Hybrid Kos

Hybrid PVP

noreply@blogger.com (Leukos) — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 04:32:00 +0000

My two current main characters in WoW are a feral druid and a holy pally. I play both of them in pvp and pve, but my druid is mainly for pve and my paladin was mainly rolled for pvp healing. In the last month or so I have rediscovered my enjoyment of pvp and the 2.3 patch changes to AV and the start of season 3 arena have just added fuel to my rekindled love. Hybrid classes are strongest in situations where many roles (damage, crowd control, or healing) are needed over the course of a fight. This occurs from time to time in pve, but it is the case in every fight in pvp. So, while I could play my 70 mage in pvp, I much prefer to play my druid or paladin.

My druid is feral specialized and has a hybrid set of epic and blue cat and bear gear, and a couple pieces of gladiator and veteran pvp gear. I have enough points to get a season 3 chest or something next week to replace the 68 blue chest I am still stuck with. He has great damage and stealth in cat form, survivability and charge in bear, and can root, cyclone and heal in caster. I can help with damage, then pop a few heals and crowd control, and then charge in an finish off a fleeing enemy. The hybrid player excels when they can really take advantage of their flexibility. In small groups this flexibility allows me to play in whatever role is lacking.

Last night I was in a fresh AV, I rode up all the way through the battle and then prowled down below the bridge and up to the mine. A Horde rogue had the same idea, so we hooked up and snuck through the mine and killed the boss in it to capture it for the Horde. We came up and found the Horde just taking the Stormpike graveyard. We snuck across the bridge, and stealth captured one of the towers. Then I headed over to the other tower, I saw a few people in trouble there, so I tossed a few heals to top them up and then went cat form to help deal with a few annoying alliance players. The team had taken relief hut by then, so I moved with the group into the lair of Vanndar Stormpike. There was no tanks in evidence, so I switched to my tank set (thank you item rack), and went at that pompous dwarf. With the support of the other players healing and damaging, I tanked him to his death and the Horde victory. It is this versatility of roles and play that I love so much about playing a hybrid in pvp.

I have been playing pvp for over two years at this point, and I long ago realized the power of healing in pvp. I attempted to use my druid to assist healing in BGs and Arena, and quickly found realized how ineffective it was as a feral druid. I was an easy target out of form, and was not using my specialization’s strengths. Since I was happily tanking in pve on my druid, I rolled a new paladin just to pvp and arena heal. I had never really been interested in healing or in paladins, but their survivability and post-TBC healing prowess sold me on the idea. I had no prior healing experience so playing a healer in a group has been heaps of fun to learn. Also, having a healer in my stable of 70s has been great for those times when my group is in that eternal search for a healer to go to an instance.

My paladin is very different then playing my druid in pvp, but he still brings his hybrid abilities to the table and allows me to do the three roles he is good at: healing damage, taking damage and annoying the hell out of his opponents.
I play much more of a support role on my paladin then my druid, seldom dealing damage on my own, but enabling others to do more damage through buffing and healing them. When I am not busy keeping my fellow Horde players up, I am stunning, mana tapping, and generally harassing the Alliance. Since my build has 20 points of protection in it I can take quite a beating and keep on healing and defending for ages. The bubble allows me time to heal unmolested and works as a quite effective short term agro wipe.

Between my two hybrid classes there is a nice mix of play style options and fun to be had. If you are bored with your single role, damage dealing class, give a hybrid a go and see if you can’t find new enjoyment in the game.

Time Blocks, Casual Raids

noreply@blogger.com (Leukos) — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 22:18:00 +0000

A friend of mine just reached the big seven zero and was trying to figure out what to do next. I think we all hit that point when we reach the level cap after months of leveling, and feel a little lost on what to do now that our XP bar refuses to increase. After a couple seconds of thinking over the options here is what I came up with to do at 70. (Note: Some these options are not available to fresh 70s.)

70 Activities
• Normal Instance
• Heroic Instance
• Raid Instance
• Grind Reputation
• Grind Gold
• Grind Profession
• Grind Mats for Gear
• Grind for Cosmetic Items (pets and tabards)
• Arena
• Battle Grounds
• Party Quests
• Solo Quests
• Attunement Quests
• Reputation Daily Quests
• Battle Ground Daily Quest
• Heroic Instance Daily Quest
• Instance Daily Quest
• Start over on an Alt

Now the real limit to what you can and can’t do in a MMORPG is the amount of time you can commit in one sitting. Several times this last week I started a heroic instance with 3 hours available to me, and then found the heroic running longer then 3 hours for one reason or another. I had to leave one of these runs before the last boss, missing out on the heroic daily quest and the epic plate item that dropped after I left. Other times I stuck it out and ended up finishing much later, losing sleep and wife rep. So I have found that I really cannot do a heroic instance on a weeknight, because I just don’t have time if everything doesn’t go smoothly.

