Jov sez: Favorite Boss Abilities

It’s been nearly a month since I’ve actually had to come up with and write my own content in this place, so I’m really feeling quite rusty.  I’ve done some editing, some formatting, but I’m still behind the times on 3.2 (I’m finishing Ulduar, damnit, Yogg>all!  I don’t care about the Coliseum yet!)  So I’m trying to get myself back in the groove by looking back.  Back at bosses, that is.  Most people I’ve had these conversations with don’t really want to think about what would happen if Blizzard took the stuff I like in fights and strung them all together into one big uberboss.  I’d call it “Jov’s Boss of Death, Madness and Pain” or “Loss of Character Control with Infinite Mana, oh boy!”  They just call it “NO!”

Essence of the Red (Vaelastrasz the Corrupt — Blackwing Lair) :  Cast by Vael at the beginning of the encounter, this debuff gives essentially infinite mana, energy, rage, and runic power for 3 minutes.  Poor boy’s conflicted, he wants to be defeated, even when forced to fight.  It just leaves me with one question: Why does Alexstrasza hold out on us when we’re fighting Malygos, huh?

Incite Chaos (Blackheart the Inciter — Shadow Labyrinth) : Party-wide mind control?  Smiting the tank to the face (sorry, Tars)?  Standing in Volley and spam healing myself?  Wacky hijinks remind me of some pugs I’ve been in.

Insanity (Herald Volazj — Ahn’kahet: The Old Kingdom) : This is Incite Chaos plus plus.  Not only are you fighting your buddies, you need to KILL them as well.  And what can be better than encounter designed around the pwning of your friends?  Plus, you get to hear them complain about how hard YOU are to kill as a healer.

Gravity Lapse (Kael’thas Sunstrider — The Eye/Magister’s Terrace) : Flying is fun, and it’s a nice change when you actually have control over your character while doing it.

Shadow Whip (Omor the Unscarred — Hellfire Ramparts) : Being flung around in the air is fun.  Cause for many a squee’d “Wheee!” in vent.

Shadow Portal (Hatmaster Darkmaster Gandling –  Scholomance) : I had no idea this was coming the first time I did this fight.  The “wtf” that followed (coupled with “You want me to KILL THINGS?!”) was apparently quite amusing for everyone else in the group.

Massive Geyser (Gahz’ranka — Zul’Gurub) : Shooting up in the air is for fun.  Especially once we learned to make certain we were in deep enough water we wouldn’t die when we landed.

Soul Steal (Exarch Maladaar — Auchenai Crypts) : I always loved seeing my darkside mindflay the crap out of the DPS.  Even when I was attacking myself, I was like “Go me!”

Little Red Riding Hood (The Big Bad Wolf — Karazhan) : Watching the giant Tauren in plate being turned into a cute little gnome in a dress is so totally worth it.

Slag Pot (Ignis the Furnace Master — Ulduar) : This is on the list just because it’s so awesome to call out “<name> in the crotch-pot” in vent.

Seri sez: Transfer or Treason? You decide.

It’s been a busy news week in Azeroth, with all the patch information coming from the PTR. However, perhaps the most interesting bit of news so far has nothing to do with the patch. On Monday, one of the CMs broke the news that Blizzard is working on a paid faction change service.

That’s right… at some point in the future, World of Warcraft players will be able to transfer their characters between Alliance and Horde. I’ll give you a moment to process this, in case you hadn’t heard already.

Ok, that’s long enough.

HOLY CRAP.

No, this is not a joke. The thread was actually updated on Wednesday to include some answers to common questions that came up when the accouncement was first made:

Q. Will we be able to switch between the races on our own faction?
A.. No. Players will only be able to switch to a race of the opposite faction.

So much for my dream of being a sexy female Orc. Le sigh. One can only hope that once they get the kinks ironed out of the process that they’ll consider making this part of character recustomization. However, they’ve said in the past that they wanted to avoid people minmaxing their characters to the extent of declaring one race “best” for a given class. I guess I can see where they’re coming from, but it sounds kind of like an excuse to avoid balancing racial abilities to me.

Q. Will I be able to choose the race on the opposite faction that I want to change to?
A.. Yes, but you will only be able to switch to a race that has your class type available to it. So if you play a human paladin, you’d only be able to change to a blood elf paladin.

Fair enough. Though I would love it if through some evolution of the overall game story arc the Druid class became open to additional races.

Q.How much will it cost?
A.. We do not have further information on this at this point in time.

No surprise there.

Q.Will I be able to switch back to my original faction but a different race?
A.. No. You will only be able to switch back to your originally chosen race.

Er… okay, I don’t really get the logic here but I guess that would prevent someone from using this service just to change their character’s race. Which, as mentioned previously, Blizzard doesn’t seem to want to do.

Q.. How will the switch between reputation, gear, mounts, etc be handled?
A.. We’ll have more details for you at a later point in time, though we plan to keep these as close to a reflection of the other faction as much as possible.

I’ll be curious to hear more details about this down the road. I think anyone who has taken the time to grind a reputation with another race’s faction would not want to lose that perk, but how would they determine which race’s faction it would translate to? Lottery could be fun, but would probably irk some folks.

Q.How often can you change your faction?
A..We do not have any information to share on this at this point in time, however we will have restrictions on the frequency by which players can change their faction.

Another no-brainer, IMO.

Q. How will this affect the balance of Horde and Alliance on the realms?
A.. We are taking great care in how we implement this new service in order to maintain balance between the factions on the realms but do not have any further details to share.

This is an interesting question. On most realms, Alliance outnumber Horde though the exact ratio varies. Obviously, Blizzard doesn’t want to create further imbalance… it will be interesting to see if they decide to pair this service with server transfers to help *create* more balance between the factions.

On a more personal level, as a Horde re-roll I have several characters from Alliance that I would have considered bringing over to the Horde once upon a time. Now, I’m not sure I would. I’m pretty happy with my Priest/Rogue, and my alts for the other classes I enjoy most (Druid/Warlock) are now 60+. The benefit of bringing the old characters over is that they would come with a good chunk of gold, reputations, old tradeskill patterns that are more difficult to obtain now, epic flight and level 70 raid gear to give them a head start in Northrend. Decisions, decisions.

I can also see this having a big effect on recruitment, opening up the pool of potential applicants but also increasing competition for said applicants. This might hurt Horde more than Alliance, as we are generally the underdog when it comes to server population and raid progression.

So, what do you think about this announcement? Is the freedom to move between the factions going to create more problems than it solves? Would you use it?