The Egotistical Priest
An irreverent and opinionated discussion of the many classes
in the World of Warcraft gaming universe.
What Ego’s Most Excited About in Wrath
by Vonya
There are a million things to be excited about with regards to the Wrath of the Lich King.
Hunters, I think everyone will agree, must have been very very good this year. Santa’s giving them almost everything on their christmas list.
Most of the other classes are getting pretty nice buffs, and there are a few classes/specs that feel they’re getting hit with a great big nerf bat.
As for me? What I’m most excited about isn’t the hairstyles. It’s not the pending dragon mounts that don’t look like sad sharks. It’s not the hunter changes (although you can bet your sweet bippy my hunter is foaming the mouth about those). It’s not the priest changes, it’s not the changes to caster stats, or even the joy of new areas to explore and new instances to crush beneath my heals (see what I did there?).
Oh no, my friends. I am MOST excited about the surge in 10-man raiding for end-game. I know from previous comments that many of you feel exactly the same way. How many of us actually saw the old 40 man content? How many of us got to see the endgame 25 man content?
How many of us spent too much time trying desperately to gather together 20+ people for a raid? Hoping, praying that we could get key players with enough brain cells to rub together to get these bosses down? The days of “bodies” needed to raid are long gone, and now we actually need “players”.
Is it hard to find 25 competent players? No. Is it hard to find 25 competent players that aren’t already spread out through the many, many raiding guilds on every server? Oh yes.
When every fight is a dance – move here, don’t stand in the fire, when it gets to phase three, make sure you change your strategy to this, STOP DPS immediately at X point or we all wipe…
…a single Leroy Jenkins could ruin a raid. Over, and over, and over again.
Getting together 10 like-minded people is less difficult. Still not easy, but certainly more doable than 25. The key there is “like-minded”. People with similar goals and ideals when it comes to raiding. Where they stand on the Hardcore-o-meter, for example.
Karazhan’s popularity was absolutely unprecedented. For the first time, raiding content (and gear) was available to a wide range of guilds, not just larger guilds. Small groups of friends could take a shot at the same content as the “big dogs”. Could see things they never thought they’d see, experience things they never thought they’d be able to experience.
Zul’Aman was, I think, a test to see if Karazhan was a fluke. The problem with ZA, in my opinion, was that you really couldn’t waltz into the instance with Kara gear and pirouette your way through the encounters. With better badge gear and more badge drops from Karazhan, that soon equalized, however.
My favorite thing about ZA is that it’s a skill check. Eagle boss is unforgiving. Every fight tests your raiders in some way. Can they listen? Can the tanks coordinate aggro? Can the dpsers handle shifting targets and always being aware of their location? Can the healers handle scattered, unpredictable AOE damage? And, test of all tests, can you do it all in a given time period to get a totally frivolous status symbol? (and the chest loot, sure, but we all know it was all about the bear)
I am so excited about the trend toward making raiding content available to more players.
It is because of this excitement that I view many of the class nerfs and buffs and the much-maligned homogenization of the classes with a sorrowful but understanding eye.
When raids have only ten players, the developers have to try and create fun, interesting, and challenging encounters for almost any raid makeup. A raid encounter that is made trivial for any team that brings a warlock is not a well-balanced encounter. If a team bringing a shadow priest is capable of remaining at full mana while an equally skilled team with only a ret paladin’s Judgment of Wisdom for mana regen is floundering – what do you do? As a developer, what do you do?
You have to make some concessions, when the raiding encounters go from 25 unique classes (and a much broader class makeup possibility) to only having 10 slots – at least two healers and two tanks, so that leaves only 6 dps slots. What abilities can they bring, and how do you keep an unfortunate raid makeup from turning a difficult encounter into a nearly impossible one?
How many of you have done the PVP Delrissa fight in Magister’s Terrace? It sucks, it’s horrible, it’s incredibly chaotic, it’s nearly impossible. Oh, but bring a mage or two, or even a single warlock, and all the sudden it’s a cake walk.
Given the magnitude of the task set before the class designers and developers, I feel they’ve done a good job of trying to balance without totally removing the originality of the various classes. Note I said ‘good’, not ‘great’. Could they have done some things differently? Absolutely. Better? Almost certainly.
But I am excited about Wrath, incredibly so. I’m looking forward to every new experience, and I hope that, in the end, the hard work to get 10 man raids fair and viable reaps incredible rewards for both Blizzard and the player base.
