Shadow And The Constraint Model Of DPS

The more time I spend working on DPS (first my hunter and now my shadow priest spec), the more I realize that DPS is built around a constraint model, far more so than healing is. Constraints, of course, are limitations on the system you're working with, either organically arising from the nature of the system or (as is always the case in games) artificially arising from the rules applied by the designers of the system.

Healing has some pretty simple constraints: cooldowns (global cooldowns and the cooldowns on abilities) and mana (and holy power, in the case of holy paladins). There are helpful mechanics that you can make use of, but those are more tools to help you survive within the above mentioned constraints. Without those constraints, healing would be a simple matter of casting your "best" (combination of power and speed) spell over and over (and that has happened at times in the history of WoW when designers didn't make the constraints compelling enough).

DPS would seem to be somewhat similar, but while cooldowns still exist as constraints (especially global cooldowns), the main power source (like mana) often doesn't. Healing decision-making revolves around selecting the right targets and dealing with the above mentioned constraints of cooldowns and mana. DPS decision-making revolves around a more precise prioritizing of abilities based on the constraints each ability places on every other.

That was probably as clear a winter's night in Seattle (Seattle is perpetually overcast and misting/raining during all seasons except a couple of months in summer, but especially winter) so let me explain what I mean by using the shadow spec as an example.

What Are The "Core" Abilities Anyway?

Here are the abilities that will make up the vast majority of shadow DPS:

• Mind Blast
• Devouring Plague
• Mind Flay
• Shadow Word: Pain
• Vampiric Touch
• Shadow Word: Death
• Mind Spike
• Shadowfiend

For clarity, I'm only talking about single-target damage on boss-like creatures, not low-health adds. So Mind Spike will only be relevant if you take the talent From Darkness, Comes Light (FDCL). I've chosen that talent, so Mind Spike will be a part of the analysis. A similar exercise can be done with the abilities you gain from the other two talents on the tier (and the level 90 talents will add further constraints, though not particularly complicated ones it appears).

Mousing over those abilities, you can see some basic constraints, like mana costs and cooldowns. Those aren't the particularly interesting ones (mana is virtually impossible to run out of, in fact I can't drop below 95% mana or so--my healer heart weeps at the injustice), so let's get to the meat of the matter.

Constraints? You Mean, Just Cast The Best Ability Off Cooldown, Right?

That's the usual take on DPS and it'll work to some extent. This is the type of thing you'll usually see about the current shadow rotation, for example:

Shadow Word: Death > Mind Blast > Devouring Plague (with three shadow orbs) > From Darkness, Comes Light Mind Spike > Shadowfiend > Vampiric Touch = Shadow Word: Pain > Mind Flay

Basically, this means, use whichever of Mind Blast, Shadow Word: Death, three shadow orb Devouring Plague, instant Mind Spike or Shadowfiend is available, with that order of priority if multiple options are available. If none of them are and either Vampiric Touch or Shadow Word: Pain are near expiration, refresh them. If neither of the previous two sentences applies, use Mind Flay.

Doing this in a machine-like fashion won't yield terrible results, you'll do reasonable DPS...but it won't be optimal. To optimize, you need to juggle in your mind all the constraints I'm about to discuss in order to make the best choice on a moment-by-moment basis. 

Let's get to it! (I'm going to omit mana costs and cooldowns, because we've already noted them. Also, remember that I'm discussing single-target damage on boss types of monsters, so I'll also ignore the duration of the damage-over-time [DoT] spells as a constraint.)

Mind Blast

Benefits: The second hardest hitting shadow spell, provides a shadow orb

Constraint(s): None, right? Actually, the constraint is that you can only have three shadow orbs at a time

Shadow Word: Death

Benefits: The hardest hitting shadow spell, provides a shadow orb

Constraint(s): See above. Also, technically a constraint is that it can only be used when your target is below 20% health (unless glyphed) but we'll ignore that by lumping it into "cooldowns" since this constraint is irrelevant to what I'm describing

Devouring Plague

Benefits: A hard-hitting DoT spell, fantastic damage per casting time invested (DPCT)

Constraint(s): Requires three shadow orbs (technically, you can use any number of orbs, but you only want to use it with three)

FDCL Mind Spike

Benefits: Hits about as hard as Mind Blast (though it doesn't provide a shadow orb)

Constraint(s): You can only have two charges saved up, further procs will be wasted

Shadowfiend

Benefits: Better DPCT than the spells listed below

Constraints: None beyond the long cooldown

Vampiric Touch

Benefits: Better DPCT than Mind Flay

Constraint(s): Cast time (this has greater relevance for a DoT than a conventional spell, I'll explain later)

Shadow Word: Pain

Benefits: Better DPCT than Mind Flay

Constraint(s): None, practically

Mind Flay

Benefits: Better than a hole in the head (more correctly: much better than standing idle)

Constraint(s): None, practically

(I ignored mana returns as a benefit for a couple of abilities because, as I said, mana is close to irrelevant. You can price that benefit in for fights which contain as a gimmick taking away all your mana, ala Yor'sahj the Unsleeping.)

