Game studios are starting the end of year blitz. Already Castlevania is impressing and Enslaved is surprising. Not much time to enjoy them, though, before Fable III and Force Unleashed 2 land.
Oh yeah, and there's that WoW thing, too. 4.01 and Cataclysm and all that. You know...if you're in to that sort of thing.
Doom and gloom is flying around the blogosphere about kitty DPS. It makes me sad, a little. But then I remember a few things:
1) I don't get to DPS much anyway. I mostly tank. So this isn't really hurting my core role.
2) I've gone through this before with the nerf of Bear health pools and armor with 3.0 and Wrath. And I'm still awesome.
Cats were a joke for DPS in BC. Seriously. We were less than second-rate. Bears got all the love on the Feral side. (Prior to BC, all of Feral was a joke from what I've heard. I wasn't end-game back then, but I'll believe it.)
Wrath came along and cats became damn good. A half-way capable cat could dominate trash dps (nothing currently in the game competes with kitty Swipe on large packs) and a good cat could challenge the pure DPS classes for meter spots on boss fights.
(Bears also became the best tanks in the game, I believe. But I'm biased.)
Now we're sliding back in the other direction a little bit (I'm told...still haven't seen for myself). It's only natural. When you're the best there is, the only way you have to go is down.
Did I really just say that? Ferals are the best?
I did.
Search your feelings. You know it to be true.
Step back and take a breath. Let Blizz do some final tweaking before the patch and let the theory crafters flex their muscle to help us find optimal rotations. If we're still truly so low, have faith that we'll be brought back up to competitive again. If Blizz can do it with Fury warriors and Frost mages, they can do it with kitties, too.
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Hi San,
ReplyDeleteIf kitties end up losing, say, 10% against other classes, I'd be cool with that. Some of the fun new tools that we're getting would definitely compensate for that, at least for me, and it wouldn't matter as much now that it seems dungeons/raids will be more about tactics and less about DPS racing in the expansion.
And I hope you're right - hopefully, they won't dump the patch before a rough numbers pass, and that's all that it would need to be: a rough pass, where they go "You know what? If we jack cat DPS up 30% for the time being, it will at least make them semi-viable There. Done." If something like that happens before the patch drops, I'll be ok, because it means that I can PvP somewhat effectively, etc. But if not, I may follow Jacemora's advice and grab boomkin gear so that I can use it in dungeons as I level (or resto, but I'm a wuss about healing, quite honestly).
As I said, I hope you're right, but I'm not holding my breath. The doom and gloom posts (lol) have been happening around the blogosphere for the last couple of months now, and while I hate feeling anxious about it, I also want to be practical - the chance is equally as good that it either will or won't be somewhat fixed soon.
I guess we may see what happens by Tuesday! :)
As far as the "most wonderful time of the year," I am totally enjoying the fact that football is on and the baseball playoffs are getting into full swing. It does seem that October is the busiest time of the year in sports, because you do get that intersection between the baseball playoffs, the middle of NFL, and the beginning of the NBA/NHL seasons. Lots of good stuff to watch, read about and talk about!
And hopefully, Fable III will make some UI changes that will bring me back to the series. Full-time minimap, please!
Good times :)
A lot of specs are balanced around 85 currently, so I have to take everything coming from the PTR with a grain of salt. Also, I expect the biggest balance pass is actually going to be patch 4.0.8 or something like that, possibly even 4.1.
ReplyDeleteIt makes sense to give it some time so the masses can get a hold of things, instead of buffing hard now and people finally find the magic rotation, then suddenly they have to nerf the heck out of cats.