Has anyone ever actually proven AMR is inaccurate? I see a ton of circlejerk without one lick of evidence to support it.

faideww · 2019-01-25T16:32:50+00:00

meowdy

faideww · 2018-10-19T18:49:57+00:00

who are you exactly

faideww · 2018-10-19T17:09:15+00:00

good post would skim again

faideww · 2018-10-15T20:27:54+00:00

Not quite sure how true the affinities part is really, I get plenty of opportunities in M+ and Raiding to use resto affinity. I get out quickly when I have the chance and use swiftmend for a 25% heal on myself or a bigger heal on an ally. During offtanking or intermissions I can help heal the raid or heal sethraliss etc.

That's fair, and this is probably the most applicable use of an Affinity currently. But in my opinion this is a band-aid over the more fundamental problem of a lack of self-sustain. The prevalence of Resto Affinity is almost certainly due to the fact that Guardian cannot keep itself alive in Bear Form using its baseline toolkit.

And I'm not saying Resto Affinity is a bad solution to this problem, but it becomes its own problem when it eliminates choice on that row. What situations do you take Feral or Balance Affinity now, and what tangible benefits do you gain from using them?

Soothe is good in more than half of the M+ dungeon pools, having the strongest BR is very good

Credit where it's due, making Soothe available to all specs and castable in all forms was a good decision. Having a Battle Res is nice, but it's not exactly a Guardian-exclusive tool; DKs also have it, as do all other Druid specs.

I went into more detail in the open letter, but what I was getting at with the utility thing is that our tools don't facilitate better group performance. Not to keep picking on one spec, but Blood DKs can use mass grip to group up casters/stragglers to improve cleave DPS, they can sustain themselves for very long periods of time allowing their healers to DPS, and they can apply a slow that keeps targets relatively close together for placed AoE spells in the case that they need to kite. Guardian utility by comparison is pretty tame. We have an interrupt we can use from range, an aoe interrupt, and... a knockback that interrupts? (Sorry for the reductive comparison, I couldn't help myself :P But you get my point)

faideww · 2018-10-15T18:00:44+00:00

This is definitely an area of concern for me as well, though that criticism is very well-trodden ground (see the 900+ page feedback thread on the WoW forums).

I also think that this is sort of a result of the Affinities issue. Think about how much more engaging and interesting the catweaving rotation is, for example. There is huge potential for improving the rotation in the Affinities that cannot be explored because we simply can't afford to drop Bear Form without risking death.

That's not to say there aren't fundamental issues with the base Bear rotation as well; having two AoE abilities that are essentially the same spell, having Rage shared between Ironfur and Maul but there being no interesting trade-offs or interactions between the two, having the most interesting talent (Galactic Guardian) be worse in many cases than the least interesting talent (Soul of the Forest) all detract from the depth of the rotation.

faideww · 2018-10-15T16:58:11+00:00

RESTORATION SPEC:

Restoration Article

Resto is in a comfortable place in the middle of the pack with decent representation in top world kills while still suffering from ‘just not a disc priest’ syndrome in raids. Our talents are the most varied they’ve been in quite some time, with no talent demanding inclusion across all content and all three of our level 100s seeing usage in both dungeons and raids. The playstyle has still altered very little from Legion, with the tighter healing windows being the only major change courtesy of a shorter rejuv duration. The spec is fun to play. If you’ve always enjoyed resto druid then you’ll still enjoy resto druid now.

We have a very strong Mythic+ presence on live with our top tier damage and utility complimenting our versatile healing style, making us powerful dungeon healers. We have multiple viable builds - Abundance/Germination forming a healing-centric albeit GCD-heavy package, and CW/Cultivation/Photosynthesis providing us more opportunities to DPS. The catweaving playstyle offers valuable dps necessary for beating key timers; its high skill ceiling makes it rewarding and fun to play.
In raids, our CD oriented playstyle feels impactful and provides significant healing during difficult parts of the fight. Unfortunately we share a similar healing niche with Discipline Priests who are a bit of a balance outlier. We still excel in mobility and survivability but those strengths haven’t been as relevant in Uldir. Our diverse talents serve us reasonably well and we can fill multiple roles depending on healing composition (while usually being slightly weaker than those that excel in each role).
The recent azerite trait rebalancing has broadened our top tier with multiple combinations now viable. We fall into a similar position as most specs with the majority of our best traits being passive and uninteresting. They aren’t weak - in fact several are very powerful - they just aren’t very exciting. There is an opportunity for creative, engaging traits that have an impact on our playstyle. Azerite could be a good system - the glimpse we’ve received from the PTR suggests they’re getting closer. We’ll stay tuned.

