Leading into Cataclysm and early in Cataclysm's wake, I read a few perspectives that essentially called Cataclysm the "golden age of alts." The idea was that if ever there was a time to start throwing yourself into playing other characters, this was the expansion to do it.
On the surface, that made sense. There were two new races (complete with their own starting areas), new heirlooms, guild perks to smooth out leveling and areas redesigned to streamline the questing experience. Even lower level dungeons had been redesigned to breathe new life into them.
How to resolve, then, that I went the other way? I was a pretty significant altaholic during my time in Wrath. After leveling my main up to 80 around October of 2009, I leveled four more characters up to 80 over the next year--a shaman, hunter, mage and priest (who became my main, relegating my original paladin to "alt" status, but that's neither here not there) in addition to a druid that languished at about level 72 due to the end-of-expansion blues. Beyond that, I dabbled in more characters of other classes, sometimes deleting them as high as level 50, 60 or 70 because I wanted to make something new. I played a lot of characters when I wasn't raiding on my main.
Now, however, I've become very alt-averse. While I've leveled up most of my level 80 characters to 85, it was in a more desultory manner. A might-as-well mindset rather than real interest. My priest is my main and my shaman could almost be thought of as a co-main. I raid on both of them a lot and as seriously as I can, which is how I define a "main" character. As for my other eight characters? I only play my rogue with any real interest and even then only to level it in a very casual, slow manner (it's 66 at the moment). So I could argue that, in practice, I only have one alt I'm interested in.
So, from my perspective, was Wrath the "golden age of alts?" Not exactly. That was going to be the thrust of my post, but when I began thinking it over, I realized the true root of why I played them so actively then and not now. And the answer didn't lie in the specific nature of the latest expansion of the time.
Fading Light Gleams Golden
The answer is that the final year of an expansion is easy money for an alt. With previous tier gear available for justice points (known as emblems of valor by that point in the previous expansion) and those points easy to farm in heroics that most people overgeared massively. With raid teams able to mount more alt runs and PUG raids available. With the top-of-the-line enchants and gems no longer new and their prices down. With all of these factors, it was quick and easy to get a fresh level 80 raid-geared and into raids within a couple of days, and without abdicating the other priorities in your life to do it.
Now, this is a very end-game-centric view. For me, the only real enjoyment to the game is end-game raiding with people I enjoy playing with (though I also can enjoy running dungeons with friends, but that is more for the social aspect rather than the game aspect). So the only thing that makes playing an alt attractive is raiding with a new class. Every moment of the leveling-up and gearing-up process is a zero from an enjoyment point of view. It's an effort investment to have fun once it's done. The fun at the end has to outweigh the time spent getting there, or else the books fail to balance.
In Wrath, with five fewer levels to acquire and raid-worthy gear so quick to pick up, the accounting finished easily in the black.
You Mean I Have To Earn It? No Deal, Man!
However, Cataclysm has changed the math significantly. There are, as noted, five extra levels to acquire (this is mitigated to some extent by the faster rate of xp gain possible and the lowering of the xp needed for levels 70-80). More importantly, the gearing-up process is far from trivial now. Reputation items matter (by the next tier, they won't, since they'll be outdated compared to justice point gear and dungeon drops) so pencil in four to six reputation grinds. Justice point farming involves running heroics that are still challenging, which ups both the play time and effort as well as the social cost (when dungeons are challenging, there's more adversity, which leads to more negative personalities expressing themselves). Gems are actually not very expensive at all, but the top-line enchants are almost prohibitively so unless you're excellent at earning gold (and even for those good at it, making a lot of gold has its own time cost). Raid teams, outside of the harder-core guilds, are still struggling with content and are not deploying as many alt raid teams. PUG raids are very uncommon for anything outside the toy raid of Baradin Hold.
So now I find that the time and effort necessary is no longer worth the payoff. It's going to take me longer and require more work to get an alt to acceptable levels of raid readiness and in the end, I may not even have a raid spot for that character. This is not a complaint, at all, just an observation as to why Cataclysm's advent hasn't resulted in a surge of interest in playing alts for me and, in fact, has had the opposite effect.
I do put in a lot of effort to keep my main(s) in top form for raids and in the actual raiding. I just don't want to apply that same level of effort over three or four or five or ten characters.
I'm sure that the final year of Cataclysm will be pretty nice for (my) alts, though! Perhaps even the next tier of content will provide the easy access to alt raiding that will make all the zero-gain (for me) time of leveling and gearing worthwhile. Once it's fairly quick to get multiple alts into raids, I'm so there!
Until then, my rogue will take the scenic route to the level cap and perhaps take some time off to bum around Europe and maybe acquire a classical liberal arts education.
Showing posts with label alts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label alts. Show all posts
Monday, April 25, 2011
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Playing Multiple Healers
This is not a post about dual-boxing to fill out your raid, I'm afraid. I know I just lost the huge dual-boxing audience, but I will never lie to you to generate more readers. That's just not how I roll.
