Posts with tag crowd-control

Pro Tip: Damage meters don't tell the whole story

by Megan O'Neill Mar 19th 2013 at 1:00PM

Some people /ignore others in random raids or dungeons for language or bad play. I add to my instant /ignore list those who spam the meters in raid chat.

Anyone who cares about whose bar is the longest is already measuring on their own screen. Not only is the reporter almost always on the top (and conveniently never reports when s/he is below), but displaying the damage done for a fight to the same raid who's on the meter is just pure epeen spill. Asking for a damage meter is just laziness (or, in rare cases, a really crappy computer paired with a log-intensive fight).

Let's not forget that problem of boiling a player down to a single number. All three roles of the holy triad have a complex set of abilities for every encounter.

Patch 5.2 PTR: Triple turkey stack gobbled by pet battle crowd control nerf

by Kristin Marshall Jan 31st 2013 at 1:00PM

Now that MoP has been out for a few months, I find myself enjoying pet battles far more than I thought I would. That being said, it was only a matter of time before griefing made its way into this part of the game as well -- even if it is by turkeys. Yes, turkeys.

It all started with the rather harmless sounding "Triple Turkey." Unfortunately, it's not a sandwich I can nom on, but is instead something much more sinister in the world of pet battles. The Triple Turkey comp quickly became the flavor of the month for trolls in PvP pet battles, ~~using~~ abusing the irritating Food Coma ability to the max. If you've never encountered it before, Food Coma puts the opponent to sleep for two rounds, on a five round cooldown.

But that cooldown only applies to the turkey who casts it. So, we were left with creative individuals who would use Food Coma, swap to a second turkey, use Food Coma, swap, and so on.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Mists of Pandaria

Is instant-cast crowd control too ubiquitous?

by Olivia Grace Dec 12th 2012 at 1:00PM

First, no, Polymorph isn't an instant-cast spell. Second, onwards! Blizzard Community Manager Nakatoir has posted this morning about Blizzard's current thinking on instant cast CC.

Nakatoir

First things first, I want to make sure you're aware that the information below reflects both short and long-term design considerations on our end. This isn't all on the table for patch 5.2 for a number of reasons.

To make this clear right off the bat: This shift of instant casts back to cast times is not just targeted at crowd control. We also wish to start moving some heals back to having a cast time rather than being instant. That said, we're not necessarily planning on overhauling many of the spells and abilities that have been instant for a long time now, such as Hand of Justice. We're looking at some of the big outliers that we see brought up a lot, which are instant-cast, area-of-effect abilities like Blinding Light, or Presence of Mind in combination with Ring of Frost.

We think that there are too many of these AoE CC spells at this time, especially instant AoE CC, which can create some frustrating gameplay experiences. Some other particular crowd-control effects that are on our radar are abilities like Blood Fear, which we're considering redesigning altogether, and Predatory Swiftness in combination with Cyclone, which feels virtually impossible to counter.

Posted by Inférnal

While we are talking about cc what about having some more spells share DR with each other. A pala can repentance/blinding light/ hammer. No Dr at all. Why is it that fear and blind share a DR and polly/fear and cycone dont? and many more examples like this.

We're looking at diminishing returns for CC right now as a possible way to help with CC in PvP combat, but it's the type of gameplay overhaul that can be risky to implement in the middle of an expansion cycle if the change is too drastic. We are, however, taking a look right now at the DRs within particular classes, as well as special snowflakes like Cyclone. Either way, the design discussion will undoubtedly continue! ^^

source

Filed under: PvP, Mists of Pandaria

Blood Pact: Staying slightly alive as a warlock

by Megan O'Neill Nov 19th 2012 at 9:00AM

Blood Pact How to stay slightly alive as a warlock MON

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill completely devours a real-life box of cookies while listing out all the ways a warlock can heal herself. Om nom nom.