If we divide up the possible activities by the amount of time they take it makes it easier to see what you can undertake if you have a set amount of time. Of course, if you have 3 hours it means you can do anything in the 3 hour list as well as anything in the smaller time blocks.

3+ hours
• Heroic Instance
• Raid Instance
• Heroic Instance Daily Quest

2-3 hours
• Normal Instance
• Instance Daily Quests

Less then 2 hours Committed
• Arena
• Party Quests

Less then 2 hours Uncommitted
• Grind Reputation
• Grind Gold
• Grind Profession
• Grind Mats for Gear
• Grind for Cosmetic Items (pets and tabards)
• Battle Grounds
• Solo Quests
• Attunement Quests
• Reputation Daily Quests
• Battle Ground Daily Quest
• Start over on an Alt

The committed and uncommitted label has nothing to do with your mental health, instead it means that you have committed to a specific block of time, or not. If I agree to a 5 man party quest then I am committed to the group until it is done, a committed time block. If I instead work on solo quests, then I am uncommitted time wise, and can log off any point. Might be a better label but this one makes sense to me.

I have an average of 3 hours to play on a weeknight, so if I look at my list, that puts me on the borderline of heroics, and able to do most everything else. On the weekend I tend to play for much longer blocks, so I have the entire list of activities available.

Now if you look at this list and compare it your average time blocks to the list you can pick out what your endgame options are. If you do not have more then 3 hours available to you at least a couple nights a week, then it is unlikely you will be able to find a raid that will fit your available time. If you only have 1 hour blocks of time available to you then that limits your play to pvp and questing, and pretty much completely excludes any type of instancing or raiding. So time blocks, not total time, is what limits your end game options. And I think it is also these time blocks that divide the perceived casual and hardcore players.

There has been an ongoing battle mentioned on Tobold’s site between casual players arguing for an easier entry level raid and raiders arguing that casuals wouldn’t play one even if it was created. As I have shown, it is the time blocks a player has available that limit their ability to raid, not their skill or their total weekly playtime. So, as much as I hate to say it, the raiders/hardcore are right, if the new raid was just easier, but not designed with the casual’s smaller time block casuals would no more be able to play it then they can currently play Kara. If casuals truly want a raid available to them it wouldn’t need to be easier, it would need less outside of raid work and require a smaller time block.

How to create a raid with a smaller required time block is up to Blizzard, but would probably be similar to what Tobold envisioned in his comments.

“If I had to build a casual raid dungeon, it would start with about 20 minutes worth of trash mobs, a first boss, and then doors in three directions, leading to more bosses. Thus the raid group can always decide how many wings of the dungeon they want to do in what evening.” -Tobold

I know my guild and I would step up and do a 10 man raid that was designed like that. Make the rewards equivalent to heroics and allow badges to drop, and it would allow a stepping stone into Kara for people who want to raid heavily, and a fun option for play for casuals.

What time blocks do you have available to you? Would you enjoy a raid designed like this? What dangers would it offer to the game balance?

Linkage

noreply@blogger.com (Leukos) — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 21:31:00 +0000

I plan on writting something more thoughtful later this week, but today I am just providing some links to great posts others have written.

Dungeon Chaperoning Galo nails the dangers of running lowbies through instances on a 70 character.

Tank Pulling Lale lists some great reasons for tanks to pull in instances. When I started on my hunter I thought I would be able to fill the role of puller, but experience quickly showed that tank pulling made life easier. Of course, misdirection is a nice solution at 70 for some of the harder pulls, remember to make use of it.

Triviality of MMORPGs Tobold perfectly presents a topic that I have been debating with some mates. I actually had started a post on this very topic, but this covers it better then I would attempt. My only additional note would be that I dislike the term "dumbing down" when applied to removing time sinks. As stated, time does not directly equal difficulty. So easing the eternal search for vendors and quest givers doesn't make the game dumber, it just removes the wasted time and allows us to get to the fun quicker.

