Might and Magic

World of Warcraft: Priest's Holy Nova

2011-11-11T00:53:00.001+08:00

One of my friends is still playing world of warcraft while others have been moved to Lord of the Rings Online with me. He is not very happy with the incoming change on Holy Nova.

"Holy Nova may become Discipline only, and interact with Evangelism in some way."

Player : "Why Blizzrd?"
BZ      : "We think it is a good compliment skill for discipline priest and it works well with our new design in 5.0"
Player : "Then why on earth have you decided to remove Holy Nova for Holy Priest?"
BZ      : "We think the skill may be less useful for Holy Priest in 5.0, thus removing it seems to be a good choice as we don't want another redundant skill for a player to have."
Player : "We don't mind to have it, please let Holy Priests keep it."
BZ      : "It is done, no undo, as usual."
Player : "Screw you Blizzard, it is called Holy Nova, so Holy Priests shall keep it!"
BZ      : "Name is not really an issue here."

"Holy Nova will be renamed as Discipline Nova which may become Discipline only, and interact with Evangelism in some way."

Anyway, "may become" does mean it has some room for argument.

Google+ Features: YouTube

2011-11-11T00:52:00.001+08:00

Have you seen the Youtube icon at the top right corner the Google+ screen?

Click on it and type any keyword such as "Kitaro", it will automatically find out all related musics and play them for you.

This is one of the best features from Google+ (And no, the real name policy is not one of them)

MMORPG: Premium Service

2011-05-20T08:25:00.000+08:00

A: "Here is a project called "RID", it will help us to achieve Facebook-like features in our games, we can use it to integrate an advertisement system eventually ."
A: "Give me the budget, I know the number is crazy, but trust me, this project is going to be a great success. You will earn more than what you can imagine."
A: "This baby will replace the old BN and rule the world."

-- RID implemented ---

X: "My lord, players don't like their real names being exposed through RID."
Y: "My lord, majority of players have turned this feature off...."
Z: "My lord, what to do next?"
.....

Those-who-just-sit-there-and-not-doing-anything: "So A, where is the money you have promised us?"
A: "I have this plan to integrate the RID with premium services."
Those-who...: "Enlighten us."
A: "Mobile Guild Chat, we can charge extra monthly fees on that."
Those-who...: "Continue."

Magicka

2011-03-25T15:29:00.014+08:00

Short conclusion: ~~It's fun.~~ It's very very very fun.

The game lets the player to mix up to 5 elements among the eight basic elements to form magic spells and magickas. Arcane, Cold, Earth, Fire, Life, Lightning, Shield and Water.

Read Magickapedia for details guides/hints/items/spells/magickas.

Elements
Each elements has its uniqueness.

Arcane
Combined with other elements to form a beam spell.

Cold
Freeze the targets
Additional frozen effect on wet targets.

Earth
Combined with other elements and shield to create heavy walls.
Combined with other elements to create elemental balls.

Fire
Ignite target(s).
Used to dry the target(s). Or unfreeze the frozen target(s).

Life
Used to heal targets.
Used to cure poison effect.

Lightning
Causes extra damage on wet targets.
The damage is chained and thus may hurt friendly targets as well.

Shield
Used to create shield
Can be boosted to become stronger.
Special effect when used on self. Prevent any elemental status e.g. rain, blizzard.
Combined with other elements to create pure elemental walls.
Shield is mandatory against casters, but any physical damage will knock you down if you have the shield on.
Cast shield again will dispel it.

Water
Used to knockback the opponents.
Used to put out the fire on ignited target(s).

Steam
A combination of Fire and Water (When fire + water or water + fire are generated, they will merge into Steam)

Ice
Combination of Water and Cold.

Combo for My Favorite Spells
* AoE (Area of Effect) = Shift + Spell Casting Button

(1) Cold + 1 to 4 Earth + AoE (More Earth grants wider range): Stunlock the enemies within the range. This is a life saver spell.

(2) Steam + Steam + 1-2 Arcane + 1-2 Lightning: This is a spell which costs enormous beam damage on target(s). It can be used as AoE, awesome damage but very short ranged (remember the lvl30 shock nova from Diablo 2? this is exactly it).

(3) 1-3 Fire + 1-3 Earth + Shield: This creates volcano wall infront of the caster, useful to block off the melee enemies. (AoE effect is a wall surrounds the caster)

(4) 1-4 Water + Earth: Knockback opponents in the range, usually destroy shield. A good spell to remove shields from enemy casters.

(5) Shield: Use boost key to increase the durability of the shield. (Default key is spacebar)

Cataclysm: Heroic Blackrock Cavern

2011-03-01T21:25:00.003+08:00

Rom'ogg Bonecrusher
Boss
The boss will draw everyone near and bind everyone to a chain, the chain must be destroyed immediately and everyone must run away from the boss immediately. Other than that, it's a typical tank and spank fight with earth elemental adds spawn along the fight.

After the boss is defeated, a monster will show up and help the team to kill the adds, this monster will occasionally show up again along the run.

Corla, Herald of Twilight
Boss
3 players are assigned to block the purple beam accordingly. Block the beam, 75+ debuff move away, the debuff fades, move back in to block the assigned beam.

Interrupt "Dark Command" (fear effect), and 3 players do the switching correctly, the boss fight becomes very easy.

Karsh Steelbender
Boss
Each time the boss touches the pillar of fire or the lava patches left when add is killed, he will gain debuff, each debuff summons an AOE (stronger the higher debuff stacks), so it is important not to rush the debuff stacking.

The debuff will fade in few seconds (longer after the nerf), adds will spawn after the debuff fades, don't panic, DPS must pull the adds out the inner ring, and kill them there so that the lava patches do not remain in inner ring. Tank must not try to stack debuff again until all adds are gone.

Tank starts the fight with 1-3 stacks, tank him near the edge of the pillar of fire, 2 GCDs, run through the edge of pillar so that the boss follows and gain debuff again, doing it perfectly, the debuff will grow up steadily and the fight shall end pretty quick.

