Azeroth vs. Tyria part 5: All The Fun of Summoning The Dead, But Without The Plate

I've talked about the warrior, Medeleth lectured everyone on the engineer, and Solagar managed to fit in some Guardian details in between all the complaining about becoming a Tauren. That still leaves four more Tyrian professions (well, five but we'll deal with that when there's more than hearsay) for us to cover. This time we've got Mordigg ready to talk to us about the new job he's looking into. Let's see what it is...

Little more intimidating than all those squishy casters in Naxxramas and Stratholme

Necromancer, huh? Gotta say I wasn't expecting to see you go with a cloth class.

Well, truth be told, it wasn't exactly planned. Like the rest of you, I was planning on finding something comparable to my current specialization to minimize downtime. However, such a thing does not exist in Tyria to my knowledge.

Yeah, the whole lack of a Lich King probably makes finding more death knights unlikely, huh?

Correct. As such I have found myself perusing the other offerings for a reasonable facsimile. My research currently shows the necromancer as being the best option available, though there will be numerous adjustments I will have to make to become accustomed to how they operate.

Bear in mind we're all going to have to make adjustments when we go to Tyria, so it won't be just you. I've probably got the easiest transition of the lot and I'll have my work cut out for me once we get there.

This may be true, but the core of their warrior still generally meshes with the class you're familiar with. For myself there are a few elements that are similar, but the bulk of it will require a change of thinking on my part.

Okay, let's start with the similarities then. Tell me what drew you to the necromancer.

The obvious answer here would be the beginning of the profession's name. A necromancer is someone who specializes in dealing with the dead. As a death knight that's one of my areas of expertise, though my own knowledge and abilities have primarily served to supplement my martial prowess. I can raise the dead, create spots of death and decay on the ground, and cause a variety of debilitating conditions in my foes, but I would never consider myself a specialist in these abilities. My ghouls are the best example of this: the one barely holds together more than a few minutes unless I feel like doing damage instead of tanking and my army of the dead serves as little more than cannon fodder.

I suppose the best way I can phrase this is to say that the necromancer is somewhat like a death knight who's forsaken his plate armor and warrior-style weaponry in order to further develop his other powers. Yes, I will have to make sacrifices to walk the path of the necromancer, but in exchange I will gain my own identity. No longer will I be considered a warrior that happens to use DoTs or summon a ghoul that barely qualifies as a pet. I will be a master of death, bending it to my will to defend my allies and drive my enemies from the land.

Makes sense to me. How about we discuss weapons now? We've already established that weapons dictate your available skills in Tyria, so what kinds of weapons does the necromancer have to work with? I assume you won't be swinging any two-handed swords or axes this time.

Correct, you will not see a cloth-wearing caster swinging a two-handed sword in our future. As one might expect from professions of the sorcerous type, the only two-handed weapon I might be wielding is a staff. Wielding a staff will provide me mostly with a variety of abilities, many being area-of-effects, that cause different debilitating effects on my foes. Reaper's Touch allows me to weaken a foe while at the same time providing one of my allies with a boost to their swiftness. Chilblains, unlike the old passive slowing talent I'm familiar with, is now an AoE ability that poisons and chills my enemies. Necrotic Grasp is just a basic attack, but the last two bear a little more mention. These two are Mark abilities.

A Mark is similar to a normal AoE ability like Death and Decay in that you choose where to cast it, but they have an important distinction. Marks are somewhat like timebombs: you place the Mark and then after enough time has elapsed, the Mark will trigger and cause its effect to those who were standing on it. Reaper's Mark causes vulnerability and bleeding on foes while Putrid Mark will actually take negative conditions you or your allies suffer from and transfer them to your enemies. There's also Mark of Blood which will not only harm your opponents, but also provide healing to your party members inside the Mark.

Sounds useful, but the timer could be problematic. What if your enemies start to split up before the mark's ready to go off?

This is not a problem. In addition to the normal timer, Marks can be manually triggered at any time the necromancer wishes. The timer is merely to allow for "set and forget" usage. For close quarters combat, a necromancer could drop his Mark on top of the group as it's fighting and immediately resume casting his other abilities. If there was more room to work, a necromancer could drop a Mark in front of him and then pull a group of monsters. He could continue casting until they all ran far enough to get within the Mark, then trigger it to hit them all with its effect before they reach him.

Nice, controllable AoE is always welcomed and it sounds like you'll have a little more variety this time besides "hit them with high-threat unholy damage". Back to weapons then?

Yes, there's still plenty to cover there. Some of the one-handed options for a caster are fairly similar to the ones available back in Azeroth: dagger and off-hand focus for all cloth wearers and the scepter is like the maces used by priests. The others are a little different though. Necromancers get access to warhorns and axes. I'm not entirely sure of the reasoning behind axes, but I suppose for someone who works with the dead, an axe that can cut through bone makes sense.

As for the abilities associated with these weapons, it's similar to what you and Solagar discussed. Your main-hand weapon determines your first three skills and your off-hand determines your last two. The scepter provides mostly long-range attacks (e.g. Curse and Feast of Corruption) while close range abilities are the purview of daggers (e.g. Necrotic Bite and Dark Pact) and axes (e.g. Rending Claws and Ghastly Claws). The distinction between those two being that axes are primarily powerful tearing attacks, while dagger attacks tend to drain your foe's life force and make it your own. Off-hands provide some additional customization: warhorns can daze your foes as well as summon locusts to attack them, daggers can weaken your foes and allow you to use Mark of Blood to heal your allies while damaging the enemy, and finally the focus lets you chill your foes to make them vulnerable right before blasting them with any life force you've accumulated.

Little more intimidating than when a boomkin does it, huh?

From the sounds of it, life force is a new resource for you like adrenaline is for me.

Yes, this is correct. Various skills provided by my weapons allow me to accumulate life force from my foes. In addition my life force pool increases whenever an opponent is felled within my vicinity.

So what exactly does life force do for you? Does it boost your regular spells like adrenaline does for me or is it something different?

Something different - it allows me to enter a Death Shroud. Being in this form provides me with new abilities and I can no longer be knocked down, but it drains life force the entire time. As such I must refill my life force by attacking my opponents if I wish to stay in my Death Shroud.

Okay, what about Death Shroud makes it so useful? Are the new abilities it provides worth the effort of stacking all that life force?