Hidden Age, Visible Drama

noreply@blogger.com (Leukos) — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 23:10:00 +0000

I have been reading the Round Table monthly posts for over a year now. The submitted posts are always well written and thought invoking. Since I am now writing on my own blog, I wanted to contribute to this month's topic: Age & Games. I decided to discuss the issues that the hidden variable of player age brings to MMORPGs, with WoW as an example.

I entered a group yesterday with my mates Lale and Biondi, to help do a low level instance run Biondi needed for an alt. Lale invited a low level hunter friend who also needed the instance. Things were going along well, although the hunter wasn’t using his pet, which seemed a little odd. Then I asked if people could get on voice for easier communication. Lale and I got on, and then we heard a very depressing sound over the channel. It was the high pitched, pre-pubecent hello from the hunter in our group.

One of the amazing parts of playing a MMORPG is the ability to play with people of different nationality, sex and age, people you would never interact with in your normal life. The interactions with people from different cultures and social backgrounds are great learning experiences, and broaden my personal horizons. My experiences with people who are much younger on the other hand, tend to only test my patience.

Age is one of the largest dividing forces in normal social interactions. When my huge extended family gets together, we all eat dinner together and then everyone seems to split up by age groups and do things in those smaller groups. I’m sure there is a theory about why this occurs, but all I know is that it is a fact of life. I think it occurs for a good reason, allowing people to interact with others in the same stage of life and who will understand each other better. MMORPGs manage to break the boundaries of this normal social division by hiding the age of players from each other completely. The advent of voice communications is changing this, but it is still possible for a 12 year old to play along side a 65 year old with neither party knowing the other’s age.

While this can be a positive thing, allowing younger people to learn that their elders are approachable and fun, the trend I have seen while playing is one of frustrating and fruitless interactions. The immaturity of these players interferes with the enjoyment of the game by the older players. Granted not all young players are immature, but age is a fairly reliable indication. This means that if I find out a player is under 17, I instantly trust them less. Experience has taught me that they may be fine and useful as anyone else, but at that time when I have to depend on them most they will break down or blow up, causing drama that is completely unnecessary.

As a guild leader and party leader, if I need to ask them to change their behavior to allow the group to succeed, or request assistance of them for the guild to progress, they are less likely to step up, and more likely to cause an issue then an older player. The level of maturity needed to take criticism and improve isn’t even attained by most adults, so expecting it from a teenager is asking too much.

Due to this experience my guild has a rule that people we recruit have to be older then 20. This rule allows us to have adult interactions, without making unfair expectations on a teen, who doesn’t have the maturity level to handle them. It is better on both parties to have less drama, and this is the easiest solution to lower the chances of it occurring. We have made one exception to this rule so far, and due to issues unrelated to age the player was asked to resign from the guild. Up until that point he had interacted fairly maturely, baring the odd “My mom says I have to get off” situation, but when we communicated our issue to him and asked him to move on, his reaction really showed his age. He argued, then begged and then didn’t respond at all. He eventually left as asked, but it reminded us again why we don’t allow younger people into the guild.

Is it fair to expect adults and teens to interact as equals in a game world where they have equal opportunity to succeed? The goal is to maximize fun for all parties in the game, so do adult and teen interactions lead to fun or drama? I think that the answers depend on the people, what do you think?

Be sure and check out the other Round Table posts below.

Please visit the Round Table's Main Hall for links to all entries.

Know Yourself

noreply@blogger.com (Leukos) — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 20:29:00 +0000

In the forecourt of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, in ancient Greece, was inscribed a command, “Know Yourself.” The login screen for WoW could rightly have the same inscription. I have learned a lot about myself while playing this game.

1. I will do repetitive, mind numbing tasks for the right reward.
2. I prefer to lead, unless I trust the leader.
3. I am a good leader.
4. I prefer small groups of people over large groups.
5. I cannot ignore perceived injustice.
6. I value knowledge and ability equally.
7. I value loyalty over knowledge and ability.
8. I enjoy teaching, as long as the pupil is trying to learn.
9. I have no patience for those who will not attempt to improve.
10. I have no patience for immaturity.
11. I have no patience for stupidity.
12. I have no patience for drama.
13. I have no patience.
14. The journey is more important then the destination.

What have you learned about yourself while playing video games or MMORPGs?

