Ventrilo Tricks

Volume Normalization
This will normalize the volume of all other users to the same level, so you don't have to mess with manually adjusting their volume through the special effects screen, or ask them to adjust it on their end.

• Go to Setup
• Enable Direct Sound
• Select the SFX Button 
• Select Compressor and click Add.
  
• Under Compressor Properties use the following settings:
• Gain = Adjust for how loud you want people to be. (I use 14)
• Attack = 0.01
• Release = Around 500
• Threshold = Around -30
• Ratio = 100
• Pre delay = 4.0

Multiple Ventrilo Windows

• Right click your Ventrilo desktop icon.
• Go into "Properties".
• Go into the "Shortcut" tab.
• In the "Target" box, add '-m' to the path.  For example: "C:\Program Files\Ventrilo\Ventrilo.exe" -m
• Click "OK".
  

Gemming

This will be an in-depth guide to gemming, focused specifically on DPS classes (much of the advice will hold for other roles, but not all of it).

Basics
Gems are divided up into 8 types: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, prismatic, meta.  The first 6 are going to be the primary ones used for gemming.  Gem sockets in items are divided into 5 categories: red, yellow, blue, prismatic, meta.

Meta sockets can only take meta gems, and meta gems may only be socketed in meta sockets.  Prismatic sockets will take any color (at present, the only prismatic sockets are the ones from an Eternal Beltbuckle and the Blacksmithing-specific wrist and glove socket modifications).

The colored sockets will take any color of gem (excluding meta), but require a gem of a color corresponding to the socket color in order to count towards the socket bonus.  Socket bonuses are granted if all of the baseline sockets (ie. excluding Blacksmithing sockets and Beltbuckles) are socketed with gems matching their color.  Red, yeloow, and blue gems match only sockets corresponding to their color (though they may be socketed in any socket except a meta socket).  Orange, green, and purple gems match two colors of sockets, red/yellow, yellow/blue, and red/blue respectively.  They will activate a socket of either color if placed in it.

Each of the primary gem colors (red, yellow, blue) has certain stats assigned to it, and gems will have a balance of stats from all colors present.  Red generally has the most direct upgrade stats, yellow tends to have the combat ratings, and blue tends to have the endurance-related stats.  A full list of stats obtainable from each color follows:

Red - Strength, Agility, Attack Power, Expertise, Armor Penetration, Spell Power, Parry, Dodge.
Yellow - Intellect, Resilience, Haste, Hit, Crit, Defense
Blue - Stamina, Spirit, mp5, Spell Penetration

Each meta gem has a certain set of gemming requirements in order to be activated (for example, 2 blue gems, or more yellow gems than red gems, etc.).  For the purposes of these meta requirements, gems that count for multiple colors count for all of those colors at the same time regardless of which slot they are socketed in.  For example, a Relentless Earthsiege Diamond requires 1 red, 1 yellow, and 1 blue gem.  Socketing an orange gem will fulfill both the red and yellow gem requirements, even if the orange gem is put into a blue socket.  A Siren's Tear or Nightmare's Tear will fulfill all 3 requirements on it's own.

Metas and Socket Bonuses
Almost all dps classes will use one of two different gems: Relentless Earthsiege Diamond or Chaotic Skyflare Diamond.  Casters will almost universally use a Chaotic Skyflare.  Similarly, agility-based physical dps will almost universally use a Relentless Earthsiege.  Strength-based physical dps may use either, and there are pros and cons to each (explained in detail below in the Advanced section).  Thus nearly all dps classes will require either 1 or 2 blue gems, and 0 or 1 yellow gems.

As stated above, both the blue and the yellow gem requirement for the Relentless Earthsiege may be filled with a single Nightmare's Tear (which will similarly fit any socket (excluding meta) in your gear), and will fill the first of the two blue gem requirements for the Chaotic Skyflare.  The second blue requirement is usually filled with a purple gems, as the red color portion tends to grant a greater benefit than the yellow portion of a green gem (the blue portion will be the same in both cases).

The general rule of thumb for dps classes (see the Advanced section for exceptions) is to socket the minimum number of blue-colored gems needed for your meta gem using your spec's optimal blue gem, which for most is a Nightmare's Tear in one socket and (if a second is needed) a purple gem with Str/Stam, AP/Stam, Agi/Stam, SP/Stam, or SP/Spi, depending on class and spec.  All other slots are filled with your spec's best overall gem (see Advanced).

Advanced Gemming
This section relies rather heavily on having accurate stat weights for your spec.  Ideal places to gather these are from the forums on Elitist Jerks, Rawr's Pawn export, and any simulators being maintained for your class.

For all examples in this section, I will be using the following stat weight scale (which comes from Kahorie's DK Simulator from the EJ forums, using my current gear and spec).  I've specifically excluded Hit and Expertise rating, as I always gem for the cap for those stats, so their effective weight is approximately identical to strength (the stat that I'd be replacing, though in reality, hit is worth slightly less then strength on gear and slightly more than strength on gems because the additional yellow gems allow me to get socket bonuses that otherwise would not be worth socketing for the bonus).

Strength - 2.88
Agility - 1.59
Crit - 2.24
Haste - 1.32
ArP - 2.58

To find the ideal gem of each color for your spec, simply add the total overall value of the stats for each eligible gem and pick the one with the highest total value.  For example, a 20 strength gem using the above scale would be worth 20 * 2.88 = 57.6 points, while a 10 strength / 10 crit gem would be worth 10 * 2.88 + 10 * 2.24 = 51.2 points, so the 20 strength one would be the superior gem for a red socket color.  For a yellow socket, strength is my most valuable stat (so the ideal gem will be an orange Str/- gem, rather than a pure yellow), and crit is the more valuable of the two secondary stats, so Str/Crit is my ideal gem.  However, Str/Hit technically ranks higher so long as at least 7 of the hit rating is pre-melee cap.

Evaluating meta gems (for strength-based plate, at least) is somewhat more complex, but not a great deal more difficult.  Since the secondary (non-stat) portion of both the Relentless Earthsiege and the Chaotic Skyflare are the same, the only value I need to take into account is the difference between agility and crit.  Using the above scale, the Relentless Earthsiege is worth 21 * 1.59 = 33.39 while the Chaotic Skyflare is worth 21 * 2.24 = 47.04.

