Descriptors: Socially Inept, Inadequate, Immature, or “Simply Unintelligent.”

Classification: “Dumbass.”

Technical Definition: (1) One who not only lacks the social skills to interact with others in any meaningful manner but also cannot understand why they are perceived as inferior. (2) One who, through lack of socialization or out of spite of social norms, causes grief to the generally competent people with which they interact.

Guidelines for Interaction:

• Accept full responsibility for being superior to the dumbass by professing how much better the dumbass is than everyone else.
• Compensate for being “a subpar player” compared to the dumbass by picking up the dumbass’ responsibilities in the group, thereby supplying positive reinforcement to the dumbass in question for being a dumbass.
• Laugh with the dumbass at every conceivable chance, including the dumbass’ obviously superior social skills and performance.
• Consistently provide positive reinforcement of the dumbass’ choices by showing damage/healing meters in every encounter, praise the gear and talent choices made, and recommend the dumbass to every person encountered in-game.

Unfortunately little is known about the origin of the dumbass, or why they thrive so much in virtual worlds. Science has attempted to provide social and psychological profiles in order to better understand and appreciate the dumbass subculture, and yet best guesses indicate nothing more than what is presented here.

Recognizing the “Dumbass” in World of Warcraft:

Thankfully this is far easier than many scientists believe. Typical behavior will include excessive use of “leet-speak” or other variations of incomprehensible grammar, damage/healing levels comparable to those attained by other players at a disparity of ten levels lower, attempts to enter content designed for level eighty players in epic gear while wearing combinations of easily attained “greens and blues” (as described by peers), and a complete lack of knowledge (sometimes to the level of barely understanding basic use of a mouse and keyboard).

When contact is established one must be wary, as the dumbass will typically not reveal its true nature until a critical moment, thus providing almost insurmountable levels of frustration to unprepared players that can result in severe emotional and psychological trauma, vehement language, rage, diarrhea, schizophrenia, alcoholism, depression, legal and illegal substance abuse, and possibly even self mutilation.

Now back to the exciting news of new druid forms!

Accomplishment.

Elation.

Fulfillment.

None of these apply to defeating a raid encounter in which vehicular combat is a major component.

Alright, to an extent perhaps accomplishment can, but not so much at besting the encounter as just getting through it to move forward.

In a questline, or even in PVP, vehicular combat fits. It works. It is understood, and it feels fun and engaging. To trivialize raid content by utilizing vehicles, where the skills and abilities we have developed over time are useless, makes “besting” the content feel shallow and unrewarding.

Obviously the Malygos encounter is the object of my ire, but we already know Ulduar will employ some form of vehicular combat as well (note, I have refused to read up on any encounters, as I am one of those stubborn individuals that actually likes to learn the encounters for myself).

After defeating Malygos I was happy that our guild adjusted its strategy to accommodate a less-than-optimal group composition. I was happy that I earned my “Champion of the Frozen Wastes” title. I was happy to have finally been able to turn in the quest from the focusing iris.

But I do not feel any real sense of accomplishment from that fight. It wasn’t my beloved druid that actually made a difference, or my ability to play my character in any way. It was a stock dragon that anyone in any gear, provided they made it to that phase, could have completed. That, my friends, is not a rewarding PVE encounter.

I want to say more, but honestly at this point I’m prone to obscenities, and while I’m not opposed to posting my unfiltered thoughts I sincerely doubt most would want to read them.

In short, I have no interest in seeing the Eye ever again. It is not a fun encounter, and does not feel rewarding. Naturally I’ll go back anyway, because there is some loot that I would like to have a shot at obtaining. My only hope is that this trend does not continue.

It appears as though Blizzard has decided to go through with the implementation of a six second cooldown on Wild Growth and Circle of Healing. (Source information: WoW Insider)

For Druids this change is more a nuisance than anything else, and I do not have enough experience as a Priest to really comment on that portion of this change. What really makes me wonder about this, though, is if Blizzard really thinks this is a smart move. Let’s look at some key things that, in my opinion, make this a flat-out stupid idea.

