The Instance #174 –

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Big News Of The Week

Class Balance Concerns Are Back With A Vengence

Remember those heady days of controversy in WoW, way back in 2005 when warlocks could single-handedly take out entire parties of other players in PvP, and feral druids and paladins were laughed out of town? Well, a sense of nostalgia for class imbalance controversy has overtaken the entire World of Warcraft recently, and this last week saw an eruption in unusually high volume to the shouting. What’s all the shouting about?

Here’s the pre-nerf/buff chart of DPS ranges we discussed in this segment:

Rumors And Scuttlebutt

Blizzard Returns With Dev Twitter Chat Part 2: The Reckoning

J. Allen Brack and Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street face the World of Warcraft again this evening on Twitter. Since we’re recording a few hours before their public chat – it’s happening today, Friday, January 15, at 5:00 p.m. PST – we could only speculate.  Here is a link to the archived chat.

Mandatory Authentication Feels Kinda Funny

Nick Kolan over at IGN ran an article last week that began with this quote:

Rumors spread on Friday of Blizzard Entertainment’s plans to make their authenticators mandatory, in an apparent attempt to stem the plague of compromised accounts that have Blizzard’s customer service backlogged for days. As of yet there has been no confirmation of the legitimacy of these rumors, but if true, it may prove to be a larger hurdle than most people think.”

The rumor was indeed widespread, and talk of mandatory multi-factor security for WoW was all the rage over this past weekend.

Town Cryer

Links to Everyquest and Lightheaded mods here.

Lau D. writes:

Just wondering your take on this. I am in a great guild and I love it. I do not use add-ons because I don’t want to deal with the risk of using them or the unpleasantness that can result from trying to get an issue resolved with the game because an Add on messed something up. I don’t think there is anything wrong with playing the game as it was made, but it has come up in my guild that some members feel that certain mods and ventrillo should be a requirement for raiding. While I love vent and I understand why people would want mods, I don’t feel this should be the case. It seems wrong to me to require ppl to use add ons. It should be a personal choice, they are suppliments to the game, not part of it. How do you guys feel about this? I know you use a ton so I thought it would be interesting to know.

Drop Of The Week

Poseurs In The Armory!

Blizzard updated the WoW Armory this week with some features that you may want to look into. Specifically, there is now an interactive 3D model viewer built into the WoW Armory. You can see any character in the gear he or she was wearing at logout, complete with correct face, hairstyle and colorings, and get this – you can pose your own character however you like for others to see. The new features include the ability to cycle through animations for your character and see her doing what she does in game, and thoughtfully includes embed code so you can take your character elsewhere on the web!

Additional show content provided by Darrell the Tipgiver, Steve “Buxley” Pietrowicz, James “Acuzod” Jefferies and the outstanding Instance Community.

Special thanks to DogHouse Systems, FigurePrints!, TypeFrag and SquareSpace for sponsoring this episode.

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21 thoughts on “The Instance #174 –”

  3. Uhm… great show guys but did you see all the macro questions in last weeks comments? :( /puppy dog eyes

    Help a dwarf out man! ;-p I need a starting point for macros and I’m NOT going to Elitist Jerks to get it.

  4. /agree with the add on lady. It shouldn’t be required to use add ons, and if that is how blizz is making the game then they need to suck it up and guarantee some, maybe host on the website or something. That way we have somewhere to turn when our toon is floating in negative space LOL

  5. Questhelper mod does have an option that tells you all the quest you havent done by quest name and location. The only thing is you have to be in the area your trying to finish. Just type in /qh and its on the menu. Thanks great show.

  6. I would just like to point out a couple things quick about the DPS graphic:

    1) The addon that produced this data can be called into question.
    2) If the data was collected from a single guild, player skill can be called into question (and probably should).
    3) Festergut may have certain immunities or resistances that skew the dps from certain specs. This needs to be considered.

    There are a lot of reasons to doubt and question the data in this graphic.

  7. What is the name of the song at the end, the Journey Remix version? I know it is, “Any way you want it.” by Journey, But what version?