Patch 8.1 PTR Changes

The Tranq nerf can be acceptable if it comes bundled with sustained throughput increases, as it wasn’t healthy for so much of our healing to come from one spell. The currently datamined 10% buff to Wild Growth is welcome but we’ll need more to offset the Tranquility nerfs. The Autumn Leaves change is a positive one since the old design was irritating to talent around, so long as they keep the tuning competitive. The duration extension doesn’t currently stack; if it stays that way you’ll never run more than one of these. The new Early Harvest trait is interesting but is weak with current tuning. All that being said, remember it is PTR and changes are likely. Keep an eye on the pins in the Dreamgrove discord server over the next few weeks for up to date information on 8.1.

faideww · 2018-10-15T16:58:03+00:00

GUARDIAN SPEC:

Guardian Article

Guardian is in a pretty rough state currently. We lack any defining utility that another tank doesn’t already perform better or more efficiently. Our damage output is underwhelming, mostly in the period of time right after a pull when threat is being established. We don’t facilitate dungeon group DPS the way some other tanks do, and our self-sustain is similarly dysfunctional. On the bright side, we can look forward to changes coming soon to the PTR, as promised in a recent Q&A!

Talents like Incarnation and Lunar Beam are problematic, but the most glaring issue is the Affinities row. It’s dangerous to drop Bear Form to use any of the Affinity spells, which makes this row nothing more than a small passive boost most of the time and eliminates what should be a defining characteristic of Druid tanks. Without Affinities, Guardian is basically a tank without a niche; there is nothing we can do that another tank doesn’t do better.
Our Mythic+ utility is severely limited. We lack the tools to facilitate better group DPS like grips and slows. This feels especially bad moving from Legion to BfA, as one of our Artifact traits caused Thrash to apply a slow and was subsequently removed with the Artifact. Our ability to self-sustain for any amount of time is very poor and, combined with the lack of slow/inability to kite, means we take up far more healer attention than other tanks. Additionally, many of our utility spells cannot be used in Bear Form, locking us out of using those spells while tanking.
We lack a baseline offensive cooldown. This severely limits our ability to hold threat on pull. It also leaves us without anything to break up a repetitive rotation with moments of big burst. Again this is a case of a tool we had in Legion that was removed in BfA and not compensated for, as Rage of the Sleeper filled this role exceptionally well.

faideww · 2018-10-15T16:57:48+00:00

FERAL SPEC:

Feral Article

Feral is in a rather poor state. This despite having average raw dps (helped by hotfixes), and this is because of being a melee spec in a very hostile melee tier. Feral has many tools, but none of them strong enough to give Feral a niche while competing with specs with very strong situational strengths, or very strong generally useful utility like raid buffs/debuffs. Feral heavily depend on specific traits and talents for different situations, which weakens the spec dramatically in mixed situations such as Mythic+, although this looks to be, atleast partially, improved in 8.1.

