Episode 34 up
So yeah, last arena episode I think I got a little misunderstood because of my negativity toward welfare epics. I think my point came out a little wrong. It wasn't intended to sound like I was some elitist prick. So to make it up, I thought I'd throw up a pure Arena guideline episode...seeing how Season 4 is pending in a week. Hope you enjoy!
Favorite Macros
/focus
/cast [target=focus] Polymorph
/cast [target=playername] Blessing of Freedom
/stopcasting
/cast dispel
/stopcasting
/cast [target=focus]Counterspell
Rogue shiv <3 this macro!
#showtooltip Shiv
/equipslot [modifier:alt] 17 Vindicator's Brand; 17 Gladiator's Bonecracker
/cast shiv
For more: http://www.arenajunkies.com/macros/
Mods: Proxmio, Afflicted, Quartz, Aloft
Season 4 Notes Blue Post *note changes about points received if team rating differe 150 points from personal rating*
3 comments:
Mods mentioned in the podcast:
*Proximo (makes boxes showing enemies as you mouse over them, helps to decide who to target)
http://www.google.com/search?q=Proximo
*"Any cool down mod" Afflicted specifically mentioned; shows the cooldowns of your enemies
http://www.google.com/search?q=afflicted+wow+mod
*Quartz; shows the spell casting of your "focus" target
http://www.google.com/search?q=quartz+wow+mod
*Aloft; Helps show the "health bars" of the enemies to help you stay away from those dps-ing you, especially when trying to keep your enemy on the other side of the pillars to keep them out of line of site
Thanks for the tips :) I've been listening to the podcast for awhile, and as you say "WoW for Life"
This discussion on who deserves what gear has become really really draining to most of the game community at this point I think. I’m new to your show and really like what I’ve heard so far, but I guess I’ve found the episode that actually has content I disagree with. I suppose since the topic is here I will give back what I think, you can put this in with the twenty responses you have probably gotten at this point to argue the point but at least I can promise you I’m not doing it to flame, I just get so opinionated that I have to talk when I hear something I disagree with, something you might be able to relate with.
I feel the need to point out how you seem to contradict yourself later in the episode when discussing poorly skilled PvPers coat tailing behind people who are skilled to get gear you feel they don’t deserve when it was within the first five minutes of the episode that you stated how this isn’t possible in PvP as it is in PvE, that this is what you admire about PvP. Obviously I won’t argue that it does not happen, but the fact that it happens in both is something I feel that needs to be shown before moving on. The distinctions between these two forms of play are very few in my mind. Both require knowledge, time, spec and gearing to perform well and, while you can point out minor differences like the non-existence of tanks (not counting healing classes that naturally aggro by their “presence” ability), these differences involve actual gameplay and not methods of gearing, methods that mirror each other in time, energy and fairness.
What am I saying exactly? I’m saying there is no such thing as “welfare epics” in Warcraft, it is a myth (at least on this topic). Welfare implies that no work was done, that no time and energy was in play on the part of the person behind the keyboard and it was freely given, but this isn’t what we actually see in the past of arena, nor its current incarnation. While it is possible to see people sporting season two and three gear from a loosing streak in arena, it should be noted that this takes a long time to acquire these items when compared to the time it can take those who are successful. This to me just mirrors our lives in terms of how we earn any sort of currency; if you work a low paying job you still can get the nice flat screen TV the guy in the three story house down the street has, it will just take you a few hard months of saving. This is not the same thing as just finding a free TV and the people in the large houses cursing your luck because they worked to buy it, this just doesn’t happen in this game, games like this follow rules and are not so chaotic, things are too ordered for people to find free things lying around. There is also no government fund passing out free points to people who do not have them as you imply by the usage of the term “welfare.” What we have are just a variety of occupations that pay and you come across as a person who merely looks down on those who use other methods to reach their goals; these methods involve lower paying arena games due to simply a lack of success and also involves people who show over success in PvE where the raid group is not in need of more tier gear allows people to go for PvP gear.
I do find it unreasonable to bash players with low scores in general. Your program for this subject has you hammering them for being unskilled and getting “free” gear over the course of many months, yet this makes you sound as if you are ignorant of the importance of actually having good gear to acquire high end scores. Warcraft is a game of math first, all else second when we discuss battles. You can talk of who has what skills until you are blue in the face, but 70% of the battle was determined before the arena doors ever opened, decided by class/spec/gear. You lost a lot of battles when you first started learning how to play each toon and worked to gear them out in PvP gear and I can make this generalization of you because we all did, it is normal. That is how it works. You learn about how to make the 30% of each battle that you can control after the doors open go your way and, in the process, gain the points/honor you need to get the gear that will have the larger effect of how later battles will go.
I also found your comparison of the hypothetical BoJ drops from boss wipes to the current arena points system to be highly flawed. If you spent months and months wiping and no raid boss ever goes down, blizzard has still made a system that gives you some rewards, even if minor. Trash mobs drop epics rather frequently to be honest with you. My guild can walk out of a “BoJ Kara night” with about five epics, typically sharded, from trash alone. While this would take forever to gear a guild, it still shows blizzards willingness to allow success even in failure, to reward their customers for participating in the time-sink. I would also estimate that, in terms of drop frequency, you’d get more epics from trash after dividing them amongst your raiders if you did kara each week then you would losing arena matches and waiting for that epic.
The basic point of all this was that the systems still mirror one another. You do well in PvP/PvE, you can expect better gear to help your progression; you do poorly and you can expect it to just take you forever. Blizzard simply cannot only reward players who can put in twenty hours a day when it comes to gear, if they did we wouldn’t have ten million other players to give them money- the money that keeps the game afloat, keeps development crews working on fresh content, keeps allowing you new gear to acquire. To put it simply, the system you hate is the reason you even have arena to play in the first place. If blizzard had your elitist mindset on this topic they never would have had the fan base that has allowed them to come so far and get them to this point in the game.
I do agree with your position on the topic of players being able to use gold to buy their way into teams for temporary positions for gear. I consider this vastly different from the other situations where people are learning and gearing in order to do better while losing. Personal ratings were a nice addition to the game for arena in the same way that the AFK changes were for battlegrounds. I don’t really stand against these methods because it allows people gear easier though, I dislike the methods of gearing above because I think they actually ruin BGs and Arena. I have zero problems with people getting gear that I might not have gotten so easily, “Online experiences may change” and I accept that. To put it into perspective, I would consider the headless horseman epics of the easiest to get and I still congratulate people on their drops. Life it too short to get so worked up on who has what gear and how they got it.
Oh and raiders do have que times, we just call them “trash.” =P
Little joke and I’m glad arena que times are better too.
Great radio program in general. I will continue to listen.
oops, sorry. I think I should have put that comment under Ep33. I was listening to this from old to new since I just found you and stopped at 33 since I was at work =P
Post a Comment