October 31st, 2008
Indeed. I think the biggest thing is schedules. Sure your not-a-hardcore-raiding guild has the _right_ people for a 25 man raid, but good luck finding a raid time that captures all of them.
Endgame for all. The rub is, all those progression 10 man raids will mean a lot more competent raiders overall, and in turn forming up 25-man raids will be easier than ever after a time.
October 31st, 2008
Can’t wait! I like my hair as it is (for now), but the zoomfast leveling for outland and then the prospect of blowing up more dwarves in Northrend is definitely going to be fun.
Pew pew healing and dps all in one svelte belf!
October 31st, 2008
I am so very excited about 10 man raids! Even when we do manage to pull together a 25 man raid without pugging half of it…I’d still prefer to be in a 10 man. I just like them better.
October 31st, 2008
As long as raids aren’t like TBC, I’ll be happy. TBC made raids exclusive and not fun. Like it or not, the original 40 man raids gave you two very big things: They were in inclusive, meaning they were big enough to hold a bunch of people and didn’t require you to exclude x-people just because they weren’t the right spec/class. The second, and even better thing the 40’s had over the TBC stuff is that if you made a mistake, there was a chance of recovery. In TBC raiding, almost anytime anyone mis-stepped at all, you were done. Add in the bs random Blizzard “IWIN” buttons (even if you did *everything* right) coughcrushingcoughplustohitcough, add it just made raiding zero fun after a while. Oh yeah, lets not forget about the ridiculous keying rigamarole you had to do… yeah…cuz THAT was fun. IMO the only thing TBC had over the original content were that the concepts of the encounters were much better. There were lots of things going on, instead of the simple tank and spank stuff in a lot of the pre-TBC… but lets not forget, the new encounters are a lot like the encounters you found in Naxx and AQ, soo……
Not to mention that the original Naxx is still the best raiding instance in WoW
There is a reason it makes a guest appearance in WotLK.
October 31st, 2008
Hey Ego! It’s been way too long since I’ve stopped by (or, you may think “not NEARLY long enough”–tough!), but I was catching up today and read your last half-dozen posts.
And while I’m pretty jazzed about the 10-man raids in Wrath, I’m even MORE excited about the fact you’ll be taking us along for YOUR ride. On the list of “awesome blogs”, this one is absolutely top-shelf!
Much love,
Kes
October 31st, 2008
@Vonya – I think your volume of words speaks volumes
Im absolutely ecstatic about the new content and that it’s available to both 10 and 25 man raids. The two guilds Im in both scrape together 10 people for ZA or Kara and actually can make a run at both. One more so than the other but thats rapidly catching up as we power through ZA or dig up gear from the scourge invasion. On a good night we have enough people to get our 25 man group together, which should mean there will be nights we have 2 teams of 10 going or 1 team of 25.
Ultimately though I most excited about tooling around Northend with my druid, my 1st toon. I got to 70 as feral then switched to resto to support. Now Ill go from 70-80 as a boomkin.
October 31st, 2008
Despite the fact that I’m in an amazing guild that’s going to be doing WotLK raiding as a 25-man group, I’m really happy about the switch to having all raid instances available as 10 man and 25 mans. I detest the elitism that 25 man instances caused, and I’m really glad that the 10 man raids will allow a bigger portion of the population to see more content. I’m only now getting to see the vanilla WoW instances at 70 since my guild is doing them for the achievements, and wish I could have seen them when I was the appropriate level. So I like the fact that more people are going to be able to see the content in LK.
October 31st, 2008
Hey Vonya! As always, fine job. I was a pre-BC raider, killing everything from Lucifron to Naxx’s Spider Wing on my hunter. I’m with Hildi to some extent, as it was nice to be able to show up to a raid whether or not you’re on your A-game. The fights now have become much more complex, and require a new level of understanding in order to get through. I remember a few runs that I _know_ I was the reason that things went awry.
I enjoy being able to say “remember the days when….” with my friends, but I’m really excited about all the 10-man content. I play with a group of competent real-life and in-game friends that spent a large amount of time trying to find enough to push through 25-mans. The realization that we quickly came across is that most of the competent raiders are already in a guild, and were frustrated with the players we did find. We can now relax, knowing that we will be able to run raid content as a small group of players that we _know_ are competent.
October 31st, 2008
[...] have to agree with The Egotistical Priest’s What Ego’s Most Excited About in Wrath. 10 player raids for all content really appeals to me. I don’t like 25 player raids as [...]