1. Wild Growth is useful, but there is no way I can find any exaggerated, illogical reason (much less a logical, honest one) to support the thought that, as Ghostcrawler stated (Source), “Resto druid were in a very similar situation — lots of tools, but everything looked like a job for Wild Growth.”

Let’s look closely at that thought. In every single encounter that I have run, Wild Growth has been marginally useful, but not nearly strong enough to handle the splash damage I have had to heal. What it does do is provide me with enough time to get some combination of heals off on those people that need it (typically Rejuvenation or Lifebloom, just depending on how quickly I need to get them healed). I’ll even be happy to start logging every single instance I run and posting the information if that is what it takes to prove that some things are, quite simply, not true.

2. Wild Growth is designed to use some sort of “smart-targeting” system.

That really sounds great. However, what I find more often than not is that the spell is horribly unreliable in the event I want to truly get some type of heal out to everyone. It is not a range issue, it is simply that the way it chooses targets seems flawed. I find, quite often, that I have to hit Wild Growth twice in a row to get that healing on everyone in the party, which is where the real nuisance of having a cooldown comes into play. Given my current disposition to go for tossing a Rejuvenation on all party members as a normal rotation anymore, primarily because I’m not very impressed with Wild Growth’s performance in the first place, really makes me think this spell is becoming completely worthless.

3. The mana cost of Wild Growth makes it impossible to use it as a “default” tool for very long.

Not only would this method of healing be horribly inefficient and, honestly, stupid, but it is also not sustainable. The claim has been made that this change is a way to reign in overuse of a spell, but I honestly do not see it being used enough to even begin to see overuse. Are you guys sure you are looking at level eighties running level eighty content?

4. AoE Healing.

I want to rant horribly in this section, because there is a huge inconsistency in how Blizzard is going about some things with all of the class changes. I’m going to refrain, however, because there are two key points I want to focus on instead:

• This will make it drastically tougher on certain classes to be able to heal 5-Man Heroics as solo healers.
• This places one class as the “supreme” class to go to for a specific purpose, and no other healing class has that same niche.

Explanation:

Five-man dungeons are already taxing for most healers, primarily due to the need to cleanse and heal without assistance. Obviously this can be addressed by changing party composition slightly, which is what most of us do. Where this becomes an issue, though is when you look closely at what this change affects from a typical “looking for group” scenario:

• There is one healing class in the game that has the ability to AoE heal easily and effectively, as well as cleansing the group in one step quickly and efficiently.
• Most of the encounters in Northrend seem to focus more on a need for AoE healing.
• There will be, with these changes, one class looked for most often to heal as a result.

With all of that said, I want to make sure it is understood that this is not a “waaahhh, they are changing my spells and I don’t like it post.” Honestly, the change to Wild Growth won’t even affect me enough to justify why I wrote such a long post about it. What really makes me sick, though, is that the justification for these changes simply does not exist. If someone is healing, and they are so stupid that they sit and spam Wild Growth or Circle of Healing through a fight, let them. They won’t continue to heal for too long, or at least not in any “difficult” content.

The other part that truly becomes annoying, and perhaps this is merely a personal issue, is that (as a byproduct) one class has a very distinct, defining niche when it comes to healing roles. Perhaps this is planned for all classes, but if so at least provide us with some insight.

(And please, don’t try to tell me a healing style, such as direct heals versus HoTs, is a “class-defining niche.”)

I’m not the best geared out there, and I’m definitely nowhere near the worst geared, but this has to be a joke. I’m in (predominantly) badge gear, so I’ll accept that I’m better geared than most of the players I’ve encountered. Fine. I’ll even give you the benefit of saying I’ve worked hard to find the best set of gear I could get my hands on, as well as to say I’m a different type of player because I carry multiple pieces for different occasions.

Hell, I’ll even agree that I shouldn’t see too much of a struggle in the first few portions of Northrend at all regardless of gear (although I disagree).

At 79, I still have not encountered any real challenge. None. Zip. Zero.

We’ve made instances challenging by pulling entire rooms instead of one pull at a time…

I thought I was supposed to feel the Wrath of the Lich King, not be tickled by feather swords and have glitter thrown on me.

/sigh

I’m holding out hope that things will be different as we start running Naxx, but given initial reports I’m skeptical. I’ll hold out hope that heroics will be tough if nothing else, and I can see where they have potential, but everything else really shouldn’t be this easy should it?