Dead DPS does zero DPS. We all know that saying. I introduce to you my Princess Bride collorary to the Dead DPS rule:

Miracle Max: Whoo-hoo-hoo, look who knows so much. It just so happens that your friend here is only MOSTLY dead. There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there's usually only one thing you can do.

Inigo Montoya: What's that?

Miracle Max: Go through his clothes and look for loose change.

The perfect description of what happens when a mob dies in an RPG aside, Miracle Max is right: mostly dead is slightly alive, and slightly alive means you can still do more damage. Naturally -- since we are magnificent, resilient bastards instead of glass cannons -- warlocks are quite excellent at staying slightly alive.

Filed under: Warlock, (Warlock) Blood Pact, Mists of Pandaria

Crowd Control announced on your screen in patch 5.1

by Olivia Grace Oct 12th 2012 at 7:00PM

In one of my earlier PvP addon posts here at WoW Insider, I talked about a fantastic addon, which was, and still is, called LoseControl. What LoseControl did was to bring up an icon in the middle of your screen whenever you lost control of your character, that indicated precisely how you had lost control, by displaying a spell icon, and for how long. This could also be modified by OmniCC to add a duration if you preferred that to the pie-chart method of measuring time, as can be seen in the header image.

I always think that the mark of a really good addon is when Blizzard incorporates it into the game, and it looks like this is exactly what's happening with LoseControl. The Blizzard blog with the official 5.1 PTR patch notes had this to say:

Blizzard

A new banner will appear when a player is subjected to an effect that causes them to lose control of their character. The effect that caused the loss of control and remaining duration will be displayed. Configuration options are available in the "Combat" section of the "Interface Options" menu.

source

Additionally, new strings have been datamined that indicate that these banners will show the type of CC a player is subject to, as well as the effect itself, so, for example, Psychic Scream is a fear effect, and can be removed with Will of the Forsaken or a Tremor Totem, whereas Mortal Coil is a horror and cannot.

Filed under: Mists of Pandaria

5 ways to keep your tank happy in 5-man heroics

by Olivia Grace Jan 11th 2012 at 8:00PM

I recently wrote a similar post about how to keep your healers happy -- now I don't want it to sound like I'm hating on you tanks. See how this is a nice, predictable series? Can you guess what's coming next? I just need to think of another three ways to keep your DPSers happy in 5-man heroics -- but don't worry, I'll run some more heroics and I'll get there.

My first and still allegedly main character is a paladin tank, and I've run a few dungeons in my time. There are some simple things everyone can do to make sure their tank is a happy meaty meat shield rather than a disgruntled defender.

5. Watch your aggro. Remember this from the "How to keep your healer happy" post? Yeah, much as that helps your healer, it also helps your tank. Playing as a paladin, I have one of the easiest AoE tanking rotations out there -- but still, if a DPSer front-loads all their damage into something that isn't my primary target before I've had one GCD to hit the darn thing, even with the new aggro buff, it may well be after you. As a paladin, I can pre-bubble you with Hand of Salvation to decrease the likelihood of this happening or even a Hand of Protection on a caster (or on a melee player to troll them). I also have an arsenal of taunts. However, other tanking classes don't have it so easy -- just give the tank a moment to gain aggro, then attack the thing that they're attacking.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion

Crowd control basics by class

by Olivia Grace Jan 4th 2012 at 8:00PM

So, crowd control. Contrary to the name, it isn't really a good way of controlling crowds; rather, it's a great way to control the size of the crowd of mobs mercilessly attacking your tank. Crowd control in this post means abilities that can be applied prior to a pull. We'll get to abilites like Psychic Scream, warriors' Intimidating Shout and Shadowfury a bit later, but they're not our primary concern right now. There are some situations, particularly in the Rise of the Zandalari dungeons where pre-pull CC isn't possible (such as the adds on the way to Nalorakk in Zul'Aman) where you'll need to CC on the fly, but this is rarely the case.

