The glyph shuffle, shamanic version.

3.1 brings a lot of changes. Dual-spec, for example. Personally I'd prefer a Quadruple-spec (Healer PVP, Healer PVE, dps PVE, dps PVP), but I'll take Dual-spec over single-spec any day. When dual-spec hits the "shelves", I'll have at least one of the builds as a resto-PVP build. I'm debating whether to have elemental PVP or resto PVE as my second build.

But it's important that you also get two set of glyphs. Because of that, I'd like to take a closer look at the various glyphs that can be useful to resto builds. For all of the glyphs, I'll rate them either 1 (rarely/hardly useful), 2 (handy), 3 (very handy/critical) for each of these purposes:

• PVE Chain Heal: Where Chain Heal contributes 90% of your healing done. Mostly translates to 25-man raids, some 10-man and rarely 5-man.


• PVE Mix: Where you use a mix of various heals and not only chain heal.


• PVP Arena: Where you'll meet a limited number of enemies who usually are well coordinated, and their objective is to keep you from breathing. Mana is a secondary problem compared to just staying alive.


• PVP BG/WG: Where you'll meet lots of uncoordinated enemies, and the objective isn't nescessarily to kill you. Running out of mana is a concern.

The newcomers

Glyph of Earth Shield: A straight-foward buff offering +20% more healing on Earth Shield. I'd consider it pretty stupid to take this glyph without also speccing Improved Earth Shield and Improved Shields, as they stack together. Buffs each charge of Earth Shield by something between 300 and 500, depending on spellpower. This is what I'd consider a handy ability for all purposes, but nothing critical for either. Check your recount values. Find how much effective healing Earth Shield provides (discarding overhealing), and multiply the number by 0.2. This is a rough estimate of the increased healing done by this glyph. Score: 2 all around.

Glyph of Riptide: 3 more sec on the Riptide HoT. Each tick of Riptide heals for something between 600 and 800, depending on spellpower. On a non-crit, this increases Riptide's total output by about 11%. on a crit (with Ancestral Awakening), about 8% more output. For this to be useful, the target must actually have less than full health at this final tick, which is 18 seconds after you initially cast Riptide on someone. In PVP, chances are high that you have to overwrite the buff early because you need the instant potion of Riptide right NOW. The glyph doesn't really convince me. There is one redeeming feature, though. Extending the HoT also extends the window in which you can cast Chain Heal on the target and get a 20% buff. But still... meh. Skip this. I'm 90% certain we'll see this glyph buffed sooner or later. A simple +5% crit rate on Riptide would be better, or perhaps "lowers the global cooldown after casting riptide by 0.5 sec". Current version: 1 all around.

Glyph of Hex: Increases the damage a hexed target can suffer by 20% before hex breaks. Similar to Glyph of Entangling Roots and Glyph of Frost Nova. I can't actually see who would want this. In any sort of group PVE, it's in 99% of the cases broken by the tank (often through AoE) and while it's a bit more incoming damage on the tank, it's nothing really bad. After all, by breaking it, the tank is sure to have aggro on it. In PVP I find that the most common reason for hex breaking being the PVP trinket. The second problem is that the target simly runs away, if it has any kind of intelligence between it's ears. With a 45 sec cooldown, it's a poor return for a glyph. 1 all around.

Glyph of Stoneclaw Totem: Shields you when you cast Stoneclaw Totem. According to a poster on wowhead, this shield aborbs 4340 damage no matter how much spellpower you have. On current PTR, the shield amount is unaffected by Earth's Grasp. In effect, another instant heal spell, but with a few limitations. 30 sec cooldown like the totem. Probably range-dependant meaning it stops working if you move more than 30 yards away from the totem. Possibly disables you from using Earthbind Totem or Tremor Totem for the same time the shield lasts without loosing the shield. The bright side is that being a totem, you can use it despite being counterspelled/silenced. It also has the other advantages of shield spells. And 4k extra health on demand isn't such a bad deal. Handy in PVP. There are few cases where I see the need for this in PVE, versus just healing yourself up. PVE: 1. PVP: 2.

The old fellows

Glyph of Chain Heal: Makes Chain Heal hit four targets instead of three. This has two effects. First, it improves Chain Heal's average throughput by 1/14 or 7%, given that it's always a fourth (wounded) target in range. Second, and harder to measure, it provides another target that potentially can proc Earthliving. If you're raiding 25-man (and possibly even if you only raid 10-man), Chain Heal will usually contribute most of your healing done. This will provide a nice increase. PVE Chain Heal: 3. PVE Mix: 2. PVP: 1. The effect of this glyph is further amplified by...

