Halion, the PuG destroyer

Normal Halion certainly is not a worthy foe even for a semi-raiding guild. But.

Three mechanics:

• move out of the fire;
• dispel-leaving-a-puddle;
• ray of death (essentially, Heigan dance).

In that order.

• Move out of the fire. There's a mark on the floor so nobody should be hit with the meteor itself, and there are arrows on that mark showing direction in which fire will spread.
• Dispel at the right time. Tunnel-visioned healer sees different color in his Grid, automatically clicks it, bam! there's a puddle on the floor. And pray that it is a puddle of fire, not remains of some unfortunate melee.
• If you're a melee, tank should be dragging Halion around so nor him neither you should even come close to the Cutter. If you're ranged, look! Ideally, you should be right behind the orb when the Cutter activates. That way you can reapply DoTs, HoTs, buffs and debuffs before you absolutely have to move.

Okay, if you stay really close to the orb ahead of you, you don't have to move in normal mode. But come on, we all know we want heroic. Two rays of death for a price of one, only in Ruby Sanctum.

They say that in heroic-25 each meteor spawns adds and, more importantly, zones that appear on the ground affect both realms — so dispelling everything on sight is much more worse than in normal. I've yet to read or see something on 10 heroic.

There you go, paladins!

So in recent Twitter chat Blizzard somewhat revealed their concept for the brand new paladin resource. Yeah, because I told them so ;P

Q. What is the goal when re-designing the paladin class? How do you plan to change rotations, talents, etc?
A. All of the paladin specializations will make use of a new resource called Holy Power. Holy Power accumulates from using Crusader Strike, Holy Shock, and some other talents. Holy Power can be consumed to augment a variety of abilities, including:

• An instant mana-free heal: Word of Glory
• A buff to increase holy damage done: Inquisition
• A massive physical melee attack for Retribution paladins: Templar’s Verdict
• Holy Shield’s duration is now extended by Holy Power
• Divine Storm’s damage is now increased by Holy Power

We also introduced several new heals for Holy Paladins including Healing Hands (an AoE heal-over-time that is applied to all players standing near the paladin), Light of Dawn (a cone heal with a 30-yard range), as well as a new heal called Divine Light, which is similar to a priest's Greater Heal, and the new instant heal mentioned above, Word of Glory.

Paladins, rejoice!

Cataclysm Analytics, revisited

I wrote that there is almost nothing to discuss at this point because vast majority of new beta features relies greatly on numbers. Numbers that may and will be tweaked. But there are also mechanics — Tree of Life cooldown, Balance/Nature moonkin craziness and so on. I choose you, 31-points talent trees.

Masteries are a great way to cut out this “you hit X% harder” bullshit. Talent points should be spent on something I like, not on some offer I can't refuse. Of course, I like getting 10% damage by clicking on a button, but that is so far from the point, its cell phone goes roaming.

The point is in bringing up skill. DPS should depend on skill first, on talents second. Talents for +damage don't really help reaching that goal. How do we concentrate on skill? We tie abilities to each other, we suggest synergies. Player herself is ought to use these synergies. If she doesn't, her damage is going up slowly, as her abilies scale and mastery effects grow. If she does, her damage jumps, as masteries and abilities are multiplied by skill.

***

Double specs (warlock 0/41/30, we'll miss ya), occasional downranking (bye-bye, double Flamestrike!) — this is all cheating the system. System got better, so cheating is off the table, and now you don't like it?.. Okay, I love double Flamestrike as any of you, but I hear double Flamestrike << Cataclysm. Get over it.

Cataclysm Analytics

The thing is, there is nothing to analyze.

• Yay, new abilities! Abilities that can be made overpowered and useless by a single digit.
• Yay, new no-rubbish talents! That are nowhere near done.
• Yay, new dungeons! That noone knows how will work with the new talents and abilities.
• Yay, UI improvements! ...yay again!

At the present stage all you can do about Cataclysm, strictly speaking, is be excited. Which I am. But that is not the most entertaining conversational subject.

I leave beta-theorizing to those who really enjoy metagames or, you know, those who get paid for this kind of thing. When 4.0 drops, I'll be all over their theories. Until then — sorry, I've got some quests for Loremaster to do.

Cataclysm has already crippled my wrapping WotLK up. Now it just have to not spoil itself several months before launch. I don't really care about horrific lore revealings, I just don't like chewing on what new things might or might not be until I lose my freakin' taste for these new things.

Mana mana

I'm confident now that my favourite class (rogue, duh) is my favourite because of its resource system. Energy and combo-points are the greatest synergy known to MMO. Similarly, classes I dislike are using mana.

