July
1
2010
My name is Cassieo, and I’ll be your tank today.
First off, I’d like to point out that this is not a typical WotLK raid. It’s design goals are very much in the tune of what we’re going to be seeing in Cataclysm. The biggest change is that you really need to plan out your pulls and use strategic positioning and crowd control to succeed. Also, you won’t have your faction leader’s 25%+ buff to everything. All of a sudden you’ll see lower health pools, lower healing, lower everything. Be very aware of this change and advance with caution the first few times in here. There are still a lot of “don’t stand in the fire” and “move away, and now back” sort of mechanics, but you can’t just faceroll through the trash any longer.
June
30
2010
I realize that I promised this article 2 weeks ago, and it has taken a while to get it out. The good news is that what would have started out as an angry ranting bitch-fest has tempered into a solid frustration with at least a bit of insight into the “why” of Blizzard’s decisions regarding the new guild system.
Blizzard had originally announced a talented guild system wherein guilds could choose how to form and grow their guilds. This would help establish a guild identity, and give a few nice perks along the way. This was one of the more exciting features to roll in with the new expansion pack, and they really let us down by removing it later.
Though my knee-jerk reaction is to get really cheesed that we were promised something and then never got it (Dance Studio anyone?), in the end most of the design goals are still there, but with a less exciting implementation.
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June
14
2010
BlizzCon 2009 Concept for Path of the Titans
I’m sure by now everyone has heard the news about some highly anticipated Cataclysm features from worldofraids.com. I for one, am very disappointed.
The removal of Path of the Titans was quite unfortunate. Now… I can understand if it came down to “+% healing and +% damage” were too boring and they couldn’t come up with more interesting cross class bonuses from following different Titans. Afterall, <sarcasm> Blizzard Entertainment is known for producing boring games with completely obvious mechanics, rotations, and story. </sarcasm>
Really Blizz… try harder. Let me take a quick crack at it, shall I?
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May
29
2010
So you want to get hit in the face? Getting the stuffing knocked out of you repeatedly can win you fame, fortune and friends. However, the transition from waving your hands around to fill health bars or stabbing something until it stops moving can be a little awkward. My tips are designed to ease the potentially jarring transition:
May
21
2010
Having tanked many a raid, both guild run and PUG, I’ve had each type of healer assigned to keep my little green bar full. Each one is very different in the way it feels to be healed by them. It’s sometimes helpful to know how their mechanics work so that you can tell when they’re in trouble and you should use a defensive cooldown. For some fights it’s more obvious such as Festergut at three stacks of Inhale, or Saurfang when he’s getting close to a full stack of 100 Blood Power, but sometimes a string of unavoided attacks means the healer might fall behind, and that’s when you want to blow a cooldown.
But that’s easy! I have an alert when my HP falls low. I just hit it then.
True, you could do it then. But maybe it’s a temporary dip. Depending on the type of healer keeping you alive this could happen several times during the fight. How do you know that NOW is the right time to use the cooldown? To answer that we’ll start looking at each healer in depth.