Beauty
Boss
After the nerf, there are only 2 puppies (Runty excluded, it is not hostile and must not be killed to prevent Beauty's enrage.)

Both puppies should be crowd controlled to make life easier, Beauty fears occasionally, other than that, her puppies are more dangerous than her. (Puppies spread lava patches)

Ascendant Lord Obsidius
Boss
There are 3 adds who channel healing debuff on the target, thus the reason to kite the adds away from the tank by a suitable DPS such as hunter/mage.

Note that the boss will switch with one of the adds during the fight.

Rift: TVGA Review

2011-03-01T15:34:00.003+08:00

Hilarious

9m22s made my day, "It's a turd."

Opinions
Rift is a game which has a similar UI as World of Warcraft, while WoW players may not really into Rift, there are players who like a polished MMORPG and does not want to play WoW (to be honest, WoW graphical engine is getting old).

Good Features
There are dyes which are used to recolor the players gears, this is one of the best feature I've ever wanted from WoW (frankly speaking, gears do look awful in World of Warcraft, especially its coloration sucks the most.)

Cataclysm: Heroic Grim Batol

2011-03-01T12:37:00.003+08:00

Use the drakes to blast the group of mobs to low health instead of focus on killing one group entirely, blast only the groups which will be cleared.

If the drake blasts are perfect, most of the trash groups can be aoe down, otherwise, crowd controls such as banish/binding elemental, sap, repentance, root/sleep, sheep, freeze trap all work wonderfully. Some of the dragonkins disarm (sleep/trap), the ogre does whirlwind shortly after a pull (stun) and so on.

(1) General Umbriss
The purple trogg if killed does a lot of nasty things, it will dot nearby players/turn nearby regular troggs to purple troggs and increase boss damage.

However, the encounter becomes trivial tank and spank if purple trogg is crowd controlled as long as the fight lasts.

Watch out for the ground siege (shockwave) and blitz (charge) when the boss targets/faces you, especially the latter causes a fairly wide range of damage.

Achievement
Crowd control the purple trogg as usual, tank breaks the cc at when boss has around 15% HP, kill the purple trogg near the boss, and nuke down the boss as soon as possible.

(2) Forgemaster Throngus
The boss picks weapon during the fight. When he picks the sword, dispel the debuff from the tank. When he picks the mace, tank kites him and the group watch out for the leap and the lava patches. When he picks the shield, everyone should run behind him (not beside him).

Group up behind him whenever he is picking a weapon to quickly react on the shield phase.

(3) Drahga Shadowburner
Tank should not near the add spawn area, giving the dps enough time to take out the fire elemental if the tank/melee are targeted. And try to tank the drake at the middle.

DPS uses whatever slow/stun/root/snare and kill the fire elemental, avoid the breath and the fire patches.

(4) Erudax
This encounter is quite difficult if the adds cannot be killed fast enough, either lack of dps or slow abilities.

The boss does Binding Elemental during the fight which will root the target player(s) and heal himself from the damage done to the player(s). Avoid this, otherwise dispel.

The boss can knock back the tank, putting a 5-second-debuff which increase damage taken by 100%, tank should avoid closed encounter with the boss until debuff wears off.

Normal Phase: Tank the boss at the center of the room, watch out for the binding elemental. Move to the eye of the vortex when shadow gale is being cast, dpsers should burn their cooldowns as boss takes extra damage during shadow gale.

Adds Phase: Following shadow gale, 2 adds spawn from the entrance towards the eggs at each side of the room, attempting to summon whelps from the eggs, they do an short ranged aoe as well when they reach the eggs.

The whelps does heal the boss as well, having too many of them will render a group wipe.

The strategy is to assign 1 player who has slow abilities (such as warrior's hamstring) to each add, delaying their speed as much as possible, while the 3rd dps helps to kill the add.

Achievement
Do not let any faceless approach the eggs.

Restoration Shaman: Basics

2011-03-01T11:53:00.006+08:00

Stats
These are your stat goals for starting raiding
1) ~2k in spirit
2) 916 haste (this is a bare min value, do not go below)
3) Trinket with a spirit proc, (pref Tear) and the epic badge trinket. (this is your first VP purchase)
4) Stack either mastery or crit. In most cases crit performs better (water shield proc, better healing surge etc), in encounters which 50% of the time the targets are badly injured, go for mastery, e.g. raid in progression.

Haste Rating Needed for GCD softcap: 5491 (4958)
Format: Wrath of Air haste buff included (Additional Warlock's 3% haste buff)

Haste Rating Values Needed for Extra Hot Ticks:
Riptide(no glyph)
1 extra tick: 610 - (220)
2 extra tick: 3051 - (2589)
3 extra tick: 5418 - (4958)

Riptide (glyphed)
1 extra tick: 262 - (0)
2 extra tick: 2005 - (1573)
3 extra tick: 3748 - (3266)
4 extra tick: 5418 - (4958)

Healing Rain
1 extra tick: 610 - (220)
2 extra tick: 3051 - (2589)
3 extra tick: 5418 - (4958)

Earth Living Weapon
1 extra tick: 916 - (516)
2 extra tick: 3966 - (3478)
3 extra tick: 7016 - (6438)

This means we have a few basic cap points that we should try and hit. And it ties nicely in with how Riptide glyphed syncs nicely with our GCD cap for end Tier content.
916 - (516) for everything getting an extra tick
3051 - (2589) for HR and Riptide
3966 - (3478) for ELW and Riptide Glyphed
5418 - (4958) for last tier content.

