll be happy!  And no more cutesy pandas!!!

A sad day in gaming

I hate to be one of "those people" who complain endlessly about some supposed apocalyptic event that will surely destroy the games we love.  But I have to admit that the launch of this so-called Real Money Auction House has me feeling deeply disturbed.

I don't think it will kill Diablo 3.  I don't think it will signal the doom of the entire Diablo franchise or Blizzard as a whole.  I do think, however, that it signals a shift towards the whole microtransaction business model that more and more games are starting to adopt.

Whatever happened to the good old days where you bought a game for a fixed price, and you got to play as much or as little as you wanted?  Those of us who chose to invest more time in it reaped better rewards.  Did you know that in Final Fantasy 7 if you spend hours upon hours to breed a gold chocobo, use it to obtain the Knights of the Round materia, then max it out, you can easily beat both Ruby and Emerald weapons?  No gimmicks, no cheap work-arounds, and no need to purchase an additional "materia boost pack" from Square Enix for only $5.99.  All you have to do is just grind out the work for days.

I'm digressing a little here, I just get very nostalgic about FF7, perhaps the best single-player RPG ever made.

The point is, that microtransactions operate under the principle - "free to play, pay to win", which I despise.  It makes sense as a business model - the hardcore gamers these days are no longer teenagers who had to beg mom for $20 to buy the latest Mario game.  They're working professionals in their 20s or 30s who have disposable income but little time, and wouldn't hesitate to spend an extra $10 here and there to streamline their gaming process.

Think about it - when you're a broke teenager, you don't mind spending 6 hours on a Saturday to get some crazy good item.  When you're in your 20s those 6 hours on a Saturday are valuable, and you'd rather pay some extra cash to get that item rather than waste the day staring at the computer.  Come Sunday, both the teenager and the adult have equal items, both paid for it in some way or another.  But in the end, the teenager feels a little bit "cheated" out of the deal.  Because let's face it, $10 doesn't seem like very fair for something you had to work 6 hours for.  But as the adult sees it, it's as if he paid someone $10 to play video games for 6 hours, a task many happily do for free.

Does this make sense?  I'm starting to confuse myself a little here.  The point is that I see both sides of the argument.  I see that it makes sense to charge people with disposable income for a small advantage and let the other folks grind their way towards the same goal.

What Diablo 3 does with the RMAH, however, is taking it a little too far, if you ask me.  I know plenty of other games have the microtransaction model, but D3 takes it to a whole new level by giving players absolute control over the economy.  It's not a matter of Blizzard selling you a few things here and there, it's a bizarre system in which players have the power to inflate prices, hoard gold and goods, and effectively coerce the "average" player into participation.

I don't want to into all the thousand little ways in which this happens.  The big picture is that most people will eventually buy into it and end up buying a few things here and there for $10-20 rather than wait weeks, months, for a good drop they can actually use.  I know I probably will.

And this makes me very sad.  It's not that I can't afford it.  It's the fact that I know the value of a $20 is much greater than some pixels on a screen that will help me kill digital monsters in a digital world.  For $20 I can buy myself dinner somewhere, or go out to a movie with a friend, or treat myself to 5 smoothies at Jamba Juice, and as a rational adult I know that these things are just much more worthwhile activities/services/goods than an in-game frill.  I know it, yet I also know that we all have that impulse to get what we want, right when we want it, without any actual effort.

And so when I see an amazing upgrade, reasonably priced, I know I will probably click "buyout", even as some rational brain cell in my head is screaming "DON'T DO IT!  You could get half a tank of gas for that money!!!".  And I know that after I've bought myself all sorts of things, I will probably beat the game very easily rather than struggle through every champion and elite pack as I do now.  And after I've beaten the game, I will feel bored and sad.

Then I will probably go back to wow.

Monk in your Trunk

Since wow seems to be on hiatus for the time being, I thought I'd write out some of my thoughts on D3.  Why not, seeing as to how D3 makes me nerd rage just as much as wow did.

I signed up to play a monk with the expectation that it would play much like a rogue.  I imagined a hard-hitting, fast-moving DPS machine, relying on high burst damaged and mobility to weave and bob my way through enemies and landing big combos.

