The Followup

Included: WoW brewmaster stats, interface/addons (WeakAuras)

Well, it's official now.  After spending the gold to acquire the Darkmoon Fair agility trinket, my tank and DPS gear sets are now identical.  Originally I had swapped out helms (for a +stam and 2% less spell damage taken meta), but with a new helm whose item level blows my former ones out of the water, I'm going to end up using it for both my specs regardless, so I decided to just go with the agility meta for tanking.  I may end up swapping back to the stamina/spell damage meta in the future when I acquire another helmet of equal power (since spell damage is most tanks' soft spot), but until then (and heroic-modes) I think I can get away without.

I also performed the tests I mentioned in my last post, to determine the effects of shuffle and elusive brew on parry/dodge.  They both seem to give a flat percentage bonus to dodge and parry regardless of your current values, so diminishing returns should not be affected.  This may make dodge/parry more desirable, since there is virtually none on leather gear by default.  I may reforge into parry in the future, since brewmaster monks already have a bunch of base dodge from agility.  I'll worry about this when my gear level improves and my haste is a bit higher (probably in future tiers).

I have, since the last post, readjusted my gear so that I cap my hit and dodge-cap expertise, but I don't pursue any further expertise (to the parry cap)...I instead go to haste to boost my energy regeneration, making it easier to manage the shuffle buff (and gain elusive brew stacks).  Gearing this way also ensures that I do considerable damage when I switch to DPS-spec.  As DPS, I'm usually managing around 60k on most single-target fights (with no damage bonus fight mechanics), which is nothing to sneeze at.

I've found that the biggest way to maximize my own numbers was through the use of the proper addons.  In my case, I didn't want an addon telling me how to play--I wanted a way to have it tell me things when I want to know about them, so that I can decide for myself when the best time to use specific moves is.  To this end, WeakAuras has been a great help.  I can create my own notifications, and then completely customize when, where, and what is displayed on the screen.  Areas where I have found this to be extremely useful include:

1) Timer Bars for abilities, buffs, debuffs - the last thing you want to be doing in the middle of a fight is browsing through your icons in the corner for a duration number.  By setting up a timer bar and placing it somewhere useful on-screen, you can easily see just how much longer that ability will last.  This is very useful for defensive cooldowns, such as Fortifying Brew, Shield Wall, Hand of Protection, etc.  This can also work for 'pet summons', such as Xuen the White Tiger, Spirit Wolves, Earth Elemental, etc.  In some cases (like Xuen), this timer bar is the only way to really determine how much longer your pet will be around.  You can also set up timer bars for proc-based buffs, or debuffs if you desired.

2) Notification Icons - this ties into the above timers to provide a better visual clue when certain buffs/debuffs are present, or when an ability of yours is no longer on CD.  These can also be used to notify you when you're missing a buff.  You don't want to set up tens of timers -- browsing through those wouldn't be much better than browsing through the original buffs/debuffs in the corner.  The key is to limit the timers to a minimum, and convey other important information through relevant icons and sounds.  More on this at the end of the section.

3) Highlighting Abilities - WeakAuras also has the ability to highlight spells on your action bars, just like WoW does by default when certain procs activate.  I haven't found this to work 100% of the time, but it's still helpful.

4) Alert Sounds - sometimes it's better to receive important information through more than one medium.  When tons of things are happening on-screen at once, it can be useful to set up sounds to certain event auras to ensure that you know what's going on.  Again, like timer bars, you do not want to apply too many sounds to your auras--just ones that are critically important.

To better demonstrate these concepts, I'll give examples of my own aura setups, and rationale for setting them up as I have.

In this screenshot, I have 6 different WeakAuras active.  The one in the center-left tells me I don't have 3 stacks of Tiger Power and 3 stacks of Power Guard, and tells me I should use Tiger Palm to fix this, highlighting button 4 on my main action bar.  The aura center-right tells me that my Shuffle buff is either missing, or has less than 3 seconds left on its duration, and tells me that I should use Blackout Kick to fix this, highlighting button 5 on my action bar.  Keep in mind that the Tiger Palm and Blackout Kick notifiers here are placed in the same positions where the default WoW notifiers appear when you are a DPS monk and get a mastery proc (Combo Breaker: Tiger Palm/Blackout Kick).  This helps ensure consistency between my tank and DPS specs...if I see an icon on the right, I know I need to Blackout Kick...if there is a left icon, I need to Tiger Palm.