However, the Relentless Earthsiege requires a single blue gem to activate, while the Chaotic Skyflare requires two.  Thus the value for the Relentless Earthsiege must also include the value for the half of the gem that would otherwise be blue.  Since that socket will without fail turn into a 20 Strength gem (all blue sockets except those needed for the meta are socketed pure Strength for me, as there's not a socket bonus yet in existence powerful enough to overrule 10 strength), the half that would normally be blue being 10 strength, the Relentless Earthsiege effectively gains an additional 28.8 value, totaling 62.19.  Thus for the Chaotic Skyflare to be better, I must have a second item requiring a blue socket with a socket bonus equal in value to at least the difference between the metas, or 15.15 points.  This equates to a minimum of 6 strength, 6 ArP, or 7 Crit.  If the item with the blue socket also requires one or more yellow gem sockets, the socket bonus value would need to be increased by 6.4 points per yellow socket, or a minimum of 8 strength for a single yellow socket, and it's impossible to out-value if the meta bonus is crit, ArP, or requires more than 1 yellow or blue socket.

This same technique can be applied to items that only require red and yellow sockets (or even just yellow ones).  Since pure red gems are almost universally better for dps classes than orange ones, the value of the socket bonus can be used to calculate whether it is worthwhile to socket pure red gems or socket orange gems in yellow slots to gain the socket bonus.  For example, my gloves require a single yellow socket for a +4 Strength bonus.  The value of the socket bonus is 4 * 2.88 = 11.52.  The value of socketing it with a red 20 Str gem would be just the value of the red gem: 57.6 points.  The value of socketing it with an orange 10 Str/10 Crit gem would be the value of the gem (51.2) plus the value of the socket bonus, totaling 62.72.  Thus I gain more dps benefit from socketing a less powerful Str/Crit gem to gain the socket bonus than I would from socketing the more power pure Str gem and ignoring the socket bonus.

To generalize, the value of the socket bonus must equal a minimum of the difference between your most powerful gem overall (in my case, 20 Str) and the value of the gem required to match the socket in question (in my case, 10 Str/10 Crit), times the number of sockets of that color required (in this case, 1).

As an example, the plate dps chestpiece from Emblems of Frost (Castle Breaker's Battleplate) requires 1 red, 1 yellow, and 1 blue socket for a +8 Strength bonus.  The red socket has no value difference if socketed for best overall (pure Str) or for the bonus (also pure Str).  The yellow socket sees a decrease of 57.6 - 51.2 = 6.4 if socketed for the bonus, and the blue socket sees a decrease of 57.6 - 28.8 = 28.8.  Thus the socket bonus must equal at least the value of those two decreases combined for it to be more valuable to socket for the bonus, in this case at least 35.2 points.  The 8 strength socket bonus is worth 23.04, well below the required value, so it is more valuable to socket pure strength and ignore the socket bonus.

Blue gems (including Nightmare's Tears) should be used to gain the most amount of overall stat benefit from gear.  If you have more blue sockets than you need blue gems, calculate the total value of the gems and socket bonus for each item both when socketed with the for the socket bonus with the blue gem and socketed for your best overall gem (ignoring the socket bonus).  Whichever item shows the the smallest decrease in value from when it was gemmed for best overall gems is the one in which you should socket the blue gem.  Generally this will be the item requiring only a single blue socket with the largest amount of your most valuable stat.  If you need a second blue gem, repeat this process with all remaining items with a blue socket, excluding the one you used the first blue gem on.

Extrapolation to Other Areas
These same techniques can be applied to other areas of gear optimization as well.  For example, there are three available glove enchants for melee dps (excluding Engineers): +44 AP, +20 Hit, and +15 Expertise.  Since most melee classes will gem for the hit cap, the value of hit can be weighted the same as Strength.  While technically orange -/Hit gems maybe replaced with other orange gems (-/Crit usually), they will only be so replaced if the socket bonus value exceeds the value of the lost additional red-color stat, and can thus be ignored (although this is why the hit on gems is worth slightly more than strength for me, as it allows me to gain yellow sockets that I otherwise wouldn't, effectively allowing me to gain socket bonuses that require yellow sockets with a gem that weights the same as my best overall gem, a pure red.  Correspondingly, since it decreases the amount of hit I am required to gem for and therefore decreases the socket bonuses I receive, hit on gear and enchants is slightly decreased in value compared to strength).  Thus the 20 hit enchant effectively has a weight of 57.8 points, while the AP enchant has an effective weight of 44 points.

Again, though, a balance point can be found.  If I am currently hitcapped with the 20 hit enchant and have a yellow socket on an item that would grant a socket bonus if filled with an orange gem (but the socket bonus is small enough that it isn't worth gemming for Str/Crit), then it would be superior to gem for the hit and use the 44 AP glove enchant if the socket bonus is worth at least the difference between the enchants, in this case 13.8.  However, since the socket bonus value required for it to be better to gem Str/Crit for me is only 6.4 points, this situation will never occur, as that yellow socket would have already been filled with a Str/Crit gem (in other words, the value loss of swapping the enchants needs to be less than the value loss of swapping from a my best overall gem to my best yellow gem in order for the situation to even be possible).

Procs

Definition
A procs is an effect that has a chance of occurring from certain qualifying events. This includes effects that proc off of physical attacks, spell casts, and certain rare conditions such as being attacked, being crit, or taking a certain type of damage.  Procs are of two general types, static-chance and proc-per-minute (PPM).  Procs may also have what's know as an Internal Cooldown (ICD), which indicates the period of time after a proc occurs in which the proc cannot occur again.  In general, static-chance attacks tend to have ICDs, while PPM effects tend not to.

Proc Per Minute
Effects that run on a PPM, system occur almost exclusively as procs from weapon attacks, and are designed to give approximately the same proc rate regardless of the speed of the weapon.  Each proc is given a specific PPM number (for example, 2 PPM for Rune of the Fallen Crusader).  This number is then multiplied by the base speed of the weapon divided by 60 to give the percentage chance per attack of the proc occurring:

P = Proc chance per swing
M = Proc per minute value
S = Base speed of the weapon


Excluding a few BC-era items, the proc chance is calculated from the weapon's base speed (in other words, the speed listed on the tooltip).  Thus any haste effects will increase the actual proc rate of the effect, as the character will swing more often, but at the same percentage proc chance.

In addition, most PPM attacks are capable of procing off special attacks made by the character, though it may be limited to weapon-based specials (in other words, special attacks that involve using your weapon to attack, such as Heart Strike or Crusader Strike, but not Bloodthirst or Judgement).  In these cases, the special attacks use the same percentage chance as the melee attacks.

