T10 Datamined

The new tier 10 sets were datamined recently so I will provide a link to mmo so that you can check em out!

Tier 10 Druid!

I couldn't be happier with the itemization of the pieces. Notice the distinct lack of spirit on the gear. Since, in the world of itemization, spirit was taking up the place of a better offensive stat, we are looking at gear that is better tuned to our unique dietary gear needs. It's like moonkin baby formula! Two of the pieces contain hit and I'm guessing that given the solid nature of the three non-hit pieces, we may just pick up a fourth (or fifth) piece for the set bonuses. I'm not prepared to offer an analysis of the set bonuses yet, but I will say that I currently feel that the 4 piece is relatively weak, but that may be part of a progressive nerf to set bonuses as a whole (which I think is needed).

Did I mention the sockets? All red sockets except for two yellow. I must say, I'd be infinitely happier if the two yellows were both blues, single handedly offering us our metagem activation and the socket bonus, but I dream big dreams. Oh, and on the topic of socket bonuses, these are not that great. Most are the outdated 5 SP socket bonus, which was decent when we had blue gems, but now that we are in Epic gems, 5 SP for a socket bonus is a joke. Luckily, those are all red sockets so we will get them regardless. The two double socket pieces offer +7, making it possible to consider putting in something other than a Runed Cardinal Ruby.

Food for thought, no?

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I'd also like to give a shout out to Smo, who posted a great little tidbit on how to set up PowerAuras for the Anub fight, but even more than that, how to create logic statements and multiple conditionals through it. Godd job Smo, and keep it up!

Foray!

I finally managed to get into a PuG for ToC 10 that didn't bail after Icehowl killed the raid. I saw all the way to the Twin Valkyries and have a whole lot of new loot to show for it! Oh. . . wait, no . . . all I got were these lousy emblems.

But I must say that I had not played WoW in a few weeks (life's been friggin ballistic here) and logging back on to raid Ony 10 (see the new ring!) and run a few other things was a good feeling. I'm looking forward to trying to steal into another ToC 10 this week. Hopefully one that actually clears it all!

Tier 10 Set Bonuses

Druid T10 Balance 2P Bonus – When you gain Clearcasting from your Omen of Clarity talent, you deal 15% additional Nature and Arcane damage for 6 sec.

Druid T10 Balance 4P Bonus – Your critical strikes from Starfire and Wrath cause the target languish for an additional 5% of your spell’s damage over 4 seconds.

So with the new PTR there comes new datamining and with new datamining comes new work! The trend of mediocre four piece set bonuses seems to continue as the first version offered a reduction in the Eclipse cooldown and now we see an Incinerate-esque trailer on our critical nukes. There seems to be much confusion over how Blizzard intends to implement this DoT. A stacking DoT has some RNG potential to be ridiculous. A refreshing DoT has potential to reach new levels of suckage due to DoT clipping on successive crits. A multiplicative DoT. . . well one can dream right?

I had though about trying to do some math on this new bonus, but decided that in all likelihood it will be modified and since the mechanics are so up in the air at the moment. I am, however, placing my chips on the current mechanic being a stacking DoT. Allow me to digress and suggest an alternative. Wouldn't it be neat if these were charges that detonated after 4 seconds? Sort of like a variable Curse of Doom. If you want to control the max damage possible, then put a cap on the stack number. But it would certainly give us something to play with, allow us to do damage while moving (in a sense) and increase our damage. Maybe we could call it Starburst. (Or Skittles so I can yell "Taste the rainbow, you scurvy dog!!").

If this set bonus stays put for a few days I'll theorycraft on it, but for now, let me say that it's really not all that much of a DPS increase for us, although it might have interesting implications on modified fights like Hodir. Stay tuned for more updates as we get more information!

Punished by Rewards

I couldn’t help but steal my title from an Alfie Kohn book that delves into the results of reward driven motivation versus intrinsic desire. This concept (maybe even philosophy) is tied very closely to any voluntary act. Why choose to do the things we do? Nobody is forcing the millions of players that play WoW to log on, so why do we continue to log on? Moreover, will those factors that get us into our chairs for hours of raiding ever reach such a diminished point that we will no longer find the reward worth the effort expended researching fights and pouring over combat logs and loot lists? Let me break down some of my initial stances.