Credit to Jynus-Blade's Edge

Gems

Red Socket	Brilliant Inferno Ruby	40 Int
Yellow Socket	Artful Ember Topaz	20 Int /20 Mastery
	Potent Ember Topaz	20 Int / 20 Crit
	Reckless Ember Topaz	20 Int / 20 Haste
Blue Socket	Purified Demonseye	20 Int / 20 Spirit

Enchants

Helm	Arcanum of Hyjal (Hyjal - Revered)
Shoulders	Greater Inscription of the Charged Loadstone (Therazane - Exalted)
Cloak	Greater Intellect
Chest	Peerless Stats
Bracers	Haste or Crit
Gloves	Haste
Waist	Ebonsteel Belt Buckle (Blacksmith)
Leggings	Powerful Ghostly Spellthread (Tailor)
Boots	Haste
Shield/Offhand	Superior Intellect
Weapon	Power Torrent (or Heartsong)

Healing Surge vs. Greater Healing Wave
- Use healing surge instead of greater healing wave when Tidal Wave (after casting Riptide) is up.
- The higher crit stats one has, the better healing surge will perform.

Credit to Cyfir from Elitist Jerks

Protection Paladin: Incoming 4.1 Changes

2011-02-25T12:28:00.021+08:00

Word of Glory now has a 20-second cooldown
Don't panic, the change is not the end of the world.

Possible Reasons
Currently on 4.0.X, all protection paladins are using 3-holy-power-WoG to heal herself/himself and groupmates because WoG is more important than SotR in most cases.

Another reason could be that retribution paladin is spamming WoG in arena (blame Zealotry). Every time it is about pvp, isn't it?

Result
Rotation
Without cooldown, every paladin is spamming WoG.

With cooldown, we won't keep 3-holy-power idling for just a heal, it's a waste. Took about 10 seconds to accumulate 3 holy powers for protection paladin, so we need to mix in something else into the rotation.

Of course the real impact to our rotation is when we want to save the WoG for incoming huge damage.

Stats
We need more reliable holy power generation, so base hit capped is important for us to ensure most of our crusader strike and hammer of the righteous do not miss.

Talents
Eternal Glory has not been included in this discussion yet, the only reason of 2/2 Eternal Glory is to have another shot on WoG, but the cooldown absolutely removes the reason.

Possible New Rotation (PvE)

More Healing
I preferred this as WoG will not be reliable anymore.

Switch to Seal of Insight and Glyph of Seal of Insight, and to compensate the threat loss of not using Seal of Truth (and the power of Glyph of Seal of Truth).

(1) 3 holy powers
(2) Word of Glory
(3) 3 holy powers
(4) Inquisition or Shield of the Righteous (Both of them proc Holy Shield)
(5) 3 holy powers
(6) Word of Glory
(7) Inquisition or Shield of the Righteous

Things to verify if
(a) The healing from glyphed SoI >= WoG lost from the new change.
(b) Threat generated from SoI, Inquisition (indirectly) and Shield of the Righteous >= The threat generated by Seal of Truth and its glyph.

Less Healing
Use this if capping expertise is preferred.

Using Seal of Truth and related glyph and glyph of word of glory, but using the rotation mixing with SotR when WoG is still on cooldown.

Less healing but more threat generated.

(1) 3 holy powers
(2) Word of Glory
(3) 3 holy powers
(4) Inquisition or Shield of the Righteous (Both of them proc Holy Shield)
(5) 3 holy powers
(6) Word of Glory
(7) Inquisition or Shield of the Righteous

Divine Guardian cooldown is now 3 minutes, up from 2
Reasons
It's a full raid 20% reduced damage (except the paladin who cast it), using it twice within a 5 minutes fight maybe too powerful.

Result
No more 2 Divine Guardians for 5 minutes fight.

Still a good talent for 1 talent point.

All non-damaging interrupts off the global cooldown will now always hit the target.
Another reason not to hit capped.

Cataclysm: Do You Know?

2011-02-17T22:57:00.002+08:00

Tanking
Avoidance vs Stamina
If your health is always topped off by the healer(s), you need more stamina, to reduce overhealing and give healer(s) more time to react.

Otherwise you need avoidance if half of the time your health is not at 100%, to avoid/reduces physical damage.

Dungeons
Manual Invitation Does Not Grant Reward
Manually invite a friend to an in-progress random dungeon run does not grant him/her the run reward.

Quests
Shroud of the Makers (Uldum)
- Avoid drake, and walk instead of run under the stealth mode.

Tailgunner!
- Don't have to shoot down any plane to complete the quest, neither your plane will be shot down.

Torchlight 2

2011-02-03T11:06:00.001+08:00

While Diablo 3 is still far far away from us, Torchlight 2 is likely to show up any minute.

There are some improvements they've promised to the players
(1) Co-op feature, a multiplayer feature possibly based on TCP/IP or LAN. (Thumbs up)
(2) Overworld scenes, no longer the unlimited dungeons crawling style.

But I do hope to see more of them, such as:
(1) Better balanced unique items, they were pretty useless in Torchlight.
(2) Unique talent trees for different instead of copy-pasted talents among classes.
(3) Unique bosses which can be repeatedly farmed.

RNG is Laziness

2011-01-31T10:37:00.000+08:00

Random Number Generation has always been a part of loot system to ensure the rarity of rare items (and many more). It is awful to see that RNG has been widely used in everything for game nowadays.

RNG is a cheap way to prolong the game playing, but it does not bring depth to a game, sometimes it spoils the game when being used in the wrong system.

I will discuss the following bad examples using RNG in the wrong system.

Civilization V
They used RNG in Diplomatic System, so that players could get the unpredictable AI feeling. The actual approach Civ5 used to represent the unpredictable humanity, however is flawed, and their AI system is stupid (yes an AI labeled as STUPID, ironic).

The game company knows that, so they hide all the in-game diplomatic info from the players so that no proof can be acquired by the players.

Ironically, there are some players do love the "unpredictability" when it is just the cheap RNG.

Final Fantasy XIV
RNG everywhere, crafting system, XP (was fixed to static XP), repair system and even their only quest system.

The game company knows that their game is shallow, so they put everything to base on RNG, hoping to attract the players to stay in the game until they manage to release more content. (Everyone knows what happened then)

Remember what the gamespot reviewer had said about this game? "They put a lot of obstacles between you and your fun."

I understand some games were meant to play-it-once-and-forget (BioShock2, Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age etc), while the other games were designed to stay in players' harddisk until the sequel/more content being released (such as Civilization series, MMORPG), apparently, the later are much more difficult to design, as the game has to be deep enough to hold players for months up to years!