Not in all circumstances, but the abilities available in the shroud are quite potent. Deathly Swarm sounds similar to my Locust Swarm attack, but when it lands it not only deals damage, but it also clears three negative conditions I may have on me. Dark Path is similar to Blink in that it will teleport me to a new location, but it will also blind any foes that happen to be standing in the vicinity. Doom is a fairly basic Fear like what Medeleth used to use. Finally there's Life Transfer provides me with a way to directly drain the health of nearby enemies to fuel my life force.

Alright, that takes care of weapons and what I assume is the unique resource necromancers have available. Anything else that helps them stand out from the other casters?

Well, as I talked about earlier, one of the aspects of the necromancer that drew me to the profession was the association with the dead. Like death knights, necromancers also possess the ability to control the dead, though their abilities are far beyond what I may have been taught at Acherus. Ranged or melee, the necromancer has the ability to summon minions to fill either role. These new allies can be summoned merely to add extra damage to the fight or more bodies to take damage or they can be used tactically. Bone fiends can bombard the foe from range, but the necromancer can direct them to become stationary so they can immobilize their targets. Bone minions seem like fairly basic melee pets, but for a competent necromancer, they also serve as a way to blow up the enemy's front line for extra AoE damage.

Good thing those rat corpse things are meant to blow up, because they are creepy as hell.

Lastly there's Wells. Similar to Marks, they are meant to serve as a method of controlling the battlefield. However while Marks are targeted effects, Wells are localized - the area of effect is centered upon the caster. Currently there are three known Wells: Well of Blood which heals you and your allies, Well of Corruption which will take a foe's beneficial conditions (boons) and replace them with negative ones, and Well of Suffering which simply does damage to any opponents who would dare stand inside the Well. Only one of these may be in effect at any given time, but all have their uses. Well of Blood would be great for any dungeon crawling involving tight quarters, while Well of Corruption would be useful against any opponents that make use of a lot of buffing abilities.

Sounds good. Anything else of note?

Yes, but those fall under either abilities that have been covered previously (Signets) or various items that require further discussion like healing and downed abilities.

Yeah, let's leave those for later. Thanks for all the info, Mordigg. Looking forward to becoming a caster?

I will acknowledge that the idea is somewhat strange to me, but I suppose it's not unheard of for a Tauren to wear cloth. There are priests wandering around Thunder Bluff now, so I won't be the only one.

Well, except for the facts that we're not going to be anywhere near Thunder Bluff and you're not going to look like a Tauren.

Excuse me?

Oh, did I neglect to mention that before?

Yes, somehow you managed to leave out a somewhat important detail like "you're changing races".

Oops. Well, we'll add that to the stack of stuff I need to cover later. In the meantime, that's it for us this time. See you guys when we've got another post ready.

Azeroth vs. Tyria part 4: So What's A Guardian?

Last week I talked about warriors and this week Medeleth blathered on about engineers. Now it's time for someone else from the team to step up and talk about the profession they're looking at. Luckily I didn't have to resort to threats this time since we've got a volunteer. Solannis, I mean Solagar, is our resident paladin expert, so I imagine he's been off looking for a profession with a similar kind of feel. Let's see what he's found.

You are never going to get tired of mocking the name change, are you?

No, probably not. Considering that you were the one stupid enough to let the engineers try that gun on you, it's your own damn fault you're a Tauren now and the name change was your own choice.

First off they told me it would be safe.

And you took four Goblin Engineers at their word, did you?

At no point did I lie. It is safe - you've still got all your limbs, don't you?

No, I've got cow limbs now.

Bah! Now you're just nitpicking. Sometimes sacrifices have to be made in the name of progress.

Sacrifices? I'm a cow now! I had to change my name so it wouldn't be so obvious that I used to be a blood elf! Do you have any idea how embarrassing it was to walk into Silvermoon and have to pretend I hadn't grown up there?!

Okay, both of you shut up so we can get back on task. You can kill each other later when we don't have work to do. Now would you care to enlighten everyone on the profession you've been researching, Sol?

Very well, I can return to this argument at a later date. As for my Tyrian inquiries, I've been looking into the guardian profession.

So I take it that's the Tyria equivalent of a paladin then?

Well, yes and no. It's not as clear-cut as that. For you, skill and weapon style differences aside, the warrior has a very similar feel to it. You're still all about hitting someone with a sharp/blunt object and wearing heavy armor. Paladins however are a little more varied than that. Some of us are tanks, some DPS, and some are healers - we've always been one of the more versatile classes in Azeroth. Strangely it seems that for Tyrians, those three roles are somewhat amalgamated.

Ah yes, the lack of dedicated tanks and healers. Gonna have to write up something about that later. For now just focus on the guardian, since the healer/tank discussion is going to take up more than its fair share of text.

True enough. Aside from the tank/heal/DPS options, paladins were known for our more iconic abilities: enhancing others through Blessing spells, auras to provide passive bonuses for everyone in range of us, healing, and our holy-powered weapon attacks. Yes, many of us identified with our chosen weapon styles, but our power came from enhancing those weapons with the power of the Light.

So how does the guardian compare? Are you looking at the same tools, modified for the way Tyria works?

There's some similarity, but a lot is fairly different. I'll start with familiar ground. Like the warrior and engineers you and Medeleth discussed earlier, guardians have their own sets of weapons available and skills associated with said weapons. Many of these weapon skills keep with the "infused with holy power" theme that paladins are accustomed to: Shield of Judgment, Leap of Faith, Smite, and Cleansing Flame are but a few examples. There are some differences in the variety of weapons available through which to channel our might.

As a paladin my options included all manner of swords, maces, and axes in addition to the use of shields and caster off-hands. Daggers and staves were apparently considered unsporting and were as such unavailable. In Tyria however, my options are expanded. I still have the bulk of my old selections, though now they break the off-hands up into torches and focuses and now scepters are considered separate from maces. I do lose the ability to wield axes for some reason (considered uncivilized, perhaps?), but in exchange I gain the ability to wield staves.

So after all these years, you finally figured out how to wield a stick, huh? I always wondered what would've happened to a ret paladin if the end of his mace broke. Would he forget how to swing it?

I didn't make up the rules, I just followed them. For all I know, we weren't allowed to use staves or daggers simply to give casters something we weren't allowed to use. I remember a good stretch of time where healing paladins would dress in cloth instead of plate mail simply because healing plate just couldn't compete with the magical bonuses of the cloth. It made a mockery of our class, but sometimes you have to swallow your pride if you're going to perform your assigned tasks.

