Special Assignments

DPS is, well, it's not a BORING way to play WoW. We have our recount meter e-peen wars, and our gear spreadsheets won its inventors the Fields Medal, but it's all very static. All us DPS have our rotation (a word that is getting increasingly outdated with more priority systems arising) that we cling to preciously, and most fight mechanics are simply attempts to disrupt that rotation. Switch targets, run around, get out of fire, that kind of thing. But every now and again, we noble DPS, who toil in obscurity, seldom recognized for leading us to either great victory or defeat, get a Special Assignment. Let's look at Special Assignments, and how they enrich the DPS'ers life.

If you do only 5-mans, you don't really get to taste the sweet nectar of being put on SA duty. 5-mans need to be relatively simple, with obvious mechanics or mild punishments to assure a PuG can expect to do well without prior training in the intricacies of the fight. Oculus is the only dungeon to do anything close to this with the drakes, but that's a vehicle fight; everyone's doing something different (and horrible, in Oc's case).

My favorite Special Assignment to this day is staying in the back for Four Horsemen. For those who didn't do Naxx, there are four horsemen in four corners, and if any one of them has no target within 40-ish yards, they start wiping the raid, so two dudes must stay near the two weak-ass spellcasters while the other two are tanked like normal. I got to stand in the back because I am crazy awesome rad, and have skills to pay ALL the bills. Also, I can heal myself.

When the raid leader picks you for a Special Assignment, he is saying "You. You are more than your numbers, impossibly huge though yours may be. You are clever and adaptable, so you can be TRUSTED with this". DPS are never trusted; they are the shady mercenaries in the cheap bar to any raid leader, whose loyalty is bought with the promise of loot, which leads to higher numbers. Being trusted is one of the two greatest honor a DPS can receive (the other is Vigilance).

I hunger for these encounters, where instead of "this fight is a tank-and-spank except for this, that, those, and these" it comes out "us 6/7/8 guys just do our job like normal, but YOU chosen ones need a special briefing. Report to spec-ops". Saurfang is case in point; men chosen not for their crazyrad deeps, but their kiting skill. It brings in mechanics we as DPS never otherwise touch, changing our experience up drastically. So here's to Blood Beasts, to Brain Rooms, to Arial Command Units. I hope ICC has more of the unexpected in store for us.

Halls of Reflection is Stupid

Finally got a chance to run through all three of the new dungeons, see all the plot and stuff, and first let me say the premise, and the first two dungeons are totally fine and pretty cool. I especially like the suppression room in Pit of Saron, how the ice crashing gives a sense of urgency and all that. But the Halls of Reflection is bed-wettingly stupid.

Firstly, we're brought in to it with a mountain of dialogue from the ghost of Uther, about how the last refuges of humanity in Arthas are holding back the LK from facerolling all of Azeroth. What? In his whole character progression, for three goddamned games nonetheless, Arthas never once acted even hesitant to throw away his humanity, and now you're telling us he isn't completely corrupt? What about Tyrion's quest where he blatantly states with his magical paladin powers that there is no "Arthas" left in the Lich King? My theory: some nine-year-old kid from the Make-A-Wish foundation won the prize, and his wish was to write HoR dialogue for Blizzard.

Secondly, doing the dungeon is like pulling especially boring teeth. When doing the first part, the waves of adds, you have to LoS them in a corner, making my camera cry. What, so half of the most epic and climactic battle in 5-man WotLK takes place in a walk-in closet? The bosses are fine, if same-y in theme and appearance. I would complain about how HoR has no interesting mechanics, and is really just a gear check, but when it comes to something that will be pug'd a lot, I guess simple is better.

Now, the final fight, the other suppression room (notice how the whole dungeon is just 2 suppression rooms stapled together with bad storytelling?) is you running away from the big bad spooky LK. Surprisingly, I am OK with that in theory, but theories are strange creatures that often fall apart like wet cardboard when implemented. His very slow gait is ponderous; is that Sylvanas/Jaina slowing him down with majickz, or is he just that lazy? The real problem is the ice walls; they're so clearly scripted to break right as the pull ends, it breaks a sense of causality. Which went on extended vacation the second Sylvanas started shooting arrows at an ice wall to break it, but I digress. They should break at a certain time, or maybe if you finish a pull early you can help break them down. That would make for a much more real sense of immediacy.

My final complaint: you don't kill the Lich King at the end. Really, he should have died right there. What if, instead of Arthas getting shot at by the airship and running back to his couch, you got IN the airship, and battled him with cannons in a glorious vehicle combat extravaganza, blowing Arthas to kingdom come. But who is the final boss of ICC, you ask? Ner'zhul, duh. Arthas might die from acute cannon-in-chest syndrome, but the real spirit of the Lich King must be re-bound to the Frozen Throne or some such. Hell yes, son!.

Blizzard seems to be allergic to the unexpected; Ulduar aside, this has been an extremely by-the-numbers expansion in terms of theme and plot. Nothing really surprising has happened, unless you count Arthas being surprisingly pussy. I pray to all-powerful Atheismo that there's SOME twist deep in ICC to save WotLK from amounting to more than an amateur's first Dungeons and Dragons plot.

The New LFG Order

I just got a chance tonight to try the new 3.3 LFG system. Of course, it was plagued with sluggishness getting into instances with the servers taxed as they were. With that in mind, here's my early impressions. Disclaimer: I didn't do any of the new dungeons, by random chance, so expect something on that later in the week.

- The new UI is delicious eye candy, and looks very slick. It also follows the BG queue interface closely, which helps the game feel more like an integrated whole.

- The tank can raid mark even if he's not the leader. Fucking. Finally.

- Voting to kick players has been a smooth and elegant system in online FPSs since 2000-ish, it shocks me it didn't make it into WoW sooner. The new procedural group making probably helps make that less personal approach socially acceptable.

- Speaking of which, getting into a group is smooth, stress-free, and fast if you're not just DPS. I'd expect some people to pick up healing or tanking to get into groups faster in the near future.

- Deserting a dungeon imposes severe penalties on those who flake on instances, and make it easy to find replacements mid way through a run. It would be lame to come into a dungeon that's already half done, but better than dooming those in the dungeon to SOL status. No rational, self-interested person will drop from anything but the most atrocious groups.

- The rewards are delicious, and make chain heroics feasible, rewarding, and fast. Perfect for the end of an x-pac, where gearing up needs to be fast for someone to get into ICC by this point.

- Oculus nerf was brilliant and needed, but riding dragons still fundamentally sucks and is boring. Now we just need a way to start CoS faster and not make VH wipes so putative and we'd be in instance bliss!

I was incredibly skeptical of this new system, but it's intuitive and very smart. Top-notch job, I never realized how frustrating pugging a group was, even before the first pull, until now. Long live the new order!