So these notes lead us to a logic that's a bit more complicated than the basic priority system laid out above.

Putting It Together In Practice

First some logical consequences...

There's little question you want to cast Mind Blast the moment it is off cooldown...unless you have three shadow orbs.

Which means that a Devouring Plague with three shadow orbs is the top priority...except that the only time pressure on Devouring Plague is the next Mind Blast. As long as you cast it before your next Mind Blast is available, there's no DPS loss.

Which can be handy if Shadow Word: Pain or Vampiric Touch is about to expire or you have two charges of FDCL Mind Spike.

That leads me to FDCL Mind Spike. It sits higher in the priority list than the DoTs...but since you can save two charges at a time, one charge of FDCL Mind Spike isn't a pressing priority. It's better to refresh a DoT that's near expiry before burning a charge of FDCL Mind Spike if you only have one charge.

But if you have two charges of FDCL Mind Spike, then you want to burn a charge of that off pronto, probably even above casting that three orb Devouring Plague.

Shadow Word: Death pretty much follows the same rules as Mind Blast when the target is low enough in health that Shadow Word: Death is available.

Shadowfiend should be used any time it's off cooldown and, since it has no constraints, could be used ahead of Devouring Plague or FDCL Mind Spike with one charge, but could also be pushed behind refreshing Vampiric Touch or Shadow Word: Pain.

This leads to some complicated decisions at times. Let's take an example:

Shadow Word: Pain is 2.5 second from expiring

Vampiric Touch is 2 seconds from expiring

You just completed a cast of Mind Blast, giving you a third shadow orb

A charge of FDCL Mind Spike just proc'd

The usual priority chart would have you cast Devouring Plague, then Mind Spike, then refresh the two DoTs. However, if you hold the Devouring Plague and Mind Spike in abeyance and first refresh Vampiric Touch and then the Shadow Word: Pain, then cast the Devouring Plague and then the Mind Spike, you'll see better DPS, since you have no opportunity cost for withholding the Plague and Spike for a few seconds, whereas the opportunity cost of holding back on the Shadow Word: Pain and Vampiric Touch is letting them expire (costing you DPS and procs from talents like From Darkness, Comes Light and Divine Insight which is further DPS).

This, however, creates a few more caveats...

The reason I mentioned using Devouring Plague before Mind Spike in the above example is because I did take the Divine Insight talent, which means that Mind Blast is always at risk of having its cooldown reset. Which means I actually do want to get Devouring Plague cast off as quickly as possible, so that if I suddenly have an unexpected Mind Blast to cast, I don't have to push it back to avoid wasting the shadow orb it would generate (and pushing Mind Blast back is a DPS loss). Which is a further constraint on Devouring Plague, if you use that talent. However, if you don't use that talent, then you'd actually want to cast the instant Mind Spike first...because your next Mind Blast will be coming at a predictable time (and you should be able to plan to get Devouring Plague cast before Mind Blast comes off cooldown) whereas you might get two quick procs of FDCL while you're casting Devouring Plague (and then waiting out the global cooldown it initiates) which would cause one to be lost if you already have a charge of FDCL (you can't hold three charges at a time).

Getting back to my earlier mention that cast time is a constraint when it comes to a DoT, if you had Vampiric Touch and Shadow Word: Pain close to dropping off (say ~2 seconds away) and both about equally close to dropping off, then you'd want to cast Vampiric Touch first. A cast time spell followed by an instant will lead to both spells being cast more quickly than the instant followed by the cast time spell, because the latter puts a GCD between the casts. Of course, in the case of the former, the GCD will still happen after both spells, so the total time used is identical...but since the lower priority of the DoTs means you'll generally be following it up with something non-mission critical (Mind Flay, oftentimes), you're better off pushing that follow-up spell back rather than adding extra time to the DoT refreshing if there's a risk that one of the DoTs could drop off your target altogether.

In Summation

This is a pretty long wall of text and may or may not seem like a lot to bear in mind, but it all starts to feel pretty natural and instinctive once you've practiced on a dummy enough and put those constraints into practice. 

The real point is that while basic priority systems give you a general idea of what matters more and what matters less, you need to look at the constraints of all your abilities, as illustrated above, to understand how to fit your abilities together in real time.