This means that for PPM effects, the chance per swing from white attacks is irrespective of weapon swing, but the proc chance per special increases as base weapon speed increases.  Assuming two players, one with a fast weapon, one with a slow weapon, with the same amount of haste from buffs and gear, using the same number of procable special attacks per period time, the player with the slower weapon will experience more procs on average over a given interval due to the higher proc chance per special attack.

Static Chance
Static chance procs function just as they sound:  they have a fixed percentage chance per qualifying attack to proc.  Otherwise, they function just as PPM effects.

Uptime and Time Between Procs
Calculating the uptime (for a duration proc) or time between procs (for instant effect procs, such as damage), the method is strikingly similar.  One needs to know 4 values: the duration of the proc (only applicable to procs with duration.  Instant effects have an effective duration of 1 second), the internal cooldown (if any), the chance to proc (either static or the percentage calculated from PPM), and the average time between procable attacks.  These are noted as follows in all following formulae:

U = Percentage uptime
D = Proc duration (D = 1 if the effect is instant)
T = Time between procable attacks
P = Proc chance per attack
I = Internal Cooldown

The following formulae will give the uptime for any duration proc.  If seeking the time between procs, whether for an instant effect or duration proc, simply take D / U (remember, D = 1 for instantaneous effects).

Instant Effects and Long-ICD Effects
If the effect has an ICD at least as long as the duration or if the effect is instantaneous (most trinkets), the uptime is as follows:

As an example, the ability to use Deep Freeze for a frost mage has a 15% proc per cast, and an effective internal cooldown of 30 seconds (the cooldown on Deep Freeze).  Assuming the mage has an average net haste of 15%, the mage will be casting a Frost Bolt every 2 seconds.  Based on the above, the mage will then have an average time between Deep Freezes of 43.3 seconds.

No-ICD Duration Effects
Duration procs without an internal cooldown function differently, as overlapping procs will reduce uptime below what one would expect intuitively.  Uptime for a proc without an internal cooldown is as follows:

As an example, Fallen Crusader with a 3.0 speed polearm has precisely a 10% chance to proc per swing, with a 15 second duration and no ICD.  Assuming no haste and no special attacks, FC will show a 41% uptime.  Compare this with the 50% uptime one would estimate if one simply took the PPM times the duration and divided by 60.

Short ICD Duration Effects
Procs with an Internal cooldown shorter than their duration use a complex amalgam of these two.  The formula is as follows:

As an example, the Totem of Electrifying Wind has a 70% proc chance per Lightning Bolt, with a 12 second duration and a 6 second ICD.  Assuming 33% overall haste (reduces Lightning Bolt to a 1.5 second cast), and assuming the shaman is spamming nothing but Lightning Bolt, the totem will have an uptime of 99.6%.

Star Trek Online

Over the weekend I managed to get my hands on an open beta key for Star Trek Online by Cryptic.  As an avid fan of Star Trek, I was expecting truly great things from this game.  I was sadly, horribly disappointed.

The graphics are fairly good for a space-based game, with quality lighting, engine trails, and explosion effects.  The ground effects, on the other hands, are reminiscent of Elite Force (the first one) without as much polish.  Character animations are jerky and disconnected, NPC pathing is asinine, and everything looks like it's made out of plastic.

To make matters worse, the game has some of the most extreme instancing I've ever encountered.  To move between systems, you first have to warp to 'sector space', which is somehow supposed to represent warp travel, but really just looks like a semi-3d map that you can only navigate at about 1/4th maximum movement speed.  In fact, you don't even have to know where anything is or explore it, they have a convenient list of every system in the sector, and doubleclicking on any system auto-pilots you to it without effort.  There are no random encounters or world mobs, only mission-oriented ones.  Now, once you warp to Sector Space (load screen), you find your system, auto-pilot to it, enter it (load screen), get the mission brief, kill some enemy ships, then either have to beam somewhere or warp somewhere for the next piece (load screen), then warp back out to Sector Space (load screen).  To make matters even worse, every single zone, including both missons and the 'public' areas (ie. the non-mission areas, Sector Space, Earth station and surrounding space, etc.) are all instanced by themselves, with dozens of instances that often cap at 10-20, or possibly up to 50 in certain high-density areas like Earth station.

Lastly, the missions actually get more difficult when you group, as the number of enemies increase, and they tend to focus-fire one ship at a time, make survival a great deal more of an issue, and the rewards only barely increase (no extra skill points, only extra loot, and that's shared among the party on a round-robin).  All these combine to make the game nothing but a solo game that you have to log in to play.

It's also an astoundingly grindy game.  The levels are broken down into 5 teirs: 1-10, 11-20, 21-30, 31-40, 41-50.  When you start the game, after the initial tutorial missions (which you have to do on every character you start, there's no "Ya, I've done this, skip please" option), you are given command of a Nebula-class starship, a light ship with 3 weapon hardpoints (2 forward, 1 rear), and 3 bridge officer positions.  You are stuck in that ship until you reach level 11.  I've put in about 6 hours play time combined in the beta thus far, and while I'm certainly not power-leveling, I haven't really been slacking either, and I'm about halfway through level 5.  That's right...the first 10-15 hours of play offer zero ship upgrades.

Next there's the methods of leveling.  First, you can PvP.  Second, you can complete missions.  However, the missions are astoundingly repetitive and shallow, all being variations of 'kill all enemy ships', with maybe some 'collect x of y', 'use x', 'escort x to y', or 'beam down and kill all enemies' thrown in.  The larger of the first missions are the patrol missions, which require a patrol of 4 specified star systems, each of which can take up to an hour, and the reward is usually just access to 1-3 more patrol missions and possibly a new minor upgrade or bridge officer candidate.

Leveling is also rather complex and tough to understand at first.  STO doesn't have experience in a traditional sense.  Instead, the player gains skill points for completing missions, which can then be spent on poorly detailed skills with no explanation of the specific benefits gained.  Each 'level' simply requires a certain number of skill points be spent.

The currency system is another hideously overcomplicated system.  Instead of any normal currency system, STO uses several types of tokens.  First up is Energy Credit, which can only be gotten by selling or melting down items received as loot or quest rewards (the quests themselves only award skill points and merit points).  Selling items grants 50% of vendor sell price, melting them down with the replicator grants 40% (but can be done without returning to Earth station).  Energy Credit is used to most basic items and services.  The next currency item is Merit points.  These are used exclusively and only to purchase bridge officers and train them (think of BO's as a weird hybrid of talent trees and minions), and are received from quests.

