2009 Retrospective

Looking back on what my 2009 was like.

January

• Ran my first Heroic at Level 80, utgarde Pinacle. It wasn't pretty.
• Ran my first Naxxraamus, and Sartharian, both as Retrirbution. I was struggling to get over 2k.
  
• Started raiding 25 mans with Mal Katai.
  
• Ran my first Vault of Archavon.
  
• Tanked Naxx10 and had 31k health fully raid buffed.
  
• Grinding Sons of Hodir rep

February

• Battling for a Tank spot in Mal Katai
  
• Mal Katai blows up. Spent most of the month trying to figure out what to do. I had two offers, one from my old guild of Heroes Inc and one from Salvation which had formed from a bunch of my Mal Katai friends. This is hardest decision I've ever had to make in regards to WoW.

March

• Made the decision to go with Heroes and joined one of their two raid teams.
  
• Tanked Sarth2d, Malygos.
  
• Hit Exalted with Sons of Hodir.

April

• Switched from Enginering/Jewelcrafting to Mining/Jewelcrafting.
  
• Hit 80 on the Hunter.
  
• Dual specs hit.
  
• Started on Ulduar. We cleared up through Hodir.

May

• Continued working on Ulduar, cleared up to Yogg.

June

• Appared on Twisted Nether for the first time, had a blast.
  
• New AD gets announced. Warriors everywhere scaream OP.
  
• We start knocking out Hard modes in Ulduar.
  
• Heroes split with my Raid Team breaking off and forming it's own guild.
  
• Killed Yogg Saron.
  
• Perp's group joins our new guild.

July

• We combined the two raid teams and ran some Ulduar25.
  
• Tanked Naxx on my Alt Warrior.

August

• Went on vacation.
  
• Patch 3.2 hits.
  
• New AD, Demo Shout on Vindication.
  
• We started in our Trial of the Crusader and cleared the first four bosses easily.

September

• Finished Trial of the Crusader (Server 3rd, Ally 1st).
• Started on Heroic.
  
• Became a Blood Elf.
  
• Killed Onyxia.

October

• Went back and knocked out some more Ulduar Hard Modes (Knock, Knock, Knock and Lose Your Illusion).
  
• Killed Sarth3D.
  
• Worked on Firefighter.

November

• Combined the Raid teams for a Crusader25.
  
• Killed Heroic Faction Champs.

December

• Made my second appearance on Twisted Nether.
  
• Killed Heroic Twins.
  
• Came with 50k of killing Heroic Anub.
• Opened Ice Crown and cleared the first wing.

The End of the Hybrid Tax

Happy Maintenance Day!

Today I bring you a proposal, a proposal to end the Hybrid Tax.

Let's get some definitions out of the way so we know what we're talking about. First let's talk about what a Hybrid is. In World of Warcraft there are 4 Pure classes: The Hunter, The Warlock, The Rogue, and The Mage. Your other 6 classes (Paladin, Priest, Druid, Shaman, Warrior, and Death Knight) are all Hybrids because they can spec into Talent Treess that allow them to fulfill the role of Tank or Healer for a 5 man party or Raid.

What is the Hybrid Tax? It's the basic idea that the Pures should have the potential to do more damage because they don't have the option to offer their raid a support role like Tank or Healer with a quick respec. Damage is all they can bring. The thinking of the Developers is that if they allowed Hybrid DPSers to do as much potential DPS as Pures, few people would make the choice to play a Pure class. I can tell you anecdotally from leveling alts that I see a ton of hybrids (Paladins, Druids, and Shamans) and few Pures leveling up.

There are two issues with Wrath of the Lich King, and I believe both could be addressed in part by eliminating the Hybrid Tax. Let me briefly describe them both, and then posit how ending the Hybrid Tax could help to mitigate or eliminate the issues.