From Light...Comes Darkness?

I've done the unthinkable. I've crossed over from the Light to the shadow. From the light side of the force to the dark side of the force. A shadow has passed over my soul.

Oh, not entirely. I did drop my holy spec for a shadow spec, but I retain my trusty, true-blue discipline spec. You can have that when you pry it from cold, dead, pixelated hands.

That said, this does signify a bit of a twist in the road for me. I've dabbled in DPS, but generally on other classes and mostly in Wrath. In Cataclysm, I pretty much lost the way with DPS and healed all the things with all the things. I have one of each healer type at max level and that's pretty much all I did. Until recently, that is.

Starting a couple of months ago, I began getting back into my hunter, mostly neglected since Wrath except to level her up to 85. I realized that the reason I was pretty mediocre each time I took a half-hearted stab at DPS this expansion was due to never setting up a proper UI specifically for DPS. Even more so than healing, in my opinion, you need a really good informational set up about your abilities. The old maxim that DPS is a science, tanking is a skill and healing is an art really holds true to me. You obviously need a good informational set up to heal, but it's a different set of information, in my opinion. Healing has a large "feel" component, DPS is all about sharp precision. That's overly simplified (healing requires its own set of precision, DPS needs a feel for certain things) but I think it conveys the general idea.

Anyway, starting with my hunter, I began figuring out how to build a really good DPS UI for me. A UI that created an informational flow that made hitting the right ability at the right time feel natural. I had some good results on my hunter and I think hunter is a blast. If I could weld a discipline priest spec to a survival hunter spec on the same character, I would.

I can't, though, and I do want a proper DPS spec on my main character, which will continue to be my priest, Shanthi, into Mists of Pandaria. The biggest motivator was to be versatile, for the sake of my teammates. Having been the healer with two healing specs (discipline and holy), I was obviously never going to be doing anything but heal. For most of tier 13, we had three healers, which was fine until we hit heroic modes and dropped to two healers for various encounters. At that point, we usually needed one of our healers to go DPS and guess who it wasn't going to be? I felt bad that someone else always had to shift, never me.

So that was the primary motivation. Wanting to be useful as more than a healer. I often run five-mans with friends and one of those friends is a main spec healer also. Since you very rarely two heal five-man dungeons, she always had to switch to accommodate me. I needed more versatility.

However, as I've spent more and more time, since patch 5.0 dropped, working on my shadow UI and rotation, I've found it to be a lot of fun. I've been asking to go DPS as much as possible in raids to get practice keeping my DPS as high as possible while handling mechanics...it's a lot of fun handling a different role. Also, it's a lot of fun melting the faces of monsters.*

*Additionally, shadow has far cooler minor glyphs than discipline or holy. So there's that.

So now I feel very comfortable about heading into Mists of Pandaria as a discipline/shadow priest. I'll offer my raid more options in terms of composition and it really won't be any kind of sacrifice for me...it'll be fun whether I'm healing or DPSing.

This was going to be the introduction to a post in which I talk about my observations of the best way to play shadow (hey, we're all new to 5.0 class mechanics and I've been spending a lot of time reading and thinking about shadow DPS, even if I'm not a long-time shadow priest)...but this "introduction" got a little longer than I expected, so I think I'll just leave it as a stand-alone post about what I've been up to and follow it up in a few days about my thoughts on shadow priest DPS.

I believe that this blog will still mostly focus on healing (with a bias toward priest healing) but there will probably be some posts about DPS (with a bias toward priest DPS) now and again.

Chakra: The Worst Clever Idea Blizzard Ever Had

Frequent readers probably realize that I play a priest as my main character. Most of my priesting life has been as discipline, but I've been playing a fair amount of holy since patch 4.3 dropped (I also flirted with it off and on in Wrath, but that experience isn't going to be relevant to this post) and the most iconic element of holy priest play (for the priest herself, anyway) is Chakra. This is the device around which the entire spec is supposed to, and does, turn.

Let's start with the good: Chakra was a great idea, conceptually. The idea of being able to fluidly shift from one "healing stance" to another, as needs and circumstances dictate, is a great idea and definitely was unique to the World of Warcraft healing game. It was to be the shining concept that, as Ghostcrawler put it, made people want to spec holy.

And, if it worked, it probably would have been successful in that goal. 

However, the concept is fundamentally and fatally flawed in a game built around balance and a "bring the player, not the class" design principle. It's a device that puts designers in a catch-22, where the solution to one problem creates another problem and the solution to that problem creates the original problem.