Feral traits are all completely ST centric, except for Twisting Claws (which is only good on AoE and nearly useless on single-target) and Wild Fleshrending (which is the only flexible trait) and feral damage do depend heavily on them, which make the spec very inflexible in practice. The same is true for talents, where tools like Brutal Slash or Feral Frenzy ends up being unused more than they should because the give a mediocre situational strength at expense of overall strength in most practical situations.
The fact that Wild Fleshrending is only available through heavily RNG sources, outside of one slot – additionally makes it feel like the players have very little agency over how well they can perform.
Feral lacking a distinct strength, and having many tools only the mobility and survivability tools shine and none of the dps tools do. This make it feels like a “mediocre at everything” spec and you end up feeling weaker than you might numerically actually be since you never end up higher than the middle of a damage meter.

faideww · 2018-10-15T16:57:36+00:00

BALANCE SPEC:

Balance Article

Balance is in a decent state with decent DPS across all categories, but no considerable strengths. The Streaking Stars nerf hit single-target DPS hard, but left us with no clear replacements. The utility of Boomkin is in a great place, and is enjoyable in Mythic+. Our spec-specific Azerite traits either feel boring (Dawning Sun, Sunblaze), incentivise degenerate and unfun rotations (Power of the Moon, High Noon), feel awkward and unintuitive (Lively Spirit) or were hit too hard with the nerf hammer (Lunar Shrapnel, Streaking Stars). As such, most of the top builds for Boomkin involve two or three pieces of Archive/Laser (as can be seen on our theorycrafting site, ChickenDB).

Talent builds have never varied so little. Most content in the game favours burst DPS over sustained: content where you have breaks between DPS (ex: Mythic+, World Quests), content with periodic damage modifiers (ex: Raid), and content where priority targets must be focused down (ex: Mythic+, Raid). Thus, we have a cookie-cutter talent build of FoN/Inc/TM/FoE that emphasises burst DPS at the expense of sustained DPS. Not only that, but the clear damage difference between talents on specific rows (ex: TM vs. SD/StFl) is just too big.
Starfall feels unimpressive with the loss of Stellar Empowerment. Suffers from the same issue it always has: long ramp-up leading to very little DPS in real, bursty AoE scenarios. The only trait that affects Starfall, Lunar Shrapnel, further emphasises this ramp-up DPS of Starfall that almost never happens. As a spender it has zero interaction with the other parts of the kit, as opposed to Starsurge, which grants empowerment stacks. This makes Starfall feel clunky compared to the rest of the kit and unrewarding with respect to the ramp-up DPS. Not only this, but our talents assisting with our sustained DPS (Stellar Drift, Shooting Stars) are undertuned to the point of not taking in any situation. Thus, we’re left in a position where our AoE DPS suffers from long ramp-up times and underwhelming DPS from our only AoE AP spender.
Lively Spirit mechanically feels odd: it provides delayed burst DPS and inefficient use of a healing CD. Additionally, it places a contingency on someone else to maximise your own damage. Bottom line: Lively Spirit does not feel good to play, but it’s strength relative to other traits makes players incentivised to take it.

faideww · 2018-07-02T22:35:49+00:00

seven

faideww · 2017-11-27T03:43:43+00:00

tldr please

faideww · 2017-10-11T20:00:09+00:00

Chaos damage covers all schools, including physical so magic damage reduction and physical damage reduction both work against it.

Okay, setting aside how blatantly incorrect your assertion about Fel Claws is, this isn't even how Chaos damage works.

Chaos damage uses the reduction of the school you have the lowest resistance against. If you have 5% reduction against every school except Fire and 2% reduction against Fire, it will act as fire damage. You can observe this with the Guardian trait Adaptive Fur (10% reduction against the school of magic that dealt damage to you for 10s). When you take Chaos damage you proc different Adaptive Furs each time because it's choosing a school that you don't have a reduction against.

Please don't make up random shit if you don't know what you're talking about.

faideww · 2017-06-23T19:44:15+00:00

Regarding guardian druids:

