Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Strange things afoot

So Blizzard has been talking about how the new dungeons will require more single target focusing instead of just a large AOE kill everything gogogo fest.  Which, if implemented, I was looking forward to.

However, it seems as if the Paladins are getting some additional AOEs, the blood boil of the Death Knight is being reworked and now this for warriors:  Thunderstruck - Your Thunder Clap leaves a crackling zone of energy on the ground for 5 sec, dealing damage every sec to enemies that cross it.

This is also in addition to this: Blood and Thunder - When you Thunder Clap a target affected by your Rend, you have a 100% chance to affect every target with Rend.

Which means pretty much the tank tool kit just got some nice new toys in holding AOE threat.

Well color me confused.  We're getting a bunch of AOE abilities for a new non-AOE style of tanking?  What's up Bliz? 

Don't get me wrong here, adding an additional two AOE effects will make tanking on the warrior easier; that's for sure.

I'm not so sure that's a good thing.  I'm enjoying the warrior play style with having to pay pretty close attention to make sure you don't get a runner.  Additionally, having a warrior tank made the dps focus a bit more too.  It is a little easier to pull threat off of them when they're tanking groups of mobs, so if they went crazy with the AOEs they should expect to get smacked in the face a bit (by the warrior as they lie dead after the pull has ended). 

I'm a bit worried this will continue to usher in the faceroll dpsers that never really learn character control, and everything must be the fault of someone else.  I've noticed this moreso on the PVE servers than PVP (more on that to come).

Maybe that's the point of the new aoe tools though.  It gives the tank enough threat to hold the group while the rest of the party members kill of the group slowly one by one.  That would certainly explain the monstrous amount of HP tanks will have.

We'll just have to wait and find out.

3 comments:

  1. So, you gotta watch out you you give the (Thunder)clap to!

    Oh, that was just too easy...

    That's right up there with me wondering whether Blizz is going to pay royalties to AC/DC for using Thunderstruck.

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  2. You know, I haven't paid too much attention to what changes are coming to Mages and Warlocks, so I have no idea if the focus on a single target at a time extends to them as well. If so, then yeah, combat will take a lot longer to progress.

    I typically don't even bother with some attacks on 5-mans such as Consecration due to the threat ramping up so much. Even Divine Storm I tend to hold back on unless the tank has a secure lock on the trash, and instead end up Judging and using Crusader Strike. Perhaps some of the changes are reflecting this reality that threat management dictates usage of fewer AOEs for Paladins. But at the same time, why give us more? For boss fights, maybe, but the utility of an AOE in a single boss fight is self defeating.

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  3. It would be cool if they would integrate both AoE and single target strategies into dungeons (maybe this is what they are trying to do!). I personally liked the days where you had to understand your abilities, and had to wield your astronomical powers with caution (think Starfall in ICC). Maybe they are giving more classes more pull-specific abilities... like one pack might be CC heavy, while the next can just be AoE'd down. I think that spice up rotations, preventing some of the monatony of playing.

    And I completely agree with you about some of the contradictory information being released from developers. I have read a number of articles and blog posts that are confused about different aspects of the expansion. Blizzard has been much more open about the contents of this expansion than other releases (imo), perhaps exposing some of the conflict that goes in to creating these games. I'm sure there are a bunch of developers all with their own good ideas, and at some point near release, they need to go through and edit changes to create a cohesive final product (hopefully!).

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