The reason for this is that there exist, broadly, only two ways to balance a device like Chakra, which allows priests to choose between two* mutually exclusive stances: one that empowers raid, or area of effect (AoE) healing and one that empower single-target healing. These stances are Sanctuary and Serenity, respectively

*Forget Chastise stance, it's irrelevant in group PvE content

Option 1: You balance the priest such that when she is in Sanctuary Chakra, she is just as good at AoE healing as the other four (soon to be five) healing specs and when she is in Serenity Chakra, she is just as good at single-target healing as the other four/five healing specs. However, to make choosing a stance meaningful, the priest must be worse at the type of healing she is not in Chakra for, which creates the problem. In order to be just as good as any other healing spec at one type of healing, she must necessarily be worse than all the other healing specs at the other type of healing (it's not possible, nor even feasible even if it were possible, to shift Chakra states prior to each healing spell and it is not uncommon to need to sometimes cast some single-target healing spells while mostly AoE healing and vice versa). If the holy priest has 100% / 75% effectiveness (for the two types of healing) compared to the 100% / 100% effectiveness of all the other specs, the holy priest is clearly underpowered. She is significantly less flexible, for no added benefit over the other healing specs, who can do everything with no penalty.

So...

Option 2: Let's solve that by giving holy priests a benefit. Let's make them stronger than every other healing spec in the type of healing they are in Chakra for, to balance out being weaker in the type of healing they are not in Chakra for. To put it simplistically (just to illustrate the concept, not be mathematically rigorous right here), if the holy priest is at 125% / 75% (for the two types of healing) effectiveness compared to the 100% / 100% effectiveness of all the other healing specs, that's balanced...mathematically. However, now the flexibility problem swings in the other direction. The holy priest is far too versatile. Any competitive raiding team will feel pressured to bring nothing but holy priests for their healing team, because a holy priest can always be the best at whatever the team needs at any given time.

You can craft a contrived, complicated system of healing involving Chakra that requires an immense skill cap, whereby an amazing holy priest can use Chakra to always be the best performer at the cost of having to work much harder than every other healing class. But, leaving aside whether that would even be fun, healers who are willing to work as hard will feel burned that they can't produce the same results with other classes.

Ultimately, this is very akin (though not identical) to the druid "bearcat" problem that Blizzard finally plans to resolve in Mists of Pandaria by splitting bear druids and cat druids into separate specs. Blizzard realized that it was a fundamentally impossible problem to solve when the two were differentiated only by a form change: either they had to gut one form, or they had to allow feral druids to be overpowered in terms of potential utility. While the specifics aren't identical, it similarly illustrates that you cannot allow a significant change in powers from something that can be switched in combat. It's impossible to find an acceptable state, where the class-spec that can shift its powers mid-combat is neither significantly underpowered nor significantly overpowered. It's not a matter of tuning numbers...the solutions lead to problems who's solutions lead back to the original problem.

To re-iterate, I think Chakra was a great idea, a very cool concept. If you could shift your healing powers while remaining in balance with everyone else, it would have absolutely been the shining reason to play holy. As it stands, it merely feels punitive...and the solution to that would be to punish every other healing class-spec in the game for not being a holy priest.

Sadly, it's time for a new device, a new centerpiece, for holy priests.

Discipline Priests--How Do They Work?

The old line (well, an old line [well, a line I used] ) in Wrath was that discipline priests don't heal, they shield. After all, holy paladins were better at tank healing. Restoration druids and holy priests were better at raid healing. Restoration shamans could swing between both and pop bloodlust. The only reason to have a discipline priest, if you had your pick of healer compositions, was for the mitigation they brought via absorbs. Mitigation is powerful...you can't heal someone back up after a lethal hit, but you can mitigate a hit down to non-lethality.

Time for the line to change? Discipline priests don't shield, they DPS. I mean, yes, the revolution got underway in Cataclysm, what with Evangelism, Archangel and Atonement. This suite of spells allowed discipline priests to strategically DPS via Smite and Holy Fire to do a little bit of healing and build up stacks that could be traded in for a healing buff at need.

However, the other signature healer-DPS ability was given to restoration shamans: Telluric Currents. This was a much simpler mechanic...no messy stacks to ensure don't fall off, no cooldown to time, no hoping that someone useful was in range of the smart heal. You cast a lightning bolt, you get some more mana (if you hit with the bolt). No muss, no fuss. Mana is fungible after all...you can trade it in for anything your heart desires. Another Greater Healing Wave, another Chain Heal, another Healing Rain...hey, big spender, dig this blender.

But, hey, funny thing happened on the way to the next expansion: discipline priests got Telluric Currents too. Well, it has a different, more World of Warcraft priestly name: Power Word: Telluric Currents. No, wait, that's not right. Power Word: Solace. It'll probably also be balanced separately.

