Metaplanar Babel

Somewhat to my own amazement, I’ve been having a lot of fun in WoW lately. After giving a druid and a priest a try on Horde, I gave in to the Dark Side and made a warlock, which has since cruised to level 33 36 39 with minimal effort. It’s funny, because I never really wanted to play one at all - yet here I am, having more fun with the game than ever. In a way, I think the class is poorly represented - a lot of people seem to focus on the soloing ability and think that means they suck in groups, which, as we discovered last night, is complete bullshit. Like the hunter, the warlock is a class that’s easy to solo (though the warlock isn’t quite as easy as a hunter) but very difficult to play well in a group. The primary reason for that is because a good warlock (like a good hunter) is typically doing 5 or 6 different things at once, especially in a difficult instance.

For example, last night, Omasu (32-33 shaman), Ravenwight (30-31 warrior), and Vharie (my 33 warlock) decided to give Razorfen Kraul a shot. RFK is an instance in the Southern Barrens with lots of uh.. gnolls or kobolds or something. Most of the instance ranges from level 25 to 31+, all elites. Typically, the place would be a good challenge for a full group of players our levels. We decided to trio it, however, and somehow it worked. I had such a blast - I spent most of the fights seducing one of the mobs (like mez) with my succubus pet, Jhorva, putting my mad DoTs on the current target, and occassionally offtanking something else (not often though). I found it amusing to see that I had more hitpoints than either of my teammates and was almost as durable as the shaman despite my cloth caster status. We did die a few times, mostly to extremely large pulls (read: more than 4) or to a couple of nasty boss encounters that we weren’t quite expecting. But, thanks to my soulstone rezzing and the shaman’s self-rez, we never had to run back from a wipe, so we were back up and running very quickly.

It’s amazing how much a warlock can do under the right circumstances. I was doing damage, weakening the mob, crowd controlling as necessary, acting as secondary damage through my succubus pet, preventing runners, positioning mobs so mez didn’t get broken, etc. It was great to know that I could handle a bit of aggro, so the warrior didn’t have to drop everything and run over to save my ass and the shaman didn’t have to chain heal me to keep me up. I occassionally ran into a few mana problems (not many), but those will be mostly fixed when I get Dark Pact at 40. I felt extremely useful and vital to the group, without actually being able to directly affect my teammates at all - defensive in an offensive way, sort of. I was able to keep to the back, keep an eye on things, help with pulling thanks to Seduce.. I never really felt like I wasn’t in some control of the situation.

It’s very interesting, because traditionally I haven’t liked the characters who couldn’t directly aid their teammates (via healing, usually). But now I find myself really enjoying a character who has huge amounts of control over a situation and can very easily turn the tide of battle, without ever casting anything like a heal. It’s almost liberating not to have to watch life bars. I don’t, because I can’t do anything about them. I watch the battle and try to even the odds as best as I can, while trying to do as much damage as possible at the same time. Finally, I’ve found a class where my ability to multi-task is being tested. I love it! It’s a challenge, but not so hard and tedious that it’s frustrating. Of course, it helps that I have a steady group of friends who are also very good at what they do.

Best of all, I get a free flaming nightmare of doom at 40. I guess I really am evil at heart.

I could be doing something worthwhile with my time while the WoW servers are down, but instead, I’m sitting here, trying to remember what I was thinking about on my drive home. See, I had this interesting, profound thought on the way home that I was going to blog about, but alas, now it has flown away, probably to be lost forever. No matter, I suppose one can always talk about nothing in the absence of the profound.

I’m a little dismayed to find myself out of reading material. After finishing Harry Potter and the Halfblood Prince and Snow Crash, I’m left with nothing to read and no real thoughts as to where to go next. I did stumble upon an interesting passage in Snow Crash that, in my infinite vanity, I’m considering quoting over in the sidebar because it vaguely relates to my semi-random blog title.

Babel is a gateway in our minds, a gateway that. . .gave us the ability to think - moved us from a materialistic world to a dualistic world - a binary world - with both a physical and a spiritual component.

