Ulduar

I read the forums fairly often, as well as several sites and blogs and I keep seeing articles questioning if Ulduar is hard enough. Obviously, this question is very subjective and depends on the type of player one is and the type of guild that player is in.

However, to answer the question of its difficulty level, I have to emphatically say that it is definitely hard enough.

Now don’t get me wrong, when I discuss difficulty I am only referring to hard mode. Blizzard has stated that they want everyone to see the content so it seems they made normal mode to allow anyone who can step out of fire to beat the instance and created hard modes for people who play this game for the challenge of beating hard bosses.

The days of asking if someone killed a boss to gauge their effectiveness as a raider would appear over, now the question is, did the player kill them on hard mode. Very similar, to Did you kill Sarth 3d (Because that is his new name now).

These articles keep mentioning these guilds that have beat hard modes. SO WHAT? A few guilds beating hard mode doesn’t prove anything about hard mode, just means that those guilds are very good at what they do. Statistically they are what are called outliers. Look at guildox.com, if you click on a specific hard mode then click world, it tells you the percentage of guilds that have gotten the achievement.

Hard Mode
1) Leviathan- 5 Guilds----------- .01%
2) Deconstructor- 0 Guilds------ 0%
3) Assembly of Iron- 1 Guild--- 0%
4) Mimiron- 0 Guilds------------ 0%
5) Freya- 3 Guilds---------------- 0%
6) Thorim- 19Guilds------------- .04%
7) Hodir- 2 Guilds---------------- 0%
8) General Vezax- 1 Guild------ 0%
9) Yogg-Saron- 0 Guilds-------- 0%

So with not one boss killed by more then .04% of guilds, why is this question even being asked? Stop wondering about these questions and go raid. I am reminded of a blue post that was written a week or so ago, when a person was complaining that many guilds (not his) have beaten Ulduar, Eyonix said

“Amazing. You have nothing to do now that people that aren't you have cleared Ulduar” (Obviously not referring to hard modes)

Holy Trinity

What is the Holy Trinity in RPG?

In a quick answer, RPG holy trinity is all about heterogeneous roles. Classically, there are three major roles in the fantasy rpg genre:
- Healer, one heals the group.
- Tank, the one that draws hate or agro from the target as to divert damage from the rest of the group
- Damage Dealer- The person that has the power to deal large amounts of damage to the target through either magic or weaponry.

In this trinity, no one character can do two jobs.
- A character that is the tank would not be able to heal nor do any significant damage.
- The healer would not have the health to take large amounts of damage nor be able to deal it out.
- The damage dealer would not have the power to heal nor have the health to take large damage.

There was also a separate component in RPG games, known as a hybrid class. This character could, tank, heal and do damage but not close to the ability of the primary role class.

World of Warcraft, has the foundation of this RPG trinity, but they allow more flexibility.
Tank- Warrior, Death Knight
Healer- Priest
DPS- Rogue, Mage, Warlock, Hunter
Hybrids- Paladin, Druid, Shaman

Now there is one class that is a tank and one that is a healer and four primary dps classes. Then, the other four classes are hybrids and can fill different roles. Blizzard has in essence removed DPS as a role within the Holy Trinity by allowing each class to deal damage effectively as long as they, for the most part, give up their healing/tanking roles.

By allowing classes to do what other classes do, Blizzard is walking a very thin thread when it comes to classical rpg. One of the major points of rpg is each class brings something to the show that makes them unique. If each player can come and get the job done, the game loses something. The secret to preventing this has to be clearly avoiding homogenization. While the business model might be to allow customers to do what they want (No, I am not accusing the company of only caring about profits) each class has to feel different from the others. While doing damage is fun, perhaps a class that just debuffs would be interesting.

An example of this would be something that seemed to be intended for the warlock but never quite got there. Take the warlock, cut his damage by half. However, in compensation allow him to slow down bosses, lower their health, weaken their attacks, this all would make for a useful class without it being necessarily about the damage he inflicts himself.

I play a mage for the great damage and would gladly give up my buff (Arcane Intellect) and stamina and even other defensive spells for a large damage increase. The glass canon is a great analogy. That was what the mage was in classic rpg, very weak against attacks but if you don’t neutralize him, he will destroy you.

Introduction

Hello everyone,

I decided to start this blog because I wanted to express my opinions on different aspects of World Of Warcraft.

My first and still main character is my human mage, thefirstevil (Yes, it is a reference to Buffy season 7) on Thrall server. I have been playing since May of 2006. I turned 60 about a month before Burning Crusade started. My first raid was Karazhan. I have been raiding ever since. My objective is 25 man content as I enjoy that that most. I love the challenge of getting 24 other raiders together to figure out and implement a strategy to take down a worthy adversary.

I hope this blog will record my opinions and spark discussion. Hopefully, this blog will also help people play their class better (yes, me too).