Glyph of Earthliving: Increases the chance to proc Earthliving by 5%. Notice, though, that there are several cases where this does nothing. First, Earthliving never procs if you heal a target at full health. It can proc if the direct heal brings the target to full health, though. Second, with Blessing of the Eternals you will have a 100% chance to proc Earthliving on a target at less than 35% health without this glyph. Finally, earthliving doesn't stack, but merely refreshens the duration of the last earthliving if it procs again on the same target, making it less useful if you spam heals on one target (like the tank). But still... I think this is a rather solid glyph. Most of the cases you will be healing people at between 35% and 100% anyway, and it can proc on any direct heal, making it an work just as well in 5-man and 25-man. It's nice for PVP too, since there's a chance that the last earthliving was devoured/spellstolen/purged/dispelled/whatever. I rate it 2 all around.

Edit: As drug pointed out, Earthliving is a minor part of healing done for a priest mainly relying on Chain Heal. I agree with his comment, there's probably better glyphs for a chain-healer.

Glyph of Healing Wave: Heals you for 20% of the amount Healing Wave heals your target for. I have sometimes, but not every time, experiened that this extra heal triggers even when I'm the target of my own HW. Possibly a bug. Personally, I love this glyph. Since I favor using Healing Wave as much as possible, I rarely ever worry about my own health in PVE groups. In fact, between this glyph and ancestral healing, I often heal area damage without using Chain Heal at all. Of course, it does rely on you using Healing Wave. Since shorter casttime = less chance to be interrupted/kicked/silenced/etc, not to mention higher chance that my target is alive when the heal hits, I mostly favor using Lesser Healing Wave in PVP. However, there are times when I can use this, and I try to maximize those. PVE Chain Heal: 2. PVE mix: 3. PVP BG/WG: 2. PVP arena: 1.

Glyph of Lesser Healing Wave: Increases the amount healed by Lesser Healing Wave by 20% if the target has Earth Shield. This is *the* PVP resto shammie glyph. Don't leave home without it. It both increases throughput and mana efficiency of your most used PVP healing spell, but only if the target has earth shield. More handy in arenas than in BGs, but it is always handy because you can earth shield yourself and spam Riptide -> LHW -> LHW -> move/root until Riptide is ready again for maximum chance of survival. It does have some use in PVE as well, but since Earth Shield will almost always be up on the tank and HW is preferable to LHW as a tank heal if you've got the talents to support it (mainly Imp Healing Wave, Imp Water Shield and Healing Way), it's usually better to stick to HW. However, if the tank needs heal right NOW, he may not have the extra second it takes to cast HW. PVE chain heal: 2. PVE Mix: 2. PVP BGs: 2. PVP arenas: 3.

Glyph of Healing Stream: Increases the amount healed by Healing Stream Totem by 20%. It makes little sense to take this without Restorative Totems. I'm a personal fan of Healing Stream totem in 5-mans myself, as it provides a nice steady return to health for everyone, meaning I can just ignore everyone with less than 2k health missing. However, since it's party only (unless I've been missing something, which reminds me: WTB raid-wide Healing Stream totem), it is significantly less effective in raids, especially 25-man. I rarely ever use it in PVP. PVE chain heal: 1. PVE Mix: 2. PVP: 1.

Glyph of Water Mastery: Also called glyph of 30 mp5, at least as long as you have Water Shield active. A solid glyph if you ever run into mana problems. PVE: 2. PVP BG: 2. PVP Arena: 1.

Glyph of Shocking: Reduces the global cooldown of all shock spells to 1 sec. This one is for the PVPers, especially at higher levels of arena. Of course, it does require that you rely on shocks as a source for interrupts/snares/burst in the first place. PVE: 1. PVP: 2.

Glyph of Frost Shock: Increases the snare effect on frost shock to 10 seconds. PVP glyph without doubt. Without Reverbation, which few resto shammies have, Frost Shock has a duration of 8 seconds and a cooldown of 6 seconds, meaning you technically can perma-snare someone. This is easier said than done, and another two seconds help a lot. But more importantly, pretty much every melee'er who would want to stay on your face beating you have access to some talent that reduces the duration of snare effects by 30%. That reduces the duration of non-glyphed frost shock from 8 to 5.6 seconds, meaning you can't perma-snare someone. With the glyph, this increases to 7 seconds. Like the glyph of shocking, this is a good glyph if you can't find any other for a PVPer. PVE: 1. PVP: 2.

Glyph of Mana Tide Totem: Increases the amount restored by Mana Tide Totem by 1% per tick. It will now restore a total of 28% of total mana instead of 24% of total mana. Last time I checked, Mana Tide Totem was a very low part of the mana restored during a fight, and so I consider this a minor upgrade. However, redeeming trait that it affects all party-members. This glyph provides an additional 20% of total mana across all affected, which isn't bad.