Let's get back to the weapons, shall we? Similar to how your warrior weapons have different strengths, ours also provide us with varying skill sets. A two-handed hammer is great for close range AoE attacks, while the one-handed mace allows for attack chains and some support abilities. The scepter seems like it should be similar to the mace, yet it provides the guardian with more of a offensive spellcaster skill set. A greatsword in the hands of a warrior is a potent AoE tool, but with a guardian it allows for more control techniques in addition to enhancing one's allies with a speed boost through symbols.

A symbol? Is that like the guardian version of a blessing?

Not quite. A blessing is a simple single-cast spell that provides a benefit to the target for a long duration. The idea behind blessings is that you cast one on everybody before the fight begins along with all of the other buffs being cast, then everyone tops off on mana before beginning the fight. Symbols aren't really targeted on allies. A symbol is placed on the ground and activated by someone stepping on it. Some can be beneficial like Symbol of Swiftness which is the greatsword speed enhancing skill I mentioned earlier. Some can do damage to your enemies, like the mace skill, Symbol of Wrath. Some even do both, like the staff skill Symbol of Protection; this symbol will damage one's foes while providing a Protection buff to your allies.

Okay, so symbols are more of a combat buff. What about pre-pull buffing?

There lies the interesting bit. I don't think they actually have that in Tyria. It's possible that there's consumables of some kind; I haven't done much research into that particular area. As for the kinds of buffs we're used to where I'll hit everyone with Blessing of Might and a priest would cast Power Word: Fortitude, I don't think those actually exist here. Other than the more short-term benefits like my symbols and your shouts, I don't believe they do long term buffing here.

Strange, but honestly that's fine by me. Before they did the consolidation in Azeroth, it was always annoying to make sure that your raid had every buff covered. I remember in those few situations where we didn't have more paladins than auras, we had to organize things so the correct groups got Devotion Aura or Concentration Aura.

Thanks for bringing up auras. That actually leads into my next point. Guardians don't have auras. Instead they have three virtues: Justice, Courage, and Resolve.

Well, at least Righteousness isn't one of the words.

You have no idea how right you are. I swear half of my spellbook had that word in it. Regardless, these virtues provide the guardian with some rather potent benefits. Courage periodically blocks attacks against the guardian. Justice makes every fifth attack cause the target to burn. As for Resolve, it gives the guardian some level of health regeneration. There's no duration on these buffs, but they're self-only. Kind of like having an aura that can only affect you.

So no party buffs other than the signets then?

Not quite. The guardian has the ability to activate these virtues. When doing so, he can then share these benefits with his allies. Courage lets everyone block their next incoming attack, Justice makes their next attacks cause burning, and Resolve will clear any conditions your allies may have in addition to providing them with regeneration. These party benefits are only temporary though and they come at a cost: activating a virtue will disable it for yourself and it will remain disabled for a duration of time, depending on which one you activated.

Interesting, that should lead to some tactical decisions while out in the field.

Indeed, rather than simply having an aura that you only consider if there's another paladin in the group, now you have to think about when you should buff your party versus when you should keep all of the power to yourself. One example of a situation where activating an aura would be in conjunction with another ability, Wall of Deflection. This ability creates a wall which will deflect projectiles. In the case where you find yourself besieged by ranged opponents, you could place this wall and have your team run behind it, then activate Resolve so everyone can regenerate out of combat. Another might be if you need to use your self-healing abilities. You could activate Justice and let everyone else add some fire damage while you patch your wounds, then jump back into the fight and regain your virtue whenever it's off cooldown.

All those years of not being able to catch a hunter in a BG make this kinda satisfying

Yeah, I can see a few good opportunities to mix in those virtues during a dungeon run. How about the rest of your abilities? Anything else interesting to add to your pally bag of tricks?

A few other odds and ends here and there. Wards are similar to symbols in that we place them on the ground, but rather than causing damage or helping our allies, they serve as a method of control. They can create impassible barriers for our foes, such as the staff skill Line of Warding, preventing them from physically crossing the threshold. They can still attack through the ward if they have a ranged attack, but this still provides a manner of control in case you want to block off enemy melee from cloth wearers or you're escorting someone that has a tendency to put themselves in harm's way.

Spirit weapons are fairly self-explanatory. Guardians can summon ghostly weapons to temporarily assist them. The only one I'm aware of at the moment is Hammer of Wisdom, but I'm told there are others. The hammer has a useful ability to knock down a foe, but using this ability will dispel the hammer regardless of when you used the skill.

Nice seeing that spirit hammer do more than give me an interrupt once a minute

Finally we share two skill types with warriors: shouts and signets. Same basic functionality for these. Shouts either buff allies or debuff foes. Signets provide a passive bonus with an additional effect when used, but this will disable the passive bonus for a time similar to activating a virtue. The actual selection available varies from the warrior list however. Some examples include Hold The Line, a shout that gives Protection and Regeneration to allies, and Signet of Wrath which causes nearby foes to burn passively and will burn and blind a target when activated.

Oh yeah, forgot about signets in the warrior post. Didn't get the info on them until I saw that stack of notes Med turned in with his engineer research. So to sum everything up, while the guardian has some additional abilities you're not used to working with, in general it's still fairly similar to the paladin?

It's hard to give a definitive answer without any first-hand experience, but based on what I've found so far, that would be the case. Any paladin looking to move to a similar profession would not be completely overwhelmed by the guardian. While there's still quite a bit of new information to process, it's likely the shortest learning curve available out of all of the professions I've seen and my personal choice for profession out of the seven we've seen so far.

Thanks for the info, Sol. That puts us at three professions down, four (well, five eventually) to go.

Don't forget you need to write something up about healing/tanking/etc.

Oh yeah, there's that too. Guess I should get started on that one while I wait for someone else to finish their profession research. Hopefully that post won't be as much of a novel as these last four.

If any of us write it, that's not particularly likely.

Azeroth vs. Tyria part 3: Engineering For Fun and Profit

Last week I talked about warriors and the changes we'll have to prepare for heading from Azeroth to Tyria. Thinking about the basic concept of warriors, it seemed like it should have been a fairly short and simple post, right? The wall of text I wrote up for that post would say otherwise. The core of the class/profession is still there. We're still practicing the fine art of putting sharp things into bad people. It's just all of those little details that have changed like skills, movement, ranged combat, stances, etc. So you know, except for that list and pretty much everything else I was able to think of, it's all the same.