Instead, as I progress further into inferno mode, I find myself more or less a tank-type character.  I stack defensive stats and abilities and I sit there spanking a mob to death.  Ever so slowly.

Compared to ranged classes such as a wizard or those completely imba demon hunters, my DPS is pathetic.  On average I'm doing only about 30-40% of what my ranged counterparts are doing in terms of pure raw damage.  My HP and defensive stats vastly dwarf theirs though, and I can take quite a few more hits and stand in a lot more ground effects than they can.

The problem is, though, that this still doesn't create a fair play situation.  Think about it: you run into a swarm of champion enemies who hit like trucks and put down fire patches everywhere.  A monk has to be able to take those mack truck hits and occasionally step through fire patches just to be able to hit the mob.  A ranged character, however, drops dead as soon as they take a hit or stand in fire.  But this is a non-issue as ranged characters never need to put themselves in that situation.  As long as they keep their distance, which they do, they can just keep running and shooting, running and shooting, kiting their way merrily until the mob is dead.  And mobs die much much quicker when they can rock 40-50k DPS too.

So there I am, cycling through my cooldowns and heals, stepping gingerly around fire whenever I can, getting smacked around by 4 elites while trying to regen enough spirit just to spam my heals, while a DH or wizard runs around in a circle, never taking a hit, and killing the mob in a fraction of the time it takes me.

Of course kiting isn't an easy task and it takes a lot of coordination to be able to do this.  And there are some situations where kiting isn't effective at all (jailer mobs, frozen, narrow corridors).  But overall ranged have a huge advantage in that they never really have to worry about their defensive stats.  They are literally glass cannons that dish out huge damage but can never afford to be touched by a mob.  Monks and our poor sad cousins, the barbarians, have to beef up our health and resistance and armor, often at the sacrifice of our DPS which explains why it's so pitifully low.

Another very unfair advantage of wizards and DHs is their passive resource regen (not sure about witch doctors, never played one).  Wizards regen mana fairly quickly, and DHs can regen their hatred simply by shooting arrows, regardless of whether it hits a target or not.  Monks on the other hand, must have an active target in order to regen our spirit.  Which means that if you're on the run from an elite pack and you have no spirit left, you must somehow be able to get near them and hit them to be able to use your abilities.  In some situations this is just a no-go.  If I can't get near a mob I can't use my mitigation abilities, and I can't use my mitigation abilities unless I can get near a mob.  I think this is definitely an issue that needs to be addressed.

Not to say that playing a monk isn't fun - it is.  It's just not what I expected, and perhaps my expectations were flawed.  I do enjoy my monk, and now that my gear is up to snuff Act 1 inferno is a breeze.  I can farm the Butcher and punch my way through any combinations of champion packs (yes, even the ones with multiple ground effects + fire chain).

The other night during a 3 person co-op game I was able to solo the Butcher down from about 25% HP remaining - AFTER the fire enrage.  After all my party members dropped from the fire, I sat their dodging his hits, rotating my CDs, and slowly whittling down his HP.  Did the fire hurt?  Yes.  Was I standing in it the whole time?  Yes.  Did my HP ever drop below 50%?  No.  Is this how I imagined playing a monk?  No, but was it freaking awesome how I soloed the Butcher after a hard enrage?  Yes.

Act 2 inferno, however, is a different story...that might have to wait until the nerf.

The real wow-killer

Every time a new big-name MMO comes out, everyone on the battle.net forums are abuzz with speculation that the new game will finally be the "wow-killer".  Ever since WoW has been out, it has pretty much dominated the entire MMORPG scene.  Perhaps it would be more apt to call wow the "MMO-in-general-killer".

I've played my share of MMOs back in the day, but until wow came out on the market, there was no real big-name MMO.  Sure, there was a huge Lineage following in Asia and there were some rabid Everquest and Ultima Online players in the US & Europe, but even in their heyday EQ/Ultima had nowhere near the number of subscribers that wow did.  Over 10 million - no other game has come even close.  No one else even had a chance when Blizzard, a household name in the PC gaming world that draws a huge fan base with just its logo alone, decided to enter the MMO market.