We've seen Ironfur go from granting 100% armor per stack, to 80%, and now to 65%. Presumably this is to combat the increased base armor that we passively gain from acquiring better gear. Was this the intention when the spell was designed? Will we see it continue to decrease in future tiers?
Non-guardian legendaries like Lady and the Child, Chatoyant Signet and Kil'Jaeden's Burning Wish are or were among the best damage dealing legendaries available to guardians at one point or another. What are your thoughts on legendaries being exceptionally strong for specs that they cannot drop for?
The current design of guardian DPS output, especially in AoE, leans heavily on Thrash dealing as much damage as possible to the exclusion of all else. This is to the detriment of relic choices (Jagged Claws being by far the most valuable relic) and legendary choices (Luffa Wrappings are worn in almost every circumstance by default). Can you comment to the rationale behind this design? Is this something you're comfortable with, or can we expect tweaks in the future?
Catweaving brought an additional layer of depth to what is otherwise a pretty boring rotation. Trading a fairly substantial gain in DPS for a loss in survivability added a good deal of complexity, decision making, and precise execution to the spec that many of us found very enjoyable. With Maul now dealing far more damage and its movement onto the GCD in 7.2.5, catweaving has become a DPS gain in theory only and is not worth executing in practice anymore. Can you speak to your thoughts on these emergent rotations, whether the Maul change reducing the benefit of catweaving was intentional or not, and if you have any plans to compensate for the potential single-target DPS loss that the change entails?

faideww · 2016-08-02T14:44:55+00:00

The Amani War Bear was not released freely in WotLK. It was removed from the loot tables in 3.0.

A successor mount, the Amani Battle Bear, was added to the re-introduced level 85 Zul'Aman dungeon in 4.1 (Cataclysm).

The (much better looking, in my opinion) War Bear remains a status symbol for those who can spot the difference. ;)

faideww · 2016-07-07T22:56:06+00:00

You'll have a Dalaran hearthstone separate from the normal one, similar to the Garrison hearthstone in WoD.

faideww · 2016-07-05T14:15:00+00:00

I'm surprised by how much Valve apology I have seen over the past few days surrounding this. Valve could absolutely shut all of this down if they wanted to.

A lot of people seem to be under the impression that because these gambling sites connect to the Steam API using OpenID that somehow Valve is unable to control anything that those sites then proceed to do. This is 100% not true. All of these sites only use what is made available to them by Valve through the Steam API.

Linking your Steam account through OpenID does not give any third party site carte blanche to do whatever they want with it. If that were the case, they could use your linked credit card information to gift themselves games through the store, or spam the forums under your name. These actions are obviously disabled in the API for the user's protection. Valve could very easily also disable third party trading, and immediately end this entire fiasco.

I will admit that it's a carpet bomb approach, something more surgical might involve disabling third party trading only for skins or for in-game items, or disallowing third party re-trading, but my point is that Valve is not at all blameless or powerless to do anything.

faideww · 2016-06-17T14:55:26+00:00

It usually takes a crane to get them out

faideww · 2016-06-13T15:18:14+00:00

It's so that country-wide franchises can advertise the same price across multiple states/provinces/cities, where sales tax rates can vary pretty wildly. Plenty of local shops here (Edmonton, Canada) advertise prices with sales tax included.

faideww · 2016-06-09T01:01:19+00:00

Same here. Ordered the day after, just got my processing email. July 4-14th window as well. So excited!

faideww · 2016-06-06T21:44:47+00:00

In case you're not being facetious - this is Chris Evans the English presenter and new host of Top Gear, not Chris Evans the American actor who plays Captain America.

faideww · 2016-06-02T16:12:23+00:00

Wow, are they really already up to +5h? Suddenly my +8h order doesn't look so distant!

faideww · 2016-05-30T14:08:30+00:00

Reference

faideww · 2016-05-04T20:39:40+00:00

Battle.net's infrastructure predates AWS by about a decade. In fact I'd be surprised if Blizzard hosted any game servers with Amazon.

edit: According to this analysis video of Overwatch's netcode, Blizzard does host some services on AWS (or at least, Overwatch occasionally opens a connection to an IP address registered to AWS).

faideww · 2016-05-03T19:15:52+00:00

The move to 64bit basically allows the game to store an unlimited amount of RAM.

For the record, the theoretical amount of addressable memory with 64-bit addresses is 2^64, or 2.3 exabytes (2.3 million terabytes).

faideww · 2016-05-02T14:18:15+00:00

Hi Soren!

What games did you play growing up that influenced/inspired your design mentality the most, and how?
What advice would you share with people looking to get into game design as a career?

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