However, conceptually, it's pretty much the same. Cast a DPS spell, get back some mana. With mana expected to be as heavily restricted for healers as soda in New York (too much mana consumption, after all, has adverse effects to your health) in the early going of Mists of Pandaria, this could be a pretty important ability for priests (I should note that any sort of priest could take this ability, but since it better fits my narrative, I'm going to stick with discipline priests). It is actually in the same tier of talents as other mana sustainability talents (it replaced Archangel, which will now be baseline for discipline priests) like Surge of Light and Mindbender, but this is the ability in which higher skillcap can result in higher reward.

Mindbender is just an improved Shadowfiend. It's a fire-and-forget several times an encounter. Surge of Light, as always, is a proc that is largely out of your control. Power Word: Telluric Currents is an active ability who's only limit is your imagination (and the hard coded limits). The better able you are at weaving non-healing spells into your healing rhythm, the more mana you will have to play with in fueling your aforementioned healing rhythm.

So, from a discipline priest perspective, you're looking at using Holy Fire, Smite and Penance (Smite will likely drop out in any serious healing situation) on monsters to build Evangelism stacks and do some Atonement healing along the way, and Power Word: Telluric Currents on monsters to get back a little mana when you can (i.e. when you're not too busy DPSing the monster with other spells).

The skilled discipline priests will weave in the occasional shield while DPSing.

If that seems negative, it's not my intent. I'm being heavily tongue-in-cheek. Blizzard has generally said that this kind of playstyle is viewed as optional. Of course, Evangelism, Atonement and Archangel now being baseline to discipline suggests that maybe it isn't. One resolution we could draw is that Blizzard's view is that you can successfully disc without using these things, but if you want to be truly optimal (i.e. higher skillcap), you'll weave all these in. On the other hand, maybe they're balancing it such that it truly is optional (whether you're wandering around old content or pushing the edge of progression) and they just didn't want to waste more talent and glyph slots, so they stuffed most of these abilities into the discipline baseline arsenal (Atonement, at one point in the beta, was a glyph and Archangel, until this latest build, was a talent).

Further, I don't dislike the whole "DPS for rewards and prizes while healing" idea. It does open up another alley for healers who want to change their style of game in a meaningful way. I now consider Evangelism/Archangel/Atonement to be part of my baseline discipline spec and I do use them (plus I'm amused by healing heroic dungeons purely by holy firing and smiting). I quite like the Telluric Currents dynamic on my shaman. Now I can put them together, like chocolate and peanut butter. Or maybe like bananas, peanut butter and bacon. I'm really not sure how it will actually play, because man...that's a lot of DPS spells to juggle. I still do cast healing spells when healing, you know. Well, not healing spells...shielding spells. Never mind.

World of Diablo? Diablocraft? By Any Name, The Perfect Game

So, I've been playing Diablo IIV. You may know someone else who is also playing the game. I would say it's popular, but only insofar as the ubiquitous crack-cocaine is popular. It's a niche market, but the fanboys and fangirls swear by it.

I've never played a Diablo-brand game before this. That might seem surprising, but in actuality, I'm not much of a gamer at all. I'm fond of saying that I went from Nintendo as a kid to World of Warcraft as an adult. That isn't strictly true...I loved the original Prince of Persia and I played a MUD (multi-user dungeon, text version of World of Warcraft) or two or three in between. But it is true in spirit...I just haven't spent much time on video games between my original fixation on them as a child and my latest fixation on World of Warcraft.

So the Diablo games simply passed me by in my non-video-game-playing existence. I'm still not much of a gamer outside of World of Warcraft, but now I'm dabbling in Diablo IIV because I got it free as part of the annual pass thing that Blizzard offered for World of Warcraft. 


So How Are you Enjoying It? 

Actually, I find it enthralling. I've been playing two characters so far...a monk in co-op mode with a friend of mine and, as a solo exploit, a wizardess (it's a word, I insist, and I refuse to use the word "wizard," which evokes the image of an old man with a long beard...I'm not playing Deckard Cain, he of the quavering voice).

The first thing I should mention is that game is beautiful. Drop-dead gorgeous. Stunning to the max. It makes just exploring a joy, because it's fun to see all the wonders of the world. Killing monsters is simple and zen...left click, left click, right click, maybe use 1-2-3-4 once in a while, maybe quaff a health potion once in a while. I'm not the first to think of this comparison (as I've discovered) but it's like a Roguelike game with stunning graphics and a gripping story. Those Roguelike games were ASCII art adventures that put the emphasis on exploration, killing monsters and loot, in partially or fully randomized dungeon maps. Hello, Diablo! Diablo's story is quite enjoyable, though. And the better graphics are important...I never really understood the point to "exploring" one room of text symbols after another (but some people really get into those games). Exploring a game with the lovely visuals of Diablo IIV, however, is great fun.