This post regards having several characters who heal that you play semi-often. It can be a tricky situation because most healers build up instinct and muscle memory to deal with both having large and diverse toolboxes and yet having to make decisions constantly in a split-second. Oddly, you can't think as you heal...that's too slow.* You need to work instinctively.
*Let me re-phrase that: you can't think in a micro manner, spending time deciding on your next heal. You should be thinking in a macro manner...big picture thoughts about how the fight is going, when you'll need to employ cooldowns, possible strategic changes, etc. Maybe I'll write an actual post about thinking while healing.
So how do you handle switching classes as a healer when instinct and muscle memory are so important? Let's talk about that!
Fundamentally, healing really is the same, no matter what class you are using (outside of blood death knights...they're a freak of their own category). Blizzard has done a good job of making healing classes feel unique (in my opinion, there are definitely those who would argue otherwise) but we can break healing down into certain categories to establish a pattern that we can employ no matter what class we are on.
Core Heals
One major change Blizzard instituted going into Cataclysm was the creation of a set of core heals that, with occasional tiny differences, were constant between all classes. Every class has:
The slow, small, efficient heal: This is Heal for priests, Holy Light for paladins, Healing Wave for shamans and Nourish for druids.
The slow, big, mildly efficient heal: This is Greater Heal for priests, Divine Light for paladins, Greater Healing Wave for shamans and Healing Touch for druids.
The fast, somewhat big, not at all efficient heal: This is Flash Heal for priests, Flash of Light for paladins, Healing Surge for shamans and Regrowth for druids.
This is where you should start, where you should ground yourself, as a healer. Get completely familiar and comfortable with these three heals. Try healing a dungeon using only those heals. Everything else you do should work as an outgrowth from these three heals.
I think this is key whether you have one healer or four different healers, but really making these three heals instinct will make healing over multiple classes much easier. Even if you have just one healer and wish to master it, these three heals are the essence of "triage"--doing only what is necessary (keeping everyone alive), not what would be nice (keeping everyone at full health). Having an automatic feel for when you have to use each heal will simply make you a stronger healer.
Returning, though, to playing multiple healers; consider reserving the same buttons on your mouse (if you are a click-healer as I think most healers are) or reserving the same keybinds (if you use your keyboard to cast healing spells) for these three types of heals. For example, I bind the efficient heal to my middle mouse button, the big, less efficient heal to shift-middle mouse button and the fast, inefficient heal to control-middle mouse button. Whether I am on my priest, paladin, druid or shaman, that's the layout for the core heals. I'm not suggesting you use the same buttons I do, but consider using the same ones between classes for those three heals.
Use On Cooldown
Every healing class has certain spells, usually instants, that are supposed to be "used on cooldown," meaning use it every time it's available. (This is only meant to be literal in raids, when there's always some damage, or difficult situations in dungeons...don't cast them when everyone's at 100% and killing critters while the tank is AFK!)
As a priest, for example, we have two of these spells: prayer of mending and either penance (if the priest is discipline) or circle of healing (if the priest is holy). A druid has switfmend and wild growth. Etcetera, etcetera. While the "use every single time it is up" is extreme in order to make a point (use it a lot!), I'm not arguing usage patterns here...sometimes you may want to hold back a swiftmend for a burst of damage you know is coming, for example. What I'm saying is that every healing class has a couple of spells meant to be used about as much as possible. Unlike the core heals, they are largely without drawback (they tend to instant, pretty efficient and make a difference) and so you use them guilt-free and with abandon. Identify these spells for your class and bind them to the same (hopefully the easiest to hit) buttons.
Special Attacks
Every video game has special attacks and WoW is no exceptions. For healers, these special attacks tend to heal people and be rather different. Holy Radiance is fairly different from Power Word: Shield is fairly different from Chain Heal. There is not a lot pulling these things together, in terms of a unifying logic...they are simply the extra moves you can and should use. Ideally, bind them to mouse buttons by binding the most used ability to the easiest-to-hit remaining button, etc.
Binding It All Together (i.e The Big Finish)
The idea that I'm putting forth in this post is to create a "healing logic." Rather than thinking in terms of actual spells, think in terms of a logic or concepts: "Time for my slower, efficient spell. Now my direct heal cooldown. Now my fast, inefficient heal." If you do that, and you bind concepts to buttons, it doesn't matter what healer you're using, outside of the special attacks. Your slow, big heal is always in the same place. Your Always-Use A ability and Always-Use B ability are always in the same place. Suddenly, you can port the same instincts over from healer to healer.
You do still need to change mindsets a little, so you don't Power Word: Shield the rogue (who currently has no aggro) when you were thinking of Chain Heal. But a lot of what you do simply transfers.
I mean, in the end, we're all just tapping into the Great Healing Delicious. We call those methods of tapping it different things and argue over who's Great Healing Delicious is the true Great Healing Delicious...but we're really all seeking the same truth. So bind accordingly!