To tell the truth, I don't like this glyph. I don't like any type of glyph that provides a buff to others (versus just your own healing), because the raid might end up forcing you to take it. No, I'm dead serious. Let's now say that Uldar really brings mana troubles for mana users. The raid leader might require that all priests run with this glyph because it helps with the mana trouble. While it's nice that the priest in question can help others, he has to sacrifice a glyph slot which could be used for some other glyph he'd rather want to have. It might cripple his own healing somewhat, while helping other healers.

But min-maxing, it's not a bad glyph for PVE. PVE: 2. PVP: 1.

Recommendations

For a PVE raider relying primarily on Chain Heal, the primary glyph is Chain Heal. Good choices for the last slot are Water Mastery, Healing Wave, Earth Shield, Lesser Healing Wave, Mana Tide Totem or Earthliving.

For a PVEer that relies on a mix of heals, especially in heroics, I'd strongly recommend Healing Wave. If you regulary user either, Healing Stream, Chain Heal or Lesser Healing Wave can make good choices. If neither are too much used, go with Earthliving, Water Mastery, Earth Shield or Mana Tide.

For a PVPer that stick mostly to battlegrounds, wintergrasp and other world PVP stuff, there are a lot of choices. If you have trouble with survivability, go with Stoneclaw, Earth Shield and Lesser Healing Wave. Mana trouble? Water Mastery. Neither? Healing Wave, Shocking or Frost Shock all make decent choices if you rely on those spells. Finally, Earthliving is always handy if you can't find anything else.

For an arena healer, I strongly recommend Lesser Healing Wave. As with BGs, if you have trouble with survivability Stoneclaw and Earth Shield could help you. Depending on what partners you run with, Frost Shock can also be tremendously useful, also in reducing incoming damage because you can slip away from your enemies slightly easier. Shocking is a solid choice if you're good at watching your enemies.

For an all-rounder, Earthliving and Water Mastery might be the best bets. If you use Healing Wave a lot, it's a good glyph, otherwise Lesser Healing Wave.

If you could pick one WoW ability...

... to have IRL, I'd picked Reincarnate. If I could pick two, I'd pick Cleanse Spirit, or any other disease-removing ability next.

Sorry for the lack of posts. Even though I weren't sick that long, work was piled up when I got back. Working on the next post now.

Blizz healing spell design philosophy.

New theories incoming, this time about heals.

Basically, I believe all healing spells fit more or less into these three categories:

Baseline aka Bread & Butter: Spells that have a clear defined purpose and are straight forward.

circumstantial: Spells that are better than the bread and butter spells for various special purposes. Most group heals fit in this category.

Cooldowns: Spells that are so powerful and good that Blizz gives them a cooldown to prevent only using them.

Blizzard tries to make every healer use as much as possible of their reportoire. Some spells are much better fit for either PVE or PVP, but they often try to buff the spell for the least used aspect. The baseline spells will be almost garantueed to always have a use. The cooldowns can pretty safely be buffed straight, as the cooldown will limit just how powerful they become.

For the circumstantial spells, though, they follow a different strategy. It can potentially be very dangerous to straight buff a circumstantial spell (as in more healing throughput without adding to mana cost), because you might end up it being completely superior to other tools at disposal for the same purposes. That's what happened to Circle of Healing. They can't balance it by giving it a high mana cost, because the players still will use the spell and then complain about mana. The way they end up buffing these spells are usually by adding secondary effects to them, or give them additional situations in which they might be useful. Adding another situation where the spell shines makes it less circumstantial, as the circuimstances in question show up more often.

Let's take an example, Binding Heal. When it was first introduced in Burning Crusade, pretty much every PVE priest shunned it. While it could outshine Flash Heal in throughput (healing per second), it had no significant advantage in healing per mana (especially compared to Greater Heal) and risked overhealing twice. In serious arena, it was much more common for the enemy team to focus one player rather than split the damage, and it offered no additional benefit to focused damage. Of course, there were occassions where it would shine, but it was very circumstantial. Blizz couldn't straight buff the throughput, as that would've made it put out more single-target healing than Flash Heal. They tried lowering the mana cost, which helped both in PVP and PVE. But since it still was too circumstantial in PVE, they gave it very low threat. That helped. Suddenly priests used it in heroic on threat-sensitive fights, or early in pulls before the tank had proper threat on all mobs.

Fast forward to WotLK. Blizz is talking about changing how healing works. At the same time, they can't mess up too much the existing healing style, as there is no way to garantuee that a new healing style will be better than the old. Read: More entertaining. It's hard to please most of the crowd, impossible to please all.