I find this quote interesting mostly because it very much follows the idea behind my blog title. Metaplanes.net came about as a domain because my husband and I were interested in so many other “worlds”, like Barsaive, an alternate (?) future, Norrath, Azeroth, and any number of others. In Shadowrun, the Metaverse is the magical term for the infinite span of universes, or planes, in existence. Amusingly, in Snow Crash, the Metaverse is simply a vision of the evolution of the Internet. Anyway, I always considered “metaplanes” to simply be a synonym for the Metaverse. The site itself could be considered one of my gateways into not only the digital or binary world, but all the other various “worlds” out there in cyberspace. Kind of an ironic thing, since I mostly latched onto the Babel aspect of my title because 1) I can’t concentrate on any one topic, so I tend to speak multiple “languages” (computer-speak, gamer-speak, etc) and 2) quite simply because I babble on endlessly (as you are all seeing right now) at times. Anyway, I really liked the line from the book because it seems to fit so well with my own thoughts for my site. As I said, it’s a bit of vanity to think that those lines are almost tailor-made for my site, but I guess we all have our little quirks.

I had a realization this afternoon on my way to car from work. I’d been talking off and on with cruinh and Jon about what to name our Horde guild in WoW, and I’d also been reading a post over at the ‘forces about Brendan’s new design and his ideas behind it. It occurred to me suddenly how much I actually care about my online representation, both through the appearance of my blog here and the appearance of my WoW characters. I’ve never been one to give much thought to my physical appearance beyond the basics, but now, I care about what “I” look like online. I care how my online presence is represented. I care what my blog is named, what my characters are named, what our guild is named. It’s weird. In a way, I care a lot about what I say, because that’s part of what I look like online too. I’ve never been able to understand how so many people can use the anonymity of the ‘net to be horrible assholes - I can’t separate who I am from what I do online. But it’s strange to find that I care about things online that I don’t really otherwise..

Looks like we may be switching over to Horde, despite all the time spent on Alliance. Jon had previously dragged his feet about it, because he liked Diantha a lot, but for some reason, now he’s changed his mind. I’m happy, I think, because it means I’ll finally get to play my long-abandoned troll shaman, who was the character I played in open beta and made the first time I logged into the game upon release. I kind of hate to stop playing Jori though, because she’s been so much fun..

I’m hoping that all of our friends won’t be mad at us for the switch. I know a few are already making Horde characters (or already had them), but most of the guild flat-out rejected the idea of switching a few months ago. Things have changed a bit since then, so it’s possible some of them have changed their minds, but I guess we’ll have to see. We’d like to get another guild going on Horde side, if we can.

It’s kind of funny.. I made an orc hunter to play with while Jon was catching Idranien up to Jori, but somehow that ended up making him want to play Horde too. Part of the reason I’d like the switch to stick is because the Alliance areas are so crowded any more. Granted, at higher levels Horde and Alliance share hunting grounds, so it may not matter, but things already feel less hectic.

It’s been a lot of fun to see things from the other side. I’ve got new quests to do, I get to see all kinds of new items that are quest rewards that aren’t available to Alliance, and I get to see all these really badass looking Horde characters. It’s really amazing how formidable a Tauren or Orc in full platemail can look, and the Horde priest PVP armor is just wicked, all black with spikes and stuff. I haven’t seen any shaman yet that really stood out to me, aside from the NPC ambassador from the Frostmanes, but I’m sure that’ll change.

Hopefully our friends will understand (especially Mom)..

I made up a flickr site the other day to host screenshots from my time in WoW. Is it sad that this is my alternative to photos with friends and family?

I know, it seems like I’ve vanished off the face of the earth, right? I just haven’t had much to say of late. I’ve been really busy at work with this book vendor RFP thing, plus a bunch of other stuff, so there hasn’t been much time to think.

I’ve been playing a lot of WoW lately. Jori’s so much fun that I can’t believe I didn’t make a warrior sooner. She looks badass, she is badass, and most importantly, she’s a lot of fun to play. Jon’s been playing up his priest and cruinh’s played his mage some, and let me tell you, that whole idea of the holy trinity? It’s true. Damn but we own as that trio. We’re all 40+ now, so hopefully we’ll be doing more instances and stuff with those 3. I just can’t believe how much fun it all is..nothing else I’ve ever played in an MMO has hit me like this. I guess I finally got the bug~

Here’s the new-and-improved philosopher of the meaning of life, the universe, and everything:

Just something to tide you all over until I get back.