Also, it's extremely satisfying to wade into an army of demons and undead and unleash Hell (so to speak). The premise of these Diablo games seems to be that you play a hero...from the start. You're not a peasant working your way up toward hero status (you don't start off by killing chickens and bats, ala World of Warcraft). You start off by holding off hordes of undead and your tasks pretty much stay in that vein: be a one-person army, single-handedly destroying all evil in the world. Unless you do co-op, in which case you're two to four one-person armies. The spell effects are great...never has slaughter been so visually appealing. I am not a violent person, but I can't help being uplifted by getting a commendation for killing sixty to seventy monsters in a spray of magic and blood.


But World Of Warcraft Is Cool, Too, Right? 

Yes, yes it is. Boss fights are fun in Diablo IIV, but possess several orders of magnitude less complexity than the mechanics that raid bosses bring to the table in World of Warcraft. For good reason, as Diablo IIV is meant to be a "pick up and play for however many minutes or hours you have" type of game, while raiding in World of Warcraft is meant to be a "clear your night, this is serious business" type of endeavor.

I love the focus and effort and teamwork required for raiding. I like spending hours refining strategy and trying to play better to down a raid boss in World of Warcraft. I like it better than hack-and-slashing through Diablo IIVX (though I enjoy that too, see above). 

I've often felt that there are two things I enjoy in World of Warcraft: creating a character and raiding; everything in between is just busywork. That might be a little extreme (sometimes I enjoy a moment or two of the in-between part, especially the first time I leveled up a character), but it does get at the spirit of my feelings for the game. It's fun to start a new character, with new abilities and a new character image in your head (my priest has such a different personality from my hunter or my mage, you just wouldn't believe!). Then you stare at its back for several thousand quests (or endless trash packs, if you go the level-through-dungeons route) before getting to the big payoff.


So, Two Different Things For Two Different Purposes, Then 

Yes, that certainly makes sense and works. However, I can't help but think that the perfect game would blend the two types of fun. My view is that the leveling process and pre-raid gearing-up process in World of Warcraft is just grinding. Grinding quests, grinding mobs, grinding dungeons. Doing lots and lots of often very repetitive tasks. Grinding isn't fun.

Except when it is. After all, Diablo IIVX is nothing but grinding when you come right down to it. You hit one scenario or dungeon after another, slaughter your way through and collect your loots. There's obviously some strategy in building your character via the skills and runes you can mix and match, but the meat of the game is the grind. The glorious grind.

And it is glorious. In every way that World of Warcraft's grinds are tedious (to me), Diablo IIVX's grinds are great fun. Gripping, even. You're not running around a 20 yard square area killing a specific type of quest boar, hoping that you'll find nine of them that possess working hearts. You're exploring fairly large swatches of dangerous territory, all lushly and interestingly detailed. And you never know when you'll run into elites or named monsters, which are always more fun than the rare, named gnoll in World of Warcraft that maybe you'll happen to kill by accident while killing all the other gnolls in his 20 yard vicinity.

I purposely explore more than I need to in Diablo's world. It's not at all a unique strategy (I started doing it because a couple of people mentioned it as a tip) but I try to unfog the entire map before I move to the next step. This means purposely running around and killing a lot more than I would otherwise need to. I would never even consider doing this when questing in World of Warcraft. In World of Warcraft, I want to get the quest done as quickly as possible...and I know I'm not alone, because I can see how many people are annoyed when quest mobs take forever to drop enough unicorn horns to complete the criterion. 


Shotgun Weddings Are So Romantic 

So put Diablo IIVX and World of Warcraft in a room and force them to breed. For science. It's ethical when it's for science.

I'm not literally saying that Blizzard should merge these two games. They're both established and separate. Shoehorning the one into the other would probably not work. However, I can dream of a game that combined the best elements of both.

You'd level up in a style of play like, such as, for instance, Diablo IIVX. Leveling is a grind and Diablo makes grinding fun. Check and check.

Then you reach level cap and you run some fancier scenarios, still in the Diablo IIVX style, but maybe requiring co-op play. Whatever, needing co-op play isn't an important detail to me. You run those for your pre-raid gear. 

Then you raid, all World of Warcraft style. And start Diabloing up an alt.