STO also has a stack of Exploration tokens, which can be used to purchase higher-level ground and space upgrades, and a bit more than a half dozen salvageable items from spacial anomalies in each system and ground mission, which are used to craft certain rare upgrades or consumables.

Just to accentuate this, STO entered Open Beta a week ago.  The devs are still working on major bug fixes and implement much of the content intended for release.  The game releases in two weeks.  That's right, open 'beta', which is supposed to absolute last phase of testing, running a stress test (which they failed miserably), and squashing last minute bugs, has turned into late alpha testing, and the game is due in just two weeks.

Ultimately STO feels like a rushed, half-assed Star Trek clone of Champions Online (in fact, the UI still has most of the same look, and even the same cartoony font).  It's grindy, unfinished, boring, unrewarding, socially truncated, and only barely has the Star Trek feel that was the entire point of making a Trek MMO.  Add to this that Cryptic seems to be running a rather desperate cashcow scheme by offering the ability to play Liberated Borg characters for the small price of just under $300 for a lifetime subscription (also included 2 extra character spots, which btw, they only give you 2 to start with and sell you ones beyond that), and the entire game just seems like a last-ditch effort to cash out on the Trek fan community to save Cryptic's failing finances after the debacle of Champions Online.

My advice: avoid until Cryptic is bought out by someone that can actually produce a successful game (Activision or Bioware come to mind).

Bryntroll Update 2

Spent some time this morning testing Bryntroll since the hotfix:

• It can still proc from BCB strikes.
• It CAN still apply from Icy Touch.
• It CAN still double-proc from Plague Strike
• It doesn't seem to be able to proc off the shadow portion of Scourge Strike.
• Refreshing diseases with Pestilence via Glyph of Disease does not seem to proc it.
• It CAN, however, proc off of spreading diseases with Pestilence, even apparently on targets out of melee range (had it proc against a target dummy ~9 yards laterally away from me), and on the primary target (so long as Pestilence hits more than one target, that is).

Assuming this is the way it stays, this adds 36.55 dps and 60.92 AEP to the above for non-GoD Unholy (total 330.61 dps, 551.02 total AEP) and 37.54 dps and 62.57 AEP for non-GoD Blood (total 377.10 dps, 628.50 AEP).

The procing from spreading of diseases and applying them via IT or PS seems like it may be removed as well, though, in which case the AEP would drop to my prior calculated value.

Bryntroll Update

Blizzard released a modification tonight to Bryntroll's proc, labeling it is a 'bug fix'.

We have found a bug with Bryntroll where it procs too often for Retribution paladins or Unholy DKs. For example both portions of Scourge Strike could cause a proc, which is unintended.


Bryntroll seems to account for about ~3-4% of dps for a typical Icecrown Fury warrior. That's more of where it should be for other melee.

Assuming they simply remove the ability for disease, Righteous Vengeance, Deep Wounds, and similar DoT refreshes or applications to proc the effect, this is a noticeable nerf to Unholy, Fury, Arms, and Ret, and a mild nerf to Blood.  Blood will lose 6 procable attacks per minute, Unholy will lose 12, and Ret, Arms, and Fury lose an amount dependent on their haste, crit, and skill at maximizing GCDs, though all 3 will likely lose 12 or more.

For those looking for numbers, this reduces the DPS / AEP for DKs down to 294.0 dps / 490.10 for Unholy and 340.0 dps / 565.93 for Blood at raid baseline (Windfury, Swift Retribution, zero haste rating).

Bryntroll

I recently was lucky enough to get my hands on one of the more powerful (and cooler looking) weapons out of ICC, namely Bryntroll, the Bone Arbiter.  The theorycrafting on this potent weapon is still rather sparse, so I spent several hours testing the limits of the proc and it's dps contribution.  First off, the basics:

• The 264 version proc has an average damage of 2250, while the 277 version has an average of 2538.
• The damage does not scale with any character stats (though the dps does, more on that below).
• The damage does scale with any percentage damage increases that affect spell damage, such as Avenging Wrath, Curse of Elements, Blood Presence, etc.
  
• The drain can proc off of any weapon attack, as well as some odd events such as applying or refreshing effects such as deathknight diseases or the paladin talent Righteous Vengeance.  However, any of the odd events that can proc it require you to be in melee range and facing the target (in other word, in a position such that your character would swing the axe at the target if you turned on auto-attack) in order for the drain to be able to proc.
  
• The drain has a base proc rate of 2 procs-per-minute, or 11.3333% chance per swing, and has no internal cooldown.
• The drain can proc multiple times per attack, provided there's are more than one weapon event for the attack.  For example, the drain can multi-proc off the following:
• On any or all of the multiple targets of Cleave, Whirlwind, Divine Storm, Heart Strike, or Sweeping Strikes.
  
• From a melee (or special) and it's subsequent seal proc, Blood-Caked Blade proc, or Windfury proc (though why a shaman would be using it...).
• From both the physical and shadow portions of Scourge Strike.
• The drain can not proc from any spells, excluding the odd events mentioned above.
• The drain is incapable of critting, functions on the spell hit table, and can be partially resisted.
  

Now, with a 2 PPM baseline, the weapon will deal 2 procs a minute before any waste or special attacks or talents are factored in, giving it a minimum dps of 75.  The wonderful thing about the proc rate, though, is that it scales linearly with haste buffs.  The more haste your character has, the more dps the proc provides and the higher it's equivalent AP value.  In practice, the proc will usually provide between 200 and 400 dps, depending on the character's haste rating, spec and rotation (and therefore number of procable attacks per second), spell hit chance, and +damage buffs present.  A good estimate is that it will provide approximately 4-8% of a character's dps.

For many classes, this means the proc is worth the equivalent of between 400 and 800 additional attack power, though it's place on the best-in-slot list is strongly dependent class, spec, haste rating, and rotation.  In general is can be assumed to be near the top of the list, however, as the proc itself provides a fairly respectable amount of dps while also making it easier for the healers to keep you alive through miscellaneous raid damage.


References
Melee/BCB Doubleproc
Scourge Strike Doubleproc
Heart Strike Doubleproc
PPM Recount Parse
Bryntroll on DK Forums

3.3: Area Damage Caps

Patch 3.3 is changing the way Area Damage Caps function, but AoE Caps are a fairly poorly understood mechanic to begin with for most players.  Thus I will explain how the current capping mechanics works, how the new 3.3 mechanics works, and the advantages and disadvantages of the new system.