Intrinsic Motivation

Intrinsic motivation is motivation that comes from within. Embodied by doing what you want because you want to do it, intrinsic motivation often acts as the most powerful motivator for many individuals. Players with intrinsic motivation to play will continue to play irregardless of gear or boss kills. They don’t mind farming for days or weeks. They don’t need to see all of the content of the game because they aren’t logging on to beat the game. They are logging on because they want to spend some time in their virtual world playing their virtual hero. For them, that is enough. Everything else is just gravy!

Extrinsic Motivation

This is the proverbial carrot on a stick. Sometimes a task is only worth doing if there’s something in it for you. Who cares about the trip when there’s a destination. The majority of competitive progressive raiders fall under this category. Gear, boss kills, server rankings, hell even world rankings drive these players to repeat battles to a point where tedium barely begins to express the repetition. These players are fiercely loyal to the game until the carrot disappears. Then they often find themselves “burnt-out” or “disenchanted” with the game.

The Battle of Motivators

I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve nodded your head to what I’ve said above, as it is all pretty self-evident in my opinion. Here’s where things get interesting. Extrinsic motivation decreases intrinsic motivation, even if we like doing what we’re doing. At some point in time, the carrot overpowers our internal desire to do whatever we like. Yes, this is a blanket statement and yes there are exceptions, so consider it a generalization.

Now, consider the nature of WoW’s reward system. You are rewarded for completing the same quest every day through financial means. You are rewarded by engaging in and successfully completing battles through gear and achievements. You are rewarded for tenaciously seeking every quest in the game through achievements. There are even rewards for battling and defeating other players that can only be achieved through such actions. Everywhere you turn in WoW there is a positive reinforcement waiting to pat you on the back and say “Great job!” This sort of extrinsic motivation begins to eat away at our desire to play the game for the sake of the adventure. We start logging on to kill X boss who drops Y loot so we can better our virtual selves.

Penalty System

So WoW rewards the crap out of you. How about negative reinforcement? Well let me say that had I written this before ToC came out, I would have been full of blood, piss, and vinegar. Now I’m probably less acidic. The penalty system in WoW has been slowly decaying since the launch of the game. Players don’t like to be penalized for dying. They don’t like having to travel long distances to complete quests or even switch zones. Players don’t like spending all of their gold repairing their gear. But is not liking something reason enough for developers to cave to every whim? Spirits move faster now, travel routes have been reworked, hearthstone cooldowns reduced, more portals implemented, faster flying mounts, the list goes on. Even repairing gear has become a trivial matter. I repair and spend 60 gold with a shrug. Hell, I don’t even care if its with an exalted vendor. Dailies make that kind of gold a drop in the bucket and easily recoupable.

The advent of ToC tribute runs has brought back the penalty system in what I feel is an appropriate way. A penalty system should not discourage a player, but rather encourage a player to excel. The ToC tribute system does just that, placing the emphasis on the quality of an attempt and troubleshooting between attempts as opposed to raw attempt numbers hoping that everything will click together after enough chances. Players are honing their individual skills in an attempt to complete the tributes in as few attempts as possible. This penalty system encourages players to take more care and better their individual efforts.

Should Players Be Penalized?

It’s tough to say yes or no to this, as penalties and negative reinforcement both can deter players from attempting parts of the game or cause unrest. I do feel that there should be a separation of tiers. I also feel that the defining factor between seeing these tiers should be skill, not time. Granted, a minimum amount of time would always be required, but that should not be the single defining factor between an endgame raider and a casual player. The term “casual raider” should not exclude a player from downing Yogg or seeing Algalon, yet it tends to do just that. Raid lockout extensions do allow a casual player to artificially bolster their “weekly play-time”, and in some ways I really like the concept. But that’s a work-around for the real problem: Content takes too much time for a casual player to consistently clear. Even when I was in my former guild pushing server firsts, we took multiple nights to clear Ulduar. I see this as an unfair penalty (a caste system based on playtime).