From the 3.1 preview, it said that holy priests now will have a faster Greater Heal after casting Flash Heal. Fairly unoriginal as it's basically the same idea that they used with both Discipline and shaman Resto end-talents, but it works. It changes Flash Heal so that instead of being a pure bread'n'butter spell (discounting Surge of Light procs), it will also be a circumstantial spell. At the moment, you get the highest throughput of healing as a holy priest by spamming Greater Heal. In 3.1, you will do better alternating Flash Heal and Greater Heal, perhaps Greater Heal several times if a single flash heal will give a stack of buffs (like Tidal Waves gives two faster Lesser Healing Waves/Healing Waves, not only one). In addition, you can also throw in a flash heal early so that you'll already have the buff ready when you need it.

What they do is give spells additional circuimstances in which they'll be better than (other) baseline spells. I offer two observations to Blizz approach in making spell more interesting.

First observation: By adding circuimstances such as the above, Blizz tries to reward planning and foresight. While combat in WoW always will have random elements, most of what happens can be anticipated. At the very least, it's easy to anticipate that the tank will take damage. Then you might also anticipate that he or she's going to take spikes, and that the rest of the group will take AoE damage from the spell the boss mob is just casting. While I think it is a good thing to reward anticipation, it leads to one of two problems. First case, fights might be tuned so hard that the healer is required to be very familiar with the fight in order to keep everyone alive. Second case, fights will be tuned so that it still is possible to improvise and catch up, in which case they might be too trivial for a healer familiar with it. Of the two evils, the second is the lesser and the most likely Blizz will follow.

Second observation: There might be problems at the horizon if you keep adding stuff to existing spells. Specifically, you will "need" to press your cooldown-heals at every possible cooldown to be an optimal healer. That, in turn, makes the healing game feels very spammy, and less dependant on good decisionmaking. Let's take an example, Riptide. For the moment, this spell has all of the following functions:

• A direct instant heal.


• A HoT that lasts 15 seconds.


• A buff to your next Chain Heal with the Riptide target as a primary target which removes the HoT.


• A self-buff to the caster, Tidal Waves, reducing the casttime of the next two combinations of Lesser Healing Wave and Healing Wave.


• A chance to proc Earthliving Weapon, a second HoT that lasts X seconds.


• A chance to crit, thus proccing Ancestral Healing.


• A chance to crit, thus proccing Improved Water Shield.


• A chance to crit, thus proccing Ancestral Awakening.

Pretty hefty list for a single spell. Why is it so long? Blizz has more or less stated that they considered it a problem that every resto shaman in a raid did nothing but spam Chain Heal all day. They wanted to buff Riptide so that it was worth the GCD to cast it for a resto shaman. In the process of buffing it (which also included buffing it's direct throughput), they added a lot of circumstantial reasons to use it. Now it is almost at the point where I feel that I need to cast it as often as I can while healing 5-man heroics, provided anyone in the group have taken damage. Holy Shock is very similar in the regard that it also has a lot of circumstantial effects attached to it.

The bottom line, I think we'll see even more of the circumstantial stuff for healers in the future. Consider the healer abilities in the Aces High daily, same as the last phase of Malygos.

(By the way, sorry for the lack of posts. Like WoW, a blog's priority is well behind both job and private life)

The healery arts of bursting

Pretty much every healer have the potential to put out some burst damage on demand. There will be moments in both PVP and PVE where this is handy. Mostly in PVP, of course, where the ability to burst down an enemy can be viewed as healing saved. But not exclusively, there will be times in PVE when bursting is handy. For example if you pull aggro on some add and it is mostly dead already or have low health, or on bosses which have vulnerability periods in which every point of damage counts. Take the Headless Horseman, to take an example a lot have experienced.

The main difference between bursting in PVP and PVE is the risk of getting counterspelled/kicked and thus getting that school of magic locked out. This is only a serious problem on your healing school (holy or nature) and only on spells with a cast-time. Actually, it's often an advantage to get your non-healing spell school locked, because whoever blew that cooldown can't immidiately counterspell you again. In both PVP and PVE you risk getting your casttime extended by damage taken for non-instants.

For all of the bursty combinations, you want to maximize the damage output for the given amount of time. The question is, how much time do you have? You can make several combos depending on how much time you have at your disposal. There's also an advantage to put an instant at the end of a chain, because it hits the same moment as the cast-time right before it, and the global cooldown triggered doesn't "count" towards the time the combo takes. In PVP, many enemies will hit defensive cooldowns if they take incoming serious damage. By making the damage hit at the exact same time, they won't have time to react between the nukes.