Another cheap tool is "Achievements".... To be continued

Cataclysm: Patch 4.0.6

2011-01-13T14:14:00.001+08:00

Reference: MMO-Champion

This upcoming patch is about tuning heroic dungeons and balancing job classes (for pvp...), going to discuss dungeon changes only.

Most of them are fine changes to cater for "Bring the players not the classes" methology, giggle.

Blackrock Caverns

Beauty now spawns with only two pups in Heroic difficulty. [My guild group has a decent warlock and hunter, and an excellent druid healer who can sleep/heal/root during the fight, so we have no problem on this boss. But it is a good change for payers who are running with little to none beast crowd control abilities.]

Grim Batol

Faceless Corruptors now move 10% more slowly. [A good change for bad group composition.]
Players may still use spell and abilities while afflicted by Forgemaster Throngus's Impaling Slam.
Valiona's Devouring Flame damage has been reduced by 20%.

Halls of Origination

The duration of the Flame Wardens' Raging Inferno has been reduced by 80%. [Does not seem to be harmful when avoided, maybe a good change for full melee groups... but this kind of groups will have more problem on other encounters.]
Anraphet's Nemesis Strike now does 75% of weapon damage, up from 50%. In addition, the damage-over-time effect applied by this ability does 15,000 damage every 2 seconds, up from 9,000. [Will see how it works, may be a good change.]
Earthrager Ptah's Flame Bolt now deals more damage per second on Heroic difficulty.
Setesh seeks a portal every 25 seconds, up from 20. [With DPS killing portals fast enough, this change is not necessary, but it may be good change for fresh geared groups.]

Lost City of the Tol'vir

Lockmaw no longer tolerates fighting in his treasure room. [What will happen then?]

Shadowfang Keep

Baron Ashbury
- Sadly, in his hubris he has forgotten how to Mend Rotten Flesh. [Really unnecessary change, what they should do is making MRF to take longer casting time and heal less.]

Lord Walden [Fine changes]
- Conjure Poisonous Mixture now deals more initial damage.
- Frost Mixture is now area-of-effect damage.
- Toxic Catalyst now deals less damage over time.

The Stonecore

Stonecore Earthshapers' Dust Storm does slightly less damage.
Corborus [Fine changes for players who have latency issues.]
- The warning time for Thrashing Charge has been increased by 1 second. In addition, Thrashing Charge now happens 4 times, down from 5.
- The visual for Rock Borers spawning during the submersion phase is now different from the Thrashing Charge visual.

High Priestess Azil
- She grew! She's now 175% the size of a human, up from 125%.
- Gravity Wells should kill Devout Followers more quickly.
- The cast time of Force Grip is now 1.5 seconds, up from 1.
- The size of the warning visual for Seismic Shard has been increased to more accurately reflect the area it affects. [Good one]
Slabhide
- The ground phase lasts longer and has fewer stalactites.
Ozruk
- There is now a precast visual on the ground to make it clear how far away a player must get to be clear of Shatter. [Visual is good]
- The cast time of Shatter has been increased to 3 seconds, up from 2.5. [Good change for players who have latency problem.]
- Shatter damage is now reduced by armor, but has been increased by 33.3% (repeating, of course) as a result. [So that it won't one shot melee dps?]
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug that made Ozruk's Shatter knockback component 10-yard range while the damage had a 15-yard range. Both are 15 yards now.

Throne of the Tides

The damage done by Lady Naz'jatar's Shock Blast and Naz'jar Tempest Witch Chain Lightning has been reduced. [Unnecessary change, but less punishment for having a bad dps who does not know how to interrupt, all good for me.]
Tainted Sentries Swell damage has been reduced. [Mage is going to hate this change - who does not want a free high aoe.]
The damage of Blight of Ozumat has been reduced by 25% per stack.

The Vortex Pinnacle
[My Guild Run has not gotten this dungeon from Random Dungeon since release.... so no comment]

Creatures
- Desperate Speed cast by Temple Adepts has had its duration reduced significantly.

Altairus
- The visual effects in this encounter have been adjusted to make the wind direction easier to read.
- Cyclones now knock players straight up, and players hit by a cyclone cannot be hit again for a few seconds.
Asaad
- Skyfall Stars are now summoned to help him defeat players.
- Static Cling has had its cast time increased to 1.25 seconds, up from 1.
Grand Vizier Ertan
- His health has been reduced slightly.
- He now knocks away players standing too close to him when he retracts his Cyclone Shield, which now inflicts Nature damage if it touches players. [No more exploit~]

Cataclym: Heroic Throne of the Tides

2011-01-10T23:35:00.005+08:00

This place has some nasty trash that must be handled properly.

(1) Lady Naz'jar

Trash
Healers Group
The first group of mobs shows up at the half way of the tunnel when players approaching, consists of 2 spiritmenders (healers) and 2 melees. The healers must be crowd-controlled (cc) at all time until melees are dead.

Same goes for other similar group consists of healers, they are the 1st priority to be put in the crowd-controlled list.

Players should interrupt the heals as well.

Caster Group
The witches cast chain lightning and will be deadly if letting it cast on the group.
2nd priority in the crowd-controlled list. Interrupt the chain lightning.

Single Patrol Naga
This naga alone does not really bring any threat to the group as long as the players avoid the poison areas.

The hallway to the elevator has to be done in one shot, communicate with the group before moving in, as mobs will keep showing once the encounter is triggered until all elites are dead. There are some healers at the middle, so make sure to crowd control.

Boss
Phase One: the boss will cast shock blast, which is a 2 seconds cast, must be interrupted at all cost because it will one shot the tank if he is not overgeared.

She will cast Geyser on the floor, avoid it as it will one shot anyone standing on it.

Phase Two: The phase starts with 2 casters from side doors and 1 melee from north, tank the melee, crowd control both of the casters, and kill them one by one, the boss will return to phase one if dragging for too long at this phase. Don't be panic, tank the boss and the adds (keep extra adds crowd controlled if more than one), do the interrupts on the boss while other dps should finish off the adds.