So now that we've covered what should have been the simplest comparison between the two realms, let's move on to something a little more complex. Yes, I know there's still at least one "this should be really simple" comparison left with rogues versus thieves, and arguably guardians and paladins could fall into this category as well. However I have to line someone up to do those posts, so they'll be ready when their corresponding "expert" gets off their butt and writes it. Solannis/Solagar is taking his time researching guardians (I think he's just pouting about the whole name/race change, but don't tell him I said anything). As for rogues, Takkal's not a very experienced writer, so I'll have to work with him on that one. In the meantime though, I do have someone that's done their homework.

Like I mentioned in our "we're not dead!" post, Medeleth has actually been the main person pushing for our move to Tyria. He's been putting in the bulk of his time these days into researching the world and hooking up everyone on the team with all of the pertinent information for their preferred professions. Now I could say that he's just a fan of the world or that he's finally taking an active interest in team business, but I'm not an idiot. I read his initial notes and I discovered his ulterior motives. Well, ulterior is probably giving it too much credit since half of that first memo he gave me could be paraphrased as "I can be an engineer instead of a warlock! Screw this magical nonsense, I wanna live here!" So without further ado, here's Med to tell all of you about engineers in Tyria:

First off, I was not that overly exuberant in my initial reports. It was simply a pleasant surprise to find a world that treats engineering as more than a mere hobby one does on the side to acquire a flying machine or a pair of goggles.

Care to clarify for everyone what you mean by "mere hobby"?

Certainly. As you're well aware, I think of myself first and foremost as an engineer. Given the choice, I would prefer to solve problems through the proper application of science. Well, and explosives. Regardless, my options for this method of problem solving have always been limited. The bombs I made had the potential to take out a foe, but for whatever reason, the laws that govern Azeroth dictate that I can only use one bomb every minute. I had other options for dealing damage with engineering, but those had similar cooldowns (if not longer). If I wanted to defeat an enemy of similar power through engineering alone, assuming that they never healed, such a battle would take about a half hour, if not longer. In addition, all of these tools required a significant investment of capital and resources to develop. As such, not only were my tools woefully inadequate for the tasks I was attempting, I was paying a premium for the privilege of failing at said tasks. This would be the primary reason I've spent the bulk of the last few years practicing as a warlock during tasks I've performed for our company. My warlock abilities got the job done, but I've never felt the sense of satisfaction from casting an Immolate like I have from making a mechanohog.

Okay, so what makes Tyria different? What makes you think that you'll be taken seriously as a professional engineer there when you've been less than successful back in Azeroth?

Numerous reasons, but I'll start from the beginning. For Tyrians engineering is not treated as a sidejob one does when they've got some downtime between running dungeons. In Tyria engineering is on par with professions like warrior and elementalist and one is expected to put in the same degree of dedication, if not more, to our craft as they would into learning your warrior abilities or a elementalist's spells. As a full-fledged profession, engineering has the same defining characteristics as any other profession: weapon selections, armor options, and combat skills.

Weapon selection are fairly basic and fit the profession: rifle, pistol and a shield, or dual-wielding pistols. This part actually covers one of the other issues I've always had with Azerothian engineering. Over the years I've made numerous rifles to advance my skills as an engineer. Some of these we've found a use for with different members of the team. However, the bulk of those weapons have either found their way to Matheion for disenchanting or to a vendor so they could be sold for a mere pittance. I'm not sure what was more insulting: the fact that I couldn't use the weapons that I designed, or the fact that there were so many of my fellow engineers working on their own skills that the effective assembly line they'd formed had devalued our inventions to the point where the finished product was worth less than its components.

You're preaching to the choir, Med. I'm a blacksmith - I'm used to basically throwing away gold for the sake of perfecting my techniques.

Yes, I know that you can sympathize with that particular problem, but you don't identify yourself first and foremost as a blacksmith. It's a point of pride for you, just like your Chef title, but you don't introduce yourself to others as Ragar, the blacksmith.

Point taken. So your weapons include firearms and a shield. We already talked earlier about how weapons dictate most of our skills in Tyria. Any details on your available skills?

Indeed, we'll start with the rifle. First you have Hip Shot, a fairly basic attack but one you can perform while on the move. There's Net Shot which is fairly self-explanatory: you shoot a net at your target. Blunderbuss is a bit more interesting; it's a shot meant to cause your target to bleed (well, more so than any wound typically does), but it's more effective at close range. This seems like it's somewhat counter-intuitive given that rifles are normally considered a long range weapon. However your other two skills include Overcharged Shot (an attack that knocks back both you and your opponent) and Jump Shot (you launch yourself to a target location and actually deal damage to enemies near your landing zone). When you look at these five skills as a whole, you start to see potential synergy. An approaching enemy could be immobilized with a Net Shot with Hip Shots until he gets too close. At that point you could use Blunderbuss for the maximized bleeding effect, Overcharged Shot to knock both of you back, then Net Shot him to start the cycle over again. Should your opponent then decide that he'd rather not stick around, you could combine Jump Shot and Net Shot to prevent his escape.

It's like Heroic Leap, but useful

Dual-wielding pistols is another option. While it's lacking a lot of the distance control options of using a rifle, it does still have Glue Shot for that basic immobilize effect. What it lacks in control however, it makes up for in damaging effects. Explosive Shot is a basic attack that explodes on impact with a target. Dart Volley fires a poisonous dart at the target. Static Shot is a lightning attack which includes a blinding effect. Finally there's Flamethrower, which operates similar to Blunderbuss in the "more damage the closer the target is" effect, but it's fire instead of bleeding.

The pistol/shield option is fairly similar to dual-wielding pistols, but you're trading Glue Shot and Flamethrower for Absorb (you can absorb a projectile from an enemy for use against them later) or Deploy Ballistic Barrier (place a static barrier to intercept enemy projectiles). If you're in a situation where projectiles are a major concern, then the shield option's there. Personally I have a hard time choosing that over the mobility options of the rifle or dual-pistol's Flamethrower skill, but it's there if you need it. Well, assuming you don't want to use the actual Flamethrower at your disposal.

Wait, *actual* Flamethrower? As in more than one?

Indeed, and now we're getting to the good part. You know the various non-weapon skills you covered in your warrior post?

Yes, utility, healing, and elite skills. For warriors we can choose from options like shouts, banners, and stances to support our weapon skills.