Currently, the cap on an AoE spell is set by and only by the spell's rank.  3 spells with known caps are Arcane Explosion, Howling Blast, and Blood Boil, all three of which have a cap at max rank (rank 10 for AE, rank 4 for HB and BB) of 37500 damage.  Each spell has a designation for how much damage it does per target, and this is the maximum damage per target it can do, but not the minimum.  The AoE cap comes into play when the total damage being done reaches said cap.  At that point, instead of doing the damage stated by the spell per target, it does damage to each target equal to the damage cap divided by the number of targets.  Thus once you are at the cap, adding more targets reduces the amount of damage per target done, keeping the total damage done constant.  Note that this damage cap applies before critical effect damage is factored in, so an AoE spell can in fact to more damage than the cap if some of the strikes crit.

For example, at approximately 305 spell power, Arcane Explosion does 625 damage per target.  On up to 60 targets, the spell will continue to deal 625 damage per target (before resists and crits).  After 60 targets, however, the damage per target begins to drop as the cap of 37500 damage has been hit.  In this mage upgraded their gear to approximately 3250 spell power, their AE would then be doing 1250 damage per target.  On up to 30 targets, this would continue to hold true, but beyond 30 targets, the damage per target would again begin to diminish, and once at or past 60 targets, both mages would be doing the exact same damage per target.

The new system radically changes the manner in which this cap is calculated.  Instead of there being a static cap imposed by the spell rank, the cap on any AoE spell is equal to ten times the non-crit single target damage it deals.  In the above example, the first mage would have a cap of 6250 damage, while the second would have a cap of 12500 damage.  If up against 20 targets, the first mage would be dealing 312-313 damage per target, while the second would be dealing 625.  Both of these caps are significantly lower than the prior 37500 cap, but there are advantages to the system as well.

One of the largest advantages is scaling.  Currently, improving your gear will improve your AoE output only while below the damage cap, and increasing that output means that it takes less and less targets to reach that cap as you get better and better gear.  In the above example, the mage improved his spell power from 305 to 3250.  In doing so, his damage per cast below the cap doubled below the cap, but the number of targets necessary to cap out his AE also halved.  In the 3.3 system, this is no longer the case.  All AoE spells by definition now cap out at 10 targets.  However, since the cap itself is based on the scaling damage done by the spell, the damage a spell does even beyond that cap is proportion to the damage done under the cap.  In the above example, the first mage will do half the damage of the second while under the cap...and continue to do half the damage of the second mage while over the cap.  In other words, you are no longer penalized on AoE damage for improving your gear.

The other thing to note about these new mechanics is that they only apply when you are damaging more than 10 targets.  On 10 or fewer targets, all spells, regardless of their potency, will deal full damage to all targets (again, before crits and resists are factored in).  This is especially relevant for higher damage abilities such as Howling Blast which can easily reach the AoE cap in as few as 4 targets in a raid setting (at very high gear levels, of course).  In my current gear in a 10-man raid (and this is against targets without the spell damage debuff), my Howling Blasts average a bit over 5000 damage, and can cap out at almost 10000 damage due to AP procs (and these are non-crits).  This means that it takes between 4 and 8 targets to cap out the damage on HB, much much less than the 20-30 it takes for a mage to cap out AE in similar gear.  With the new 3.3 mechanics, HB will guaranteed full damage against up to 10 targets, giving me a potential cap of up to 100000 damage, a nearly 3-fold increase in maximum damage.

An easy way to illustrate the advantages of this change is to relate it to the testing I did to determine the HB cap.  Against the 33 Converted Heroes gathered up by Frostbound, my HB was dealing 1136 damage a piece, for a total of ~37500 damage done.  Given the new system, and assuming maximum procs in a raid setting, I would be dealing a touch over 3000 damage per target, almost 3 times as much damage per cast as before.

There is a minimum in which this change is valuable, though, and it varies per spell.  In the case of Howling Blast, it takes a touch over 8000 AP for HB to have a cap more than 37500 damage on 10 targets (in other words, for the change to be a buff), which is relatively easy to achieve with a single of the many procs available in a raid setting in high-end raiding gear, but otherwise fairly out-of-reach.  For AE, the necessary spell power is absolutely ludicrous, requiring 12595 spell power to reach a cap of 37500 damage against 10 target, and that's for a mage with full points in Arcane Instability, Spell Impact, and World in Flames, a net 16% increase in damage to AE.

Still, on the whole this change is a good thing as it allows one of the few true damage caps in game to scale with gear.  I'm especially pleased as it means I'll no longer be seeing crits down around the 4-5k mark from HB against packs like the Exploding Lashlings on Freya.

Worgen

I just saw the new Worgen gameplay videos posted on MMO-Champion, and I have to say, I'm far from impressed.  While I understand that Gilneas is a human kingdom, the design and texturing are so blatantly similar to the ones currently in-game that one would almost think themselves in Darkshire if they didn't know better.  The castle in the distance is somewhat interesting, but otherwise the land is rather dull.

The model animations are the worst part, though.  The animation for transforming into a worgen was revealed at Blizzcon earlier this year, and it hasn't changed a bit, it's still over-the-top in terms of graphics and yet somehow still astoundingly so basic and crude.  The walking animation for the worgen is my largest complaint, though.  They look awkward and uncoordinated, something wolves and especially the werewolves of legend are most certainly not known for.  Despite having arms that hang down past their knees, they only go down on all fours as a random idle animation (and sadly this is really the only time they look cool).  Even when their racial sprint is popped, the only change in animation is a trailing white flag identical to the animation present on a rogue's Sprint.

The worgen present in Grizzly Hills have one of the single coolest-looking run animations in the game right now.  They get down on all fours and literally claw their way over the ground.  They seriously look neigh-unstoppable while barreling after you, and that's precisely the animation that the worgen player race should have had.  Standing bipedally is a fairly common piece of werewolf lore, but running on all fours is almost universal, and looks far better than a gorilla-proportioned creature swinging its strung-out forelimbs back and forth in a crude attempt to maintain balance.

On the whole, I can honestly say that at this point I'm frighteningly disappointed with the feature that I was most looking forward to out of Cataclysm.