Note: there are tornadoes moving from the center of the room to the edge, not deadly, but they will drag the players to the edge thus making the fight unnecessarily tedious.

Achievement
Kill the casters adds first and dps the melee naga to 50% health. When a geyser appears, tank grabs the melee adds into the geyser, and everyone uses whatever abilities such as stun to keep the naga in place, tank immediately moves away from the geyser. Achievement will be granted when the naga is killed by the geyser.

(2) Commander Ulthok
Immediately after the first boss, the boss will show up at the center of the next room when players trying to approach it.

Boss
Kite this boss to the edge of the room and move when the boss drops the void zone, when he starts to squeeze the player, healer should heal the target.

The room will be filled with void zones sooner or later as they expand themselves over time. Pretty much a dps check before heading for final boss.

(3) Erunak Stonespeaker & Mindbender Ghur'sha

Trash
The path to this boss is crowded with goblins and faceless watchers.

Goblins
They have low health pools but insanely high damage, crowd control the aquamages as many as possible and have tank burn a cooldown after charging in, aoe them to death.

Faceless Watchers
They do void rip, grabbing all players to the mid air, and pump their fists doing aoe closed range aoe damage after that. Run away immediately after landing. Levitate may help the group to prevent the damage (except tank)

Boss
Phase One: Interrupt the spells, tank and melees move away from the spikes. Once he is 50% low on HP, phase two will start.

Phase Two: It turns out the first target was mind controlled by this little creature, this phase is a lot easier relatively. DPS the mind controlled player, DPS the boss, rinse and repeat.

(4) Ozumat (Final Boss)

Trash
The path to last boss is crowded with water elementals, and they must be cleared out in one shot as well, the elites does aoe damage when they are enlarged (can be tranq. shot by hunter to clear it).

Boss
This is a 3 phases fight, lacking dps in this fight will make life difficult (should be fine if the group didn't struggle from the 2nd boss)

Phase One: DPS Kill everything first then Behemoth which will be kited by the tank.
Phase Two: Starts with 3 faceless sappers channeling on the boss, mark one immediately, DPS focus fire on each of them.

Tank will be kiting beasts around the room (when sapper is down, tank should have more space to kite, as these beasts drop shadow pools which will hurt the group)

Phase Three: Starts when sappers are all down. All beasts must be killed immediately. The groups get a buff and increased in size, health, dps and healing. The target is outside the building, it's a huge octupus, so make sure to look up and dps it before the group wipes.

Achievement
Keep the behemoth from the phase 1 alive and kill it at phase 3.

Cataclysm: Justice/Honor Points Vendors

2011-01-10T22:56:00.008+08:00

Enchanters may as well buy and disenchant the 950JP gears instead of spending their justice points on following stuff.

Based on the AH price from Cenarion Circle.

Hypnotic Dust (11g)
Heavenly Shard (100g)
Small Heavenly Shard = 100g/3 = 33.4g
20 Embersilk Cloth = 80g
Greater Celestial Essence = 40g
5 Savage Leather = 50g
20 Elementium Ores = 80g

The cheapest JP gears costs 950JP, and it can be disenchanted to 1 heavenly shard (perhaps small heavenly shard).

Manual Disenchant
Let's assume 950JP = 100g OR 33.4g
so 1JP = 100/950 OR 33.4/950 => 0.1g OR 0.03g

Using the Vendor
Hypnotic Dust: 1JP = 11/200 = 0.05g
Heavenly Shard: 100/1200 = 0.08g
20 Embersilk Cloth: 80/2500 = 0.032g
Greater Celestial Essence: 40/800 = 0.05g
Savage Leather: 50/750 = 0.06g
20 Elementium Ore: 80/2000 = 0.04g

So if JP gear is 100% disenchanted to 1 Heavenly Shard (or even more), all of those new stuffs are not worthy for an enchanter to spend their justice points.

I will skip the Honor Points Vendor for the time being.

And what Blizzard does not want to include chaos orb?

Note: results may vary on different servers.

Cataclysm: Possible Future

2011-01-04T12:54:00.143+08:00

Offspec Need
The chance we will see this to be implemented in future dungeon loot rule is minor until they can differentiate the gears for Feral Cat and Bear. (Drama for these 2 classes)

1. Main Stats Check

Class	1st Spec.	2nd Spec.	3rd Spec.
Death Knight	Blood, STAM	Frost, STR.	Unholy, STR
Druid	Balance, INT	Feral, AGI	Restoration, SPR
Hunter	AGI
Mage	INT
Paladin	Holy, SPR	Protection, STAM	Retribution, STR
Priest	Discipline, SPR	Holy, SPR	Shadow, INT
Rogue	AGI
Shaman	Enhancement, AGI	Elemental, INT	Restoration, SPR
Warrior	Arms, STR	Fury, STR	Protection, STAM
Warlock	INT

2. Secondary Stats Check

Class	1st Spec.	2nd Spec.	3rd Spec.
Death Knight	Blood, DODGE/PARRY/ARMOR	Frost, HASTE/CRIT.	Unholy, HASTE/CRIT
Druid	Balance, INT	Feral, AGI	Restoration, SPR
Paladin	Holy, SPR	Protection, DODGE/PARRY/ARMOR	Retribution, HASTE/CRIT
Warrior	Arms, HASTE/CRIT	Fury, HASTE/CRIT	Protection, DODGE/PARRY/ARMOR

Transferring Justice Points to Alternate Characters
Let's talk about what will the main problem be if this is implemented.

(1) Players will store Justice Points on their alternate characters, waiting for the content patch which is released with downgraded gears (Valor points -> Justice points), transferring back all those JP back to main characters and instantly upgrade all necessary gears.
(2) Alternate characters accumulate their Justice Points and send to main character for new downgraded gears.