It seems that despite the Developers desire to give the Pures 3 distinct damage dealing talent trees, there is always one tree that lags behind the others. Beast Mastery Hunters, Frost Mages, Subtlety Rogues and Demonology Warlocks know this all too well. Although to be fair, Demonology provides a really nice buff to the raid, but the design of balancing around lower DPS to compensate for good buffs went away in Burning Crusade.

One tree will always do more damage in theory than the others. But let’s take Hunters for an example. The difference between Marksman and Survival is small and which Tree does more damage is relatively gear dependent. Beast Mastery trails both and by a significant margin.

The Developers seem to be able to provide two relatively balanced damage dealing trees, but the third appears to be somewhat problematic.

The second issue is one of flexibility. We all know there is a lack of Tanks and Healers for groups. This has been a great boon to a Tank who can get a near instant queue, and healers who get very short ques. DPS meanwhile have to endure very long queues by comparison. Though it should be noted that groups are forming with the LFD tool much faster than they ever have before. This disparity of wait times has caused some Hybrids who are main spec DPS to switch over to their Tanking or Healing spec to get groups and farm their Emblems faster. This is a great advantage to those classes. The Pures simply don't have the option.

So how does eliminating the Hybrid Tax help fix the issues with the lack of flexibility, creating groups or the difficulty in balancing 3 distinct damage dealing trees?

When everyone's super, no one will be.

My proposal to end the Hybrid Tax is to make every one a Hybrid. In Cataclysm, each Pure class has one of its trees redesigned to allow that Hybrid to take on the Tanking or Healing role.

Already, we see enterprising Hunters pushing the limits of their class and using their Tenacity pets to Tank. If you search on YouTube, you will find videos of a Hunter tanking Wrath of the Lich King heroics up to and including Halls of Lightning. The Developers could give Hunters a “Righteous Fury” type Aspect, call it Aspect of the Turtle, that would increase threat generated and reduce damage done to the Pet.

Mages are masters of Magic so it doesn't seem like a huge stretch to me that they could learn to funnel their magic into healing instead of damage. Perhaps the Developers could combine Fire and Frost into a FrostFire tree and then make a new Sun tree. They could even write in Lore about a reignited Sunwell and the return of the quel'dorei being the source of the Mages healing magics.

Warlocks are good at draining life away from enemies. Why not have that life then redirected to one of your team mates. The Devs could also take one of their less used Pets and give it a Beast Master type treatment and make them capable tanks. They could join Paladins and Druids as the Triple Threat hybrids, able to spec into Tanking, Healing or DPS.

Rogues have joked for years about 'Evasion Tanking'. Why not codify that into the game itself. Give them a threat poison; call it Aggravating Poison, to increase their threat. The Developers could design them as heavy avoidance tanks, sort of like the initial design of Death Knights.

The elimination of the Defense minimum means that it would have little impact on gear. You wouldn't need Defense Mail or Leather. All Tanks in Cataclysm will be Crit Immune through talents like Druids are today.

I don't want to get into too many specifics as I'm confident the Developers are much better at game design than your humble author.

With Rogues, Hunters, Mages and Locks able to spec into Healing and Tanking, you will reduce the number of damage dealing trees you need to balace to a maximum of two per class. You will drastically increase the number of Tanks and Healers available to groups and everyone will experience shorter wait times. They can spend more time having fun than waiting around Dalaran for a group. And since everyone would be a Hybrid, there is no need for the Hybrid Tax to exist any longer.

So what do you think? Would the game be better with 10 Hybrid Classes?

Honors Heals

I thought I'd start off by regaling you with the story of Honorshammer healing.

We've really dialed back the raiding over the holidays, but most days I'd get on to run the daily heroic. I was getting pretty bored with tanking these heroics that I've been tanking for over a year, so I decided I'd dust off the healing set.

Now I haven't healed on Honorshammer since late tBC and that was under protest. I didn't want to heal back then, but I was forced to. My other option was not raiding. So for Council and Archimonde I healed.

Wrath of the Lich King brought many changes to Paladin healing and most of them I wasn't familiar with.