Pet Peeve of the Day: Gear Scaling

Something I've been thinking about a great deal lately is how Blizzard decided to have gear scale with raid difficulty and size, and I believe they've designed the system entirely incorrectly.  Currently, 10-man Heroic instances have little to no incentive behind them other than progression, as 25-man Normal drops the same itemlevel gear and can be PuGed, and is a virtually guaranteed clear.  10H has an advantage of having slightly better itemized 245 gear, a higher loot to raider ratio, and only requires keeping 10 people focused rather than 25 (but actually requires said focus, unlike 25N), but otherwise has no true advantages over simply PuGing 25N each week.

Nothing burns quite as much as knowing I'm on one of the best progression teams on the server, yet looking around and seeing people within a couple hundred gear-score of me (or even almost equal to me) that are in some little-known guild that never raids, yet that player PuGs 25N each week and therefore has nearly the same or higher average itemlevel as me.  Thus I propose the system which Blizzard should have used for the ilevel progression:

10 Normal
The easiest of the easy, 10N will have the lowest itemlevel items: 232 for ToC and 251 for IC.

25 Normal
Given it's PuGable nature and lack of true difficulty (other than keeping 25 people focused and doing what they need to), 25N will have an IL half a teir above 10N: 239 for ToC and 258 for IC.

10 Heroic
Befitting it's significant jump in difficulty over 25N, yet it's smaller group size, 10H will have an IL a full tier above 25N: 251 for ToC and 271 for IC.

25 Heroic
As difficult as it gets, 25H will have the highest IL available, half a tier above 10N: 258 for ToC and 277 for IC.

The blatant advantage of this design is that it immediately separates heroic (ie. 'hardcore') raiders from casual ones, while still allowing casual raiders to experience the content and get gear that, while not bleeding-edge good, it still quite solid.  It does, however, also allow the hardcore raiders to retain the gear advantage that was the trademark of hardcore raiding for the first 4 years of the game.

Another distinct advantage of this system is that it puts 10-man Heroic forward as a viable gear progression option, as it has a noticeable gear advantage over 25N, and is only half a tier below 25H.  This would serve to inspire 25H guilds to run 10H as their auxiliary raid rather than 25N, cutting down on some of their boredom (and likely complaints of the game's lack of difficulty).

The last advantage evolved from this new system is that gear progression would be a relatively smoother curve, with 4 distinct IL gear sets rather than 3, yet it would still only take up 2 tiers worth of IL.  Assuming the 10N IL was placed equal to the 10H IL of the prior raiding tier, gear would show precisely a 1.5 tier upgrade per raiding tier, the exact jump currently displayed between ToC and IC.  In addition, it would show a full 1.5 tier upgrade between difficulties (befitting the significant increase in the difficulty of the encounters), and only a half-tier between raiding sizes (since handing 2.5 times as many people, while definitely something worth rewarding, isn't nearly as impressive as the Heroic modes).

As a raid leader that regularly runs 10H and partially PuGs what I can't guild-fill in my 25N each week, I can honestly say that the implication that 10H requires the same effort as PuGing a 25N is a fairly potent insult to 10H teams.   Given the fact that Blizzard seems a lot more interested in making sure both raid sizes are valid options for raiding then they do making sure PuG raids are as rewarding as possible, this change would alleviate much of the frustration and complaining by the more hardcore raiders (who strongly dislike seeing the visible marks of their progress become next to meaningless to the casual observer), yet still allow the more casual raiders access to the upper-end content.

Blizzard Pet Store

So I was surfing MMO-Champion and up on the front page pops a message about a Blizzard Pet Store.  My first thought was that the current in-game pet store run by Breanni, the NPC avatar dedicated to the creator and administrator of WarcraftPets.com, would be expanded to include new purchasable pets, perhaps with a new token system.

Instead what I found was the most blatant and pitiable attempt to wrest more money from their customers that I've ever seen.  It's bad enough that they are effectively charging us (and charging us exorbitantly!) for services like name, faction, server, or race changes, but now they want us to dump the equivalent of 2/3rds of a month's subscription fee for some of the more desirable pet models they've ever implemented, after taunting us with them for a month via MMO-C's data mining.

Honestly, this is a whole new level of disrespect to customers.  I can see charging minor amounts for certain services to cover the expense of performing them, but charging for an in-game item, especially one with a purely aesthetic purpose?  This seems remarkably hypocritical after their efforts to eradicate gold-selling.  Is purchasing in-game items with real-world currency somehow suddenly acceptable so long as it's Blizz that gets to sleep on the bed stuffed with bills?

TSO

Last night I was fortunate enough to find myself with a ticket to the TSO show here in Denver.  It was a nightmare getting down, and the show started late due to some technically issues with the rigging, but it was well worth the hassle.  Amazing show musically, pyrotechnically, and choreographically, I highly recommend it to anyone living near one of their tour show stops.  Hit up their tour page for details.

Icecrown, Part 2

Now for the Valithria Dreamwalker fight.  When I first read of this fight, I thought it was an extremely cool concept.  Put the healers in the role of dps, put them in charge of the pace of the fight.  It sounded like an exceptionally innovative idea for an encounter.

Then I saw the video of it...and realized that the implementation they chose makes the entire fight essentially into a long drawn-out KT phase 1.  The raid still takes damage, though, so the healers are basically all on raid healing + a giant dragon, and the rest of the raid is just fighting off endless waves of undead until the healers get around to topping off said dragon.  Booooring.

Icecrown, Part 1

I just got through watching a video on the Gunship Battle encounter in the upcoming Icecrown Citadel, and I have to say I'm incredibly impressed with how it looks so far.  It has some very innovative mechanics involved, and similar to the Twins fight in ToC, feels a lot like a fight that's there mainly to play around.  The inclusion of jetpacks, the requirement to split focus between many different (but not instagib) damage sources, to prioritize targets and who's doing what...

This is the precise sort of fight that was missing in Ulduar and ToC, requiring everyone to be paying attention and looking out for themselves, but not to the point where they get instagibbed if they make a mistake (but if they make several in quick succession, they likely will die).  Beyond that, the fight has motivation behind it, fighting off the intrusion of enemy faction as you battle for control of the citadel's access rampart, instead of just gibbing these random monsters, demons, undead, or PMSing gladiators that the Argent Crusader brought in to try to kill off as much of their army as possible.  It's a fight I can get involved in and have fun with in addition to the challenge.