Not all classes have crowd control abilities of the type we're talking about here. Warriors and death knights have a few stuns, fears and Hungering Cold, all of which can be put to excellent use but aren't really crowd control in this sense as they can't be cast prior to the pull.

So which classes have these pre-pull crowd control abilities, and what are they?

Scattered Shots: Scatter-trapping with grace and ease

by Basil Berntsen Nov 5th 2011 at 6:00PM

Frostheim appears to be decimated, unable to write this week, over the loss of the most recent raiding gun from the patch 4.3 PTR files. As someone who PVPs to get my first raiding weapon of most patches, I can choose whichever ranged death-dealing machine I want. Of course, as a Worgen (not to mention someone who is generally the butt of many of Frostheim's jokes on our podcast), I usually choose a crossbow after buying, returning and screenshotting the gun.

Today, Scattered Shots will be all about a very basic hunter PVP survival skill: scatter-trapping. All hunters of all specs can scatter-trap, and whether you're being ganked doing dailies, trying to win Baradin Hold, or doing competitive Arena, it's one of those skills that can really set you apart.

Traps on their own are only useful for people you can force to cross through them. Mostly, this means melee, although you can sometimes force a ranged player to cross a trap if you're humping a pillar properly. What do we do when we want to freeze someone who isn't chasing us, though? Freezing Trap is really our most effective crowd control ability. We'll often want it to be used on someone that matters like a healer. Unfortunately, short of stepping up to a healer and dropping a trap on them, there's no way to force them to cross our path.

Filed under: Hunter, PvP, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Blood Sport: Finding your PVP playstyle in arena

by C. Christian Moore Jul 19th 2011 at 4:00PM

Want to crush your enemies, see them driven before you and hear the lamentation of their women? C. Christian Moore, multiple rank 1 Gladiator, examines the latest arena strategy, trends, compositions and more in Blood Sport.

I've found one of the most common excuses for not having an arena team is conflicting playstyles with past teammates. While often times these excuses are not really the problem (far too many arena players are self-centered and unreceptive to criticism), playstyle differences can be a factor in not meshing well with certain players.

I'd like to provide you with a few common playstyle differences, my take on which side of the spectrum is generally more popular, which side is generally better, and what I tend toward.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, PvP, Blood Sport (Arena PvP)

Spiritual Guidance: Shadow priests react to patch 4.1, look forward to 4.2

by Fox Van Allen May 4th 2011 at 4:00PM

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Every Wednesday, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen takes you down the only road he's ever been down. You know, the one that takes you to the places where all the veins meet, yeah.

Shortly after patch 4.1 went live last Tuesday, I got the chance to raid Bastion of Twilight. I tried out Mind Sear on the first pull, and the numbers were absolutely luscious. Instead of weak, ugly, sub-2,000 ticks, I was seeing ticks twice that size. Before long, I was gaming my trash rotations, trying to proc Empowered Shadow and keep it up through the pulls. It was terrific practice for Cho'gall -- I finally felt like my AoE was making an impact on that encounter.

Overall, I got praise for the improved numbers I was putting out (thanks, Mind Sear!). But that praise got me thinking -- how is the rest of the shadow priest community faring in the post-4.1 world? And with patch 4.2 around the corner ... is there anything about shadow priests that Blizzard still needs to fix?

Filed under: Priest, (Priest) Spiritual Guidance

The Queue: A fel dilemma

by Alex Ziebart Apr 6th 2011 at 11:00AM

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

I walked into today's edition of The Queue fully intending to be a counterpoint to Adam's Queue yesterday -- I would walk in, say mages are awesome, and mages everywhere would herald me as their redemption. I would be carried off into the sunset as a hero. The problem is ... I can't do it. I just can't lie like that. Mages are awful! Warlocks are also awful, though. I would say that shadow priests are obviously the best casters, but then I would be stroking Fox's ego, and you people do that enough already.

Warriors need a caster spec, obviously.