It doesn't have to be so cut-and-dried separate. Maybe you can also run dungeons, World of Warcraft style, while leveling up. As a break from the Diabloesque hacking and slashing, and to learn the fundaments of group play so that you're not confused when you begin raiding. Maybe the co-op play of the Diabloesque leveling process can include more "holy trinity" elements than Diablo IIVX has.

It's all negotiable. I'm just envisioning a game that largely allows the fun of Diablo grinding to replace the tedium of World of Warcraft grinding while not losing the excellent (in my opinion) World of Warcraft end game. 


Conclusion, In Which I Realize I'm Not The Only Person On Earth

You may have noticed that my enthusing over what makes each game fun and/or tedious is a bit opinion-based. Not everyone would agree with me that World of Warcraft questing is boring and repetitive. Not everyone would like to replace the run-one-hundred-heroics-to-be-raid-ready process. Not everyone likes Diablo IIVXXXXL's playstyle. Not everyone wants to raid.

So, obviously, I'm creating a game for myself. The perfect game for me. I'm sure there's at least a small band of people who value things in each game as I do, so it would be a perfect game for me and those people. How large that group of people is, I don't know. Maybe one day, though, we'll get this game. And, hopefully, the people who like completely different things will get the game they like.

And maybe it'll be the same uber-game that all of humanity plays when they're not eating cleverly-concealed human remains. Did I just blow your mind?

Taking Credit Where Credit Is Due

Just a quick post here, but back in March (do we even remember those heady, innocent days? Ah, we were all so young!) I penned this post: Priests Desperately Need Minors

That, of course, was my cheeky way of noting that we priests needed a bunch of cool cosmetic minor glyphs and pronto...we were falling behind in the stylistic arms race on the Mists of Pandaria beta.

Included in that list of suggestions was this little nugget:

Glyph of Vengeance

Your Spirit of Redemption is now a Spirit of Vengeance...instead of using the model of a graveyard angel for when you turn into a Spirit of Redemption, you gain the model of a val'kyr.

Fast forward to May (otherwise known as present day) and lo and behold, what is this new glyph? For those too lazy to mouse over the link, let me reproduce the text here:

Glyph of the Val'kyr

While Spirit of Redemption is active, you now appear as a Val'kyr. 

Why, it's my glyph idea, with a less evocative name!

For those priests out there, main or alt, reading this: you're welcome. (In Mists, Spirit of Redemption is a baseline ability for holy priests, so every holy priest will have it.)

Did I just write an entire post for the express purpose of self-congratulation? I think I did!

Dungeons Are Hard

Well, for some people. Like me. Other people breeze through them, but they represent a serious investment for me and, worst of all, the difficulty can never be nerfed (at least for as long as they are current content).

I don't mean performing my role in the dungeon. That was difficult at the start of the expansion when, as a healer, mana was tight and damage was reasonably high. However, now I overgear pretty much everything. And, really, even if I consider lower level dungeons on lower level alts, dungeons I don't necessarily overgear, I really never have much trouble playing my character. Dungeons aren't hard for me in that respect.

It's the social aspect that makes it hard, that makes it an investment that I have to weigh every time I queue. I'm not at all bad with people, in my daily life, in my personal life--even in my World of Warcraft life, with guildies and in-game friends. I wouldn't call myself socially awkward or anti-social. I get along with people, by and large.

However, in all those respects, the people are accountable to you in some respect. Even if it's as thin as the knowledge that the interaction is taking place with your real-life person, that's an accountability that puts quite a few limits on socially unacceptable behavior. In that setting, I'm fine with people. 

That, of course, is an overly-complicated way to introduce a pretty commonly-expressed sentiment that people given anonymity will (as a population) act quite a bit worse with respect to social mores.

Let me, though, start at a more general level before getting back to that.

Faking It

Even in "real life," I've become a pretty introverted person. In elementary school and junior high, I was a pretty introverted kid. I was the kid who took a book to school and spent recess sitting alone reading the book, because that's what I wanted to do. In high school, I was much more extroverted and friendly and that extended into college years. However, since then, it's been a slow descent back to introversion. Currently, my natural inclination is to keep to myself and avoid contact.

However, I avoid doing that at times. You can become a hermit, but it's not advisable. Some amount of socialization is healthy and you don't want to end up cut off from everyone. You don't want to be a dark presence in the company of friends, because then you'll be shunned.

So I force myself out of the automatic introversion and chat with people in an outwardly social manner. In fact, I'm so good at forcing myself to do this that people sometimes mistake me for outgoing. But I'm faking it!

This begs the question (and people have put the question to me directly), "What's the difference? How social one is is defined by how one interacts, so how can one plausibly define two identical results differently; one as real and one as fake?"

It's a good question, but I believe I have a good answer. 

