A Few Musings on Cataclysm

I've been watching the blogs the past couple of weeks, and several thoughts have occurred to me about Cataclysm.

A lot of speculation --and the underlying assumption-- is that Deathwing will be the killable end boss in Cataclysm.  End boss?  Likely.  Killable?  I'm not so sure.

In Wrath, we got the chance to destroy one of the Dragon Aspects, Malygos.  He wasn't even the end boss in the expansion, just the end of one of the story chains in Wrath.  From this, we can go in two directions:  either Deathwing is more powerful than Malygos ever was, or Malygos isn't truly dead.  (A third possibility is that Malygos got nerfed by Blizz in a patch release and we caught him on a good day, but you never know.)

If Deathwing is truly more powerful than Malygos --and by extension, the other Dragon Aspects-- then there's very little stopping him from killing Ysera and Alexstrasza.  Also, if he is truly powerful enough to break the world, perhaps the best we can hope for is to beat him back and shut him out of Azeroth once more. 

Now, if Deathwing is equivalent in power to Malygos, and his retreat from the other (pissed off) Dragon Aspects in the Second War implies as much, then the downing of Malygos (even with the Life Binder's aid) might not have been the end of him.  It won't be the first time that someone once thought dead makes a reappearance in a Fantasy environment.  ("What, Sauron is back again?  Just how many lives does this guy have, anyway?")

Another possibility is that Deathwing isn't the true last end boss in Cataclysm, but someone --or something-- else.  Possibilities abound:  another Old God or two, Azshara, Elemental Lords, or maybe even Sargeras.

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I keep bringing this up, because I think it's going to be a very important theme for the Horde in Cataclysm:  the Cataclysm itself won't do as much to the Horde as the fight with the Alliance will.

From what I've seen so far, the Horde region that is hit the hardest will be The Barrens.  Sure, Cataclysm splits the region in half, but the greatest impact is on the Alliance's push into Southern Barrens and the hasty construction of barriers at the entrance to Mulgore.  Shenanigans with the Grimtotems will impact the Horde/Alliance war and will change the face of the Horde forever.  Ashenvale is going to change significantly as well, given all of those Horde victories in Warsong Gulch.  And that's not counting the Forsaken turning their attention to the Greymane Wall.

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Speaking of Forsaken, whom do they turn their ire to?  Arthas is dead, and the Scourge will be (theoretically) more contained than before.  (Gee, I have no idea why...  The Lich King is dead, isn't he?  At least that's what the official stories say....)  So, who gets the brunt of the Undead's vengeance?  Or, will this lack of a major enemy be a major theme in the Forsaken story?

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Although technically they are part of Outland, what about the Draenei and Blood Elf starting areas?  Will there be changes in Eversong and the Ghostlands given the current state of the Scourge lore?  How will the Draenei start off in an "unbroken" world that doesn't acknowledge that they were around for the Cataclysm?

Cinematics for the Alliance

When I first watched the WoW Cataclysm cinematic, my first thought was "Okay, that's technically well done."  My next thought was "Outside of the brief glimpse of Freewind Post and Grom'gol, I'd say that the Horde comes out of this better than the Alliance does."



The last thing I thought of probably dates me, but did anyone else notice that when Deathwing said "Pain! Agony!" he sounded remarkably like Bugs Bunny?

New Favorite thing to do (while bored)

Step 1 - Get shoe shine
Step 2 - go stand on statue out side of south bank and kill squirrel
Step 3 - Stand over squirrel's dead body
Step 4 - Watch how many people try to stop and loot the squirrel

OMG Warrior tanking...

... is pretty much the same as it was, with the addition of a few new abilities in the mix like victory rush and rend. 

Like Q in the post below, I also got DTK as first dungeon I did.  The first pull was a little shaky getting the mobs on me because I had some trouble generating rage right off the bat, but a quick shout fixed that.  The second pull was a little hairy as well because the DPS in the group got all antsy in their pantys and starting dpsing stuff before I could even get a thunderclap + shockwave off.  After that though, it was back to normal speed and we were done in there with no wipes or deaths in about 15 minutes.  There was, however, one noticible difference - I did the most damage done.  Muaahahahaha!  Watching vengeance scale is amazingly fun.  My attack power just goes up and up and up and up...

I'm definately noticing how aggro is going to be a little shaky.  I look forward to the cries of the dead dps.  They haven't quite learned how to assist the tank - but the current dungeons and design don't FORCE them too.... yet.

So much to learn and wrap my head around with all the changes.... so many new glyphs and a few new skills.  The new all plate armor bonus is sweet, as well as the mastery bonuses.  I'm up to 50k unbuffed HP, which makes me wonder if I should think about swapping out my one stam trinket for armor or avoidance.