That is correct: your utility skills *support* your weapon skills. As an engineer, my utility skills *become* my weapon skills. Let's start with the categories our utility skills far into: weapon kits, backpack kits, and turrets.

Weapon kits are essentially additional weapon sets we can switch to during battle in addition to the normal two sets everyone can swap between. There are a few different options here, but my personal favorite is the Flamethrower Kit. When activated, my weapon skills are replaced with five new skills. Flame Jet allows you to spray multiple enemies with fire while on the move. Flame Blast fires a ball of plasma towards your enemies that will explode upon impact. Air Blast not only interrupts enemy casts, but also knocks them back and deflects projectiles. Napalm creates a flame wall that will burn and blind your foes. Finally, Backdraft will pull your opponents towards you, setting them up for your other attacks.

Backpack kits for the most part operate like weapon kits and replace your weapon skills with new backpack-related abilities. A Grenade Kit, for example, gives you a regular grenade attack in addition to a variety of grenades that cause status effects. However, some backpack kits don't replace your weapon skills. The Med Kit gives you the option of dropping medical packs that can heal your allies if they should run over them. In this case, you could have a rifle out and in between shots, you could use your Med Kit to drop a medical pack for someone, then immediately go back to shooting.

Turrets are closer to the Med Kit in operation in that they won't replace your weapon skills. Instead you simply drop your turret on the ground and go back to doing whatever you were up to before. However while the medical packs are single-use (your ally picks them up and now it's gone), the turret has a little more presence on the battlefield. Once used, it stays on the battlefield for a while and does its specific task. A Rifle Turret is pretty self-explanatory: it shoots whatever is in range. Other options include the Flame Turret, Thumper Turret, and the Healing Turret.

Would've traded that worthless imp for one of these turrets in a heartbeat

So the Healing Turret would give you a healing utility skill in addition to your self-healing skill?

Not quite. The Healing Turret would actually take the place of your self-healing skill. Your choice there would be between the turret, the Med Kit, and Elixir H.

Okay, so if the turret can heal you, I suppose that implies that you could heal yourself by running over your own medical packs from the Med Kit.

I cannot confirm that, but my instincts say no simply because of the Tool Belt.

What does a belt have to do with healing?

The Tool Belt is an engineer specific trait, kind of like adrenaline is for you warriors. The Tool Belt gives us the option of overcharging our kits.

So you won't miss out on all of that exploding from your Goblin Engineering days?

Very funny, but no. Basically it gives engineers a cooldown option to get an extra feature out of our kits. In the case of the Med Kit, you get a self-healing option. Grenade Kits can be overcharged for a grenade barrage. If I were using a Mine Kit and had a bunch of mines set up, I could use the overcharge to set them all off. Finally, I could overcharge a turret to get a more powerful attack (e.g. Rifle Turret would fire off a burst attack while the Thumper Turret would knock down nearby foes in addition to doing damage to them).

So to summarize, your profession's going from "a neat little hobby" to making you a full fledged Gnomish Army Knife in combat. That about cover it?

You're cutting out a lot of the nuance and emphasis, but yes, that describes the situation in layman's terms. However that doesn't quite cover the potential the new improved engineer has. A novice engineer could just grab a rifle and happily fire away at his foes. A true master however will be making use of all tools at his disposal.

Let's say that I'm using a rifle, Med Kit, Mine Kit, Flamethrower Kit, and a Thumper Turret; there's also the elite skill, but I'm missing information for those other than the Elixir Kit and that's not part of this example. Now with this loadout, we'll say that I'm getting ready to fight a group of enemies. Rather than just using my rifle right away, I could set up for the fight by placing mines and a Thumper Turret in between myself and my foes. Next I could start the pull either with a Hip Shot or, in the case of one target being a bigger threat than the others, a Net Shot to stagger him behind the rest of the group. Now that the group's heading my way, I can continue firing away while they run through the mines and the AoE from the turret. Once they start to get close though, I can switch to the flamethrower for AoE damage. Between the mines, turret, and flamethrower, this should be enough to handle the weaker parts of the pull. That just leaves the foe I immobilized and any potential survivors of the AoE assault. If I need to finish off the survivors, I could use Net Shot again and go back to AoE work. Once that's finished, I can switch over to the Rifle and use the rotation I mentioned earlier to take them down.

This is only one example of the potential of the engineer profession. I could go on about potential battle scenarios for pages, but this should set the tone for what's possible. Hopefully I've managed to properly convey the exact reasons for my excitement about moving to Tyria in this post.

I think you covered the matter fairly well. Thanks for your time, Med. If you come up with anything else that needs a post, let me know.

That should just about cover the engineer profession. That's two down, six to go. Time to start persuading the rest of the team to get to writing. See you next time.

Azeroth vs. Tyria part 2: The Way of the Warrior

Now that we've laid the groundwork for how weapons work in Tyria compared to Azeroth, we can move on to something I'm sure most people are curious about: the classes, or professions as they like to call them. As of right now there are seven known professions available to anyone looking to do some adventuring in Tyria. Supposedly there's an eighth one out there somewhere, but if there's anyone who actually knows what that profession is, they're apparently keeping their mouth shut. Regardless that still leaves us seven other professions to talk about, and at the rate I write, number eight might be unveiled before this series is finished anyways.

For those interested in some adventuring work, the choices so far are elementalist, engineer, guardian, necromancer, ranger, thief, and warrior. At first glance it looks like there's some familiar names amongst that group for us Azerothians. We're used to warriors, hunters have been called rangers in some parts of the world, and thief is just another synonym for rogue to us. Elementalist is a little more vague since we know both mages and shamans that are big into the whole "summoning the elements" thing. Guardian and necromancer are new to us though and engineering to us is just a tradeskill, not an identifying name. Well, unless you're Medeleth.

Names aside, most of us probably look at a list like that and think, "Ah, I'll just find the closest analog to what I am now and go with that. I'll have a real short learning curve compared to everyone else, then I'll show those rookies how a real adventurer gets things done!" Yeah... that's not gonna work. Just like the skills I mentioned last time, the professions operate a bit different than what we're used to. For today let's start with the warrior profession.

You'd think that comparing an Azeroth warrior to a Tyrian one would be a pretty simple job. We both hit people with assorted weapons, we both yell at friend and foe alike, and we both wear heavy plate for armor. True though those may be, there are some differences buried in the details. In addition, there are some tricks the Tyrians have that we don't.