Faltor asked:

As a new tank learning in the Cataclysm era, what is the most common standard for marking? I know almost everybody uses skull for first kill and sheep for moon, but everything else seems fair game. I know the right answer is just "explain what you use to the DPS" but I want to use something close to standard if there is one (like, does X really usually mean kill second).

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, The Queue

Lichborne: Blizzard tackles death knight DPS utility in patch 4.1

by Daniel Whitcomb Mar 22nd 2011 at 6:00PM

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done.

Judging by some of the most recent changes on the patch 4.1 PTR, I'd guess that someone at Blizzard has been listening to player complaints about the difficulties in bringing classes that do not have crowd control or other major non-damage related utility to dungeons.

Unfortunately, I wouldn't say they've responded in the way some of us were wishing they would, by giving death knights and warriors a simple humanoid crowd control spell. They have instead, added some tweaks that address the issue in some unexpected ways that may or may not solve the problem and in some cases feel a little bit unwieldy or unconventional.

Filed under: Death Knight, (Death Knight) Lichborne

Addon Spotlight: LoseControl

by Mathew McCurley Feb 24th 2011 at 4:00PM

Each week, WoW Insider brings you a fresh look at reader-submitted UIs as well as Addon Spotlight, which focuses on the backbone of the WoW gameplay experience: the user interface. Everything from bags to bars, buttons to DPS meters and beyond -- your addons folder will never be the same. This week, take back control of your life with LoseControl.

Give me an A! Give me a -ddon! Give me a Spotlight! What's that spell? A half-assed attempt at an engaging introduction for this week's Addon Spotlight! Does that lame joke make you want to charge my office and do physical harm to me? Well, good, because this week's addon is a PvP-centric tool that can help you regain control of your character and potentially your sanity.

One of the worst feelings is losing control of your character. In fact, as a design decision, many MMOs including WoW limit the amount of player abilities that cause a player to lose control of their avatar. No one likes losing total control for a long time -- it just isn't fun! Balance reasons aside, there is a reason that most stuns, CC options, and other abilities are on short timers.

Filed under: Add-Ons, AddOn Spotlight

Lichborne: 3 things death knights need in patch 4.1

by Daniel Whitcomb Feb 22nd 2011 at 5:00PM

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. Join World of Warcraft's first hero class as we head into a new expansion and shed the new kid on the block label.

Now, before you get too excited about the title, we still don't know when patch 4.1 is dropping, much less when it's coming to the PTR, so don't think this is any sort of announcement. That said, it's never too early to wish and speculate. I won't deny it, I love death knights and I love balanced classes, but not everything I want for death knights is ironclad. A lot of what I want would probably turn them into horribly overpowered machines of death and destruction, powered by the tears of lesser classes. That said, as I've played my death knight day by day, there are a few things I've noticed time and time again, quality of life issues that could really use some TLC from the dev team -- things that I am relatively sure wouldn't overpower us if fixed up.

This week, I'm going to discuss three death knight issues I've noticed in Cataclysm and how I think Blizzard should fix them with the next major content or class balance patch.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Death Knight, (Death Knight) Lichborne

Arcane Brilliance: The mage survival guide, part 2

by Christian Belt Feb 12th 2011 at 8:00PM

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, we continue our discussion of ways to avoid dying horribly. This week's tip: Roll a death knight.

Yes, the sad reality of being a mage is the ever-present threat of a swift and ignominious demise. We're like every character in The Walking Dead: We could go at any time, and our only consolation is that God willing, we'll be able to blow up a few zombies on our way out.

Last week, we discussed a few methods for surviving to pew pew another day, namely aggro drop and damage mitigation. This week, we turn our attention to two other lifesaving techniques: movement and crowd control. Just remember as we go forward that every time a mage survives a fight, an angel punches a warlock in the face. Have I used that joke before? I may have. Doesn't make it any less true. Angels hate warlocks. So does Jesus. And me. And, I pray, all of you.

Filed under: Mage, (Mage) Arcane Brilliance

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