I also noticed that dwaves get a +archaelogy bonus.  Which is OK, I guess.  It's still not enough to make me not want to race change to a worgen as soon as I can.  I mean, come on... a warrior with charge, intercept, intervene, heroic leap, AND a racial sprint - as well as a resto shaman arena partner who can now cleanse mage polymorphs and ice novas!?  Mmmmmmm.....  dead mages.

All in all, wonderful changes and it's fun to learn your class again.  And to all of the nay sayers out there... shut it.  We don't have the right gear (+mastery points) yet to make your spec shine.  It's all new and different and you don't like it.  I get it.  But shut up and give it a go and see if you like it.

Oh, and the new downloader is rather spiffy!  I loaded up while it was still downloading with out much issue and off I went.

Oh, and one last thing... I purchased my 310% flying speed last night which lets me give up on Yogg +1.

And there's finally someting NEW in the game again!

 *cue up Choir*

Getting to Know You All Over Again

Well, I got Quintalan set up talentwise, reestablished my glyphs, checked my gear, and tried out Drak'Tharon with three other guildies.  In a taste of lowbie runs, there were three Pallys --one of which was the guy not from our guild as the healer-- and two as Ret.  We also had a Druid as tank, and a Lock rounding out the DPS.

What did we learn?  Oh, joy.

We had an incredibly slow run through Drak, all of us critiquing our stuff.

"XXX Druid ability has a CD now.  Do not like."

"WTH happened to Art of War?"

"Flash of Light and Holy Light flip-flopped.  Have to rework our buttons."

"I feel completely naked; I have no idea how I'm doing."

"Oh oh.  This tanking ability is broken."

"I'm just seeing 300, 400, 500, then 9000 damage at a time.  This just feels wrong."

Nobody died, which was a bonus, but it wasn't, well, thrilling.  Holy Power is definitely the key to making some decent damage, but it's very clumsy right now.  The cooldowns are s-l-o-w, and I felt like I was a fresh 80 doing miniscule damage.  Art of War seems to take forever to proc now, and when it finally does it always seems to be on the last hit of a mob.  Big whoop.


I know what I'm going to be doing the next couple of days:  reading.

Hmmmm.... About that patch

Note to self:  The patch is big.

My background downloader had taken care of the 4+ GB over the past few weeks, but I was surprised that after that installation, another window started up for first a 50MB and then another 1.4 GB download.  I've no idea if there's a fourth download behind this one, but hold onto your hats.

EtA:  No, there wasn't another gig lurking behind that fifth one, so we're good to go.  The "you can play now" sound pinged halfway through the last 1.4 GB download, but since the servers were down, it was a moot point.

All in all, lots of "Deathwing this" and "Deathwing that" files were unpacked along with the plethora of assorted other data.

Hot, hot...muy caliente

Mages are going through some pretty significant changes, though some argue rotations aren't that much different. I say, "Ha!"

Although Fire mages, which is proving to be by far the most exciting tree in the class in Cataclysm, has a much more dynamtic approach to fighting than it has before. With such spells as Improved Scourch and Improved Flamestrike, mages will be burning everything in sight while on the move. Not many classes can boast cast-as-you-go flexibility, but Fire Mages not only get a full array of spells that allow movement, it does insane AoE DPS. Proof below:

Cataclysm Beta - Fire AoE Madness + Flame Orb!



I've read that the new Fire Orb isn't living up to expectations, but the other changes have demonstrated amazing results (see Elitist Jerk's spoiler at the bottom of the first post here for Spell Coefficients). However, there are issues to take into consideration especially when running with a group:

1) CC involved pulls break when AoEs are used.
2) Hot streak doesn't proc as often as it does now.
3) Mana efficiency is a major issue currently in the patch (which isn't expected to change much when it goes live).
4) Fire has too much emphasis on DoTs and AoE.

The debate is pretty hot and heavy at Elitist Jerks, bringing up burning issues such as boss encounters in raids where single target DPS is lacking in Fire, the lack of Fire Streak procs, and issues with Combustion. Arcane may prove to be the winner for single target, but given its complex rotation we could see more go Frost on the duel spec. Indeed, Frost is taking an interesting turn boasting higher coefficients than fire on EJ's number-crunching charts. So it might be one of those things where a mage goes back and forth, which isn't much different now for heroic modes in ICC, but something to consider based on playstyle, group composition and boss strategies.

I can tell you this, I'll be at the dummies for a while to determine the best build and rotation until I determine the best of both to maximize my DPS. I'm certainly no min-maxer, but like any other girl I'm all about whats muy caliente.