Unbearably HoT

New content arrives. You, dutiful raider that you are, want to find out as much information as you can. Unless you’re particularly averse to spoilers and have somehow managed to shield yourself from the barrage of datamined information out there, information is a beautiful thing. Bringing early knowledge to your raid group allows you to troubleshoot your composition, reduce the number of easily avoidable errors, and make the best use of your time. So why are people flipping their metaphorical shit about the dungeon journal?

If you haven’t heard, the dungeon journal is a new UI feature that Blizzard plans to release in patch 4.2. According to Community Manager Kaivax, the journal will provide instantaneous information about a variety of dungeons: high-quality loot dropped from trash or bosses, boss locations, and a description of bosses’ (and associated adds’) abilities. Kaivax is very careful to mention that although ability descriptions will be “verbose and complete,” they (Blizzard) “will not be giving any strategy tips in the Dungeon Journal.” Great! Instead of alt-tabbing and opening up a third-party site such Wowhead or WoWWiki, all you need to do is press M, select the appropriate dungeon from your map interface, and navigate to the boss you’re interested in learning about.

I initially viewed the addition of the Dungeon Journal feature as an acknowledgment of player expectations. Some third-party mods were (and are) so commonly used that players were more or less expected to have them: Outfitter, Omen, oRA, SCT, Deadly Boss Mods, PowerAuras, QuestHelper[i], and many more that I’m sure I’m forgetting. Over time, Blizzard decided to incorporate elements of these mods as standard game components. Now, as players are expected to scour the depths of the Internet for (at the very least) basic dungeon information, Blizzard has decided to bring that information straight to us. I thought hey, if you’re interested in something beyond the game that provides you with cool videos, fancy diagrams, and maybe even some advanced calculus, you always have the option of searching for it; the Dungeon Journal can easily be ignored.

Still, some raiders seemed to believe that the Dungeon Journal would eliminate the intrigue and challenge of tackling a new dungeon for those who do use it. It seemed that somehow, the very inclusion of the Dungeon Journal would rocket every casual guild to the top of the progression chart. Please, I thought. It’s not a goddamn miracle. By the time any new content hits the live servers, dedicated progression guilds have already played through most of it on the Public Test Realm (PTR), rudimentary how-to videos are making the rounds on TankSpot, and MMO-Champion has datamined the loot tables, boss abilities, and audio files. Soon after, enterprising raid leaders are posting modified strategies in their guild forums, and, if your head’s still buried in the sand, one of your guildies will, in all likelihood, explain things to you before you make a fool of yourself.

So what’s the deal? Well kids, Blizzard lies.[ii] Remember Kaivax’s quote about not providing any strategy tips? The Dungeon Journal does, in fact, provide brief strategy tips about both normal and heroic encounters as soon as the content releases. Phailia, from Inner Sanctum, provides a few examples on the EU forums.

Take a look at the underlined sections. The Spark of Rhyolith section seems reasonably straight forward at first: “Sparks of Rhyolith deal 8,671 Fire damage to all players within 12 yards.” Then, Blizzard makes a point of adding, “Sparks should be pulled away from the raid as long as possible, then quickly destroyed.” Ignoring the poor sentence structure, that last bit goes beyond a basic description of the boss abilities and further provides strategy advice. The description for Magma Geyser (for the Ragnaros encounter) is similar. Instead of simply including the spell description (which I think is fully described by the second, non-underlined sentence), Blizzard specifically tells players how the Magma Geyser mechanic works.

Though I’m not certain I like that the Dungeon Journal will provide strategic content information straight from source, I still can’t imagine that it will meaningfully alter the raiding community—progression guilds will simply destroy raid content faster. I would, however, suggest the removal of strategic advice from the heroic boss descriptions; even if the “tips” for normal dungeons remain, there will still be an element of discovery, trial, and error for the more difficult content. (For a little while, anyway.) Just remember: you can force a veritable dissertation upon your raid group, but some moron will always manage to stand in the fire.[iii]

When we last met, I had forsaken my subscription and had moved on to other things. Of course, I don’t really remember what those particular things were, but the point is that life suddenly developed a new busyness. Seemingly overnight, I metamorphosed into the kind of person whose crankiness knew no bounds if she didn’t get to sleep sometime before midnight. How lame!  Thus for a time, I resigned myself to the drone of corporate life punctuated by brief sprees of gaming and occasional weekend badassery:

• playing D&D and painting miniatures;
• flirting with AION;
• attending PAX East and Prime;
• trashing a novel I’d been working on;
• boating;
• taking copy editing classes;
• purchasing large quantities of Mackinac Island fudge;
• adopting another cat; and, most recently,
• building a house.

