Ailis in Hunterland

I was waiting for the official announcement before making a post and it’s happened, so here we go.

Unless you’ve been without internet or under a rock or in the desert, you’ve undoubtedly heard the bombshells coming from Blizzcon regarding the next expansion, Cataclysm.  New races, new race/class combos, Azeroth being completely remapped, a complete revamp of the stat system, new Path of the Titans, Mastery, Guild Leveling, and bears oh my!

Okay, maybe not bears.  But who knows?

If you have been missing it, head over to WoW.com or MMO-Champion or even the Cataclysm website and get caught up.

Since this blog deals with Shamans, let’s talk about the initial sweeping changes that will influence Shamans – specifically, the stat changes.

Here’s the basic breakdown of the ones that influence us directly:

• Attack Power on gear is gone. Instead, some classes will get 2 AP from each point of Agi (Rogues, Hunters, Shamans, Druids), and other classes (presumably Warriors, Paladins, and Death Knights) will get 2 AP per point of Strength. Side effect: no more plate wearers stealing your gear
• Spell Power is gone. It comes from Int now.
• MP5 is gone. Spirit is the mana regen stat, and all classes that need it will get some form of Meditation.
• Haste now increases your rate of resource regeneration (energy, rage, runes, focus).
• Stamina is going to be more equal across different armor types – no more “plate HP envy.”
• Enhancement Shamans do not use INT anymore and will be given talents to not need it just like Retribution Paladins.

Digest that for a moment.

For the Enhancement Shaman, this makes our stat itemization vastly simpler – once your hit and expertise are capped, gem and enchant to kingdom come for Agility.  That’s it.  Just Agility.  (For now, until we get more information)

This is a really nice change and one I’m seriously in favor of mostly for the fact that Plate wearers will no longer be rolling on my gear (just Hunters) because it will, frankly, be shitte for them.

The other major addition to the game that will help with gear itemization will be the new skill of Reforging.  Little is known about it other than this will enable you to move stats around on your gear and potentially add new ones (presumably with restrictions and at a price).  I see this coming into play during gear transition periods when it’s a PITA to keep your hit and expertise properly capped without sacrificing other stats.

For Elemental and even Resto Shamans, your itemization got not only turned on its head but easier as well.  Welcome back to Spirit!  You will be stacking Spirit and Int now.  Maybe Haste – information keeps getting changed on that one.  This actually makes sense seeing is how our largest base stat is Spirit and yet, currently, we shun it like some transmitted disease.

Add to this the new Path of the Titans and the Mastery system (more on that as it’s revealed) and you have an overall rebalancing change that could make huge strides towards getting rid of “cookie cutter specs” and clones running around Dalaran.  No more “have X spec, Y and Z professions and these glyphs and you’re top DPS” – there is the actual potential of many paths being just as viable as the other and purely dependent on playstyle.

I, for one, as a raider and enormously excited about this change as I’m tired of having to fit Ailis into a mold that she sometimes doesn’t like or having to adopt a particular style of play just for the sake of higher DPS.  The game should be about what you enjoy to play and how you have fun and your DPS/Healing/Tanking output shouldn’t suffer because you have fun doing things slightly different from the norm.

This gets a huge thumbs up from me.

Old World Makeover

On the other end of things, the changes that affect everyone is the actual world event behind the Cataclysm itself.  Azeroth is about to get a major makeover and, I have to say, this was a brilliant move on Blizzard’s part.

The Old World is definitely showing its age when stood next to the sweeping zones of Northrend and is more of a nostalgia area, a place to go to complete achievments, or something to race through as quickly as possible on alts.  Completely redoing the old world zones essentially makes World of Warcraft a new game for new and old players alike.  The old world zones will be vastly different, with different quest chains, different paths to take, the ability to fly, and new NPCs and races to play and meet.

TBC and WotLK were made for the end-game player and rightly so as that’s what everyone loves.  But, in the hurry to reach the end game, we forgot about where we came from.  Powerleveling and heirloom items just made it even more blurry.

When it came time for a new expansion, Blizzard could have just as easily tacked on another ten levels, another continent and more end-game frivolity.  Instead, they returned to level one and decided to actually progress the whole story, the whole world, and push it back to the forefront where it should be.

Brilliant.

I can’t wait to level an alt from level 1 to 85 and experience a brand new World of Warcraft and I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in this sentiment.  Yes, Ailis will always be my girl and she will be the first to get to 85 and dive into the massive new raids and new heroics.

But then…

Worgen Druid, here I come.

You hear it all the time “we are a hardcore raiding guild” or “I’m a casual raider” and, at some point, you have to stop and think about those terms.  What do “casual” and “hardcore” mean?

Take my husband and I for example.  We play WoW in our downtime, which, as people who own their own business, can be for many hours a day or none at all.  During the summer months when business is slow, we’re online much more often than, say, in the fall or winter when the large companies have money to spend before the end-of-the-year-budget is due.  When we raid, we are serious about what we’re doing and very much want to progress in a timely fashion.  I’m interested in hard modes but have yet to find a group to attempt them, but that’s not a huge deal.

I go after any and all achievements I can.  He spends his time honing skills and researching his hunter, tweaking and fine-tuning everything he can within the available gear he has to work with at any given moment.