  8. Festergut is simply melee-friendly, which is why all casters are lower.

    Movement kills caster DPS since it’s not front-loaded. Melee can constantly attack on Festergut, casters have to stop casting when they move, which can cascade into a DPS loss. Affliction is the highest warlock spec because so much of their attacks are instant and DOTs keep damaging even when the warlock is moving. Arcane is overpowered currently, and has a very simple rotation.

    One fight will never tell you what the “true” DPS situation is. It does, however, show a disparity among melee classes, as Assassination’s single target DPS is way too far ahead of everyone else.

  9. Festergut really isn’t a good encounter to compare DPS. Melee, tanks and healers barely move, while ranged DPS are constantly hopping to spores and then spreading out again. I’d be more interested in the Rotface data, where everyone’s running around like scalded cats.

    The chart also does not reflect that while some classes and specs are the most efficient or powerful DPS, it’s still very beneficial to bring the classes and specs which provide raid utility. Some people do more than their DPS! Meters, gear scores and achievement records do not tell the whole story. Maybe there’s a shadow priest who brings up the rear in the meters, but brings the D.I.S.C.O. ball and the fish feasts and good recruits to the guild.

    People talk about class balance as if it’s even possible in every situation. Pfft.

  10. My main is a warlock and it doesn’t bother me at all who tops the dps charts. Yeah in a perfect world a pure dps class should be at the top before any other class but it’s not perfect. As some have pointed out, casters who can’t hit on the fly are hurt the most. I can’t comment on the fight as I haven’t done it but as long as I’m not spending 45 minutes in a heroic because I’m the only pure dps class in the group so we aren’t putting out enough dps to drop trash quick then I don’t care who’s on top

  11. Regardless of the fight, it is interesting to see the results as listed above.; even if only to see how melee stacks against melee.

    For addons, you shoudln’t HAVE to if you don’t want to, BUT there are certain mods (namely Deadly Boss Mod or DBM and Omen or Diamond threat meter) that make raiding a better experience. Maybe they take it down a notch, but for me it makes the fights just go a bit better, which = more fun for me.

    The macro person… google “WOW Macros 101″ or better WOW MACRO ___YourClassHere___ and see what kind of macros are out there. I am developer by trde so once I see the object names and format it comes fairly easy, but there are sites that break it down to the most basic level. Even on EJ they generally have common macros for a spec and tell you what it does, all you do copy and paste into your macro window.

  12. My biggest question is what is the source of the graph. I have looked for information like that at World of Logs, but have not been able to find it. It would be great to have some sort of collective dps meter to compare all reports. Was this something provided by Blizzard or was it a particular person’s/guild’s information?

  13. Ditto to Badpepsi’s comment. What is the title of that Journey remix and the end of the show? It was awesome!

  15. Im an alliance player and I wana see if u will mention mee LVL 71 draenei dk on nesingwary;) u guys are great keep it up:):):)

  16. hey was wondering if u guys would give me a shout on the show love what ur doin, im Stumpylocks aka Lokander the lvl 71 (75-77 by the time u shout this out if you do) Death Knight on Auchindoun realm. P.S stumpylocks is because my main is a gnome warlock .. power to the gnomes! we will one day take over ironforge! oh one last thing.. can you paint your face with my blood?

  17. Hey could ya put a shout out to refusetoheal the holy priest on Al’Akir good friend of mine and think he has one of the best names ever haha gurp gurp !

  19. “Arcane is overpowered currently” No it isn’t. If it were, it would be at the top of that chart. Listen, since70% of the fights in ICC are all heavily movement-based, casters are going to need extra dps to even stay average. i think this graph is a perfect illustration of that point. The issue of whether a spec is OP or not is all based on the context. Arc mages are OP in ToC but clearly, its assassination rogues who are OP in ICC.

  20. Hi!
    Shoutout as Gummisos the druid of the Bloodscalp server scored 100 mounts (101 with the Dragon Hawk) and to cheer on my friend who got Raven Lord and the White Chicken a few days ago =D

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