But let’s be real—you don’t spend an inordinate amount of time playing a game, involving yourself in that community, and then writing about it without eventually being sucked back in. At some point I caved and spent the last gasps of Wrath raiding on Mal’ganis, waiting for Cataclysm. As tradition in our apartment dictates, Mortality and I immediately power-leveled to eighty-five when the expansion released. Even after taking a cramped nap on the loveseat, the entire leveling process took less than eighteen hours. Eighteen hours! Chagrined, my husband and I flopped around Orgrimmar for a while, brought our professions to max, tried to get into heroic dungeon groups as two melee DPS[i], and then started the endless process of completing daily quests for reputation gains. Perhaps some of you are familiar with this cycle.

But though Blizzard’s pre-60 leveling experience in Cataclysm drastically improved, the end game suddenly alienated me: I was stymied by familiar content, uninterested in raiding, and wholeheartedly dismayed by the seeming return of melee as a liability. I was completely un-enamored with both the expansion and—for the first time—my class. Faced with the prospect of turning into the type of casual, cranky player I’d always despised, I simply unsubscribed. Again.[ii] I washed my electronic hands of the game, cleaned out my RSS feed, scornfully derided the sad state of feral druids, and sneered at the resurrection of Zul’Gurub and Zul’Aman[iii]—two dungeons I had been more than happy to leave behind.

What then? I started playing Rift. It’s a fantastic game with a development team quick to respond to feedback generated by the player base, and while it’s certainly not without its flaws, the game has incorporated and improved upon some of the most successful elements from other MMOs. The community, however, needs time to grow. As Mortality tried and discarded Rift and my fellow gamer-friends dispersed to different shards, my journeys in Telara became largely solitary ones. One afternoon, while hunched over my keyboard obliterating Guardians,[iv] Mortality casually sidled up to my chair. “I’m going to reactivate my WoW subscription,” he said benignly.

Kids, this is a trap. When a super-hot dude drops the “Hey I’m going to play—” line on you, he casts some voodoo nerd spell and somehow you’ve entered your credit card information and fished out your authenticator before you even register what happened. “Oh god,” you say, “why am I in Stormwind again?”

Stormwind indeed. Mortality and I have reconnected with some old players and real-life friends from (the now defunct) Dread Lobster. This change of play locates us back on Doomhammer, Alliance-side, effectively stranding us from our mains. My old roster boasts an array of characters stuck at level seventy—my ancient warrior, a neglected death knight, a sad looking frost mage—and a holy paladin that miraculously made it past eighty. In the interests of new beginnings[v] I’m leveling another druid.[vi] In the meantime, I’m healing heroics on my paladin.[vii]

Although it will take a little while to grind my way back up to eighty-five (I’m halfway there) and gather the necessary druidly accoutrements, I’m back. Expect more content to follow.

Although this shouldn’t really come as a shock to anyone who’s noticed that there hasn’t been an update here in months, Unbearably HoT is closed for business – for now. Back in October when I initially stopped posting, I had canceled my WoW subscription. I figured hey, it’s been 3.5 years, I somehow landed a husband via raiding, my office workload tripled, I didn’t have the energy to raid in the capacity I like to, and I ostensibly had no regrets moving on.

Except that really, I did. When you’re involved in not only a game, but a community, for that long, it’s very difficult to walk away from. I truly didn’t expect the e-mails I received asking where I’d been, if I’d be updating my gear list, or when I’d start posting again. For that, thank-you. But ask any blogger out there, especially Kalon, who has also recently stepped off the feral stage, and they’ll happily explain that you generally can’t crank out a post in an hour and expect it to be any good. My process normally went a little like this:

1. Come up with an idea and sit on it for a week.
2. Finally write a few paragraphs to see whether or not anything interesting or helpful can come of it. (I really cannot begin to express how many things I’ve started writing about and eventually shelved, whether because my writing was terrible or because someone else posted about something similar; my flash drive is full of attempts such as these.)
3. Research. Sometimes it’s as simple as digging through blue posts and the latest WoW news. Sometimes, it means taking out a calculator. For what it’s worth, I am absolutely terrible at even simple math, and any post that included such numbers received triple proofing.
4. Proof.
5. Fret over previous step, and send to someone else to read over (generally my husband or Phaelia).
6. Create images, if the post needs any. This involves some quality time with the usually broken model viewer and Photoshop.
7. Upload images, format post.
8. Publish.

And, of course, this all takes time. With the economy such as it is, many of us are working twice as hard for the same amount of money. I’ve also been working on my own writing, in hopes of a future publication. I cannot currently justify expending the effort that you, my audience, deserves on any sort of a regular schedule. Will that change in the future when things slow down? More than likely! In the meantime, thanks for all the support, and don’t let your fellow raiders convince you to use your offspec for any Restoration purposes.

If you have any questions or comments about this whole feral business (or hey, just me!), you can still shoot me an e-mail, track me down in game, or follow me on Twitter.