I ignore spells with long cooldowns. Though you can get a nice burst as a shaman by for example using Nature's Swiftness and Chain Lightning, you usually want to save those for other purposes.

Priest

A quick and safe 1.5 sec combo is Mind Blast -> Shadow Word: Death. If you don't risk getting counterspelled, Holy Fire -> Shadow Word: Death will probably yield better damage for a holy or disc-specced priest, at a lower mana cost.

You can of course drop both for a twice as long combo, Holy Fire -> Mind Blast -> Shadow Word: Death. I like using Holy Fire first because it packs a dot, slightly longer cooldown and better damage if you can't finish the combo.

If you're discipline, you also have the option of dropping Penance into the fray, of course based on the assumption that you don't immidiately need it for healing. If you're holy, pray for a crit and drop an instant Smite in there.

All in all, priests got pretty good burst potential, and at a neat 30 yard range. Use it well.

Druid

Druids are lacking in the bursting department. First and foremost, the problem is that to deal any kind of damage (except Thorns) you need to shift out of tree form, which means that the mana cost of the combo is sort of increased by the mana cost of shifting back to tree form.

The next problem is their spell selection. I don't assume any healer specs Starlight Wrath. Starfire deals decent damage and doesn't include any risk of counterspelling, but at a 3.5 sec casttime. Wrath deals pretty low dps without serious talent investment into the balance tree, risks counterspelling, and still has a 2 sec cast time. Moonfire deals very abysmal damage compared to it's mana cost when only looking at the instant part.

There's always the option of Moonfire spam, which has the advantage of being only instants. However, mana cost and low dps doesn't make it a too powerful burst.

The only option they have is to chain Starfire -> Moonfire or Wrath -> Moonfire depending on how long time they have.

All in all, druids are seriously lacking burst potential, in my opinion.

Shaman

Shammies have some interesting options. First and foremost, Lava Burst is a garantueed crit as long as the enemy has Flame Shock on them. Lava burst deals better damage at a significantly lower mana cost than Chain Lightning, even without Flame Shock present. In addition it's handy that it's not from the nature (healing) school, in case of counterspells. Like Lightning Bolt it has a travel time, which can be both a blessing and a curse.

The special thing about shocks is that they share the same cooldown. In PVP, if you *need* your enemy snared (Frost Shock) or the shock cooldown ready to interrupt a spell (Earth Shock or Wind Shock), you won't have the option of chaining Flame Shock into Lave Burst. In PVE, you might often be better of using Wind Shock to reduce aggro rather than use it for a nuke. There's also the problem with range, 20 yards (barring gear bonuses) rather than 30 yards on cast-time nukes.

All in all, there's a lot of different combos for different needs.

First, let's look at Flame Shock -> Lava Burst. Since you have to wait for global cooldown after the first, the combo takes 3.5 sec, barring haste and interruptions. While Lava Burst is a garantueed crit, without Elemental Fury it's only a 150% crit, and the initial hit from flame shock is nothing great. In effect, while handy, this isn't a superior combo. The redeeming trait is that you only need to stand still to cast in 2 of those 3.5 seconds. Glyph of Shocking reduces the time of this combo by 0.5 sec.

If you spend 4 seconds, you can chain Lava Burst -> Chain Lightning -> Earth Shock. Frost Shock at the end deals a bit less damage, but snares if you need that should the combo fail to kill. The advantage of this combo is that Lava Burst have travelling time while Chain Lightning and Earth Shock hit instantly, meaning they can hit in very short amount of time (<0.5 sec), giving an enemy player very little time to react, provided you're at max shock range. If you're in melee, this isn't such a good idea. Of course, there's the risk of getting Chain Lightning counterspelled. Just Lava Burst -> Earth Shock is a quick and safe combo, in the sense that you can't get nature counterspelled.

Given the nature of Lava Burst, the best option for bursting is setting up a killer combo by casting Flame Shock earlier, then load up a double or triple nuke so that you get a second shock in. This is easier said than done in PVP, slightly less so in PVE.

Paladin

Since pallies lack any casttimespells, their nukes are limited only to the instants they have. The interesting part is that Judgement of Justice (or any of the other judgements) is off the global cooldown, meaning you can that and another instant in at the same moment. Seal of Righteousness is probably the seal that causes the best damage on jugdement for a holy pally. Enlightened Judgements give judgement a lot of range, in fact more so than most other offensive spells in the game.

The primary nuke is Holy Shock, which has a few disadvantages. Only 20 yard range, for a start, and the fact that you might need it for healing rather than damaging. The bright side is that you probably have a fairly good crit rate on this, and using it with Divine Favor still grants the instant Flash of Light when used offensively, thanks to Infusion of Light.