I did a little research and found a nice Holy/Prot Bubble spec and made sure my gear had some gems and enchants. It was a mix of 200 to 219 gear that I had picked up in Raids. I spent some Emblems to shore up the particularly weak points of the Cloak, Trinkets and Rings, and grabbed the weapon from the Argent Tourament.

There's a real dearth of Holy Paladin Basic Training on the web. Holy doesn’t' have a set 'rotation' like Ret or Prot, but what I came up with was Beacon of Light on the Tank, Sacred Shield on the Tank, Flash of Light to start the Heal over Time and heal whoever took damage. Most of the time I'd just Flash of Light to get them back to full, and rarely use Holy Light or Holy Shock.

I didn't want to subject some poor random Tank to my Holy newbness so I somehow convinced Blueshield to tank a run for me. Blue plays an Arms Warrior in our Raid and is our 3rd tank. We grabbed a couple of DPS from the guild and headed off to Gundrak with one Random who turned out to be an Elemental Shaman. Donk, our Arcane Mage, was very happy about that.

Blue did a great job tanking and our DPS took down mobs in no time. I managed to get the Less Rabi achievement thanks to Blue and the random Shaman having all those stuns and interrupts. I never let Blue die although I did lose Donk a time or two.

With that experience under my belt, I decided to go alone into the LFG as a Healer. No one in this group would know I was an extremely inexperienced healer. This time we got Drak'Tharon Keep. The Tank was a Deathknight and our DPS consisted of a Shadow Priest, Hunter, and Enhance Shaman.

We managed to clear the place with only a couple of deaths. For some reason the Enhance Shaman did almost as much 'tanking' as the DeathKnight. I didn’t have any trouble keeping the party alive and the run was over in short order. I don’t think anyone had any clue I was healing for basically the second time. I never had any issue with mana and most of the time I’d have about 60% over heal. Towards the end I started to try to see how low I could let the DK get before I healed him to prevent the overheal. My Holy Light could heal him for nearly half his life, but I was pretty nervous letting him get that low, so I stuck with mainly Flash of Light.

Paladin healing isn't as bad as I remember it. It's actually a different look at these heroics. I learned some new things like to stay away from the Rhinos at the end of Gundrak because they silence you and that's rather bad when you're the healer.

I've also learned that if you queue as Tank or Healer, you will get assigned to tank.

Every. Single. Time.

If you queue as Healer or DPS, you will get assigned to heal.

Every. Single. Time.

What might be fun now is to get into one of those 'PST with Achieve and GS' PuGs. I have every Achievement they could be looking for, and a decent gear score. Of course, I've never healed one of those raids in my life. I've tanked them all, but Tanking a raid and Healing it are two very different things.

Generally, I would get my two Emblems of Frost on Honorshammer, and the Hunter, and then spent the rest of my playtime leveling my Druid, who is now up to Level 75.

Speaking of the Druid, I'm finding that I enjoy Tree Healing much more than Paladin healing. Ultimately, what I'll do is have Honorshammer for tanking, the Hunter for DPSing and the Druid for Healing.

Merry CHRISTmas My Friends

"And there were in the same country sheperds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them; and they were sore afraid.

And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.

And this shall be a sign unto you: Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men."

As Linus finishes he turns, walks back to the wings and calmly asserts,

"That's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown."

Merry CHRISTmas!!!

WoW Year in Review

My sympathy if you are stuck at work today. You'll get through it.

1. What did you do in the World of Warcraft in 2009 that you’d never done before?

I had a max level alt. I got the Hunter to 70 shortly before the end of the Burning Crusade but outside of Gruul's Lair I never really got to do much with him. In Wrath, I've raided up to Lady Deathwhisper on the Hunter.

And though it's not some I've NEVER done, in 2009, I voluntarily healed again for the first time since Vanilla. Honors is now Tank/Heal with the Hunter for my DPS needs. I'm literally the swiss army knife I thought my Druid might be. Whatever you need for a group, I'm there. I'm also terribly rusty and I'll regale you with an account of my first time healing soon.