Get ready to hate me. I’d love to see a death timer with upwards of 1 hour times. I’d love to have to pay for lodgings or earn them in some manner. I’d love to see travel time at least remain the same. I want to see less gear, less epic, less rare. Rewards in WoW are starting to lose their glamor for me. And I think it is due entirely to the over-abundance of rewards. Bring back some punishments, bring back the grind. Sure I will complain, but in the end, I'll be all the more proud of my accomplishment as it becomes non-trivial. This is exactly why I am working on the Insane achievement. Sure, I probably won't finish it in time, but I have put in many hours and invested lots of gold to seek out an accomplishment that is not your average accomplishment.

I see now that I have wandered well off topic so allow me to conclude by simply asking every player to evaluate his/her motivation for playing and if the "hardships" they endure while playing are frivolous or amplifiers to the accomplishment beyond. Happy gaming you psychological puppets!

Gearing with a Purpose: Pawn and True Worth

I haven't been able to get into the new content due to my hectic schedule so I have been focusing on maximizing my non-raid gear upgrades. Having run with a plethora of PuGs, I find that many people roll on items that they can equip if it is an upgrade in one stat. Others choose to upgrade if, on an overall comparison, the new item has "more" stat points. This gearing philosophy seems anywhere from mildly superficial to blatantly ignorant. I've actually seen a mage drop about 20 crit to pick up about 25 spirit and 5 haste. Now I don't know a great deal about mages, but I really can't imagine that is an upgrade.

Pawn

Pawn is an addon that allows a user to rank the relative value (or raw values) of individual stats on gear. Not only that, but it allows a user to make direct gear comparisons, and appends a gear score based on your stat scale to the tooltip of any item. I highly recommend using this addon. It plays a part in almost every gearing decision I make.

------------⟨⟨ Warning: Intelligent Gearing Beyond This Point! ⟩⟩------------

In order to use Pawn you need to have a stats scale ranking the relative value of 1 stat compared to some baseline (another stat, 1 dps increase, 1 sec TTL, etc.) Some people just hijack these values from other reliable sites. I personally don't theorycraft my DK extensively so I grab stat weights from a blog I read and trust.

I base my own stat weights on the relative DPS increase given by adding +10 to one stat. To give an idea of the scope of what is needed, I calculate my DPS by calculating theoretical Eclipse uptime for two concurrent Eclipses (1 cycle) and the necessary nuke spamming to trigger those Eclipses. I have an incomplete model of DoTs where I keep up Moonfire 100% of the time and IS cast at the beginning of the Solar Eclipse. Setting up an Excel spreadsheet to help you calculate can be very useful. Once I have my values, I normalize them to the highest DPS increase (hit if needed). I considered accounting for the difference in budget cost of each item but decided that it would be unnecessary as I wasnt trying to find the best budgeted item, but rather the item that offered the largest DPS increase per point (or 10 points, technically). If I clean up the spreadsheet I will upload it (Don't hold your breath!).

Ok, so now you have some stat weights, let's talk about how to make your Pawn Scales. In Pawn, you can manually enter each stats' weight or use a string to import it. I'm not going to explain the string bit because you'd still have to type it out. Create a new blank scale and enter the stat weights you have. Then copy this scale and set hit equal to zero. Often, items with hit will be overvalued because some (or all) of the hit will be wasted. The second hitless scale will allow you to make comparisons when hit is not an issue. Name your scale and select a color to display the scale on the tooltip.

If you've got Pawn up and running, you can begin to make informed decisions about your gear. But there lies a caveat in all of this. Don't just follow the numbers. Pawn is not a substitute for researching drops and making a loot list. Pawn is a tool to help you evaluate things on the fly, not an excuse to roll on any item that has a higher cumulative score. Now, off with you to set up Pawn and become a more informed consumer of gear! (oh and there are new stat scales over at Gray Matter)