Solution:
(a) The characters must be maximum level (85 for cataclysm) to be a valid JP sender/receiver.
(b) Characters must spend the received JP before able to transfer their JP to other characters.
E.g. A transfers 2200JP -> B, then B is locked from the service until they spent 2200JP or more.
(c) The received JP has a reasonable weekly cap amount, to prevent case (2), e.g. 500-1000JP

Cataclysm: Good Design I

2011-01-02T12:20:00.005+08:00

So what about the good design.

Special Mechanic to Clear Trash in Dungeons
Very brilliant idea and implementation, such as NPC who shows up to clear out the trash for players, dragons from Grim Batol which are controlled by players to blast the mobs on the way to first/second boss etc.

Possible Improvements: To implement mini-games to reduce the dungeon trash on the run.

The Importance of Hardcore Gamers

2010-12-31T14:07:00.002+08:00

By saying hardcore, I do not include those e-peens who pretend they are hardcore with a condescending attitudes.

A game with depth needs hardcore gamers to make it shine, like good chess games need hardcore players.

Hardcore gamers have mindset to explore and analyze the game with their amateur/professional skills and thus create theorycrafting, strategies, guides, interesting walkthrough, and mods in some games.

With 2 conditions:
(1) The game must have depth.
(2) The hardcore gamers are interested in the game.

Nowadays, many game manufacturers start to aim on the casual gamers market, obviously, that market is much more profitable because hardcore gamers are the minority. However, this should not become an excuse to create a soulless game.

The recent examples are Command and Conquer 4, Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy XIV and Civilization V. They are considered "good" games from certain point of view, but these beautiful games are starting to drive hardcore gamers away because they do not provide a deep game mechanism and content for exploration and analysis (the more they analyze, the more they find flaws of design).

Command and Conquer 4
I don't want to mention this game a lot here, as it is a shame of the series. EA is a soulless company which create popcorn games ($$).

Popcorn games: Games which were designed for few hours gameplay and thus never meant to be classic at all. (A lot of rich gamers buy this idea)

Final Fantasy Series
The re-playability of Final Fantasy Series has been reduced to absurd level since Final Fantasy X, high re-playability was one of the key elements in previous series but they are forever gone, as the company decided pretty cutscenes are more important than content and gameplay, and suit the gamers from popcorn era.

Civilization V
This is the first Civilization game which I cannot get the "Just one more turn" feeling (Civ fans know exactly what I am talking about here).

The game shows its shallow design after the fog of beauty starts to fade.
Read Sulla's Explanation if you are interested

Consequences of Hardcore Gamers' Departure
As those are the gamers who love to use their brain, once they leave the games, other gamers will not have MODS, ADDONS, GUIDES, STRATEGIES, and then the games will be left in the dust after hours of play, and no one would ever remember them again. (marketing may help them to last for a longer period)

Civilization V: What Went Wrong?

2010-12-29T15:38:00.012+08:00

Reference
http://www.garath.net/Sullla/Civ5/whatwentwrong.html

All credits to Sulla, this post from Sulla (I believe this is her/his name) pretty much sums it all what are failed in Civilization 5, which leads to hardcore players belief that the developers do no know their franchises.

--
That's all I had to say about the patch. I'm going to finish with Civ5 by analyzing what went wrong with the game's design, in order to explain why things were derailed so badly. I have five major issues to go through, but before that, here are some smallish gripes that I jotted down while playing:

Minor Complaints
* Barbarian units can spawn regardless of line of sight. It is maddening to move next to a barbarian camp, and have a new full-strength barb magically appear out of thin air on a tile where you had full visibility. Immersion-breaking? There's a reason why barbs could only spawn in fogged tiles in past Civ games...

* Horsemen and archers/crossbows were both nerfed in the patch to reduce their combat values against cities. Simultaneously, cities were buffed to be much stronger and heal damage much faster. In order to capture cities now, you need strong melee units or siege units. There's just one problem: strong melee units means swords/longswords, and siege units means catapults/trebuchets. All of those units require iron. What happens if you don't have iron? Currently, the answer appears to be "you are screwed", and enemy cities can only be taken with very heavy losses using non-iron units. This is not an example of good design.

* The food box graphic is still broken on the city screen, and also shows as full regardless of actual food count (see screenshots above). The whole city interface is just bad in general; it's far more difficult than it should be to swap tiles around and set up a production queue.

* The interface for diplomacy is still awful. You have to click between three different screens to see all of the information, and there are further scroll bars on each individual screen - you can only see information on three AI leaders at a time. With more than 50% of screen space not even being utilized, this is atrociously bad design.

* The default length for a trading agreement is 30 turns. That's a really long time, and there's no way to change it. (On Marathon speed, the default length is 90 turns!) It's also impossible to cancel Open Borders once they've been signed, so sorry, sucks to be you if conditions change 25 turns later and you want to remove those Open Borders. The whole system is practically begging players to declare war and invalidate these agreements, pulling lump sum gold out of the AI civs for free. By the way, you can also trade a resource for lump sum gold, pillage your own resource, and then immediately re-sell the same good again once it's re-connected, all without any kind of reputation hit or penalty. I think this all could have been handled much better.

* Research agreements are a broken game mechanic; you can get any technology in the game for a paltry 250 gold (does not increase over time, which rather breaks the lategame!) and it's possible to game the system by investing one turn of research into all of the techs you DON'T want, thereby choosing your own "random" free tech. Completely exploitative and game breaking, turning every research agreement into a free Great Scientist. Note that fixing this bug wouldn't solve the issue either, because then research agreements would deliver something extremely powerful or hopelessly weak out of sheer chance.

* Occasionally AI leaders will pop up in diplomacy simply to insult your civilization in some way. What is the reason for this? Does it serve any point whatsoever? I can't imagine that someone thought it would be fun to receive random insults like this.

* Even after several patches, the various civilizations remain totally unbalanced. Winners like Greece, France, or Babylon absolutely destroy losing civs like America or Ottomans. Other civ abilities are wildly random, like Germany and the new downloadable Spain. Perhaps you'll get a ton of warriors for free, or pull hundreds of gold out of the air for finding natural wonders. Perhaps you'll get absolutely nothing. This is textbook bad design: civs with abilities that are either crazy overpowered or completely useless, with random chance determining the outcome.