If you’ve been reading this site with any frequency, you probably know that I love to collect and examine the benefits of idols. Having an arsenal of these easy-to-acquire pieces allows the intrepid feral a measure of versatility that doesn’t require re-gemming or building a second armor set—although obviously, some are more useful than others. Previously, I provided the following table as a quick-and-dirty guide for what you should pick up:

Idol of Worship < ArP 230 < Idol of the Ravenous Beast
Idol of the Corruptor ← Manglebot? → Idol of the Ravenous Beast
Idol of the Ravenous Beast ←ArP > 230 and 25 EoT → Idol of Mutilation
See Above ← Bear → Idol of the Corruptor

Currently, I’d argue that the Idol of Mutilation is the premier go-to choice for DPSing ferals everywhere. The 200 AGI proc effect has a near 100 percent uptime and remains just as useful for Manglebots as it does ArP badasses. Yesterday, however, MMO-Champion spotlighted an as yet unnamed Druid T10 Feral idol:

The periodic damage from your Lacerate and Rake abilities grants 44 Agility for 15 sec. Stacks up to 5 times.

Now wait a second! Rake? As you might be aware, Rake is getting a little more attention in 3.3; namely, the T10 four-piece set bonus gives the Rake DoT effect a chance to crit (something that, I might add, was initially part of the Primal Gore talent and was subsequently removed as it proved to be overpowered). We still do not, however, have any way to extend the duration of the nine second DoT. What does this mean for the mystery idol?

With incredibly basic math, you can ascertain that five-stacks of the new idol’s effect will provide 220 AGI. While that looks better than the Idol of Mutilation’s 200 AGI, we need to consider the following:

• The Rake DoT lasts for nine seconds after application and ticks every three seconds. This means that you can receive three stacks of the idol effect from one application of Rake (132 AGI).
• If you’re already keeping a close watch on your debuffs, you’ll probably make sure that Rake never falls off the target. If so, you should easily be able to obtain the five stacks (220 AGI) and receive the 15 second buff.
• If you can keep the proc effect at five stacks without having to start over after every 15 seconds (i.e. ensure that Rake never falls off the target), it’s incredibly useful. If, however, you need to re-stack to five every time, you might as well keep the Idol of Mutilation and receive a reliable 200 AGI with your Shreds or Mangles.
• We also don’t know what the internal cooldown is on this particular idol and what sort of uptime we can expect. If it’s anything like the Idol of Mutilation (i.e. up almost all the time), it’s potentially 110% more useful.

For cats, then, the new idol is theoretically “better,” as long as we’re prioritizing Rake and the above conditions turn out to be favorable. If, however, you’re involved in a fight that requires a lot of movement or target switching, the Idol of Mutilation will likely end up being a more favorable option as it does not require obtaining five-stacks. What about bears? Remember that in my last discussion, we concluded the following:

It’s essentially a direct upgrade. Again, we will need to make sure to reevaluate this once we have more information, but for now, I’d keep this piece of shiny in your sights.

In a most fortuitous coincidence, Blizzard is releasing Patch 3.2.2 today just as AION boasts its first opening day. I’ll be the first to admit that this is happening earlier than I anticipated; naively, I assumed that because the supposed WoW anniversary is in November, we’d be seeing an Onyxia release about then. If previous PTR patch notes can be trusted, we can be squaring off with the Brood Mother this evening! But let’s be real—what can we ferals expect?

• The amount of ArP gained per point has been reduced by 12%. Before you all explode and lament the skyrocketing prices of Delicate Cardinal Rubies, please take a look at the previous post: (Armor) Penetration: how hard will it be in 3.2.2? Although stacking ArP becomes a much more expensive endeavor, it’s entirely possible to pull off ridiculous DPS by reaching toward the hard-cap.
• Predatory Strikes: This talent now also causes the Druid’s finishing moves to provide a 7/13/20% chance per combo point to make the next Nature spell with a cast time below 10 seconds instant cast. Potentially super cool for PVP, and situationally useful for PVE. For slightly more discussion, check out my post: Can’t wait until November? Hot 3.2.2 action here!
• Infected Wounds: the debuff generated by this talent no longer stacks and instead causes the full effect with a single application. Again, we’re seeing more PVP utility here and limited PVE utility. This change isn’t actually increasing the effect of Infected Wounds, but rather gives you the full effect of two stacks in one application, bringing this talent more in line with the one-hit punch of Thunderclap.
• Onyxia. Am I the only one who was sick to death of her in vanilla? Maybe not, but Kalon points out one good reason to check her out again.

I am currently flirting with AION, mostly because I can get away with being a retard in game right now, but I don’t really foresee it replacing WoW. If you’re interested, you can look me up as Sibilance (Asmodian side) on the Zikel server. Here, have a token Ascension screenshot:

That’s all for now. Are you looking forward to 3.2.2.?