Comments on: We’re the players, not the enemy!

By: kaozz

kaozz — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 14:24:43 +0000

Just was browsing your site and saw this and I want to say….

Well said! I get a headache thinking about playing my alts.. changing specs, gear. So armor is no longer the defensive stat in pve.. defense is. Nor is it in pvp.. resis is.. You need hit not just spell power or ap and you also need expertise.

Dual specs woulda been so much more fun if I didn’t have to swap a set out to go from healing to dps as a caster.. say on my druid or priest. On my paladin sure.. I don’t expect to go ret in my holy set. It just gets old worrying about every little stat on all my chars. I am very very happy about dual specs.. not the cost lol.. for all my many alts. But things get so complicated sometimes heh. I agree with the poster who says “Make people theorycraft obsessively about their loot and DPS until their eyes cross”.

Maybe I need to stick to one character…sigh.

By: Pies

Pies — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 14:47:16 +0000

What I always found strange is that even with RatingBuster calculating the composite stat differences for me, taking talents into account etc., I often found that the few seconds between ML links the items and starts the rolls is still not enough time for me to really tell which of two items with the same ilevel is better. Of course, I could research possible drops beforehand, but, frankly, I like the surprise and I never grind for specific gear.

By: Demahn

Demahn — Sun, 31 May 2009 14:35:45 +0000

Well said and wholeheartedly agreed with… I’ve received several Ulduar souvenirs now, but I’ve kept every piece I’ve replaced and switch back to them because it is so difficult to determine which is better (or better put, the new stuff may be fantastic once it is part of a set of all new stuff, but in the changing gears between sets it doesn’t work or doesn’t seem to work, or just doesn’t feel like an upgrade)

Thanks for the outlet… ;)

By: Tesh

Tesh — Thu, 28 May 2009 22:14:25 +0000

[snark]That’s Blizzard’s excuse for content. Make people theorycraft obsessively about their loot and DPS until their eyes cross, and they are too busy to notice flaws in the game, or that their progress is measurably slower as time goes on.[/snark]

Agreed on the article, BBB. Complexity isn’t content, especially arbitrary changes to the underlying structure of the game. Teaching your players one thing, letting them play with it for a while, then changing it on them is simply bad game design. (Or Silent Hill, but they are *trying* to mess with your expectations because that’s what those horror games do.) It’s like arbitrarily changing the meaning of words in a language. (And yes, I’m still miffed that “thong” and “gay” have picked up rather different meanings since my youth.)

By: Leah

Leah — Thu, 28 May 2009 18:09:35 +0000

what bugs me personally is one of the points you mentioned and sometimes it doesn’t even take much spreadsheeting and theorycrafting to get to that point… you finally kill that boss in Ulduar – hurrah! you look at the loot. you compare it to the loot you still have way back from Naxx. and you pass, because that drop that you just got? not as good. and then there are those couple of items that everyone is fighting for, because they are just so damn perfect – they work for half of your raid. /shudder. and then few weeks later – that item that everyone wanted and a few payed through the roof for? barely viable. and those couple of drops you sharded because no one wanted them, even for free? the holy grail.

a bit of complexity is nice…as long as you don’t keep changing the rules every couple of weeks, fer crist’s sake! I wouldn’t mind juggling so many stats as much if the worth of them didn’t fluctuate so much from hotfix to hotfix. one day – you are avoiding armor penetration like a plague – next day its practically your primary stat. one day you’re stacking agility because it shows to be better – next day you see your dps drop because surprise, surprise – attack power scales better now.

ugg.

By: Feralan

Feralan — Thu, 28 May 2009 08:08:20 +0000

Full, wholehearted agreement. I play the game to play the game. Some theorycrafting is tolerable, but I refuse to bother with graphs and spreadsheets and all that bull. The difficulty should be in the CONTENT, not in digging through obscure nonsense to figure out whether an item is an upgrade or not. Even as someone who doesn’t really care much for loot, it’s much more satisfying to see a new boss die, look at its drops and immediately see something would be an upgrade.

Now I’m far from hardcore, more very casual as a raider (bear tank) so I can afford to give spreadsheets the middle finger. But I wonder — do the more “hardcore” people actually enjoy this nonsense? Brooding over stats for hours to sqeeze out 0.01% more DPS or TPS or HPS? Spraining their brains on mathematical formulas?

By: Talldar

Talldar — Thu, 28 May 2009 07:16:30 +0000

Not only are you plain simple right here, also that was a gret read to get into the day :)

Wish I could be happy about Ulduar Tank-Drops with my Warrior, but it’s a little confusing to have tanking-gloves who spend points on ArP while I have to keep a +def trinket around to stay crit immune

By: Kolan

Kolan — Thu, 28 May 2009 03:28:07 +0000

Bravo Bear Bravo!!!

The gear issues are really bugging me at the moment. Half my bags are full of different gear depending on the content. It gives me a headache.

By: Lenaiya

Lenaiya — Wed, 27 May 2009 23:47:52 +0000

It *was* STR in 3.0. Now it’s AGI. Before 3.0 it was AGI. I wish Blizz would make up their minds. -.-

By: Dorgol

Dorgol — Wed, 27 May 2009 21:15:17 +0000

You should see the crying from the Holy Paladins. The spreadsheets say that Crit >>>> Mp5, so the hardcore Paladins HATE Mp5. I’m not even sure HATE is a strong enough word. I see posts all the time from these “leet” Paladins where they brag about having less than 80 Mp5 on their gear – while they sport a 45% crit rate and 25k mana.

Yet my Naxx + Ulduar geared Paladin has sometihng around 250 Mp5 and a paltry 30% and 21k mana. And still I pull my weight. And still I don’t go OOM. And still I fight with overheal because my heals are so damn powerful (god forbid I actually CRIT).

I think that in 95% of cases – it doesn’t really matter. Blizzard designs these instances with a certain amount of HPS and DPS and TPS in mind. And then they give you ways to get there. You can min/max and eek every last bit of DPS or HPS or TPS out of your gear (pulling your hair out along the way), or you can take the gear that is available and STILL get there.

I will say, though, that I’m still confused on my Druid. I am told that Strength is the best stat, but everything I see is loaded with Agility. Oh well. Guess I’ll just have gobs of AGI instead of gobs of STR. :)