Chaining Holy Shock and a judgement gives a fairly good nuke, and is completely instant. From 3.1 you can also throw in Exorcism, which will then be usable on all targets rather than just demons and undeads. See here for more details if you missed the change.

Last words

I believe Blizz doesn't dare to give druids a baseline high-damage, low cooldown ability like Holy Fire, Mind Blast and Lava Burst because they're afraid that it might make druids overpowered in PVP (again).

Why do we play?

As a parent, I'm reading quite a lot of child psychology, especially Alfie Kohn for the interested. The interesting part of it is that a lot of the psychology that turns up there aren't limited to children, or can be easily ported to the rest of the population as well.

One of the most interesting topics I've come across, both with Alfie Kohn and other sources, is motivation. I'd like to take a look at motivation in WoW with the insights I've come across there.

First, some background. While I may not use the exact same words, psychologists speak of internal and external motivation. The internal motivation is the motivation to do something for the it's own sake. The classical school example is a pupil that suddenly realizes a connection in mathematics, and desires or even aches to learn more. Then there's the external motivation. That's when you have some other reason to do something, and you're not nescessarily interested in doing whatever you do for the sake itself. Classic example continued: A teacher stands behind the pupil, watching him, and telling him "Good job" when he does something good, thus the pupil wants to do more math exercises (not nescessarily learn more) to keep hearing the teacher saying "Good job".

According to the theories I've read and what I've experienced, external motivation kills internal motivation. If you do something for fun, and someone starts giving you money to do it, chances are great that you'll now view it as a job rather than an interest. That's not saying you can't have internal motivations towards a job. What matters, in my mind, is your view of the task at hand. Do you do it because you want to do it, and payment is just a nice side effect, or do you do it to get the payment? If you fall into the latter category, you'll easily find yourself hating your job, or at least looking forward to job is done or the weekend.

Now, let's take a look at WoW. Internal motivation could be doing quests because you're curious what will happen or find the story interesting. External motivation is doing quests for the rewards only, to the point where you never really read the quest text. Internal motivation could also be exploring for the sake of itself, while external could be exploring to get an achievement.

WoW has so many ways of external motivations that it's almost silly. XP/Level, reputation, gear upgrades, money, titles, various mounts and pets, and achievements. My theory is that if you focus on these things, WoW will be less entertaining for you, raiding will feel more like a job than entertainment, you're much more likely to suffer burnout and so on. I used to skip every quest text through second half of vanilla WoW. Now I read every quest text, book, readable quest item and dialogue carefully, to absorb as much as possible of the story.

That is not saying you can't have fun with achivements. But if you do an achivement just to get +10 achivement points, that's possibly a bad sign. Do it because you find it entertaining, or just have fun with a random achivement popping up now and then without intentionally hunting them.

Still, there's a big playerbase, and a lot of them *are* motivated by external motivation. What keeps them back? I've got a theory of that as well, though I didn't invent that either. The general idea is that addiction is often caused by the enviroment rather than the thing you're addicted to itself. Translated: Many people who are addicted to WoW feel that their lives are lacking in some way. Thus, the sympthom of that is that they've developed an addiction to WoW, even to the point of playing when it feels like work. The actual cause is in their actual lives. Taking away WoW doesn't solve the problem, only removes a sympthom.

Aspects of the game: Soloing

I've tried to find out why I suddenly go all out with my shammie, when I could just as well be levelling my priest or druid. I have a theory. Bear with me, I need to start somewhere.

World of Warcraft combines many different types of game into one. The major parts as I see them:

• Soloing: Most notably levelling, but also grinding and dailies. You (or your pet) will be the only aggro targets. If you mess up, you've got noone to bail you out, but you won't pull anyone else down the drain with you.


• Instancing: Includes normal and heroic dungeons and raids. You have a defined role you're supposed to do, and unless that's tanking, you're not the usual target of aggro.


• Battlegrounds: Apart from the actual battlegrounds, I also include Wintergrasp here. Though it is slightly different, it shares many of the same traits.


• Arena: Different rules than battlegrounds, not least of them that you only live once.

There are also several minor parts of the game. Well, minor for most players:

• Grouping outside instances: Usually for group quests. However, some people level like this rather than soloing.


• World PVP, aka ganking: Where there's no reason for the conflict other than the interest in crushing your enemy.


• World PVP objectives: Removed in Northrend in favor of Wintergrasp.


• Duelling: A part some love and others completely avoid.

Finally, there's the social parts of the game. However, unless you're an avid roleplayer, they're not connected to what class you play at the moment. You might also count exploring and professions as special parts, but it is (at least techically) without any class restrictions.