When Rift came out, everyone called it the wow killer.  They even attempted to advertise themselves as such.  Rift came and went, barely breaking 1 million subscriptions.  Bioware tried to do what Trion couldn't do and pushed big advertising dollars into its Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO.  SWTOR lost 25% of its players within the first quarter, only reaching about 15% of wow's playerbase at its peak.

Even another renowned Blizzard game, Starcraft 2, couldn't kill wow.  But I think that was mostly because SC2 was designed for an entirely different fan base compared to wow.  SC2 is for the hardcore, as SC1 was.  Once you play through the campaign modes, all that's left is content suited for the hardcore gamer: it's all about APMs and ladder rankings and high-pressure matches, which doesn't appeal to the more casual players of wow.  I know a lot of people who did pick up SC2 when it came out, played through it once and came back to wow within a couple weeks.

I have always said that the only true wow killer will be World of Warcraft 2: [insert catchy title here].  The day that wow servers would be truly empty and dead would be the day that a bigger and better version of wow made by Blizzard hit the markets.  Only time will prove whether I'm right or wrong.  But in the meantime, I think we do have a very strong contender for the title of "wow-killer".

On May 15th, Diablo 3 hit the market, and it seems as though almost everyone I knew who played wow has taken up D3.  It makes sense - D3 is more "like" wow than SC2.  It's kind of like a more action-adventure version of wow.  There's no set class roles, no real need for cooperative gameplay, and not as much depth as wow.  But at the same time it's fun, it's fast, it's "clicky" and "smashy", if that makes any sense.  In wow you click on a monster and your character will swing a sword and you see the monster chirp and die.  In D3, you click a monster and you smack it hard in the face with burning fists and the monster explodes all over the screen and dies.  It's more visceral, it's more gory, it's ultimately satisfying in a cheap-thrills kind of way.

It's too early to tell whether D3 will retain a permanent hold on the once-devoted wow players.  The game has been out for 3 weeks today.  When I logged into wow this morning (for the first time in 3 weeks), I was overjoyed to see 6 friends online!  Until I looked at my friends list and realized that they were simply my RealID friends who were logged onto D3.

I could see myself going back to wow eventually once I've worked my way through 99% of D3.  This could take a while.  Let's just hope there are people left to play with when I get back.

Heroic Hagara down!

After about oh, 20 attempts or so over two raid nights, we finally downed Hagara the stormbinder!  Or as I like to call her, Hagara bitchface.

Nothing terribly exciting or anything, just wanted to share our 4th heroic boss kill and talk a little about the fight.

Definitely not one of my favorites due to the insane RNG factor.  The Ice lance/Ice tomb mechanic can either make or break your group - like when we had her down to 30% and both our healers got ice tombed.  Given that the fight is dependent on 3 healers rotating their cooldowns on the tank every 10 seconds, this meant our tank just dropped like a rock.  During another pull our healer ate 3 ice lances at once and died, leaving us in the same crappy situation.

I'm not sure why Blizzard hates healers so much - it seems like almost every other dragon soul encounter description or video guide begins with "this fight is very stressful for your healers..."  Yeah, like all the other fights.

At least on heroic mode the phase transitions are more challenging and make the fight less boring.  On normal mode it's a total snooze, whereas on heroic the ice phase makes you clench your buttcheeks and grip your mouse!

I think what I miss most from Dragon Soul in general is the lack of adds.  It's nice to have one or two tank-and-spank fights as a breather but a whole raid of basically nonstop tank and spank is too much.  Spine and Deathwing is really the only add-heavy fight.  Blackhorn, maybe, but only for the first phase.

I really miss fights like Valithira Dreamwalker or Lady Deathwhisper.  Especially on 25man mode where people would be running all over the room CCing and tanking and kiting and killing things, and someone would scream over vent, "BLAZINGGGG!!!!" or "MC ON ME!!!" and people would drop whatever they were doing and run halfway across the room to take care of business.

Ah, here I go again, reminiscing about the good old days of Wrath.  What can I say, ICC was the most epic raiding experience I've had.  Nothing in Cata has even come close.

Tonight is Blackhorn!