To Customize, Too Confuse

noreply@blogger.com (Leukos) — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 03:57:00 +0000

Many people play MMORPGs because of the customization that you can gain for your character through game play. These continual improvements and social aspects in MMORPGs are the main reasons I play WoW. With the addition of The Burning Crusade, the level of customization on a character has increased a great deal through new stats and gems, as well as reputation requirements for gear and instancing. Are there any dangers with this increase, or is it just more of what makes us play?

First, let’s detail all the ways to customize a character, assuming a level 70 character. I suppose I could get into the numbers, figuring out how many unique options are available through all the customizations, or how many choices are made to fully customize a character, but that would glaze your eyes, as well as mine, so we will just talk in generalities.

When this fictional character was created several important customizations were made. A server, a faction, a race, a name and an appearance were picked before even entering the gaming world. Most of these, with the exception of server, are irreversible. I suppose you can now change your name as well, but with the loss of name recognition by other players. As the character levels talent points are given, and eventually the character has 61 talent points to use to customize his specialization in his class talent trees. Two primary professions can be selected and leveled, with some professions leading to further specialization choices at higher skill level. Three secondary professions can be trained and used as well. All classes have at least a couple choices in what weapon training they purchase, level, and use. Hunters and warlocks have pets to train and customize.

The character then buys, instances, or pvps for gear. There are 18 gear slots, 19 if you dual wield, to gather gear for. Several of these are non-stat slots, like shirt and tabard, but they are still customizations, if only cosmetic. Post-TBC most gear at 70 can now have improvements through gems, enchants, thread or armor kits. The Burning Crusade also additional stats that players have to choose from, such as resilience, spell hit and spell penetration. With the new patch there will also be armor penetration and expertise added. The more stats that are available and the greater affect each other, the more complex the stat customization becomes and the more options a player has in selecting his gear and improvements.

Although it started its appearance in the old world, reputation grinds have come into new dominance with the expansion. This is kind of a stretch to call a customization, but it is a character specific stat that is required for access to gear, enchants, and heroic instances. I think this one ends up being a large hurtle for players trying to play together later in the game.

On top of all of this current complex character customization (bet you can’t say that 3 times fast), we have the upcoming expansion which is supposed to create a new profession, inscription, which will allow you to customize your core spells in certain ways. This will allow similar specialized and geared characters to have different custom spells.

All of these customizations extend the game and keep us playing for these small advances and tweaks in our character power. It’s the next reputation reward, the next gear upgrade, and the gold to pay for it all that keeps us killing mobs, running instances and entertained while we hang out with our friends in the game. I think that most of these customizations make the game better and more fun to more people. Each customization doesn’t make sense or extend the game for each player, but over all we each find something additional that we want to customize about our character and we spend our time doing that.

I would like to suggest there are dangers to the level of customization as well. Blizzard is making the game much deeper, and therefore harder to learn. It was very easy to pick up the original game, create a character, level and learn it, and at 60 gear it up and customize your gear with enchants. There were fewer statistics to keep track of and fewer ways to get them on your gear. There were no reputation grinds to speak of, and what keying was required easy to get through normal game play.

Now, in our post-TBC world, for someone completely new to MMORPGs, picking up the game and getting through all the new customizations is a bigger issue. I have many first time players in my guild, and as they leveled up there was a clear knowledge gap apparent between what they knew from learning in game, and what I knew from my outside reading even about classes I had never played. Increasingly complex customizations are required to be successful in the game, especially if you are looking at the pvp game. Once help and outside resources were offered to guide their characters through these customizations, they were able to work it out and it improved their effectiveness. The biggest problem I see is that they were not even aware they had missed some vital steps in their customization, or hadn’t used the customization to its fullest. They were happily going along with one arm tied behind their virtual back, and only when someone more knowledgeable noticed did they get the information they needed to proceed through these new stages.

I am not saying these changes are bad for people who invest themselves in learning the game, and enjoy learning how to play as much as the actual playing. People like me and you, who read blogs about WoW, and delve into the web for information when we start new characters, instances, or reputation grinds. These games were created by people like us for people like us, the problem isn’t probably so much that the complexity is increasing or changing in MMORPGs in general. The problem is WoW has aimed itself at a more casual sort of player, and that player doesn’t care about the details, they want to pickup their character and have some fun. They don’t want to read for hours and learn that race x had a 3% better racial bonus, not these players. They are most worried about picking the race that looks the coolest to them. This accessibility is the biggest success of WoW, but also root of the so called casual vs. hardcore debate. While these players can level to 70 solo or with small groups, eventually they reach the stage where their lack of understanding in the game begins to affect the players around them. It is at that stage that they need the help and understanding of those of us in the know. We can help them over this customization hurtle that Blizzard has thrown up, and get onto having fun again.