Sindragosa's fight looks similarly interesting, a true evolution of the Sapphiron fight.  Instead of a stack Frost Breath that kills anything it touches, now it moves around (and there's a lot more of them), doesn't hit as hard, but still needs to be avoided.  On top of that, the raid chooses when the iceblocks are removed (as they have to kill them).  Lastly, the Unstable Magic mechanic sounds like a very interesting way for a caster to go out in a streak of glory before getting instagibbed by a 40k+ arcane bomb.  Mages, of course, can simply Ice Block out of it, though >.>

Then on the other side there's the Lord Marrowgar encounter.  Of the 5 fights I've seen in ICC to date, this one looks by far to be the most dull, basically a tank and spank with ridiculously slow lines of fire to avoid (they don't even follow you like Archi's did), spears of ice to kill, and the same annoying whirlwind of death kite that Skadi in Utgarde Pinnacle has, and that's pretty much the entire fight.  Not terribly innovative or engaging.

On Boss Design and Mechanics

I read an interesting post on the WoW forums called Lets Talk About Modern Boss Design, the first of a 3-part series focused on encounter design and how WotLK has performed in that area thus far.  I was planning on writing a post about this anyway, but last night's heroic Anub'Arak really amplified my feelings on it.

For those unfamiliar with the Anub'Arak fight on heroic, it's a 3-phase fight, with the first two running almost identically to the regular version, excepting that you are limited to 6 of the frost orbs (thus giving the fight an effective soft enrage for those first 2 phases).  The only really important difference in the first two phases is that pairs of adds spawn instead of lone ones, and the adds gain a new ability called Shadow Strike, which is essentially a 4-second-cast (hasted to 2-seconds if there are two of them close together) random target shadowstep which must either be interrupted or the raid member targeted will be instagibbed.  This isn't terrible unruly to deal with, as the adds are still stunnable (and are undead, so our prot paladin offtank can keep them shut down with Holy Wrath), there are never more than two up at a time, and they always cast Shadow Strike in unison.

Phase 3 is where my irritate begins.  Anub'Arak casts an aura called Leeching Swarm that drains 20% of each raid member's current health per second (healing Anub for 50% of the damage done) for the remainder of the fight.  This isn't so bad, as once people get down around 5k HP or so, the swarm doesn't hit hard and Anub doesn't heal much.  Anub continues to cast Penetrating Cold (which ticks for 6k on heroic), but it's not terribly difficult to heal through.  What is a problem is that the burrower adds continue to spawn.  This leaves the raid with two choices: continue tanking and killing the adds, or tank them off the ice until they borrow.

If we choose the former, we lose a minimum of 2 of our dpsers, usually 3, to keep the adds under control.  This more than doubles the amount of time necessary to kill Anub, and often results in a wipe purely because the healers just flat can't keep up the necessary output for that long.

If we choose the latter (and this is where my peeve is), the major worry is keeping up to 4 adds at a time interrupted on Shadow Strikes.  This means that the off tank needs to watch for new adds and adds unburrowing, maintain aggro on all the current ones against the massive output by the healers and splash damage by the dps, and still manage to get a Holy Wrath off within a very short cast time every time one of them tries to gib a raid member.

This falls back to the point made in the post above: unmanageable precision.  Yogg-Saron was another example of this, with 3-6 mobs up, each of which casting an AoE spell that needs to be interrupted, and unlike Anub'Arak's adds, Yogg's aren't undead for an easy Holy Wrath stun.

Blizzard has gotten far to fixed on the idea of RNG difficulty.  There's a massive different between a fight that is complex and requires precision and focus to succeed and a fight in which you simply have to get lucky to win.

In the category of the former, Vashj, Archimonde (excluding his fear), Gorefiend, Val'kyr Twins, and Mimiron are awesome examples.  They require precision and focus, demanding the highest of all or random members of the raid, but the potential for an RNG wipe is very very low.

Fights such as Faction Champions, Gormok, Freya, Anub'Arak, Yogg-Saron, and Steelbreaker are poster childs of the second category, though.  These fights either require raid members to be watching 4+ mobs simultaneously for a split-second reaction or to be able to react to incoming damage in literally the twitch level of response times.  These fights are difficult, but for all of the wrong reasons.  They are difficult because they push past the actual limit of human attention or reaction time, and thus rely as much on luck as skill.  A fight in which a raid that has had the boss on farm for months can still wipe up just because they got a bad string of RNG is a terrible fight at it's core.

This brings me to another peeve: PvP in PvE.  The Faction Champions fight makes perfect sense in ToC from a lore standpoint, and the entire instance is effectively a giant arena (don't get me started on the 'OMG the Lich King! Let's ignore him and hold a gladiatorial arena on his doorstep instead!' lore failure).  However, I'd estimate that around 80% of PvE raiders, especially progression raiders, are among the crowd that would rather leave the PvPing to the arena folk and stick with their boss fights.  Blizz, twice in two expansions, has gotten the brilliant idea to force these PvEers to PvP in their instances, though.  Back in BC, Dalrissa was one of the least popular fights of the entire expansion, and Faction Champs likely would be for WotLK if Occulus wasn't such a nightmare.

Beyond that, the fight seems to be a hybrid of the worst parts of PvP and PvE.  The mobs have PvP crowd-control limitations and have many of the abilities and effects that PvPers of those class regularly use, but they also a damage output roughly equal to a geared PvPers against a zero resilience target, the base 115% move speed of normal NPCs (actually, I believe their speed is closer to 130%), a gang mentality on dps (often resulting in instagibs of raid members, the shaman and mage being primary culprits of this), and roughly 10 times the HP of a normal player.

What this leads to is that you need more healers than normal, and those healers have to have a ridiculously quick reaction time to saving people, and they need to maintain that reaction time for the entire fight.  The shaman can walk up to someone and nuke them for 30k damage in under 1.5 seconds, the mage can do the same thing in less than a second from 30 yards away, the warrior can do a similar level of damage in AoE with Bladestorm, and the rogue can instagib a clothie through a Shadowstep before anyone even notices he moved.  These are pure RNG deaths.  We'll have weeks in which we get a nearly perfect composition for the fight and down it without any problem, and then we'll have weeks with a terrible composition that make us feel like we're slamming our face into a brick wall.

Blizzard needs to move back to the complex and precise but manageable fights, instead of making success based on RNG (especially in an instance that gives rewards for less wipes).  They also need to get rid of PvP fights in PvE.  As a dpser, if I wanted to tank, I'd have spec'd for it.  Facing a fight that I, as a dpser, need to output my maximum as well as blow every cooldown I have to stay alive if I get focused...well, it's just plain not fun, and our healers like it even less.  Challenging the raid by making them need to look out for their own survival: ok.  Challenging the raid by putting random invisible guillotines peppered about the area: not ok.