This post regards having several characters who heal that you play semi-often. It can be a tricky situation because most healers build up instinct and muscle memory to deal with both having large and diverse toolboxes and yet having to make decisions constantly in a split-second. Oddly, you can't think as you heal...that's too slow.* You need to work instinctively.
*Let me re-phrase that: you can't think in a micro manner, spending time deciding on your next heal. You should be thinking in a macro manner...big picture thoughts about how the fight is going, when you'll need to employ cooldowns, possible strategic changes, etc. Maybe I'll write an actual post about thinking while healing.
So how do you handle switching classes as a healer when instinct and muscle memory are so important? Let's talk about that!
Fundamentally, healing really is the same, no matter what class you are using (outside of blood death knights...they're a freak of their own category). Blizzard has done a good job of making healing classes feel unique (in my opinion, there are definitely those who would argue otherwise) but we can break healing down into certain categories to establish a pattern that we can employ no matter what class we are on.
Core Heals
One major change Blizzard instituted going into Cataclysm was the creation of a set of core heals that, with occasional tiny differences, were constant between all classes. Every class has:
The slow, small, efficient heal: This is Heal for priests, Holy Light for paladins, Healing Wave for shamans and Nourish for druids.
The slow, big, mildly efficient heal: This is Greater Heal for priests, Divine Light for paladins, Greater Healing Wave for shamans and Healing Touch for druids.
The fast, somewhat big, not at all efficient heal: This is Flash Heal for priests, Flash of Light for paladins, Healing Surge for shamans and Regrowth for druids.
This is where you should start, where you should ground yourself, as a healer. Get completely familiar and comfortable with these three heals. Try healing a dungeon using only those heals. Everything else you do should work as an outgrowth from these three heals.
I think this is key whether you have one healer or four different healers, but really making these three heals instinct will make healing over multiple classes much easier. Even if you have just one healer and wish to master it, these three heals are the essence of "triage"--doing only what is necessary (keeping everyone alive), not what would be nice (keeping everyone at full health). Having an automatic feel for when you have to use each heal will simply make you a stronger healer.
Returning, though, to playing multiple healers; consider reserving the same buttons on your mouse (if you are a click-healer as I think most healers are) or reserving the same keybinds (if you use your keyboard to cast healing spells) for these three types of heals. For example, I bind the efficient heal to my middle mouse button, the big, less efficient heal to shift-middle mouse button and the fast, inefficient heal to control-middle mouse button. Whether I am on my priest, paladin, druid or shaman, that's the layout for the core heals. I'm not suggesting you use the same buttons I do, but consider using the same ones between classes for those three heals.
Use On Cooldown
Every healing class has certain spells, usually instants, that are supposed to be "used on cooldown," meaning use it every time it's available. (This is only meant to be literal in raids, when there's always some damage, or difficult situations in dungeons...don't cast them when everyone's at 100% and killing critters while the tank is AFK!)
As a priest, for example, we have two of these spells: prayer of mending and either penance (if the priest is discipline) or circle of healing (if the priest is holy). A druid has switfmend and wild growth. Etcetera, etcetera. While the "use every single time it is up" is extreme in order to make a point (use it a lot!), I'm not arguing usage patterns here...sometimes you may want to hold back a swiftmend for a burst of damage you know is coming, for example. What I'm saying is that every healing class has a couple of spells meant to be used about as much as possible. Unlike the core heals, they are largely without drawback (they tend to instant, pretty efficient and make a difference) and so you use them guilt-free and with abandon. Identify these spells for your class and bind them to the same (hopefully the easiest to hit) buttons.
Special Attacks
Every video game has special attacks and WoW is no exceptions. For healers, these special attacks tend to heal people and be rather different. Holy Radiance is fairly different from Power Word: Shield is fairly different from Chain Heal. There is not a lot pulling these things together, in terms of a unifying logic...they are simply the extra moves you can and should use. Ideally, bind them to mouse buttons by binding the most used ability to the easiest-to-hit remaining button, etc.
Binding It All Together (i.e The Big Finish)
The idea that I'm putting forth in this post is to create a "healing logic." Rather than thinking in terms of actual spells, think in terms of a logic or concepts: "Time for my slower, efficient spell. Now my direct heal cooldown. Now my fast, inefficient heal." If you do that, and you bind concepts to buttons, it doesn't matter what healer you're using, outside of the special attacks. Your slow, big heal is always in the same place. Your Always-Use A ability and Always-Use B ability are always in the same place. Suddenly, you can port the same instincts over from healer to healer.
You do still need to change mindsets a little, so you don't Power Word: Shield the rogue (who currently has no aggro) when you were thinking of Chain Heal. But a lot of what you do simply transfers.
I mean, in the end, we're all just tapping into the Great Healing Delicious. We call those methods of tapping it different things and argue over who's Great Healing Delicious is the true Great Healing Delicious...but we're really all seeking the same truth. So bind accordingly!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)