So what do you guys think, has customization in WoW gone too far? Are you looking forward to the new inscription profession as another personal touch on your character, or are you dreading another thing to learn? However you feel about it, make sure you assist those around you who are struggling to learn this game. They might be the players you depend on later, and karma is a nasty piece of legislation.

Four requests, null nerfs

noreply@blogger.com (Leukos) — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I was having a discussion with a mate who plays WoW the other day about changes we would like to see in the game. I had a nice list going, so I thought I should post the ideas here and see what people think. Some of these have made the rounds before and some are new, to me at least.

New Druid Forms

Since I have a druid main, my first wish is some change to the druid forms. I have been the same ugly cat since I hit level 20, and the dire bear form is getting pretty old at this point too. I would love new elite textures and models for our forms, especially if there were several new ones to choose from. Additional models and textures only available to feral druids for cat and bear would be icing on the cake. I would love for all of these forms to have unique quest lines, but that might be asking too much since we already have a 70 class quest line for epic flying form. A different approach would be craftable, or vendor available, cosmetic armor for use on our current forms.

Gear Colors

I have always wanted some sort of color changing options for gear, be it dye or multiple selectable looks for a specific armor piece. I am tired of looking like a rainbow and getting an awesome piece of gear that makes it worse isn’t a huge let down. I have looked at other MMORPGs and been jealous of their gear dying options. The solution EQ2 has implemented, with a paper doll for looks and a separate one for stats, seems like a good middle option. I believe that Blizzard prefers to maintain control over the colors so that each item is easily recognizable compared to similar textured and modeled items, and so they can maintain the artistic look of the game. Making people with the best gear visually recognizable makes it more of an achievement to have that gear. There have been arguments that for pvp you need to be able to recognize gear to react correctly to different situations. I think none of these arguments really stand up. The models for the epic gear should be unique and then the colors don’t matter as much. The colors available can be limited to disallow too much artistic license, although, they already have pink shirts and tabards available now, so what more harm could be done?

Languages

The first time I realized that my Night Elf hunter could speak in Darnassian I was very excited. I thought, as you would, that eventually through a quest or a trainer I could learn other languages and possibly learn to speak to the other faction. I was sad to learn that this was not possible, and over my time in WoW this has always been something I hoped would be patched in. I think this is an opportunity for a new profession or secondary profession. The languages could require long quest lines, and would allow you to trade with any race whose language you know. I think this offers a lot of potential benefits and fun that are missing from the game.

Cross Faction Interaction

With the increase in cooperation between the Horde and the Alliance in the Burning Crusade, it is time for cross faction interaction and grouping. The language changes I suggested above could be the beginning of this integration. Eventually allowing cross faction access to cities and auction house, and linking all auctions. This would allow servers with low populations, or imbalanced Alliance to Horde ratios, to have better access to buy and sell. The integration should also allow cross faction instance groups. This would assist all levels in finding groups easier, and allow for more diversity in grouping. This would be a huge change, and would require a lot of work to sort out, but I think it would be worth it for playability reasons. There are lore repercussions and pvp issues, but I think it could be done. With the advent of Horde vs. Horde arena matches the pvp based arguments are void. World pvp is dead anyway, and if you really wanted to you could integrate the battleground teams also, with a little lore tweaking. This request has nothing to do with my two alliance 60 characters rotting away unplayed on the same server as my horde mains and guild, nothing at all, I swear.

I have some other requests as well, cross server instances, new low level zones, new classes, and new races, but I am out of time to write today. I may post about them another time. What do you think of the ones I have detailed or mentioned? Should Blizzard look to implement them? If not, why not?

BRK Linkage

noreply@blogger.com (Leukos) — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 22:07:00 +0000

I am nearly done for my post for the day, but as I was browsing my daily blog readings which are in a feed on the bottom right of this site, I saw that BRK linked to me in a list of new blogs on his site. I just wanted to pass a big thanks to BRK for the linkage. His blog is one of my favorite WoW blogs to read, so the notice was the highlight of my day. Welcome to all of you who are visiting from his site, please make yourselves at home and leave a comment or two.

Hybrid value: 3 roles, one class

noreply@blogger.com (Leukos) — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 22:02:00 +0000

My first commenter and good rogue mate, Lale, brought up a good question in the comments yesterday, which I think I will address.

