Shifting Perspectives: The druid of 2009

Lines composed more than 3,000 miles from Tintern Abbey, by someone who hated Wordsworth and thought he was a self-obsessed little prick, but managed to conceal this from her professor long enough to book it from the class with an A, and this is a run-on sentence just like the title of the original poem, which is what we call Irony.


One year has past; one year, with the length
Of one long winter! and again I lean
My head -- back, against the perch of chair and post
And snarf the Robitussin down. -- Once again
Do I behold the druid class in all its glory
That with the benefit of dual-specs allows
Me to be incompetent in more ways than simply one.
The day is come when I again repose
Here, in the glow lent by the laptop, and try to keep
My editors from killing me. The column, it is late.

Yes, folks, it's that time of year again. Allie is sick, druids are thriving, and 2010 is upon us like the rear axel of a pickup truck on an icy road with a "Guns don't kill people, I do" bumper sticker. It's time to revisit the Year That Was, keeping in mind that the author of this article is so blitzed on cold medication that an entertaining afternoon was spent delightedly watching the screensaver.

Balance

Balance had a promising beginning as Wrath revved up, helped in no small part by a talented stun from Starfall via Celestial Focus that was utterly amazing in PvP. For once in our miserable little lives, we could actually keep something away from us. This had all the joy of playing a Frost mage without the bothersome rigmarole of actually leveling one and having to devote a portion of one's day to complaining about being a Frost mage. It was Very Fun, and as such, it was nerfed.

You learn to expect these things. Anything too enjoyable should be looked upon sorrowfully, because we know it will not last. Druids in World of Warcraft have an inherently better grasp of the fleeting nature of life and human happiness -- that transitory glimpse, the distant, flickering corner of one's brain possessed by the terrible comprehension that we are as leaves upon the wind. Sic transit gloria m-- f^&# me, is this all the cough syrup we have in the house?

Where was I? Like it matters. At any rate, Balance had a good start out of the gate, so much so that I was surprised at the end of 2008 to think it had the best prospects of any druid spec. Feral was getting yanked around like a kid in the middle of divorce proceedings, and Restos were rerolling paladins en masse after getting fed up with being two-shot by death knights, so perhaps we could all be forgiven for thinking that the world had gone a little crazy.

But then there was Eclipse. Nobody knew quite what to make of it, apart from the fact that it blew the old Burning Crusade rotation to bits -- or at least, it was supposed to. Cool animation? Check. Made the rotation more interesting? Check. A pain in the ass on movement-dependent fights, half of its proc not really worth using at the time, too much of Balance DPS ultimately dependent on something with a looming +haste cap issue? Check, check, check, and check.

No, Mr. Barkeeper, I was not signaling for mine. You leave that there.




Eclipse was undeniably a significant improvement to Balance DPS, but its status as a proc-within-a-proc made it difficult, if not impossible, to get the most out of it when you really needed, except by chance alone. Was it going to be up during Bloodlust/Heroism? Would it proc right before Thaddius switched your charges or you had to run to avoid a Flame Wall? There wasn't an answer to either of these questions, and frustrated Balance players everywhere watched a huge portion of their potential damage vanish down the gullet of something completely beyond their control. Wildly inconsistent performance (as Gray Matter noted at the time) is not something that raid leaders are terribly overfond of accommodating, and players had limited means of regaining lost damage in other ways.

So Eclipse -- the proc, the cooldown, and tier bonuses reliant on it -- has been tinkered with pretty much the length of the year, and Balance is still in an iffy spot. Any dispassionate observer would admit the issues affecting the spec are pretty much immune to a quick fix, more particularly with how +haste interacts with Wrath/Nature's Grace, and the looming +crit cap on Starfire in Tier 10 content. The easiest way to deal with both would be to nerf Balance talents to the point where gear doesn't add a set of increasingly problematic stats to the moonkin arsenal, but I think we can all agree that deliberately making things worse in order to let existing gear solve the problem is an uninspiring solution. Beyond that, the two primary nukes -- Wrath and Starfire -- don't really do different things, as Ghostcrawler himself observed. The former is faster but travels to the target; the latter is slower but hits immediately. They also have different colors. That's it. There is no ancillary benefit to the use of either beyond switching them up for different Eclipse procs now that that the individual cooldowns have been decoupled.