2. What was your favorite new place that you visited?

I think Ice Crown is actually too new, so I'm going with Ulduar. The instance was huge, and it was beautiful. The fights were varied, and there was plenty of different tanking roles and responsibilities. Our Yogg kill was a special night I won't forget. It ranks right up there with Magtheridon, Archimonde and Illidan.

3. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?

A Mekineer's Chopper. I know most people who want one have one, but I don't yet. The Auction House bores me to tears, so I basically only sell stuff that I collect flying to and from Raids. I send my greens to my buddies Mage to DE and we split the proceeds.

I'd really like to get enough cash to buy one. My other problem is that I'm fanatical about having the best gems and enchants on my toons so I often spend big money at the AH on enchanting mats, raw gems, and leg patches.

On top of that, I can't decide if I want to give it to my Paladin or my Hunter. I really like the Charger on the Paladin for a land mount so I'm not sure how much I'd use it if I gave it to him. But the Hunter is an alt. Do I really want to spend that kind of cash on an alt?

4. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

I'd have to say it was Yogg. At the time of the kill, it put Unusual Suspects at 30th in the US for 10 man strict guilds. We've since lost our 10 man strict status after putting our groups together to knock out TotC25. I kept hearing "Another one spawned Honors!" for days after our kill.

5. What was your biggest failure?

I'd have to say Heroic Anub'arak. We can so so so close, but we just missed getting him. I can still hear Thorim taunting us "FAILURE!" "WEAKLINGS" for not killing Anub.

6. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

Most of what I got really, really, really excited about in 2009 didn't have to do with Warcraft, but with other things going on.

But as far as Warcraft goes, I had a blast appearing on the Twisted Nether. Both times I've been invited on were fantastic. I really enjoy talking with those guys and giving them a Protection Paladin point of view.

I was also most excited for the Paladin Tanking buffs we received in Patch 3.2. They finally fixed Ardent Defender. I always said I'd know when Paladins were finally the equal of Warrior tanks, it would be when they started calling us OP. We are finally there.

7. What do you wish you’d done less of?

Dealt with Guild drama.

First it was the breakup of Mal Katai, then the excruciating decision between Heroes and Salvation. All of those moves left hurt feelings. Unlike my moves in Burning Crusade, none of these move was initiated by me. I could handle it better if I was the causing it. I would be paying the consequences of my decisions, but this time I was paying the consequences of others decisions.

There was also the Heroes split, but I'll talk about that in a minute.

8. What was your favorite WoW blog or podcast?

The Twisted Nether is my favorite podcast hands down.

As far as blogs, there are some great blogs out there. Here's my Top 10 in no particular order:

• Pwnwear
• Wrathy
• Rhidach
• Vene
• BBB
• Hunters Union
• WoM
• Asleep at the WoW
• Paladin Schamaladin
• Just My Two Copper

JMTC is why I even have the meager amount of gold I have.

I'd also like to give a shout out to my blogging guild mates (and I consider Bacon kind of an honorable guid mate since he was with us for a couple of weeks before going back to Heroes, and I enjoy his Blog):

• Bacon
• Lakini
• Ofn

9. Tell us a valuable WoW lesson you learned in 2009.

It's good to find a home. 2009 was the year that I really found an ingame home in Unusual Suspects. These guys are more than just avatars to me now, I consider them friends. I look forward to raiding with them or just running some 5 mans.

I know our split with Heroes caused some drama and hurt feelings and I wish in my heart that could have been avoided. I still miss people who I got to know that are still on Alliance. People think I'm crazy but I only do Wintergrasp with an alt that doesn't have the Honors_____ name so that if I see an old friend at least they don't know it was me that killed them. They just see some random Orc.

But I think ultimately the split was good for both guilds. Suspects has been everything I ever wanted in a guild and Boston has been a fantastic guild leader. I'm really lucky to be tanking for this group of guys.