So, are we hardcore or casual?

When we left our previous guild, I spent a few days researching several guilds on our server.  I looked at the top guilds and picked a few random ones from a list – usually going by names that jumped out at me.  I even looked up guilds on other servers for a little while.

After reading through countless forum stickies on guild policies and raiding policies, my definition of hardcore is simply this: When new content is released, you make it your top priority to clear it first and you immediately attempt any and all hard modes.

So, wait, if you don’t clear it first, you aren’t hardcore?

That’s not what I said – if you, at any time, whether or not you meet this goal, make it a priority to attain realm firsts, world firsts, or any other firsts, I consider you hardcore.  If you immediately go into hard modes after clearing the instance quickly, I consider you hardcore.  Everything else can very much fall under the heading of casual.

So, what does casual mean, then?

Casual does not mean unskilled or undisciplined.  It can, but I believe there are many levels of casual when it comes to raiding and many people immediately assume “loose and undisciplined” when they hear the word casual.  This can be the case, but not always.  When you hear that a guild only raids 2-3 days a week, most people nod and think casual.

I would consider the top five guilds on my server hardcore.  They vie for the realm firsts and all have their hard mode drakes from either 10 or 25 man.  They are the best geared players on the server.  All of them only raid about 3 days a week for only about 4 hours each day.

Most “casual” guilds I know raid 4-6 days a week for 4+ hours each day and don’t even see half the content.

After finding this out, I came to realize that raiders that think of themselves and their guild as “casual” adopt a “meh” or restricted attitude towards progression half the time.  Or, even if they are serious about raiding, they think that because they are considered “casual” that they aren’t supposed to progress faster or in a more disciplined fashion.  They figure that this is just the way things are.  Standards are a bit more lax, rules are “meant to be broken” and a night beating heads against one particular boss for the third week in a row is simply seen as the status quo.  ”We’re casual so therefore we don’t move as quickly and sometimes struggle more.”  Any attempt to address this is sometimes seen as “trying to be too hardcore.”

Does it really have to be that way, though?

I firmly believe a guild can call themselves a casual raiding guild and still clear content in a timely manner.  It’s about maximizing the time spent and holding your raiders to a  standard.  Most of us who raid have real lives and families so we can only raid 2-3 nights a week for a few hours.  What you do in that 6 or so hours a week is what’s important, no matter the label you put on yourself or your group.

During the summer, it’s harder to maintain standards and the same rate of progression due to attendance problems.  This is especially true for guilds that focus primarily on 25 man raiding.  This is where, in my opinion, your 10 mans have a chance to really boost morale for the guild.  Those who know me well know that I am a very strong supporter of dedicated 10 man groups.  I realize it’s hard to have the same 25 people week in and week out but it is infinitely easier (and needed) in a 10 man.  In a lot of ways, you just simply cannot progress as well if you’re constantly juggling people.  A 10 man is a much more intimate raiding environment and, with time, you come to learn your raidmates’ styles and it makes your team that much stronger.  The most efficient 10 mans I’ve seen (other than the aforementioned top five hardcore guilds) are ones that have been together through several installments of content and can walk into new content with only one thing to do – learn the new content.  Not learn the new content and these 3 new people that were shuffled into the group.

Successful 10 mans such as these in the summer lulls can help even the most casual of guilds when frustration and burnout are at their peak.  And a dedicated 10 man group or two does not mean you are hardcore.  You can very much be as casual as you want and still have a smart and organized view of raiding.

Basically, you can call yourself “casual” and still maintain standards and discipline in your raiding.  Doing so doesn’t mean you are hardcore – it means you are being smart with the time you have allotted to get through content.  Asking that your raiders maintain a certain level of DPS or coming to raids repaired, with flasks, and having read up on the boss fights isn’t hardcore.  It’s using your time wisely and making sure that money spent in enormous repair bills will be worth it as you systematically take down boss after boss.  Having standards and discipline also doesn’t mean you don’t have fun with each other.  My closest friends in this game are raiders with a set of simple, easy to follow standards that make raiding a little less stressful and a lot of fun.

The best way I’ve seen it put was in a forum post on MMO-Champion:

Being casual doesn’t make you a bad player, and people confuse bad with casual. Casual just means you can’t play as much as someone who raids hardcore or semi hardcore can. Casual players might be AMAZING, great players.. but they just don’t have the time to devote themselves to raiding 4 hours, 3-4 days a week. But if they could, maybe they would be amazing hardcore players. Bad players are the ones who raid hardcore and can’t kill bosses.. but people seem to take the word casual a bit wrongly.

However, this is all my opinion based on my observations.  I’m curious to know what you guys think.  What’s your definition of hardcore and casual?

For all you hunters out there, if you didn’t hear already, BRK has announced he’s leaving WoW to focus more on his family.  He’s been a wonderful source of information and laughs and will be sorely missed by the WoW community.

RL > WoW and never forget that.  If WoW keeps you from balancing your life in such a way that your friends don’t feel forgotten and your wife/husband doesn’t feel like they have to compete, then it’s time to take a break.

Farewell, BRK, good luck in all you do and lots of love from the blogosphere.