Most players concentrate on some aspects of the game. Indeed, many players hate some other aspect of the game to the point where they try to avoid it completely.

While levelling through Outland, I tried a lot of different aspects. This time, I'm mostly doing soloing, with the occasional instance and group thrown in.

Now, soloing has some special "rules" about it. Like most PVE, almost all incoming damage is physical, and most are done in melee. And since every class is supposed to be able to solo, the damage must be moderate, because some classes have very low physical mitigation. Of course, this means that classes with high mitigation have a significant advantage while soloing, in the fact that they take less incoming damage.

To pull the analogy to myself: I'm now levelling a character that has a very acceptable physical mitigation of almost 50%. My priest and druid mitigates less than 20% damage. As my blog name implies, I love healing. But while a paladin has even higher mitigation, he's unable to do ranged dps which I prefer, and thus I end up with the three others.

Granted, a moonkin can have even more mitigation than me, but at the price of healing. And if they shift out, they're suddenly really squishy and risk dying faster than they can heal against elites. I feel I've got better survivability combining high-power healing with good mitigation. While a bear have way more mitigation (add dodge and demo-roar), they got way less healing even when shifting out than a moonkin.

The last piece in the argument here is that I like staying alive. As long as I can survive, I can beat every elite I come across, even if it takes time. I do belive that not everyone have the same preference as me. Many players would for example prefer superior dps to survivability. So what if they can't solo everything, they can still kill 99% of the mobs out there, and faster than I am able to while heal-tanking something.

However, I suspect that once I start PVP, I might be rather tempted to return to my priest, or perhaps even my druid. While physical mitigation helps, there are a lot other ways to mitigate damage in PVP. Various passive talents (Focused Will or Blessed Resilience, for example), or active abilities such as dispelling dots or frost nova to avoid getting caught in a shatter combo.

Bottom line, I'm wondering if I won't be more envious of other healers once I start serious PVPing at lvl 80. I already envy the number of instant heals priests and druids can throw around, and of course the all-mighty bubble of pallies.

Edit: Seriously, I mus've been really tired when I first wrote this. Forgot to explain the reason why I like high mitigation.

Roleplaying Rant

I've spent the vast majority of my playtime on Earthen Ring, which is an RP server. As I wrote in my earlier post, I was a rather active roleplayer for the first year of my WoW career. After that, it went downhill. At some point, the roleplaying in WoW was taken over by various drama queens and kings.

This post is aimed towards those drama queens and kings, but might be of interest to others who've encountered them, or even to people intending to start roleplaying.

How to recognize a drama queen

While I find the term 'drama queen' to be the most descriptive, other names are also floating around. 'Spotlighthugger', 'Power RPer' and possibly a dozen other such names describe similar behaviour in roleplaying. What generally defines them is that their roleplaying is all about them. They're the main character in the story, everyone else are less important characters. They're practically bursting to tell/play their story. Just push the botton (ask to hear their story), and they'll talk about themselves for at least the next half hour. Most won't even wait for that, if they believe someone will listen to them.

Practically every drama queen use some addon like FlagRSP. It allows you to write a description for yourself, which other players with the same addon can read. It can be quite entertaining to install this addon if you're on a RP server, and walk around some capital city just to read what people've written in the descriptions.

The third defining characteristic of drama queens is that they all want to be special. They try really hard to write stories and create characters that are completely unique, resulting in rather quite a few far-fetched bios.

The problem

Now, the problem with drama queens is usually not that their stories are uninteresting. Quite the opposite, it can be very entertaining to listen to a story. What type of entertainment depends on the story and the character, ranging from hilarious (often without the intention of the storyteller) through amusing to exciting.

The problem is usually that it can be rather tiresome to listen to yet another far-fetched, overplayed story, which rewrites the lore of WoW yet again. How many secret lovechilds does Tyrande have? How many times was Thrall saved by a single hero, who for some reason needed to be omitted from the common lore? That, and the fact that it can be quite annoying to listen to someone who won't let anyone else get through. Granted, unlike a verbal conversation they can't just speak louder than everyone else, but they don't nescessarily mean to. Many roleplayers are quite polite, and will wait their turn. And when their turn doesn't show up... well, then they'll just wait until their patience grow thin, and then stop showing up for roleplaying sessions.

Hints on backstory creation

I don't want to teach you how to roleplay. The paragraphs above contains quite a few hints on how to roleplay. Besides, there's quite a few sources that have written 'Roleplaying 101' guides before me. I'll just list up some spesific suggestions I have for drama queens.