Anyway, enough ranting for me.

Hello World! (and Raid Difficulty)

Ah, blogging.  That wonderful combination of private contemplation and public espousement.

The most recent article on the Blessing of Kings blog entitled On Difficulty and Guilds happens to be the driving influence for me to create this blog and vent my opinions somewhere other than the cesspool of the WoW forums.  That post (and the post on Larisa's The Pink Pigtail Inn, Why I Don't Want to Hear Another 'WoW is Too Easy' Statement, that spawned it) have caught my eye for possessing an uncommon alacrity of vision into the issues facing WoW in the current day.

In particular, the idea that guilds can be broken down into different 'tiers', if you will, or castes, and the health of the game judged based on the size and activity of those castes.  I've pasted in a portion of Coriel's post on BoK below to illustrate what is meant by this (my apologies in advance to Coriel if I've overstepped):

In Wrath, I think PvE guilds can be categorized as follows (for raiding purposes). All numbers are approximate:

Royalty - The two hundred guilds which can clear everything, including Trial of the Grand Crusader.

The Aristocracy - The three thousand guilds which can defeat at least one boss in TotGC--or some Ulduar Keeper hard modes--and thus are working their way through hard modes.

The Gentry - The ten thousand guilds which can defeat regular Trial of the Crusader, but haven't been able to advance into the hard modes.

The Bourgeoisie - The next ten thousand guilds which are working their way through Trial of the Crusader. Also includes those guilds working on Naxxramas and Ulduar. Basically any guild that is still working on normal difficulty content.

The Proletariat - Our beloved casuals. All the other guilds which are levelling or making alts or doing 5-mans, and haven't really gotten into raiding yet.

Now, his particular point in the post can be summed up with the following quote:

The real problem is that the Gentry is currently too large. Too many guilds are in that gap between hard modes and regular modes. It needs to be shrunk from both ends. The difficulty of the first two bosses in TotGC should be reduced a little bit, and the difficulty of the last two bosses in TotC should be increased a little bit. That should create a more gradual path.

This in particular is the point that drove me to start blogging my opinions on the WoW world and it's social climate.  I believe that in part this is a bit misguided.  In reality what is causing the issue is not the size of the step between normal and heroic (that step is meant to be a deterrent against 'casual' raiders), but the slope before it.  The difference in difficulty over the course of an instance has become to shallow in slope.

For example, in Ulduar, Flame Leviathan is one of the easiest boss fights I've ever seen.  Ignis, XT, Razorscale, Kologarn, Auriaya, and arguably Iron Council (And Vezax, come to think of it), though, are all roughly the same level of difficulty.  There's no scaling, no slope.  Ulduar is subdivided into roughly 4 'zones' of difficulty:

Free Loot - Flame Leviathan (and arguably Ignis)
Mild - Ignis, Razorscale, XT, Kologarn, Auriaya, Iron Council, Vezax
Moderate - Hodir, Freya, Thorim, Mimiron
Hard - Yogg

Mimiron slightly bridges the gap between Moderate and Hard, and Vezax and IC slightly bridge the gap between Mild and Moderate, but for the most part, there's no scaling of difficulty.  The instance is roughly the same level of difficulty until you reach the Keepers, where it increases a bit but is relatively the same between each, then increases again noticeably for Yogg.

In contrast, Naxx, while overall a remarkably easy instance, has the scaling desired (as well as increasing gear quality to match).  The first boss of each wing is easy to the point of a brand new group with only moderate knowledge of the mechanics can likely defeat the encounter with not more than 1-2 wipes, if any (Patchwerk being the exception here).  The middle bosses often are more tests of coordination than anything else and are somewhat more difficult, but still easily defeatable.  The final boss, though, often has mechanics that the group must be watching carefully for to avoid wipes, increasing the overall difficulty.  In other words, the final bosses of each wing felt 'final'.  Once a raid got beyond all 4 of the wings, though, they entered the Frostwing Lair, where the difficult took another jump in Sapphiron, and yet another in KT.

This is the instance design I think is lacking in the latest tiers.  Ulduar I've already explained, but it's even more apparent in ToC.  On normal mode, Northrend Beasts is a remarkeably easy fight, Jaraxxus is a mildly easy fight, Faction Champs (until the recent nerf) was quite difficult, and now is still moderate in difficulty, Twins are a flat playplace, and Anub is mild to moderate.

In ToGC, Northrend Beasts are extremely difficult, arguably the second or third most difficult of the five encounters in the instance, serving as a gear check.  Jaraxxus serves as a dps responsiveness check, but once the dps can respond quickly enough to zerg the portals and volcanoes down in time, is barely more difficult than normal mode.  Faction Champs butts heads with Northrend Beasts for the second place difficulty spot, along with having an amazing amount of RNG difficulty.  Twins, just as in normal mode, are merely a playplace, with hardly any difficulty involved.  Anub is a straight and sudden cliff in difficulty, requiring a great deal more focus and performance from the guild.  In essence, ToC is a rollercoaster of difficulty where Ulduar is a very shallow staircase.

They should instead be ramps.  T6 was a remarkable example of this, especially Black Temple.  In both T6 instances, the first boss, while relatively difficult, was still fairly mild.  From there, though, the instance increased in difficulty in an almost linear pattern, with each boss being noticeably but not unreasonably more difficult than the prior boss.  It wasn't unexpected for a raid to get lodged at a boss part-way through the instance for weeks or even months on end as their gear and skill grew to finally be able to overcome a boss, much like an incoming tide slowly overtaking a beach.

WotLK raids have lacked this very important quality.  In ToGC (and especially ToC), if you can get past Beasts, you can get to Anub without much issue.  In Ulduar, if you can get past Ignis or XT, you can get all the way to the Keepers (and likely even Yogg).  Blizzard has reverted to a mindset wherein the intermediate bosses in an instance should be interchangeable in difficulty, with only the final boss being an increase, and I believe that this specifically has resulted in a large amount of the 'WoW is too easy' cries of late.

However, I agree wholeheartedly with Larisa's point in the above linked post: if you've not cleared hardmodes, you've no business even thinking that WoW is too easy, much less spamming the forums with it.  I've done Anub'Arak in ToGC, and I can say quite honestly that while it's certainly doable, it's not a walk in the park by a long shot.

I'd also like to point out two posts that caught my (and many others') attention on the Dungeons and Raids forums.  I'll be discussing the points brought up in them in my next post:

Lets Talk About Modern Boss Design
The Price of Accessibility in Raiding