The auras at the top of the screen are more suited to boosting your DPS, but I still feel are important.  The blue cat circular symbol in the center notifies me that 'Invoke Xuen, the White Tiger' is no longer on cooldown - he is ready to tear up some enemies for me.  This aura also highlights my Xuen button on my lower left action bar.  The fire effects surrounding the Xuen notifier at the top of the screen each symbolize a different agility proc.  The left fire is the agility buff gained from Relic of Xuen, the right fire is the agility buff gained from Bottle of Infinite Stars, and the top fire is the agility buff gained from my Dancing Steel weapon enchant.  Because most summon spells (such as spirit wolves and fire elementals) base their power off of your current stats at the moment you summon, I try to only use my Xuen cooldown when I have at least 2 of these fire auras lit.  If all 3 are up, I use Xuen immediately!

After using Xuen, the blue icon at the top of the screen disappears (telling me that Xuen is on cooldown) and is replaced by a timer bar displaying Xuen's remaining duration.  On the right, below where my debuffs are displayed, you can see my other timer bars showing the remaining internal cooldowns of my agility-proccing trinkets.  These timers help me to better coordinate my next Xuen cast -- when Xuen is ready and I have 2 fires lit, I check my timers to see if the third is ready, or if it is on cooldown.  If the cooldown is long, I should use Xuen immediately instead of waiting for all 3 procs to line up.

Other notable auras I use include a notification aura when I reach 15 stacks of Elusive Brew or 10 stacks of Tigereye Brew.  This displays a large green mug icon on my screen, telling me I need to drink, and also plays a chime sound, just in case I'm not paying close enough attention.  On a similar note, I use an aura to track whether I have the buff from my ox statue (Sanctuary of the Ox), and if not, it displays a large yellow ox icon.  Lastly, I have an aura to track when I am affected by Moderate Stagger or Heavy Stagger, both of which play distinct sounds and put a skull & crossbones icon on the screen until I use Purifying Brew (or die).  All of these auras also highlight the appropriate abilities I should use.  It's worth noting that a lot of these auras are configured so that they are disabled when I'm outside of combat, or when I'm not in a dungeon.  When you're looking around for daily quest items, you don't want a lot of stuff like a big blue Xuen icon blocking your screen!  Taking the extra couple minutes to enable and disable where these auras activate can improve your play experience that much more.  (For the record, I recommend keeping your proc-based timers enabled 'everywhere'...case-in-point, if you have them set up to turn off outside of combat, you will enter a battle, have them proc, kill the enemy, exit combat and have your timers disappear (lets say with 20-30 sec left on the duration).  If you enter combat with another enemy 3 seconds later, those timers will not reappear with their remaining duration -- it will seem as if your trinkets are off CD and ready to activate, when in reality they are still on their internal cooldowns.  Keep timers enabled to avoid this problem!)

Configuring your UI so that it tells you what you need to know (instead of what it thinks you need to know) is one of the biggest steps you can take to improving your gameplay.  It'll probably take you a full night to install, setup, and test your addons, but in the end, it is time well-spent!

The Beginning

Included: Introduction, Purpose (or lack thereof), Background, WoW design (with game design tip of the day), WoW raiding progress

In order to experience an adventure, you have to take that first step.

Thus, this post.  This blog will serve as an inside look into my various activities and thoughts, some of which include online MMO gaming, game design, writing, philosophy, and random other crap I find funny.  Some posts will provide a lot more insight than others.  Some may serve no purpose other than to get my own thoughts down onto electronic paper.

To be completely honest, I'm not sure why I'm starting this blog.  I'm known to do some things on impulse, and am just as likely to abandon said projects when the interest fades.  This may be one of those things, and it may not.  Time will tell.

Stick around, and you may learn a few things.  You also may be subject to some of my rants.

To provide a little bit of background (especially since I'm going to type up the background section a little later), I am a gamer, primarily a WoW player--a raider and leader of a PvE guild on the Dark Iron server.  I tend to play the game daily, like many thousands of other players.  I've been playing for probably close to 6 years.  Not that I can't stop playing--I take breaks on the weekends to spend more time with family, and also play other online games for stretches of time when WoW 'slows down' between patches...you know what I'm talking about!  In any case, I play the game for lengthy periods of time often, and thus, would consider myself better than average at the game.  Like anything, if you practice something long (and hard) enough, you're bound to get better.  Or, at the very least, you'll gain levels and get better equipment, allowing your character to do better while your brain continues to sit like a pile of mush.  Believe me when I say there is more than a fair share of these players out there.  There are times when I think my server (and cross-realm group) are chuck-full of them.  I am also just as sure that there will be entire posts about these kinds of players (and what they do) in the future of this blog.  You'll likely recognize these posts by a tag such as 'WoW idiots' at the top of the page.