The "bad answer" (by which I mean, the one with no explanatory value) is that it feels different. I know what it's like to want to interact and do it naturally and I know what it's like to do what I do today and they don't feel the same.

The better answer, from an explanatory standpoint, is the energy cost. Doing it naturally is effortless, because you enjoy doing it and it's the instinctive action. Faking it, however, requires the mental and emotional exercise of forcing one's self out of one's comfort zone and therefore carries a much greater toll and costs more energy (while generating no combo points).

I can experience this dichotomy even now. I am actually quite naturally social with people I'm very comfortable with. With those people, it's natural and I can interact with them easily for a great deal of time. It costs little, so it takes a long time to become mentally/emotionally exhausted. However, with strangers or casual acquaintances, it's forced and that costs a lot more energy per minute. Doing this exhausts me (again, on a mental/emotional axis) much more quickly.

I'm good at faking it, but my endurance isn't great in this mode. I can seem very social and chatty, but my clock is counting down rapidly.

Was This About World Of Warcraft Or Something?

I was just getting back to that, actually! I "recently" (end of November or so) switched guilds. I was joining the guild of a long-time friend, and several other friends were joining at the same time, but that still meant most people in the guild were new to me. I was leaving a guild of people I had known long enough to be quite comfortable with (including a good friend there, too).

For the first few months, I was faking it. On guild line, in vent, in raid chat...I didn't want to maintain a sullen silence, because no one likes sullen silence, right? I wanted to know the people I'd be spending so much time with per week, but I wanted them to know me, too. I consider myself reasonably interesting and occasionally funny, so I wanted people to know that. So I chatted on all those lines and made my little jokes and banter. It was tiring, though. Not tiresome, but tiring. The raiding was the easy part, the pretending-to-be-what-I-could-eventually-be-once-I-came-to-know-them-better was the part that taxed me. (Also taxing? Reading that hyphenated abomination I just created in the previous sentence.)

It's easier now, as I know them all better and they probably know me somewhat better. I no longer feel like the newcomer with no defined personality. Mission accomplished, but it came with effort.

So, this gets me back to where I started: dungeons are hard. A behavior of mine that I didn't really understand until I began to think about it in these terms now comes clear. Generally when I queue for dungeons, I queue for several in a row. Sometimes, a bunch in a row. There are times when I just want to run some dungeons, for the experience to level up or for gear.

What often ends up happening is that I run the dungeon, it goes well with no conflict and someone re-queues the group once it's finished. I'll watch one person after another re-queue as I hesitate, trying to decide if I will. And then, after saying something cheerful like "Good group, thanks!" I'll drop party and manually re-queue.

That, at face value, simply doesn't make sense, in my opinion. As I noted above, this happens when the run was smooth (so everyone was generally competent at their job) and there wasn't any conflict. I still want to run more dungeons. Why, then, would I turn down an instant queue with a perfectly reasonable group (the kind of group I'll hope to get in my next queue)?

The answer, now I realize, is simply that the social pressure got tiring. Even though I'll still be dealing with strangers in the next run, it'll be a new set of strangers. I can start over...I don't have to keep "being a person" with the same set of people. It sounds pretty strange and I'm probably explaining it with language poorly, but the longer the time spent with a group of people I don't know, where at any moment I may be called upon to interact, the more the toll. Re-queuing feels like a chance to recharge. Even as a healer (I'm usually a healer), my queues are generally not completely instant...more in the 1-5 minute range. That proves to be a nice mental/emotional recharge period. Plus, I get a new group of people. That does help ratchet down how much energy it feels like I've spent, since I'm not trying to extend the time of being nice or interesting or whatever with a group of people, I'm starting it from scratch.

Hopefully, the above paragraph made sense. It makes sense to me, because I know what I mean. Reading it over, I can see how it might not make sense to someone not already familiar with what I mean.

When you add in the knowledge that anyone in the party could be a griefer or that the first adversity (or any random event, really, from your point of view) could turn one or more people into raging jerks, that adds to the cost. The energy isn't only spent when I say something or when someone else says something. Some of the cost is just the presence of other people and that cost goes up when you have no reasonable expectation of what those people will say or do.

That is what makes dungeons hard and an investment. Each queue, I have to decide how much energy I have left for faking it. Depending on what else I've done during the day, I have more or less desire to spend that energy. Running a dungeon with friends substantially reduces the energy cost (indeed, reduces it to about 0, if I'm running with 3-4 other friends). Raiding with friends and guildmembers is about 0 in energy cost.

Running a dungeon with a PUG is costly, though. And until I can solo it, that cost can't be reduced by much of anything Blizzard does.