“I would like to make a quick point up for debate = hybrids are good at many, masters of none. I have seen times where a druid tank has been a far better option than a warrior. Has the shift in the game changed? Can hybrids now be masters of particular roles? I smell a new post today...”

I made a point in the post to focus on classes, not talent specializations. This was because including talent trees into the discussion muddies the waters a bit more. With in hybrid classes the talent trees allow you to either focus on one role, or spread talent points around and gain a hybrid setup. The confusing part is that even in a so called pure class, like a priest, talent specialization allows players to play different roles or a hybrid mix.

That said, I think I can still answer to your question. When a hybrid class focuses on any specific role, they can be as effective as the focused pure class at that role, while bringing additional abilities outside that role. They may not have all the exact same abilities as the pure class, but the skills they do have should allow equal capability to fill the role. Before TBC talent trees, gear and the new 70 skills, the hybrid classes actually only had one role they could effectively spec into, healing. This has been resolved and now druids can be great healers, tanks, and melee or spell damage dealers. Paladins can be healers, tanks, and melee damage dealer.

If a hybrid class puts his talents in multiple trees then he becomes the jack of all trades player that you are talking about. In that case he is less effective at all roles then a focused primary or hybrid class, but can more effectively switch roles on the fly. This is the same as a pure class, like a priest, who can specialize into healing or damage dealing, or a mix of the two. I think that the hybrid classed have better synergy in the design of our talent trees post-TBC, which allows us to use a hybrid talent build more effectively then say a hybrid specialized warrior or priest. Druids, for instance, have a feral talent that translates strength into +heal, and restoration talents lower in the tree that effect rage generation and damage in feral forms.

With the number of talent points players now have at 70 they will generally specialize into one role mainly and then still have enough points to get a hybrid level specialization in another role. For instance my paladin is currently 41 points into holy, and 20 points into protection. This allows him more survivability then a full holy build, which is very helpful in pvp and surviving bad pulls in pve. He could also tank instances effectively, if he had the proper gear.

This brings up one final issue that all classes face, especially hybrid classes, the issue of gearing. If a class plays one role all the time, like most pure classes, then they only need one set of gear. They may want other bits for different uses like pvp, or resistance gear, but your gear is mainly one set. Hybrid classes, on the other hand, will need a fully different set for each role they want to play. If they attempt to use a hybrid set of gear, with a mix of stats for different roles, then they will be less effective at each of those roles then the pure class, even if they are fully specialized into that role at the time. It is the same as if a warrior attempted to use his tanking gear with an arms build to deal damage in an instance, it would not be nearly as effective as if he switched to gear with the proper stats for arms. A hybrid specialized player, hybrid or pure class, will be able to use role specific gear to buff his abilities in a certain role, or use a hybrid gear setup to improve his abilities across all roles by a smaller amount.

The biggest hassle of playing a hybrid class is getting the proper gear to effectively play the roles that people expect of you. On my druid, I have 4 sets of gear in Item Rack, I have a healing set, a bear set, a cat set, and a hybrid set. That is a lot of gear to carry around and more importantly to collect, even if there is some overlap. It makes it hard to have a good level of gear for all the roles you play in a group. I would always recommend gearing up for your main role first and then working through the other gear sets. In my guild I am known for snatching up anything that would add to my gear sets, be it caster, melee, or tank gear. They may complain at the time that they missed out on a shard, but when the gear is needed to save their bacon I have it available.

So in review, you have 4 requirements to play a hybrid class as a master of a particular role. First, pick the correct class that will allow you to play the role you want. Second, pick the proper talent specialization for the role. Third, gather the proper gear to play the role. Fourth, you must have imagination to use the class to its fullest potential. You do all that, and you can beat out pure classes in an otherwise equal situation. Remember you have skills they can never match, so make sure you take advantage of them when the situation allows. Don’t just stay in cat form dealing damage if the healer is out of mana, and the mage is getting hammered on. Switch to caster form, throw the healer an innervate, switch to bear form, and taunt the mob off the mage. You do that, and they will take you over that uber geared, damage meter whoring rogue every time!