So what does 2010 hold in store for the laserchicken contingent? I wouldn't be surprised to see Balance mechanics get an overhaul in the run-up to Cataclysm, because as things stand now, we will always be among the first victims of stat inflation, and Eclipse -- while more "reliable" in the sense that you can better predict when it's likely to be triggered -- still isn't a controllable damage boost along the lines of Icy Veins or Metamorphosis.

I have grown dangerously coherent. There may have been actual analysis in this portion.

This will not stand.

Neither can I, but that's why I'm writing this from bed with a cold compress now.

Man forced to choose between his wife and his orc

The Scottish Sun reports that a Scottish man made the news for having to choose between his wife and his orc. 42-year old Robert Cushnie was the proud owner of a life-sized World of Warcraft Thrall statue, one of several that Vivendi commissioned from Studio Oxmox to promote Warcraft III (along with a Night Elf female statue). The telecommunications manager scored the 185cm. tall statue when a toy store in nearby Falkirk closed down six years ago.

Much to the dismay of geeks everywhere, Cushnie's wife Dee wasn't comfortable sharing her home with a green-skinned orc and threatened to move back to her Canadian homeland if her husband didn't ditch the Horde Warchief. His wife reportedly said that there was "no room for (the orc) in our life," and Cushnie prudently chose Dee, whom he married in February 2009, over the huge statue. "I just don't like it," Dee said, "I'm only 5ft 3in, so it towers over me, which is quite creepy."

The statue was adopted by a couple in Aberdeen, Michael Thomson, 61, and his wife, Patricia, 55, who report that their 16-year old granddaughter is thrilled with the acquisition. "We wanted him because he's so unusual," said Patricia. Robert and Dee will move to Canada later this month sans the orc. "I'll miss him," Cushnie said, "but I'm glad he's gone to a good home." As this little episode proves, not even the most badass orc can mess with marital bliss!

Prot Warrior nerf details

Protection spec warriors, did you enjoy being able to charge out of roots and snares to get back to the boss fast? Well, thanks to PvP, you won't be able to do that anymore. What else won't you be able to do? Well, if you've been stacking block value in PvE content, first off, I kind of don't get you. Seriously, except for very specific gimmicky fights, why would you stack block value? (I said value, not rating, and I also said gimmicky fights so don't bring up Heroic Anub) But if you have been... perhaps you have a block value set for totally destroying adds or something... then get ready for a Shield Slam nerf. They're 'testing that one internally' which, if you remember how horrible the Rage Normalization changes went in early BC, always works.

Honestly, neither of these are huge gamebreakers. I liked that Warbringer cleared roots and snares for me when I was tanking, and I barely even noticed it in PvP: it was like a free self-cast Hand of Freedom. As for nerfing Shield Slam, well, like I said I don't stack block value so a lower block value cap on the ability wouldn't really affect me. Irritate me? Yes, it will do that. But it isn't a game breaker either. Of course, since as the commenters mentioned yesterday prot PvP warriors don't stack shield block value at all (I know you guys don't read my posts, Blizzard, but if for some reason someone is, look at all that ArP. Look at all that lack of block value. It is ArP that drives the prot PvP damage machine. ArP, not block value. Just thought I'd mention that) then I fail to see any point to the change either.

So there we have it: Warbringer gets changed and Shield Slam might get changed which is like taking a club away from a guy who is shooting people.

Spider-Man 4 delayed, possibly impacting Warcraft movie

The latest buzz out of Hollywood is that the fourth installment of the Spider-Man movie franchise has hit a snag. Director Sam Raimi is apparently in the midst of some major creative differences with Sony Pictures executives over the script and the villain lineup. A little bit of drama in Hollywood is nothing new, of course, but in this case its become bad enough to delay the movie, with the May 6th, 2011 release date now in serious doubt.

But what does this have to do with WoW, you ask? As you may recall, Raimi has also been tapped by Blizzard to direct the upcoming Warcraft movie. While the Warcraft movie is still in the very early stages of production, to the point where we have almost no idea of the details beyond the fact that Sam Raimi is the director, the fact remains that you need a director to make a decent movie.