And the worst of them are not mages or warlocks. The worst of them are hunters and retribution paladins.

Damage-dealing gameplay in WoW is a game of resources. You usually have to hold balance: rogue fears energy-cap as much as she doesn't like sitting at 5 CP, warrior wants to hit things, but he has to consider his rage generation, death knight has to hold 4 different resources in his head. Mages and warlocks are tied to time as a resource — all spells require timing, whether to cast them in time or recast them appropriately.

Retridins were facerollers in PvE from the start of WotLK. Infamous FCFS rotation holds its ground. Why? Because there are no resources retridins use. They have global cooldown and a bunch of local cooldowns. Gee, how can this be no fun! It's like you get railroad train for Christmas, but you can only put passengers in and pull them out, because train goes all by itself stopping at the station for a few moments.

Hunters are trickier, but the problem is identical. There is almost nothing to consider besides the GCD and abilities' cooldowns. “Omigod, Serpent Sting fell off! Oh well, here we go, reapplied it.” End of story. It's much less boring in PvP, but if nobody's heading your way — same thing. “Burst, you say? Let me see what's not on CD and fire it.” It reminds me about a certain PvE rotation. Oh, retridins, right.

***

So what do we have here. Hunters will get focus instead of stupid mana in Cataclysm. Paladins will get stupid mana instead of stupid mana. Paladins? If noone invents something absolutely brilliant, you're screwed. Enhancement shamans may have something for ya, but although I didn't get myself to play one, I doubt there is something besides wolfs.

RealID buzz

I don't really care.

No, I don't want to show my real name to anybody interested. No, I don't give a crap about the official forum. I almost never use friends-list. RealID can be turned off only through parental control, which is ridiculous and too demanding. Blizzard does what they gotta do, and I play all the way on the other side. If they screw up, well, Guild Wars 2 is upon us, that Star Wars thingie is upon us.

I am emotionally invested in my characters, I have hopes and dreams for them, bright future lying ahead... but these investments are rather diversified as I have ~20 toons already. Eventually I found out that my best experience was during leveling, each character being a campaign of a single RPG with occasional company. So these 20 toons are like 20 saves in Dragon Age. Do I care about them? Yes. Do I feel like deleting them would be end of the world? No. I grasped the “casual” — it's not that you play less, because hardcore raider may play less, but you play however you like.

Hardcore means setting up rules over rules over rules, and the one who wins while not breaking the most rules is the king. Casual means playing by some rules that are most convenient or most enjoyable or most unusual, but casual will never stack many obstacles just for their number.

Unfortunately, Cataclysm is going to meet the casual and nourish it. So Blizzard really should not push that RealID thing, because I want to see how this meeting goes.

MW2

Modern Warfare 2 is one enormous exaggeration. What exactly ripped ISS apart when that nuke went off? Power of imagination, that's what. And Soap, pulling knife from his chest and throwing it straight into Shepard's eye! I mean, what the hell.

Other than that single-player campaign sometimes gets plain messy, especially for a guy who isn't so fond about shooters (like me). There was a mission where you have to wait for files to be copied while defending the computer from the enemy. I went through last checkpoint of that task like 10 times in a row — enemy is everywhere, grenades, my bad aim... In first Modern Warfare there were few such places, in the second — madness. Yes, kinda like «Sparta!», because allies are few and in Brazil mission I realised that they are really not respawning.

But as with any other shooter these days there's a huge online-play-with-strangers thing attached. And that thing is madness too.

For the first 4 levels they allow playing only in Team Mode where wins the team with the best killers. Ah, being dumb meat... how can I ever forget that feeling. It gets better, though, and despite my shooter-unawareness WoW melee skills can be applied and my acute reflexes are playing — I often finish matches with the most knife kills. I've yet to see more kills than deaths on the final sheet (I was a Juggernaught once — I just have yet to look at stupid sheet when that happens).

In WoW you engage other players in 36 yards maximum, them being clearly visible for at least several seconds. In MW2 you can kill whoever you see however you please. “He never saw it coming” is about almost every death in the game. Not saying anything about aircraft.

To sum up my first impression.

1. Aircraft is overpowered.
2. Maps are way too complicated for a shooter. My experience with MMO-shooters being Counter-Strike and Battlefield Heroes. Too many threats, too easy to die.
3. Read strategy guide, really. Save yourself a couple hours of figuring out.
4. I suck at this. Well, except for knife-stabbing part. «Boy, I just love to stab», paraphrasing famous sitcom.