This is it, the week I’ve been planning for several months. Jon and I are flying down to Texas to visit some friends from college. Neither of us has ever been to Texas, so not only do we get to see friends we’ve only been able to keep up with online, but we also get to experience a new city. I know cruinh has some stuff planned for us, including the Austin Air Guitar Finals. Woot! We’re also planning to force cruinh to watch at least one movie that he was supposed to watch a long time ago. (Upon doing a search for that movie, I discovered that there’s a sequel in the works. I don’t know whether to be ecstatic or horrified..) Hopefully he’ll show us some of the games he’s been playing recently; I especially want to see Jade Empire, which actually had a review on MSNBC. I’m sure there will be much playing of Tekken 5, perhaps some Hunter: the Reckoning, some other movies that he wants us to watch. Plus, I’ll get to show off the preciouss. Good times, right? Can’t wait, though I’m not overly fond of flying any more, thanks to all the craziness at the airports these days. Anywho, we’re flying out Wednesday and won’t be back til Sunday, so don’t expect much in the way of updates between then (I know, you’re all crushed, right? )

In other news, my warrior in WoW is almost old enough to know the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. She graduated to platemail at 40 and just got a new sword too, though I forgot to take a screenshot of that (I’ll put one up later, since it’s awesome looking). Overall, I’ve been extremely happy with how she plays and with the game in general (it’s amazing how much getting a mount changes the enjoyability of the game..). I’m not the best player in the world, but I’m learning - it’s just hard to learn how to tank when you’re consistently playing in instances that are too high level for you, without a healer. Still, I’m sure I’ll figure it out; so far, I tend to take the most deaths, so I guess I’m not doing anything too wrong. I’m also psyched because the changes on the Test server for warriors completely rock for the fury/arms, dual wield build that Jori is. Whoohoo~

From a post on the WoW forums, mostly for my own benefit and future reference.

Okay, got home and bashed it out with pen and paper.

Remember, this is raw base DPS, with only weapons, dual wield and attack power factored in.

For a two-handed weapon of “2h_dps” DPS,

2h_dps = DPS of the two-handed weapon
2h_hit_rate = 95%
main_dps = DPS of the main-hand weapon
off_dps = DPS of the off-hand weapon
attack_power = Warrior attack power
two_handed_effective_dps = (two_handed_dps + attack_power_dps) * 2h_hit_rate

To find the DPS required of a one-hand weapon to produce equivalent dual-wield DPS to a standard two-handed approach…

I’m basing this on two_handed_effective_dps, because it’s easier to work with the miss rate and AP bonus already added, as they’re a big part of dual-wield and a bit hard to extract.

main_dps = two_handed_effective_dps*(100/95)

Remove the miss rate from the mix.

…….. = main_dps * (2/3)

Because we’re dealing with the main hand, if you have equivalent DPS in both hands, the main hand is doing 2/3 of the damage as the offhand is half damage.

…….. = main_dps * (100/76)

Remove the dual-wield missrate from the mix.

……… = main_dps - attack_power_dps

Remove the attack power bonus dps from the mix.

At that point you should have the DPS you need to look for in your one-handed weapons to give you equivalent dual-wield DPS (over time) compared to the 2h that you put into the equation.

I think it’s all finally balanced. :p

And an example:

Okay, as an example, let’s take the Blackhand Doomsaw (fairly popular polearm), and load up with 700 attack power (fairly easy to get).

Doomsaw has a DPS of 54, so we want to find the DPS required of our 1h weapons to make dual wield equivalent in terms of DPS.

attack_power_dps = attack_power / 14
attack_power_dps = 50

two_handed_effective_dps = (two_handed_dps+attack_power_dps) * 2h_hit_rate
two_handed_effective_dps = (54 + 50) * 0.95
two_handed_effective_dps = 104 * 0.95
two_handed_effective_dps = 98.8

Okay, we’ve figured out what the Blackhand Doomsaw is dishing out, with only factoring in the 5% miss rate and the 700 attack power.

main_dps = two_handed_effective_dps*(100/95)
main_dps = 98.8 * (100/95)
main_dps = 104 * (2/3)
main_dps = 69.33 (recurring) * (100/76)
main_dps = 91.228070175438596491228070175439 - attack_power_dps
main_dps = 91.228070175438596491228070175439 - 50
main_dps = 41.228070175438596491228070175439

So basically, you need two 41DPS one-handed weapons to compete with the 2h DPS of the Doomsaw.

Ran into this interesting Nelfling NPC in Theramore the other day. I wish her armor was actually available somewhere, even if it sucked. She just looks so awesome. Hopefully Jori will continue to look cool. It annoys me how careful I have to be with her armor to avoid the platemail thong look. There should be more stuff like Pained or like the Might set.