So now that Sam Raimi is tied up with script disputes in Spider-Man 4, what happens with the Warcraft movie? As you might imagine, rumors and speculation abound. Gamespot believes that this will simply push the Warcraft movie back a few more months, as current scuttlebutt suggests the Spider-Man movie will be pushed back to Summer 2011. Blizzplanet's Medievaldragon is a bit more hopeful, suggesting that Raimi will perhaps decide to work on Warcraft instead while Spider-Man 4's script is rewritten to solve the dispute.

Part of the problem with speculating too much on all of this is that we still know so little about the Warcraft movie itself. All we can really say for sure is that Sam Raimi will direct it and Legendary Pictures will produce it. We've heard only the vaguest rumors of a script, and certainly there's been only very basic rumors on casting news. In this vein, I actually think that speaks better for Gamespot's theory than Medievaldragon's. If the other pieces are not in place, Sam Raimi won't have anything to direct, after all. For all we know, they haven't even slated actual shooting to begin yet. Besides, Sony's probably not going to let Spider-Man sink so easily. Raimi's probably going to be tied up for a while.

Still, regardless of all that, you know I'm all for Raimi dropping the Spider-Man movie and heading into the Warcraft movie. Don't get me wrong, Spider-Man was a boyhood hero and all, but I'm more of a Lantern man these days, and I'll give up either for some good old fashioned Humans vs. Orcs.

Regardless of what happens, stay tuned here. The minute all this Warcraft movie buzz consolidates into something solid, you'll hear about it on WoW.com.

Rumor: Sam Raimi's next project is the Warcraft movie

According to Ain't It Cool News, Sam Raimi's next project will be the Warcraft movie. This follows on yesterday's announcement that Spider-Man 4 is canceled, and that Raimi is done with the Spider-Man franchise. The Spider-Man movie series is going to undergo a reboot (yes, already) with entirely new cast and crew, which means Raimi is free to work on other projects.

If AICN's sources are correct and Raimi is going to be working on the Warcraft movie next, this is great news for the movie. While it is probably still a few years away from release, the fact that he's focusing on it now is a good indication the project is moving forward in the right direction.

AICN points out that with the success of Avatar the time is ripe for creating immersive virtual worlds, and you'd be hard pressed to find a more immersive world than Warcraft. Although lets all hope that the Warcraft movie doesn't become a cheap rip off of Avatar -- but with Raimi at the helm it's likely in safe hands.

Upcoming Adjustments announced for Old Kingdom, Nexus, Culling of Stratholme

Zarhym popped into one of the many official forum topics complaining about the seemingly inordinate amount of times Old Kingdom pops on the Dungeon Finder to offer some welcome news for exhausted dungeon runners: Old Kingdom and Nexus alike will be receiving some adjustments meant to bring the dungeons in line with other Wrath heroics.

Old Kingdom will receive the most changes. Elder Nadox will spawn only one Ahn'Kahar Guardian and Jedoga Shadowseeker will ascend only once in their respective encounters. In addition, some static trash groups will be removed, while some roaming groups will have their paths altered. He stressed that these changes are not meant to make the dungeon easier, but rather to make it a slightly quicker run, more in line with other heroics. He also acknowledged that the dungeon finder made the daily quest associated with the dungeon somewhat complicated to obtain and turn in, and while the dev team would like to fix it, they still haven't found a satisfactory solution.

Later in the thread, he announced a similar change to Nexus, namely that Anomalus will use his Create Rift ability much less often. Finally, he revealed that a "quick start" option for the Culling of Stratholme is in the works, but will likely not be ready for the next minor patch due to the complicated scripting required.

All of these changes, I am sure, will cause great joy among the badge running crowd. I admit I never disliked the lore of the Culling of Stratholme instance, but after the first 10 times, you know, it loses some of the lustre. This also makes me wonder which dungeon is next. It seems like Halls of Stone is really the only dungeon left that still has a problem with people dropping group. I'm guessing we might see a reduction of the time to victory on the Tribunal of Ages event, and possibly a pruning of the trash before Krystallus and Maiden of Grief to give more incentive to grab them.

Regardless, there's no word on when these changes will be implemented, but all the same, they should be welcome. Stay tuned for any more news on this stealthily announced "minor patch" as we hear it.