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!