Enjoy LFD Now

The new LFD (Looking For Dungeon) System is great. The developers did an excellent job with the design of the systems. There are plenty of rewards for people at all levels and all Tiers of Level 80 from the guy who just dinged all the way up to the guy who was farming Heroic Anub’arak the night before the Patch.

Right now, you have an abundance of T9 raiders carrying people in random LFG groups. I’ve done this several times myself. I’ll be in a group where I’m first on DPS, Damage Done, and Damage Taken. If I would have used Judgment of Light, I might have been first in Healing Done as well. I’ve had the same thing happen on my Hunter where I’m the only DPS in the group over 3k.

Enjoy it now, and if you are a lowered geared toon, get all the dungeons run as fast as you can, because this isn’t going to last.

The Tier 9 Raiders are in the LFG for one reason, Emblems of Frost. I typically only run the Random Heroic for the two Emblems of Frost it provides. I don’t need Triumphs; I’m swimming in the bloody things. In a few weeks, my Hunter alt won’t need them either.

What you have to realize is that right now, all the T9 Raiders need Emblems of Frost. You can’t buy your 264 T9 with a Token until you have the 251 from Emblems of Frost. The Daily Random provides more Emblems (14) over a week than all of the current Bosses open in Ice Crown (8). In addition, because Tier 9 Raiders are clearing the first wing so quickly, they have down time during the week and they are running Random Heroics.

But in a few weeks, Ice Crown is going to have plenty of Bosses open. A new Wing will open shortly after New Year, then another just a couple of weeks after that. Tier 9 Raiders, and especially those lovely Tier 9 Tanks with 40k plus unbuffed Hit Points are going to be spending more time raiding and less time in LFD. And even when they aren’t raiding, they will be getting to the point where they don’t need Emblems of Frost nearly as much as they do now.

The Developers have already acknowledged the system is reliant on the number of Tanks queuing up. As more Bosses in Ice Crown open up and Raiders buy what they need with Frost Emblems, the number of people and the number of tanks available will dwindle. Those 10 and 15 minute wait times could become 20 to 30 minutes. And when you finally do get a group, it might be sorely lacking in T9 Raiders able to carry an entire heroic on their shoulders.

Christmas Reading

Schools out and various industries are in the midst of Christmas shutdowns. You might find yourself with a little extra time on your hands this time of year. You also might find yourself lacking regular internet access, and be looking for some good reading material.

This year my Christmas present to you is a book recommendation. The book I'm recommending you read over your Holiday break is call The Science of God: The Convergence of Scientific and Biblical Wisdom.

Schroeder is a physicist and Bible scholar. His previous work was called Genesis and the Big Bang. In The Science of God, he compares the Genesis account of creation with current scientific knowledge about the origin of life. No doubt he is well versed in both the Bible and biology; he's also a skilled pedagogue, explaining abstract or counterintuitive concepts in lay terms.

Some of his arguments (for instance, that the sequence of Genesis creation is congruent with evolution's progression from prokaryotic to human life) are compelling.

He demonstrates how some of the issues between the Church and the scientific community were not actually Biblically based at all. For example, the Church fought against the scientific discovery of elliptical orbits because they believed a perfect God would use perfect circular orbits, but no where in the Bible does it talk about Circular or Explical orbits at all. It wasn’t an issue of Science versus the Bible, but Science versus the Church.

I loved his turn of the phrase "Render undo Einstein, that which is Einstein’s, and render unto God that which is God's"

Schroeder is very lucid in explaining difficult scientific concepts, such as the passage of time according to the theory of relativity, and religious data, such as the original Hebrew words.

I'm finding this book truly fascinating. Whether you are a skeptic, or a believer, I think you will find the book an interesting read.

Highly recommended.

You could also check out some of the books I recommended last year. You can see them here: http://honorscode.blogspot.com/2008/12/holiday-reading.html