A member of my WoW guild's discord mentioned that they didn't understand how someone could hate grinding in modern WoW, but still be fine with grinding in Vanilla for hours. I responded with a few points on why grinding as a gameplay element is contextual.
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Commander
Melee support, adv of the warrior(?) class Main utilities are commands - People in the Commander's party gain a buff when commanded - This buff doesn't do anything until they do something specific - For example, attack a specific target, move to a specific place - Reward is increased damage done and reduced damage taken - Allows a player to "shotcall"/raid-lead a bit and give his team bonuses for doing mechanics correctly Inquisitor
Melee DPS, adv of the cleric class. Main passive is a damage bonus when healthy. - 20% damage boost at full health, scaling continuously and linearly. - To aid with this, the inquisitor has tools to aid with keeping his health high. Main resource is piety. Each fight begins with full (100) piety, and it goes down and up based on skill usage alone. Tier 3 (Level 45)
Mirror Image is the pure single-target talent of the row. It does not scale well with many of the mage's stats, and it is very much a fire and forget spell. Its DPS contribution is only barely more than the other options. So, balance wise, it is a very poor talent. However, thematically, I think it's interesting and has real potential. The ability to summon multiples in order to trick an enemy into fighting the wrong one is interesting, and it provides a threat drop, despite that being barely relevant in the current game. It's rooted in the illusionist archetype of magic, where spells are cast in order to deceive others, and this is something that could be explored more in WoW (see Mesmer from GW2 for an example). Storm, Earth, and Fire, a Windwalker Monk base ability, has a similar theme, except it focuses on splitting the monk's damage and controlling each clone rather than using magic to trick enemies. Despite the strong thematic side of the talent, I feel that it could be a lot more interesting design-wise. Since this is a shared talent across the three specs, it could have a unique flair for each. For example, for Fire, Mirror Image could end with the images exploding for AoE damage, with the ability to end it early. This would move it from a simple fire and forget spell to one with a real decision to be made: should I explode it now or allow it to continue doing damage? Good judgment is rewarded, which is an important facet of gameplay. Or, allow the images to produce the procs for each spec, turning this into a cooldown that has heavy synergies with other talents and overall changes gameplay, as opposed to a basic talent with little implication for a spec (like Incanter's Flow). To sum it up, the theme is fantastic, but the implementation is simplistic and doesn't affect gameplay, which means there's two talents on this row that are just too simple. Stream Legends is a newly released semi-idle RPG that runs in the panels underneath a Twitch stream, and features a Diablo-like loot system and the ability to play with the others in the stream to build up a town and take on raids. In my opinion, the best part of the game is that the combat system is actually fairly deep. While heavily RNG-based, it has a lot of nuance, and making a "perfect" gear set is something you are always working towards, going for synergy and robustness.
Tier 2 (Level 30)
Shimmer is a very powerful replacement to Blink. While it removes the ability to Blink out of stuns, the mage can now be highly mobile without having to stop casting. It feels amazing to use, it doubles the mage's "burst" mobility, and it is, in all but the most Patchwerk of fights, a DPS boost. The issue I have with Shimmer is that it's just too good. Compared to all of the other talents Shimmer competes against across all three mage specs, the only one that stands a chance is Arcane's ability to walk during Arcane Missiles and Evocation, and that comes down to personal preference. However, is this because Shimmer is too good, or is it because the rest of the talents are too bad? A full analysis would be too long for this post, but I would venture to say that Shimmer is the outlier here, but the other talents are somewhat to blame, especially for Fire. Shimmer needs to be toned down, and a good possible fix would be to remove its charge system. The ability to Blink mid-cast is much more interesting and impactful than having two charges. Plus, two charges is especially powerful with the shield-from-Blink legendary and the heal-on-blink trait for Fire. I can soak mechanics with Cauterize, and I just need to Shimmer twice (staggered out) to live quite easily without help from a healer. I did this on H KJ progression towards the end, and I feel the large amount of survivability I had as a Mage was out of character. Introduction
The Fire Mage is a class that plays on the control of RNG. Its main mechanic is Hot Streak, where two subsequent critical strikes will allow the mage to cast a Pyroblast or Flamestrike, two powerful spells with long cast times, to be instantly cast. To aid with this, the mage has two spells that are guaranteed to be critical strikes: Fire Blast and Phoenix Flames. Fire Blast is off the GCD and can be cast during other spells, while Phoenix Flames is on the GCD but does AoE damage. The main rotation is chain casting Fireballs, reacting to Heating Up! procs with Fire Blast, and casting Pyroblasts at every opportunity. Since Pyroblast itself can crit, it allows for a satisfying chain of spells where the mage simply repeats Fireball -> Pyroblast if they both crit, or if one crits and Fire Blast is used. Ultimately, the Fire Mage is about chain casting instant spells that are generated from controlling the RNG aspects to the best of the mage's ability. |
Nicholas PorterMMO-Focused Archives
November 2018
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