* All of the victory conditions in Civ5 are pretty badly designed, especially the new Conquest (get all the capitals!) and Diplomatic (buy the city states!) versions. The static endgame screen, still with no replays or graphs, is an embarassment to the franchise.

* The Civiliopedia and "Official Manual" remain laughable, with vague information or flat-out misdocumentation rampant, and will likely never be fixed now. It's the sort of thing you expect from an indie game working on a tiny budget, and feels incredibly amateurish and sloppy in a flagship strategy game.

* Forced Steam installation. We can argue about Steam all day, and the forums have been full of the back and forth. Personally, I simply wish it were an option and not mandatory. I don't think it does much of anything to stop piracy, and I hate the fact that if Steam goes out of business, I can never play the game I purchased again. I find the downloadable content system, selling off extra civilizations one by one, to be a distasteful business model. Ugh.

Major Flaws
5. Global Unhappiness and Infinite City Sprawl (ICS) Conflict
4. Uninspired Mechanics and Unnecessary Penalties
3. Inscrutable and Meaningless Diplomacy System
2. Multiplayer Failures
1. Bad Implementation of "One Unit per Tile" Idea
(Read the original post for details)

Cataclysm: Heroic "Heroic Dungeon"

2010-12-20T15:08:00.002+08:00

Epic is once again Epic
The word "epic" has been redefined and things may become rough once again for many players while running heroic dungeon in Cataclysm.

Heroics stay as difficult as they are
It may become nightmare for quite many pugs, but it will triumph when everyone tries to do her/his part and manage to complete the heroic dungeons.

In my opinion, heroic dungeons should remain at what they are. Maybe a bit tweaks are needed to fix some of the broken boss mechanics, but the difficulty should stay. (In short, don't nerf the heroics)

Because

Casual: What should we do?
Currently some casual players are complaining about the heroics being too unfriendly to casuals, which takes too long to complete and encounters are showing no mercy to human mistakes.

To help the casuals, Blizzard should buff the reward in normal dungeon so that casual players can still choose normal dungeon to progress when they do not have time/effort to run a heroic. 70JP per daily from dungeon is a bit absurd for the current heroic setup. (In wotlk, no one was doing regular dungeon because of the absurd tiny reward, but heroics were not hard at all back there.)

May be at least giving 70JP for the final boss in dungeon run (and should be giving 10VP for daily), this way, the players can choose to run a regular dungeon final boss for 70JP, or to run a challenging heroic dungeon where every boss grants 70JP (daily gives 70VP as it is now)

And it is possible to set a JP cap from regular run to avoid players from farming them.

The advantage of current setup
1. The encounters are challenging and fun.
2. New players learn their classes from encounters.
3. Pact of cooperation, every party member must cooperate to help the group, and s/he are encouraged to do so, dps number is no longer a big deal (at least in my group, if you are not helping the group, 10K dps is worthless when that means more burden to the healer, e.g. A rogue who kicks, a elemental shaman who uses healing rain)

The Disadvantage of current setup
1. Most casual players can only do heroic runs on weekends.
2. Casual players cannot experience Shadowfang Keep and Deadmine and other non-85 regular dungeons.
3. Geared casual players will not run regular dungeons anymore after the daily.

Noted that casual players I am saying there do not include unskillful players, noobs.

Minecraft

2010-12-16T01:05:00.000+08:00

A proof which a game does not need fancy graphic to be fun. An extreme opposite of Final Craftasy XIV.

Fun

Rift: Introduction

2010-12-05T01:56:00.001+08:00

This introduction is funny. It slaps the face of Final Fantasy XIV.

"Rift is a complete next generation online game, complete means polished at launch with everything expected from AAA world class MMO, next generation means the game will advance with the genre from the day it is shipped."

The 2nd part shoots the infamous excuse used by FFXIV fanboys "FFXIV has potential." (Every MMORPG has potential, this is not FFXIV's proprietary statement.)

Cataclysm: Leveling Flow

2010-11-27T11:20:00.002+08:00

Reference
MMOChampion

Final Fantasy XIV vs Cataclysm (November 2010)

2010-11-26T13:52:00.004+08:00

The first real patch from SquareEnix is released to Final Fantasy XIV, after World of Warcraft Patch 4.0.3a has been gone live for a week.

If you still cannot decide whether to play FFXIV or Cataclysm, check this out.