Hybrid love, pure imagination

noreply@blogger.com (Leukos) — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 04:26:00 +0000

I love playing hybrid classes, but before going on about why, I suppose I should explain what I mean by hybrid. The dictionary defines a hybrid as something of mixed origin or composition. We are talking composition in this case, so what elements are we mixing in our composition, or class? The roles a class can fill in an instance would is its defining elements. There are 3 main roles, tanking, damage dealing, and healing. Crowd control, buffing and de-buffing tend to fall into one of the main roles already listed, and can be thought of as sub-roles. So we have the elements, or roles, that get combined to create our composition, or class. By the definition, we would assume that we need two or more of these roles to create a hybrid class.

This definition is close, and excludes classes like rogues and mages, which are clearly not hybrid. On the other hand, if you spend too long thinking about it you could claim that most classes in WoW are hybrid. All classes are a mix of damage dealing and some other role. A warrior can be damage dealer and a tank. A priest can be a damage dealer and a healer. This isn’t what I mean by a hybrid class, so how do I define it clearer so it excludes these classes? Well, I think we can safely assume that every class in wow has some flavor of damage dealing available to it through talent trees. So if we exclude this as one of the roles that can be combined to create a hybrid class, we can assume that any class without the ability to heal and tank is not a hybrid class.

This definition limits us to the druid and paladin classes, excluding even shamans which are traditionally thought of as hybrid. People think of shamans as hybrid because they heal and deal damage, but that is no different that a priest, which is most definitely not a hybrid class. I guess you could also argue that a shaman is a hybrid of melee and spell damage, but again, it doesn’t hold water, as a mage does different types of damage, but is clearly a pure class. So, paladin and druid classes are hybrids and I love playing them.

Now, I think an example is the best way to show you why I love playing hybrids. I was playing my fully feral speced druid tank in Botanica on the weekend. The party was a hunter, a druid healer, druid tank, rogue and a warlock. I generally just tanked and held all the mobs on me, while my trusty damage team took out the baddies, and the healer kept us all alive. This is all well and good, but a pure class warrior would have handled this equally well, though with a lot less style then me of course. Where the hybrid really shines is when the shit (yes, we are a pg13 blog and can say shit. No, the FCC can’t charge us a fine.) hits the fan. During our otherwise perfect run, there was one messy pull. You know the one with 5 mobs that polymorph people, spawn additional mobs, and cast that horrible killer AoE on the ground? Yeah, that one. I pulled them to me, and the kill team took out the little beast mobs, but while they were doing that the polymorph mob poly’d the healer, and the killer AoE was thrown. The party’s health was dropping quick and the healer was out of action. I moved my remaining mob back out of the AoE, and stunned him. I popped out of bear form, cast barkskin, popped a fel blossom, and cast tranquility, healing the whole group to full. The mobs were rather pissed about the healing and stayed on me. I popped back to bear as soon as the cast was over, taking very few hits between the fel bubble and barkskin. The healer’s polymorph broke, and he went back to healing and the kill team finished off the polymorpher and then the AoE caster. Now, some of us might have survived, but without that quick hybrid action several players would have gone down.

That is why I love hybrids, we contribute most when it counts. Now I could go on and on, and likely will in other posts, but that really covers the basics for me. Now a poorly skilled or narrow focused player would not be a good hybrid, they lack the imagination and reaction speed to successfully get their hybrid on. That’s right folks! Those who play pure classes have no imagination!

Introduction

noreply@blogger.com (Leukos) — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 00:32:00 +0000

Welcome to my new blog. This will be the home for my reflections, rants, and research about World of Warcraft. I expect the topics to cover everything related to the game, but will follow whatever interest I have at the time I sit down to write. I hope to update this site at least a couple of times a week, but we will see.

To begin I think I should introduce myself, while retaining my aura if internet anonymity of course. Let’s see if I can be properly vague so people can’t figure out who I am. I have been playing WoW since December 2004. I first played a night elf hunter, on an RP server. While I didn’t RP much the server was great and that hunter was my first 60, and the hunter class is still one of my favorite.

After my first few experiences of bad tanks and horribly lead instances I rolled a human protection warrior, which allowed me to lead instances and ensure they went off smoother. I leveled both the hunter and warrior to 60, and played the hunter through the beginning of MC, before realizing that the raiding world wasn’t for me. The farm to fun ratio was much too high, and the amount of time spent standing around in a 4 hour raid was also not to my liking. I also felt like the individual contribution to a 40 man raid was much less then that to a 5 man instance, and I prefer to actually make a difference when I play. Granted a few people in the raid, like the RL, MT and MH, make a huge difference, but as hunter0301 in a 40 man raid there isn’t much contribution.