Normality, the new originality

If you desire to be original, you needn't nescessary go out of the way to create a new original backstory, complete with some major names from the lore and some grand event that without your intervention would've doomed the world. In fact, there are so many of those, that it's refreshing to read/hear a down-to-earth story. There are still many things that can and does happen to "normal" people, and just because it can happen to normal people doesn't make them uninteresting. Try roleplaying a father who needs to feed a family, for example.

Avoid anything about rape

I'm very certain that 100% of all characters I've met who've been "raped" in their past, have been played by male players. Many other male players, and probably almost every female player will react very negatively to that. To the poor souls that've actually experienced it, it will probably be a lot of emotional pain. Here they come to WoW to relax and play, and get reminded of their probably worst experience ever. Tasteless.

Regarding lost eyes

... it's the peak of unoginality. But if you really want to lack one eye, first find a good reason that actually doesn't make everyone think "yeah, right". Second, most people don't cover lost eyes with the biggest gem in the world or something like that. Third, actually roleplay it. A person with only one eye will have a limited depth perception, causing him to occasioanly misjudge distance and bump into walls, loose their footing, misjudge a ledge. With that said, they will also be used to it, meaning they will avoid moving too close to somewhere they might misjudge and fall down. In fact, they might've developed phobia of heights. And that brings us to...

Mental problems

Now, this is something refreshingly new. I personally believe that every adult person in the entire world have some mental problems they live with. Most people don't have a diagnosis for this. Only those that have problems that in some way hamper their life get a diagnosis. Why shouldn't WoW characters have theirs as well? It makes a character way more realistic. But here's the trick: It must be some problem that you can function normally with, or at least hide really well. A challenge can be to roleplay a character with a problem the character itself isn't aware of, or at least views as a problem. Some examples of mental problems that could be roleplayed: Father/son-problems, general problems with authorities, virtually any phobia, schizofrenia (not to be mixed with multiple personalities), sleepwalking, hearing voices, paranoia, lack of respect for own well-being, bad judge of character (often trusts the wrong person), bad memory, and various fascinations. For more adult roleplaying, various fetishes. Again; the character must still be able to function normally.

Traits

A mixed bag of everything that doesn't include mental problems. For example, habit of chewing a root all the time, stopping to salute every guard, shouting when angry, blinking unescessarily much, raising an eyebrow occasionally, talking very polite, talking very commanding ("You will have a fine day!") or practically anything else you can think of. Make a macro and hit once in a while when the situation calls for it.

Emo is sooooo last year

Generally, making an emo character is not the best of ideas. There ought to be something in your story that's positive as well. A character with an optimistic view of life is so much easier to stick around with than someone suicidal.

Roleplaying the character

Now, let's say you have a wonderfully interesting, or plainly dull backstory. The most important part is how you roleplay, how well you've written the story. Here's some general advice:

Listen more than talk

In a group of at least 3 roleplayers, if someone speaks more than listens, it means that the group's turned into a speaker and two listeners. Avoid that.

Be subtle with traits

A good roleplayer will be subtle about their traits and problems. They're something that you remember the character by, but shouldn't occur too often. If you do it too often, you'll start annoying others. I'd like to make an example from one of the best roleplayers I've ever met in WoW (hope you don't mind); A shaman that heard the spirits speaking to her. Once in a while, the combat log would say "Shacklya whispers to herself." What happened? She roleplayed that she replied to one of the spirits speaking to her, which no one else can hear. When asked about it (in character), she would explain that she was replying to a spirit which spoke to her first. And she did that once in a while, sometimes seldom, sometimes often. Never more than about once a minute. Ingeniously simple. Everyone that meets her will remember it, and I don't think anyone would be annoyed by it. And it can create great plotline hooks, depending on what she's discussing with the spirits for the moment.

Create stories/plots with solutions

Many roleplayers like to make large plots and stories. Great! As long as the rest find it entertaining, no worries. The problem, though, arises when you've created a plot that doesn't really include any input from the other roleplayers. It's really frustrating to "participate" in a character-driven plot when you can't do anything at all to affect the outcome. Be flexible! If a given character is possessed and someone tries something good, let them succeed. Don't just wait and eternity and then present *the* solution, which they never could've done.

Create positive plots as well

Practically every plot I've seen in WoW is some sort of negative. Try to create some positive plots as well, or at least some that has light points. Go to a pub and drink yourself silly, for example. Can lead to a lot of interesting roleplaying without demonic interference.

And a word of respect to my master...

Aside from Shacklya, the best roleplayer I've ever met on Earthen Ring have to be Cavran. Unfortunately, he's no longer playing, and hasn't for quite some time. His interest in WoW was killed by various bad roleplayers. Bah. Salutations, Cavran!