Visual
FFXIV	SE sacrificed memory to get the top notch graphic effect and impressive water/sky textures, thus copy-pasted terrain. Unfortunately, it does makes the world dull and lifeless after months of ingame exploring.
Cata.	The old world Azeroth is greatly improved with high detailed texture, combined with new water engine and lots of environmental changes, it does impress the players.
FFXIV	Characters' actions are smooth and natural.
Cata.	Old world characters' actions are mostly unnatural, expansions characters are a lot better.
FFXIV	Realistic world environment.
Cata.	Cartoonish world environment. I don't like it, but it is Blizzard style.
FFXIV	Impressive cinematics and cutscenes.
Cata.	Impressive cinematics, ingame cutscenes are limited by the game engine.
FFXIV	Ingame Notoriuos Monsters are well done and cool looking.
Cata.	Good looking but not that impressive, the new models added after Cataclysm are pretty and high detailed.
User Interface
FFXIV	Limited UI customization.
Cata.	Flexible UI customization, the feature that makes WoW stands out among mmorpgs. One of the essential reasons to play WoW.
FFXIV	Interface is not friendly, too many redundant steps to do a simple thing. (Note: sluggish responsiveness is fixed in November patch)
Cata..	Excellency in user friendliness, everything in WoW is so easy to manipulate.
Gameplay
FFXIV	Classes system can be complex if trying to min/max, otherwise it can be straightforward. The balance needs to be improved though.
Cata.	The classes system becomes too newbie-friendly to suit new players.
FFXIV	Professions are boring in the end but they are rewarding, they are not complicated (they do not have much depth either), they are tedious because FFXIV enforces every player to participate in their crafting system.
Cata.	Professions are very rewarding and easy to master, although they will be forgotten at the end game, at least the process to level up is far from tedious.
FFXIV	Slow pace of gaming, but still can hit end game pretty quickly.
Cata.	Relatively faster pace, hit end game very quickly.
FFXIV	The levequest is just another form of "daily quest" from other MMORPGs, a different name and longer cooldown do not make any difference. No other forms of quests yet, other than the few storyline quests/class quests.
Cata.	Chained quests are fun and well-thought.
FFXIV	No jumping and swimming. Expected as they will introduce terrain bugs and players will exploit them to reach restricted areas.
Cata.	Able to jump and swim. Must appreciate the work of developers to choose harder route and filter out all the terrain bugs.
FFXIV	1 character per account in release. Additional character will be charged (USD 3.00 each). Consider how the class system works in FFXIV, it may not be crucial.
Cata.	No additional character slot, for players who have hit their maximum character slots with all level 80, it is going to be a tough decision to delete one of them to get a goblin/worgen.
FFXIV	Ingame retainer provides extra inventory slots for players to store items, however, only 1 retainer is given to a character, additional fee will be charged (USD 1.00) to unlock more retainer for the same character.
Cata.	Character inventory expandable with bags, bank expandable with more bags and guild bank. And don't neglect the fact that one can create alternate characters to generate more storage space.
FFXIV	Bazaar system is interesting, but having to browse through players' inventory one by one to find something you need is absurd considered how many players will be involved in this game. SE separated the wards and renamed them individually to help buying a little bit easier.
Cata.	Auction houses, trade channels.
FFXIV	Repetitive combat effect, the target system makes the encounter difficult.
Cata.	Combat are responsive, players can choose to participate in normal or difficult encounters.
Sound Effect
FFXIV	No japanese voice act. English voice act quality is above average, no voice act at all other than cutscenes.
Cata.	Voice acts are mostly average quality. But all NPCs have voice act, some are pretty special.
FFXIV	Sound effect is plain and simple, some are pretty annoying after listening for thousands times, such as the sound when clicking on actions during combat.
Cata.	Sound effect is better presented, provided with options to turn off ambient sound effect, normal sound effect.
FFXIV	Some musics are really good, but most become annoying after hours of repeatitive playing, unlike FFXI.
Cata.	Blizzard improved their background musics for each region, overall they are pretty good.
Lore
FFXIV	Moogles, chocobos, airships, what more can we ask for, the only problem here is that they are not implemented yet.
Cata.	Diablo, Starcraft stuffs exist ingame as cosmetic forms such as pets.
Pricing
FFXIV	The game can be bought around USD42.99. Monthly subscription fee, USD9.99/month, USD8.99/month for 3-month-plan, USD7.99/month for 6-month-plan. Each amount should add USD3/character. So the basic fees become 12.99/11.99/10.99 (NOTE: If you are paying the subscription in EUR, SE did not normalize the price, USD9.99 -> EUR9.99, not fair for Europe players I know, but deal with it).
Cata.	One may think Cataclysm is an expansion and the price to buy the full game as a new player is costly, fortunately, Blizzard wants new players to suffer less on this matter, the original wow and its 1st expansion costs only USD5 each, 2nd expansion costs USD10, cataclysm costs USD39.90 (Digital Versions)= USD59.90. Monthly subscription fee: USD14.99/month, USD13.99/month for 3-month-plan, USD12.99/month for 6-month-plan
Misc
FFXIV	Very high PC requirement for what it provides, non-issue for PS3 players.
Cata.	If you have a computer, you can run it.
FFXIV	Alt+tab in Fullscreen mode shuts down the game, annoying feature for PC users, SquareEnix way to control bots, thumb down. Non-issue for PS3 players.
Cata.	Blizzard does a very good job to control GMTs/bots.

Conclusion
"There will never be WoW killer, only WoW can kill itself."

For the time being, the players in FFXIV have to "make" their own fun to struggle through a lot of issues. (Heck, every one can make her/his own fun from any game, why FFXIV?)
For those players who think World of Warcraft is easy. Removes all the "advanced" addons and try again, then it will be feeling like playing FFXI/FFXIV.

Strategies: Soloing Anzu (level 80)

2010-11-21T15:10:00.001+08:00

Paladin (Easy)
Preparation
Dps gears with 1H weapon and shield. Protection spec with optional talent Divinity/Eternal Glory.

Trash
Ravenguards: Use any seal of truth with regular rotation, save holy powers for word of glory if necessary.
Cobalt Serpent: Keep avenger's shield and stun to interrupt the spellcasting.

Anzu
Tank and spank, note that paladin can still crusader strike the Anzu when it is phased to gain holy power.

Warrior (Easy)
Preparation
Regular protection spec with Blood Craze talented and Field Dressing.

Trash
Ravenguards: Typical rotation with demoralizing shout, shockwave/shield block when they enrage, use victory rush if available.
Cobalt Serpent: Use spell reflection, shield bash (or perhaps concussion blow)

Anzu
Tank and spank for Phase 1, burn cooldown if necessary especially before stun. It will become a lot easier when the birds start attacking, keep these birds alive as they will make Blood Craze always proc during the fight, and it will out-heal Anzu dps.

Rogue (Normal)
Preparation
Assassination spec with Improved Recuperate and Quickening, glyph of cloak of shadows/glyph of evasion are quite helpful.
Bring health potions, bandages, any kind of buff if not well-geared.
PvP trinket to release from stun if necessary.

Trash
N.A.

Anzu
Start with garrote/ambush, first mutilate and 5CP Recuperate, use vendetta/coldblood, this will keep the rogue alive for Phase I.

Fan of knives the birds.

Burn Evasion to last through Phase II, keep Recuperate up.

Fan of knives the birds.

Use Vendetta/coldblood again if available, keep Recuperate up and kill Anzu.

Cloak of shadow does not prevent stun, but it can reduce 40% physical dmg if glyphed.