SAN 1 to 10 Project: Dwarf Paladin

Trying (and not doubt failing, since I am a 10 year MMO player and 30+ year computer gamer) to put myself into the shoes of a new player and leveling a dwarf paladin from 1 to 8 left me distinctly unimpressed. Paladins are about as interactive as Farmville. Paladin powers are as bad as hunter’s 1-10—when hunters have no pets.

Level 1 starts a paladin with auto attack and…heal! Not needed at all 1-5 when the mobs aren’t agro, I have no AE attacks and we still have the massive HP and mana regen power. Level 2 got me devotion aura—something I have cast once so far, as I haven’t died. It was cast out of combat at that.

As a quick side note, I dinged 2 before I even completed my first wolf quest and had 0 copper. I couldn’t have trained had I gone back to the trainer. 3 and 4 came on nearly as quickly—in a way that I think would have left me slightly disoriented and thinking the effort to level was too easy. Adding to the out of control feeling I had was that some quests were auto-accepting. I had no clue if I still needed to read the quest text, or what the heck was going on. I know I ran out of coin at least 2 more times before 8th.

Level 4 got me 2 powers, Judgment—which I don’t recall here at work—and—the 50% shield wall type ability. Judgment, 1-8, looks like a second button to push in combat, but you would be wrong. You can, and should start your attack with judgment, but that turns on auto attack. Most 1-6 mobs are dead before the 8 second cool down is up, so there isn’t even a second button to push (or decision to be made) in combat.

Here, economically I am barely making it. There are very few small bag drops for the Alliance, and I certainly don’t have the coin to spend before on some extra bag space. Once I learned blacksmithing and was running around with quest items, it wasn’t unusual for me to leave the in with 5—or fewer!-- open bag spots.

The culmination of Anvilmar used to be a big, dangerous confusing cave with a named troll in the back. The mobs, at least for non-peak use conditions, are closely packed, social and, IIRC, have some casters mixed in. Getting the book at 5th or 6th was a non-trivial task—and the first real hurtle a player had to cross.

Now that the cave is non-agro, its just a big, confusing, boring cave that has no risk it. You find Waldo, bonk him on his head, while his non-aggro guards watch, and you leave. While the whole confusing/dangerous cave is problematical (and the comments can equally apply to the orc/troll starting cave, and maybe even the first night elf cave quests) the big, confusing, boring cave is even worse.

By 8th level I finally learned a second ability I might be able to use in combat—the paladin stun. Only to find its on a one minute cool down. I think, after training 8th, I would have strongly considered walking away. I have 2 ways to start auto-attacking, and if the fight goes long I might be able to hit one of those buttons again. Once every 4 or 5 fights I can hit an extra button for a stun.

Sid Meier said that a good game is a series of interesting decisions. The first 8 levels of being a paladin misses making almost any decisions at all.

A Modest Proposal: 1 to 10 SAN Project.

The proposal springs from the fact that we know 2 things, rather recently: that 70% of the players never make it past level 10 and that we know a lot of bloggers are rolling new alts for SAN. And conveniently we have Horde and Alliance side SANs.

While I am sure that Blizzard is more than capable of reviewing the 1-10 experience themselves, I am sure they would love to hear what we think. So, I suggest we SANners start a blog project--if you roll up a newbie on Argent Dawn try thinking like a newbie and see what you think of the experience. Would you keep on playing WoW?

I suggest we call it the SAN 1 to 10 Project. You can even tag the race and class combo at the end of the title.

Since my blog has all of 1 follower and not too many readers I will forward this on to Tamirand and Miss Medicina.

Single Abstract Noun

I have joined it, at least for some alting, over on Alliance, Argent Dawn US.

Rolled up a paladin, Guthammer, to see if I can learn pally tanking.

I think it's also going to turn into a review of the first couple of levels of auto-attacking, er paladinning.

I Would Have an Insightful Post About Wynns Battle Song

Or whatever the proper name of the ICC buff is but Cablevision continued to be completely buttheads and I bailed out of the raid with well over 2 seconds of lag.

It looks like the raid, lacking the normal leaders, still managed to down the first 3 bosses with undergeared walkons.

Threat-Capped DPS

Caer Morrighan pulled out some interesting points from the latest Dev Twitter Chat.

Here's a real gem:

Q. You talk a lot about changing how we heal tanks, but will aggro ever come back as a challenging part of the game?

A. Not sure. This is something we discuss a lot. I even had a meeting on it this week! On the one hand, some tanks really felt like the way to distinguish themselves was to generate maximum threat per second. On the other hand, threat is a pretty invisibile part of the game (it’s limited to the UI at best), and I know when I tank that I always feel pretty emasculated when someone actually pulls off of me. It’s challenging, but is it really fun? This is the kind of thing we’d love to get more feedback on. Please include your feedback on large banners to be shown in the background during the Olympics. Failing that, the forums would work too.

As a tank I think the raids lost something when optimal DPS stopped being about managing aggro and resources and became about twitch reactions to not standing in the fire and and banging out your priority queue properly.

I also think--though I would really want more feedback from DPSers on this--that new tank--who threat cap the T10 geared DPSers anyway--suffer more now than they would if even their T10 geared tank threat capped them.

I think--I mean no matter what a well geared DPSer (unless he is willing to solo a mob (something I encourage in HHoR as a warrior)) is going to have to throttle DPS way more with a new tank than a well geared one.

There is a negative flipside though too--raids are already potentially blocked by tanks not being survivable enough for an encounter--adding a threat cap to raidwide DPS would put huge pressures on tanks to up threat and give them first crack at gear.

Ultimately new tanks are always going to threat cap well geared DPS and I think making all DPSers in most situations aware of their threat and teaching them how to control their aggro would do more to help new tanks than not.

So Long Defense

There have been many electrons spilled talking about the stat changes coming in Cataclysm. Tobold has a great little post on defense--and points to the fact that the defense cap is a "hidden" requirement for tanks. Considering how important it is--don't get slotted for raids without 540, and lots of group grief under 535 in 5 mans--there is nothing, I repeat nothing in game to teach a tank about the importance of the stat--or even clue you into the fact that it makes you crit immune.

Yes, I think there should be some interesting stats on gear, but when you need to run out of game simulators, or massive amounts of theorycrafting and excel spread sheets from hell to figure out if you want ArP or Haste or whathave you stat, there is something wrong.

An informed player (one who has been informed by the game no less-not outside sources) should be able to identify best or near best gear choices with a little bit of thought--but no longer than the decision cycle that Blizzard imposes in the looting process.

O RLY? Authenticator Hacked?

MMO Crunch is apparently reporting that account with authenticators have been hacked with confirmation from blue.

This is actually crappy title making--Tobold's guilty of among others.

There is a key logger out there that will intercept what you type into authenticator dialog box and forward it to the secret masters--while forwarding a bad code to Blizzard. The authenticator is till perfectly secure and the black hats still don't know what number will come up on your authenticator when you hit the button. It is a hack of your PC and the login process not, NOT, the authenticator.