/end rant

/begin rational ponderings

Obviously things are skewed at the moment. My experiences in badge gear versus the experiences of guildies starting out in quest gear are quite different, and we all know how much of an impact good gear has. In many ways I’m glad I’ve not really found any upgrades, save three definites, after all of the time I spent getting my gear. A part of me also feels left out, not knowing the same enjoyment others have when that quest reward or dungeon drop is an “OMGMUSTHAVE!” item.

Based on rumors/opinions I’m scared all of the content I’ll see soon is going to be easy, and my experiences to date do not help that impression in the least.

It does help that most of the people I’m grouping with, all guildies, are about as well geared as I am. I realize this, and I know it makes a huge difference. But that was well geared for level 70, should it really still be well-geared for 79?

Blizzard tried hard not to have the same thing happen here that happened when The Burning Crusade launched, that much is quite apparent. I’m glad. I applaud them for it. I think, however, we went just a little too far the other direction.

A part of me thinks it really is just the experiences of those who were well geared that is making me fearful. After all, we have some new characters in the guild (main rerolls primarily) that are experiencing a little difficulty at 70, which points to the majority of the player-base probably being in the same general ballpark.

I’d like to know what other people have been experiencing. If you’d rather not comment here feel free to send me an email (byaghro at mac.com).

For me, things just seem way too easy right now…

/rant

Everyone seems to think their class is horribly broken and unplayable at the moment, and Paladins have started running around screaming at the top of their lungs that they are back to being absolutely useless. Come on people, get a grip.

Why does it have to be broken when you don’t even know how the hell you are going to perform in the expansion? IT ISN”T EVEN HERE YET!

Yes, we’re all concerned. Yes, we’ve all seen something happen we don’t like. Yes, a lot of us feel as though out 51 point talents are a little sub-par…

Have you stopped to just play the game and see how ridiculously overpowered everything feels at the moment?

If you stop and think, just briefly, about the implications of that statement then you might just realize that we have absolutely no idea how things are going to compare to what we think we are interpreting things as.

/end rant

On Restoration Druids (Yes, that means me too!):

Lifebloom was a wonderful spell. It made content easy actually, and I never even considered the possibility of running out of mana in a raid. It would be a rare occasion where things were going really, really bad for me to even innervate. Yes, I miss it… a lot. But I like not having that crutch too.

Don’t set me on fire yet, I promise I’m not a heretic!

I think Lifebloom was hit just a little too hard, but I’m more concerned that our mana efficiency might have been harder still. In content that we have routinely been through over the past few months I’m having a tough time finishing the fight with much mana at all, and this is on much, much shorter fights than they used to be.

Something to consider, and probably something that is much tougher to really get a feel for yet, is that I am pretty certain I am doing a LOT more healing than before also.

Let’s look at KZ as an example. I’m obviously well over-geared for it, even pre-patch. On a typical guild run we have two healers: myself and a Shaman. On our most recent run I did over seventy percent (70%) of the overall healing done.

Side note: This is intentional on the part of the Shammy, and not anything I’m unaware of. We’re sort of trying to see if I can solo heal it at this point, and were it not for some points where I just need more direct heals to keep up, or more people grouped together for Wild Growth to be effective, I’m pretty certain it would be easily doable.

In our most recent ZA run I noticed I was having to pop Innervate on every boss fight.

What does this mean? In all honesty, pretty much nothing. We cannot truly get a feel for where we stand at the moment because of how horrendously overpowered classes are, and because, to be fair, I’m not even paying attention to trying to be mana efficient.

So, what does this have to do with my rant above? Pretty simple actually: we do not, in any way, at all, have any idea how we are going to perform in Wrath. Those that might have some idea are playing on a Beta build. Let me repeat that, a BETA build. And we’ve seen firsthand how overpowered some classes are at the moment…

Let’s step back and look at the game honestly, and you tell me if I should run proclaim that the sky is falling, that the earth is slowly standing still, that hell has frozen over, and that three meteors are headed straight for us, destined to obliterate us exactly three minutes after we install Wrath.

Come on, I’m waiting.