Let's start off with weapons since those are pretty iconic for warriors. Now like I mentioned last time, to most of us from Azeroth, one weapon is as good as another. My Devastate, an Arms warrior's Mortal Strike, and a Fury warrior's Bloodthirst all hit the enemy the same regardless of whether it's a mace or a sword. In Tyria however weapon styles have their own specific skills and their own strengths/weaknesses, so this isn't the case. If I were using a sword, then I'd be more mobile and be using a lot of bleeding techniques, but switching to an axe would give me access to more burst damage. If I needed some AoE, then I could break out a greatsword or a bow. Yes, you read that last part right - a bow.

For all of us Azerothian warriors (and honestly the casters too but this is about us warriors), our ranged weapons served one purpose: stats on a stick. We didn't pull with these unless every single other ranged trick we had was on cooldown and the only time we used them in combat was if a dragon was flying and we felt like doing something other than twiddling our thumbs till it came back down. Gun, bow, thrown weapon - didn't matter to us. All we wanted was more strength for DPS and more stamina for tanks.

In Tyria though both bows and guns serve completely different purposes. If I want to pick off a single target at range, then I can break out a gun and start pounding away at it until it gets close enough that I need to switch to melee. If there's a group of monsters that need taken out, then I can switch to a bow and start raining fiery death from the sky.

Not sure why I get fiery sky death, but I won't say no to it

So weapons determine our attack skills and being a ranged warrior is no longer considered a sign of mental instability. Next on the list of similar yet different? Stances. Azerothian warriors used to think about their stances, but honestly that's a thing of the past with additions like Warbringer and Juggernaut. I can't actually remember the last time I had to switch out of Defensive Stance; there just isn't really any need to anymore. You find the one that suits you and the skills you have to use and it's just this passive buff that always exists.

For Tyrians stances are similar in that they have no buff duration or cast time (they're either just on or they're off), but they're not meant to be permanent. Let's use Berserker Stance as an example since both worlds have one. In Azeroth Berserker Stance is just a flat 10% damage increase and fury warriors use it because their skills require it. In Tyria Berserker Stance doesn't add a passive damage bonus. Instead the entire time you're in the stance, you build additional adrenaline, which I'll get to in a second. Suffice it to say that adrenaline is always good to have. However the entire time you're in this "yay adrenaline!" stance, you're losing energy - the resource required to actually use any of your skills. This makes the stance a tactical choice rather than a passive bonus: do I use the stance now to build my adrenaline for short-term gain or do I forgo the bonus for the purpose of having resources for a longer fight?

Since I just mentioned adrenaline, let's go ahead and compare that to its closest analog for Azerothians, rage. To an Azeroth warrior, rage is everything: it's what fuels our abilities, and with enough rage, we can destroy anything in our path (assuming we live through whatever was pounding on us to supply said rage). However rage is merely a resource for us and cannot do anything when it's not being used.

Adrenaline, while similar to rage, does have some distinct qualities. For one it only comes with attacks from the warrior, not received by him like protection warriors are accustomed to. Next it's only a secondary resource. Energy is used for the bulk of warrior skills with only a handful benefiting from releasing adrenaline. However unlike rage, adrenaline can help even when not in use. As adrenaline is acquired, it builds up like rage and once it passes certain levels, every attack from the warrior will hit harder. This will continue as long as there is adrenaline built up, so until either the battle ends and the adrenaline fades or until the warrior releases it all through a burst skill. These skills can do anything from applying conditions to just dealing a bunch more damage to your target. This means you'll have to choose whether you want to spike the enemy down as soon as you build up enough adrenaline, save up for a maxed out burst skill, or just sit on the adrenaline and chain a bunch of powered-up regular attacks until a better opportunity presents itself.

Speaking of chains, that leads me to my next point. Anyone from Azeroth is pretty familiar with the idea of an attack chain or rotation. We've all done our research to find out what our optimal attack order is and when we should use which attack. Well, chains are sorta similar, but they're more self-contained. Remember those five skills I said were associated with each weapon style? For this example let's say you're using a sword. One of your skills will be called Sever Artery. Now in the middle of a fight, you'll be doing your thing and at some point you'll use that skill. If you take a look at your HUD afterwards, you'll notice that there's something new in the spot where Sever Artery used to be. Now it's called Gash. That's because those two are part of an attack chain: Sever Artery, Gash, and Final Thrust. Chain skills add two more moves you can pull off against your enemies, but they need to be in order, or "chained". If you use Sever Artery and Gash against an enemy, but then you switch to a different skill, you'll have to start the chain again if you want to land a Final Thrust. This means you'll have to think about whether or not you'll have enough time to finish a chain against your enemy or if you'd be better off using a different skill like your self-heal or a charge skill.

A true warrior adds some variety instead of just mashing Bloodthirst or Mortal Strike

Charge skills are going to be a bit odd for most Azeroth warriors. Other than using a mount or crafting, we're all pretty much used to instant reaction. Unless you're a DPS warrior trying to use Slam without Bloodsurge, the only time we see cast times are for crafting or summoning mounts. Well, charge skills are kind of like cast time skills, but the time's variable. The longer you want to wind up your swing/stab/etc., the harder it'll hit. Note that there is a limit to how long you can charge up though. No matter how much you may want to, you can't just sit outside of town for five hours waiting for the first thing that comes in range so you can hit it to the moon. It'll take more than shouts and banners to make your swing that powerful.

Shouts we're all pretty familiar with: I yell out something that either makes all of my friends stronger/tougher/etc. or I say something mean about my enemy's mother and lower their attack/defense/etc. Fairly standard warrior tool that even the Tyrians didn't see any real need to fix. They did however decide to add another buff to their arsenal though: banners.

Banners to me were always just something the guild summoned either to show off or to signify "stand here, you easily distracted morons". Other than a slight bonus to experience (which meant absolutely nothing to us raiders), they served no real purpose beyond that. In Tyria though, these serve as sort of a warrior totem. The example I could find was the Banner of Courage, which makes friendly melee attacks around the banner hit harder. The warrior would place this banner and then continue to fight. However, this doesn't have to be the case. For a more mobile situation, say a large group chasing after a giant monster, a stationary buff doesn't help all that much. In this case the warrior can pick up the banner and run around with it. It means he won't be able to attack along the way since his hands will be full, but all of his allies in the surrounding area will benefit from the buff while he follows the group. Once they finally stop somewhere for some stationary fighting, the warrior can plant the banner and get back into the thick of things.