After quitting my raiding guild I proceeding to form my first guild, and gather a few friends to my banner. We instanced a lot and I decided that 5 mans and pvp was the endgame for me. I worked my hunter up to Knight Lieutenant before realizing that instant queues and more team oriented people existed among the Horde.

I tossed in the alliance towel and re-rolled horde on a new server that had just opened up in my region. Since I was planning to pvp heavily I picked a new class that I felt had a lot of potential in PvP, and could contribute to 5 man runs. Yes, I rolled a troll mage. I had a blast playing the mage, but I tended to play with others who were not always available, so I decided to start another character to play when they weren’t around. I was looking for something to solo with, that had potential for instancing and pvp. So I rolled a druid, thinking that I could heal, something I had never done heavily.

Around this time I fled my random guild, after a GM lead raid on STV with level 15 characters was so horribly organized. Me and another member of the old guild formed our own guild, to level up and instance together. We both brought other friends/family and we had a nice small friendly guild.

Now, druids were a complete unknown to me and I quickly realized I liked the feral forms more then casting and healing. This, and the need for a tank for the new guild, led to me specing into feral combat and eventually tanking the majority of the guild runs as we leveled to 60. So the druid became my main, and I fell in love with the hybrid power to save runs, and myself, from almost certain horrible death. (My love of hybrids will be a theme for this blog, and my next post will likely explain my thoughts on this topic.)

Since my druid became a large furry bullseye, my mage became my solo character. I had a blast learning to AoE grind. Killing 20 mobs at once with high risk is my favorite kind of fun. I had planned to level the mage as fire, but the survivability and mob control that frost provide mean that I have never speced out of deep frost since switching at level 20.

A month or so after these two horde characters hit 60, TBC came out, and the race to 70 was on. The guild actually selected to roll some blood elfs first, and give Hellfire a few days to cool off before we went after quests heavily. I rolled a rogue, as I have always wanted to try one, he is still sitting around level 27. We did go through the portal the first night and had a blast replacing all our fresh 60 gear with uber quest items. I very much enjoy the expansion and it has been a blast going through all new areas, low and high level. I reached 70 first on the druid, followed closely by the mage. The mage ended up getting a bit more play, since we found a nice protection tank as we leveled 60-70. But he has since moved on and my druid is definitely my current main.

As we hit 70 the guild wasn’t meeting my grouping needs, so, against all past experience, I joined a large raiding guild. This was ok for a short while, leading to more instance runs, and the large numbers meant more people to call on for 5 man quests. The leadership was lacking though, and the guild was headed for drama. I left that guild and once again formed my own, with my normal instance running group. We have been growing since with the goal to hit heroic 5 mans and arena heavily. We have a nice group of involved officers, and we have leveled up a crop of good players, mainly new to the game. We hit our first heroic a few weeks ago, and I love the challenge without all the farming that raids need.

As I hit 70 I also started hitting some BGs and Arena on my druid. I quickly found that healing was the most effective way to be successful, but that my feral spec and abilities didn’t lend themselves to healing pvp and arena. I would pop to caster form to heal and get absolutely mauled by other players. I took this to heart and decided that I wanted to heal and that a paladin was the way to go for pvp and they were strong healers for pve too, if the group needed that over my tank or dps mage.

So I rolled another new blood elf, and worked my way through the levels playing as protection spec, so I could AoE grind, and tank instances. The guild had a small group of new players at the lower levels, so we all leveled up together. When we found good players we invited them, and weeded out those who didn’t fit in or who acted entitled. We spent a long time teaching the new players to use marks and coordinate the runs well. As we have all hit 70 since and started hitting heroics and hard 70 instances all of this work has paid off, and we have had very few messy runs.

My pally is now 70, and has respecced Holy. He is rolling through the BGs and Arena now, healing his little blonde pony tail off. I am enjoying healing as much as I like tanking, and doing something completely different is a good thing from time to time.

So, that’s my WoW “career” all laid out. As you can see I have done most things in the game, except raiding, though I have stepped into different raid instances from time to time. I have maxed most professions and leveled fishing once. I have been a member, officer and currently GM. I have a 60 NE hunter, 60 human warrior, 70 troll mage, 70 tauren druid, 70 BE pally, and a smattering of 20 something alts. Even though I have done a lot, I know there is heaps I still don’t know about this game, and hope that when I share information here I can get some back from you. Please leave me a note, corrections welcome, feedback needed, and comments a must.