Anyways, today was the first day my raid group raided (10-man normal mode) in the latest Mists of Pandaria expansion.  I played the role of a brewmaster monk (tank) and proceeded to do what most tanks do--get their face smashed.  Turns out the raid bosses don't pull their punches, and a fellow raid member informed me that stacking hit & expertise, like IcyVeins and Mr.Robot suggest for some tanks, may be bad information due to a faulty simulation.  Go figure!

And that brings me onto the topic of tanking stats in Mists.  This can be a tricky topic to address (especially since I have a lot of strong feelings about this subject, and I haven't done a whole lot of my 'homework' yet), but it bothers me how certain tank classes are best advised to stack 'DPS stats' to maximize their effectiveness.  I imagine the case-in-point here would best be illustrated by guardian druids and brewmaster monks, since I believe the plate tanks still get a lot of use out of stats like dodge & parry.  Mastery seems to be that oddball stat that can be really good for you or really poor, depending on how it scales and its exact function.  Overall, I don't think this is a bad thing--it's nice to have some variance between classes (and specs) in the form of unique masteries that you can choose to stack or avoid.  In the Cataclysm expansion, mastery was particularly good because (from what I hear) it was not subject to diminishing returns (or was to a lesser degree than other stats).  From what I understand, this is no longer the case, and as such, its value for a lot of specs has dropped.  (This is all heresay from guildies, so I advise searching for more definitive answers elsewhere.)

That said, a lot of my frustrations with managing stats in WoW can be summed up in that single area of the game: diminishing returns (DRs).  It's one of those safeguards in place to prevent people from 'cheesing' certain mechanics of the game, but in practice, I don't feel it's a great system.  Case in point, if a player 'likes' using a certain statistic, why penalize that player for seeking it out excessively?  Why set up a system with invisible DRs that requires skilled players to go OUTSIDE of your game to several different websites to look up information on which stats they should be getting (or how much) to minimize this sort of point loss?  Is simulating characters what you want your players doing, instead of actually playing in your world?  And for the record, I don't believe I've seen any information about stat DRs within WoW itself (loading screen tooltips, in-game tooltips, mouseover displays over parry/dodge stats, etc).  The only reason I know they even exist is from doing this sort of outside reading.  Game design tip of the day: The player should not be expected to go outside your game to play it well, or to understand it.

Tying this back into the original topic, I'm relooking at taking dodge/parry/mastery on my monk again, and ditching a lot of this extra expertise I had been using to try reaching the no-parries cap.  The DRs again throw another kink into this though, as I do not know whether temporary stat buffs, such as Shuffle and Elusive Brew, cause additional diminishing returns on your parry and dodge stats when they are applied.  I believe I'll test this tomorrow by removing various pieces of dodge gear, and see what results appear on my character window as I activate Elusive Brew on some training dummies.  When in doubt, hit the dummies...I always feel it's better to test things within the game itself, instead of some sort of simulation (which isn't you playing the game).

Once again getting back to the topic of tanking stats, I can see the merit of having hit and expertise to ensure you land enough attacks to generate the resources you need (elusive brew stacks and chi points) to use your defensive abilities in a fluid rotation.  But stacking things like haste to boost elusive brew (and to fill your energy bar faster) is something I'm not fond of doing.  At that point, what truly distinguishes the DPS from the tank?  As is, I have a 'one-set-fits-all' gearset that ensures I always hit (when DPS), prevents enemy dodges when tanking, and has a naturally high haste rating from various pieces (supposedly good for both tank and DPS monks).  It seems to be working fine in practice, but I feel a bit dirty for running around performing both roles in nearly identical gear.  Heck, with two agility trinkets, I don't even end up changing either of those half the time.  Should tanking really be as simple as swapping one trinket out for a stamina brewfest bonus on heavy-damage fights?  Personally, I wouldn't like to think so.  But perhaps that's just how the game is currently designed.

At any rate, we downed the first two bosses of Mogu'shan Vaults tonight, and I am looking forward to getting back in there tomorrow.  Not bad for a starting night with two PUGs!