That just about covers the major differences between the two types of warriors. There are a few other details like warhorns, but I covered the important parts. There's also traits, but that's another one of those "needs its own post" topics. For the most part, anyone from Azeroth who enjoys being a warrior and getting into the thick of things should be happy with what Tyria has to offer. In addition any warriors who fancied themselves as a pretty good marksman can still be proud warriors and not feel required to join the ranks of the rangers. It won't be quite the same for all of us and honestly it's probably going to require quite a bit more paying attention that some of us have been used to from the days of Wrath (and honestly quite a bit of early Cataclysm raiding), but I think we can handle it. Hell, for those of us that are old Onyxia and Blackwing Lair veterans, it'll feel like the old days of stance dancing. I've kind of missed that. The stance dancing part, mind you, not the 40 man part; you couldn't pay me enough to do that nonsense again.

Azeroth vs. Tyria part 1: One Weapon's As Good As The Next, Right?

Last time I mentioned that the team was looking to leave Azeroth in search of greener pastures and grander treasures. I even mentioned that we had somewhere in particular picked out. Now that those basic details are out of the way, I figured it might be a good idea to start looking at some of the similarities and differences between our old home and our potential new one, in case any other Azerothians are looking for a change of scenery.

Given that I'm comparing two entire worlds, this isn't going to fit into one post. Well, technically it could, but that's less of a post and more of a dissertation and I know no one is going to sit through that mountain of text unless I break it up. Best to start simple, I think. Adventurers of all classes have to have their tools of the trade: swords, axes, guns, etc. You'd think that there shouldn't be a whole lot to talk about here, right?

To those of us from Azeroth, a weapon's a weapon and all that matters is if you know how to wield it and if it gives you more strength/agility/maximum damage/whatever random number your class and build was concerned with. Axe or sword, it didn't matter because the attack's the exact same for both. I always thought that was a bit odd that a sword swung the same as a mace or an axe, but that's just how it always worked. The closest we ever came to caring about weapon types was back when Arms warriors and Combat rogues had to spec for specific weapon styles. Even then it wasn't really all that involved, since all we were really doing was choosing between passive bonuses: a better chance to critically hit with axes or perhaps get the occasional free swing with a sword.

It was even simpler when it came to casters. As far as Medeleth and the other spellslingers were concerned, their weapons were annoying things they had to carry to bump up their spell power. A warlock with a staff cast his spells the same as one with a sword and book and, assuming they had the same bonuses, hit for exactly the same amount. Weapons were just eye candy to all of us and as long as we had something in that hand to do our jobs, it didn't matter what it was. That was Azeroth though; for Tyria, that attitude isn't going to cut it anymore.

Now the system as a whole is a lot more complicated than I'm going to lay out right here, but just to keep things simple, I'll focus on the basics; we'll go over the specifics later. For the moment, let's start with how we dealt with combat back in Azeroth. You'd have your long list of abilities available in your spellbook. Depending on your spec, you'd pick out the abilities that made sense for you to use, then you'd put them somewhere where it was easy to use them. Assuming that you were using whatever was agreed to be the most efficient build/rotation for your class, this meant that you pretty much picked the same abilities as every other person of your class doing that job. You'd have your single target skills, your AoE moves, your "oh crap!" buttons, etc. Pretty much everything you could possibly need during the fight needed to be available at a moment's notice. The standard-issue adventurer's HUD makes it easier to keep track of all of this stuff, but after a while it can get pretty cluttered, especially when you start to consider add-ons. I managed to keep mine fairly clean, but that took hours of work and a lot of extras to minimize wasted space and duplicate information. I couldn't do anything for all of those hotbars showing my abilities other than shrink their size a bit and hope I could still make out which button was which. When we move to Tyria however, that kind of heavy-duty HUD management should be a thing of the past.

This is the kind of mess I'd rather avoid

I can't comment on whether the add-on management will exist or not because, well, I don't know if they're allowed to modify their HUDs or not. What I do know is how many bars of buttons there will be on the screen:

One bar. 10 buttons.

That's it. At last count I think I have something like 48 buttons on my Azeroth HUD; Med's even worse at 60 just because of all of that engineering crap and warlock summoning stuff he keeps on his.

Now I know what you're thinking. You're looking at that and going, "So instead of having everything at my fingertips, I'm gonna have to dig into my spellbook whenever I need to switch from single target to AoE or whatever else I need to do. How is this helpful?". Remember when I was making a big deal earlier about how weapon types were going to matter in Tyria? Therein lies the secret.

Let's take that 10-button bar and break it into two sets of five. Looking at buttons 6-10, we've got a healing skill, an elite skill, and three utility skills. I'll talk about this three things at another time, but for now let's look at what we've got left: buttons 1 through 5, or as they're better known, your weapon skills.

To illustrate, let's say that you're a warrior and you've got a one-handed sword equipped. If you took a look at the abilities on your bar, you'd see some high mobility move and an emphasis on bleeds. This would be great when you need to bounce around the battlefield and the bleeds would be great since you could have one ticking away on multiple targets. This isn't perfect for all situations though. What if you ran into a big rock elemental by himself? Assuming rock can even bleed (don't look at me like I'm crazy - Kologarn can take damage from Deep Wounds and he was rock with a moustache), the mobility from the sword is kinda wasted if your target's slow and the bleed's less impressive if there's only one target taking damage from it. How can you improve your odds in this situation? Switching weapons, that's how!

If we switch over to an axe, now we've got access to some high spike damage in case the rock elemental has high armor. If we go with a mace, now we've got stuns in our arsenal. Assuming we can get the drop on the elemental, our warrior could even go with a rifle and decimate him from range. Yes, I know the idea of a ranged warrior sounds like heresy, but it's true. Things get even weirder though when we get to the casters.

We'll use an elementalist for the caster example (they're like mages, but they don't pick one element and pretend the others don't exist). Let's say this elementalist has two weapon sets: one with a dagger with a focus in his off-hand, and the other with just a staff. Were this Azeroth, these two would cast the exact same spells with the only differences being how hard the spells hit, how fast you cast them, etc. In Tyria however, your combat spells are in those first five buttons and because those are weapon-specific, your two weapon sets now serve different purposes. With the staff equipped, the elementalist will now have access to a set of long-range attacks, but he'll have to deal with longer cast times. If he switches to the dagger and focus, his dagger will give him a set of fast casting, medium range spells while the focus will fill in the remaining slots with powerful close range spells. For a little extra customization, the elementalist could even swap out his main hand dagger if he's planning on being stuck in close quarter combat or he could go dual daggers and be built for medium range destruction.

