原创 Utgarde Keep beta impressions

 2008-8-6 14:53  1300 2 2 分类: 工程师职场

"I've run Utgarde Keep a few times on the Wrath beta using a couple of different characters now, and it's... not bad. I like the atmosphere, the mobs, the visuals and the bosses had decent flavor, but it was hard to take it seriously. It was really, really easy. I guess that aspect of things is to be expected, it's an entry level dungeon that needs to be balanced for people in full green gear. Still, I wish it was a little more challenging. Even in level 70 blues you can completely brute force your way through the dungeon, slamming your face on your keyboard willy nilly while the bad guys fall over. I don't really want the trash mobs to be terribly difficult, but even in pulls of four and five giant hulking vrykul there's not much reason to use all of that brand new CC some classes are getting. The bosses are all quite easy, too. However, each of them has a gimmick that will trip up players in greens and players in Sunwell epics all the same, and might cause you to wipe your first time seeing them. That will only really work once, though, if it even actually manages to kill you. They're just small, easily handled things that make you go, ""Oooh, duh!"" after you die. The last boss, Ingvar the Plunderer, is the most notable example of this. Our first time pulling him we all laughed as our tank got nailed for 21,000 damage. The second time pulling him, we knew exactly how to avoid it and the boss was a complete joke. The boss's hits besides that special ability are so weak that it actually has a stacking debuff mechanic so you can't make the encounter last forever by kiting him around the dungeon. Still, that hasn't stopped people from doing it.

Holy Paladins have solo'd him, and I actually took the final 65% of Ingvar's health off solo after everyone else died in a PUG once upon a time. I wouldn't say Utgarde is a bad dungeon, but they took that ""entry level dungeon"" bit a little too far. I still enjoy the zone simply because of visuals and story, but there's really no challenge to it. As I said, you might wipe to the bosses once, but after that you never really should ever again. If you know how to play your class or have decent gear (both is overkill) then this dungeon is trivial. " "As some of you have correctly pointed out in my last article, most warlocks use rank 1 of Drain Soul to return a soul shard (I've covered this in tips and tricks). Thank you for your comments as this reinforces my point that the new Soul Siphon buff to Drain Soul is pretty much pointless. Rank 6 of Drain Soul was used as an example to illustrate the fact that even at its highest rank, it's still a woefully inadequate spell to do damage with. There are also some who insist that Green Fire is not an issue that ""real, raiding"" warlocks care about. Yes, I understand that raiding is serious business and endgame warlocks are supposed to be single-minded shadowbolt-spamming machines. To the real, raiding warlocks out there, I'll quote this from my favorite movie this summer: ""Why so serious. "" Now that we've got that out of the way, some of you may have noticed that I didn't address the escape mechanism portion of the wishlist. I'd figured that this topic was intriguing enough to warrant its own article and a look at probably the most interesting ability - in terms of Warlock mechanics - that we'll get in the expansion: Demonic Circle. Circular applications In its current beta form, a Warlock can summon a Demonic Circle that will stick around for six minutes, and teleport back to it from 40 yards out.

This is like a clicking on a ""Home"" button on a webpage: as long as you're within the range of the circle, you can always go ""home"". It is still unclear whether the teleport effect is affected by line-of-sight, but my guess is that it will be subject to the same limitations as the mages' Blink. wow gold Another downside is the possibility of losing our pets as we plant the Demonic Circle. Creative warlocks are already thinking about neat applications for this ability: using it to zip around in the Arenas, a quick recall button for feinting maneuvers in the battlegrounds, or simply to shorten that run between the mailbox and auction house. Escape mechanism Most importantly, Demonic Circle is a big step up in our ""escape tech"" department. For the longest time since patch 1.8, Warlocks have been relying on Death Coil (with Fear and Howl of Terror, to a smaller extent) to create that space between themselves and their melee banes: rogues and warriors. While the fear/ horror effect is still a much-maligned ability for some classes, its defensive utility has become more limited against the very same melee classes that warlocks need to stay away from. This somewhat makes warlocks a ""win-more"" PvP class, with very little chance of turning the tables around by playing defensively if we're caught in a bad matchup or situation. Much of our PvP and Arena viability stems from not being shut down too quickly by rogues, warriors and other melee threats. wow gold Unfortunately, they have been doing just that, even with the SL/SL tough-it-out spec and stacking for Stamina and Resilience. Warlocks are pretty much toast or ""mushrooms"", when we're caught by melee DPSers. Warlock blogger, Jagoex*, looked at the Warlock vs melee issue and made an interesting case against Resilience. According to him, warlocks have little chance against melee classes because Resilience counters all aspects of our offensive power, namely crits, DoTs and drains. mp3 In other words, in the current state of the game where every opponent is stacking resilience, warlocks are simply not putting out enough damage to have a fighting chance against the auto-swing damage of melee DPSers. Demonic Circle gives warlocks the ability to get out of sticky situations, but it could also get us into stickier situations, since our teleport destination is visible to all. Consistent with the ""power with consequences"" flavor of warlocks in general, it is certainly not a get-out-of-jail-free card. We should see some interesting team plays against warlocks. I can just imagine a stealthed Rogue waiting at the circle, while his Warrior friend hustles the unsuspecting Warlock. PvE. wow gold What about the PvE applications of Demonic Circle. I'll expect this ability to come in useful in certain encounters, where warlocks can set up a safe spot to get to in a jiffy. A couple of raid encounters come to mind: Archimonde, for example. buy wow gold Demonic Circle will be handy to get away quickly from the Doomfire trails, or to avoid the fall damage from Air Burst more reliably, if mid-air teleportation works. Other than longer encounters, I don't see warlocks dropping circles with every trash pull, especially if it involves giving up our pets. A secondary effect that has been suggested earlier by Kalgan for Demonic Circle was to allow quicker pet summons if the Warlock is standing within the circle, akin to the effect of Fel Domination. We shall see if this gets into the final build of Wrath. Full circle With the homogenization of cloth gear in the expansion, warlocks may lose the passive survivability provided by a class-defining stat: Stamina. wow gold Warlock gear has traditionally been heavy on Stamina; will sharing the same gear make warlocks as squishy as priests and mages.

Priests, and particularly mages, have compensated for their lack of Stamina with their range of defensive abilities. The 12k-life question: will Demonic Circle be good enough to do that for Warlocks. "

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