The idea of mixing main and offhand weapon types isn't just for casters. When I was talking about sword and axe techniques for the warrior only, those were one-handed weapons. The warrior could mix the two for bleeds and spike damage, he could go all-out if the situation calls for it, or he could toss a shield in his offhand for some defensive skills. There's also mixed weapon techniques for that middle button of the five, but those are for thieves only (damn greedy thieves).

Now I could go on about the ramifications of this for days, but I'll try and sum this up. Switching to a system where your weapon style matters does make it where you'll have to carry around multiple weapons, but honestly we've been doing that for ages already. I've had to dedicate two bags to spare gear for as long as I can remember. Plus with some of the other stuff I've seen, I might be getting some of that bag space back, so I can afford to hold onto a few spare weapons. We'll talk about that "other stuff" another day though, along with the other twenty things I couldn't fit into this mountain of text.

LF Adventurer Work Not In Azeroth

*cough* Damn dust! *cough* Guess I should've hired someone to clean while we were gone.

Hello, anybody who forgot to take us off their feed readers! Been a while, huh? I suppose I should talk about why we haven't posted in a while and maybe play a bit of catch-up for what's happened in the last couple years.

The former's kinda easy to cover honestly: nothing worth writing about happened for a long time. Looking at the last couple posts we did, it was the guys running heroic dungeons over and over again and I was just doing weekly wrap-up style posts. After a few of those, we decided to take a break until something worth writing about came along. I didn't enjoy writing those "Dear diary, we ran heroics today..." posts and I doubt anyone really enjoyed reading them. There's something to be said for making yourself write just to stay in practice or to get into the habit, but we can recognize when we're trying to hard just for the sake of having a post up with today's date.

As for what's happened in the last couple years, I'm gonna save a good chunk of that for other posts. Part of that is because there's enough there for separate posts, but most of it is just for brevity (my rough draft of this post with all the details hit four pages and I was barely finishing the wrap-up). I'll summarize it all though: we ran heroics, we went to raids, Azeroth blew up, we did a lot of leveling, and we were starting to get a bit burned out towards the end. Being tanks though, you keep going for the sake of the group and because there was still some enjoyment to be found in the work. Earlier this year though, the guild Solannis (who became Solagar - long story for another day), Mordigg, and myself were all contracting for kinda, sorta exploded. They were still there in name and general spirit, but the ones we all enjoyed working alongside the most all left for various reasons. Some to find work with another guild, some to go join the PvP circuit, but most of them just needed a break from the war and the Horde and went their separate ways.

This left us with a decision: do we stick around with the guild despite it no longer having the people we enjoyed working with, or do we follow suit and blaze our own trail? After some discussion with the entire team (even the Alliance branch came down to weigh in), we came to a conclusion: time to move on. I got the feeling from the team that we all just needed a change of pace and scenery. Some new business contacts also wouldn't go amiss, since the Alliance branch wasn't particularly thrilled with King Varian and I really hate Garrosh. Between the two of them, a lot of good soldiers are going to die for stupid reasons and I'll be happy to be gone while they fight it out.

Of course, deciding to look for work other than Alliance or Horde does leave us with a predicament, but we've got enough engineers on the team that we can find a way around that. I mean, if we can send men off to alternate Azeroths to open new branch offices for us, I think we can find a new home. Med's been hard at work investigating new worlds for us where we can set up shop and members of the team have already investigated a few of them. Some have held promise, but just didn't pan out. Some visits have ended nearly as quickly as they began.

There is one place that has our attention though. It's got plenty of work for adventurers like us, there's far less faction vs. faction nonsense than we're dealing with on Azeroth, and it's technologically advanced enough that Med and the other engineers are all fighting over who gets to do the first scouting mission:

Usually a good sign when the team's actually competing to see who gets to go in first instead of needing coerced or threatened. Guess I should start digging through the recon Med's found, so I can start posting about that.

From "Summer Slowdown" to "We've Run Out of Heroics For The Day"

When I said the team needed more exciting things going on so I could blog about them, at no point did I consider the possibility that one could swing too far in the other direction. Namely, we've had plenty of work lately, but none of us have had any time to write any of it up. Ever since the Argent Coliseum opened up, we've pretty much had work lined up from when we punch in to well after we should've punched out for the day. We're all tired, but it's a good tired as opposed to the normal falling asleep in Dalaran while waiting for a group to show up.

About the time the Coliseum opened, I also found a new guild for Grunzford and Mordigg. So far they both seem to have nothing but good things to say about the new guild, and they certainly aren't wanting for people to do things. To put things in perspective as to how many heroics and raids Grunz has run in the last week, he's managed to pick up every piece of Emblem of Conquest gear except for the pants (he had tier 7.5 already) and still have enough left over to turn into Emblems of Valor for his shoulders. Mordigg made out about as many emblems as Grunz, but unfortunately he did them all before the switch to Conquest. That'll buy a lot of epic gems though, so it's not a total loss.

Speaking of the death knight, he's been a bit annoyed at the hits his survivability seems to have taken lately. Nothing too bad for what he's been doing, but the health and armor loss has been noticeable. In addition, he also mentioned a spec swap for his multi-target tanking build. Blood's still fine for single-target tanking, but the change to Unholy Blight eliminated the main reason to have that for a trash tanking build. I believe he found some Frost build last night, but it still needs a field test or two.

Grunz seemed to make out fairly well with the changes, and in the last few days, he's seen fights that even Solannis hadn't tanked:

While Grunz has seen most of our field time, Sol and I haven't been entirely left out of the fun. For the most part, we've been doing the new 5-man dungeon - Sol for the trinket, me for damn near all of the tanking stuff since I've got Naxx-10 and heroic gear. The new instance is fun, though I do have one question. The warrior champion they've got in there, Marshal Jacob Alerius, is already a bit weird since he's an Arms warrior using a shield, but I'll ignore that as normal PvP weirdness. What I want to know is: what day of warrior school did I sleep through when they taught that backflip throw garbage he does? It's certainly not in any of my talent trees, so what do I need to do to learn this trick? He won't talk regardless of how many times I Shield Slam his face, so I'm open to suggestions.