Voices of Wrath

Back when I reviewed the Cataclysm cinematic, one of the negative points I mentioned was the fact that I didn't really care for Deathwing's voice. This then made me think about what I thought about WOTLK's voice acting in general, what I thought was good and what was... less good.

The latter doesn't take that long to sum up, as it only consists of two points really. The first one is simply Arthas himself. I didn't have a problem with his voice acting per se, but I swear that the pitch of his voice changed every single time he made an appearance. People joked about how sitting on the Frozen Throne all this time had given the guy a cold, but what it came down to in the end was that the voice of the major villain of the expansion changing all the time hurt immersion and generally gave the impression of Blizzard doing unusually shoddy work with him, as if the sound editor randomly came up with a new mix of settings every time they had to record more voice work for Arthas.

The second thing that I didn't like was that all the NPCs just talked too damn much. I know that certain upcoming MMOs are really priding themselves in the fact that they include a lot of voice work, but personally I don't think that this is a good thing. An MMO is not an audio book, is not a film, is not a single player game... it's not a medium where you should have to spend extended amounts of time just sitting back to listen. If a boss wants my attention they have to be snappy; otherwise I'm just going to tune their yapping out eventually, in order to focus on, you know, actually playing. (Gruul's "Come... and die" is one of my favourite lines to this day, simply for being short and to the point.)

For all the time that I've spent in ICC in the past year, I'd have trouble quoting most of the bosses from there, with the exception of Sindy's terribad "BETRAAAY you" line. I mean, I know that they talk a lot and I have a vague idea of what it's about, but what I really hear in my head is something like "Arthas blah blah Tirion blah blah Bolvar blah blah". Not really memorable to me at least.

That said, when they don't go into endless monologues, a lot of WOTLK's NPCs had some pretty good lines coupled with solid voice acting. My personal favourites from Wrath's five-man instances are:

1. Keristrasza: Finish it! Finish it! Kill me, or I swear by the Dragonqueen you'll never see daylight again!

I have a suspicion that her voice work was done by the same woman that did Sindragosa, only without the annoying screechiness, and she does a pretty good job at conveying emotion with her voice (maybe overacting just a little bit, but that's okay). Whatever you thought of Keristrasza's story in general, her last lines in the Nexus are a heart-wrenching mix of aggressive insanity (threatening to kill the players) and what's left of her original personality (swearing by the Dragonqueen and wanting her torment to end). I like all of her lines really, including the "Preserve? Why?" upon pulling her and her last words asking for the Life-Binder to preserve her after all.

2. Scourgelord Tyrannus: Rimefang! Trap them within the tunnel! Bury them alive!

Scourgelord Tyrannus is actually one of those characters that talk way too much, even if he has a very nice voice, but the above line shows that he can get to the point when he thinks it's urgent. I've been known to randomly call this one out whenever we're fighting Rimefang in ICC.

3. Skarvald the Constructor: Pagh! What sort of necromancer lets death stop him? I knew you were worthless!

I love this line for the simple reason that I've always felt that the Scourge's necromancers have a tendency to look a bit sissy, and Skarvald not only shares these feelings, he expresses them better than I ever could.

4. Ionar: Master... you have guests.

Ionar must be British or something, because that's quite the understatement when talking about people storming your castle and slaughtering everything in sight. Even in death he retains the elemental equivalent of a stiff upper lip, and I can dig that.

5. The Black Knight: No! I must not fail... again...

I always thought that the Black Knight was a bit of a weird character, because on the one hand he's supposed to be this really powerful Scourge lieutenant, but on the other hand he's very obviously a Monty Python joke. How do you reconcile these two images? Well, I thought his last words do a decent job at it, by showing that his constant getting up again is not a sign of overconfidence, but rather the last desperate attempt of someone who knows that he messed up before and can't afford to do so again. The way that last line is delivered is enough to actually make me feel sorry for him a little every time.

The "So bad it's good" award: Devourer of Souls: You dare look upon the host of souls?! I SHALL DEVOUR YOU WHOLE!

If you've ever done Forge of Souls, this needs no explanation. You just want to tell this guy to chill the hell out.

And my five favourite voices from WOTLK raids...

1. Sara/Yogg-Saron: I am the lucid dream. The monster in your nightmares. The fiend of a thousand faces. Cower before my true form. BOW DOWN BEFORE THE GOD OF DEATH!

This phase-transitioning line is probably the single most amazing piece of voice acting I've ever heard in WoW. Even just playing it back in my head gives me the shivers. The transition from Sara's almost sensual voice to Yogg's fury is just so incredibly well done; it completely blew me away the first time I heard it.

2. Thorim: I remember you... In the mountains...

I never actually got what the fuss was about with this line. I remember our main tank and raid leader repeating it ad nauseam and I just didn't see the appeal, but the longer they went on, the more ingrained it became into my own brain. Then I found out that it had even become an internet meme and... well, now I can't help it anymore either. (Seriously, search YouTube for this phrase and you'll find loads more.)

3. XT-002 Deconstructor: New toys? For me? I promise I won't break them this time!

While having to hear XT's voice over and over again whenever I run past someone with the mini pet has demoted his voice from amusing to annoying for me, I still have to give credit where credit is due: I still remember pulling him for the first time and vent erupting into laughter upon hearing his squeaky voice - and I know we weren't the only guild that had this kind of reaction.

4. Lord Jaraxxus: You face Jaraxxus, eredar lord of the Burning Legion!

I suppose I have a bit of a thing for eredar lords, considering how many times I abused Malchezaar's lines to announce to people at large that they weren't facing our raid alone, but the legions we command! Jaraxxus has a similar kind of thing going on, and like Thorim he's made it to YouTube as well. Hard to get that out of your head again after a while.

5. Anub'Rekhan: I hear little hearts beating. Yesss... beating faster now. Soon the beating will stop.

Being a product recycled from Vanilla, Naxxramas wasn't exactly innovative and new in terms of voice acting, but bloody hell, Anub'Rekhan's voice is still amazing. Especially the line quoted above is just so creepy, delivered in a way that makes it very clear that the big bug won't just eat you, he's also perv enough to enjoy it in a very naughty way. /shudder

The "So bad it's good" award: Sindragosa: Suffer, mortals, as your pathetic magic betrays you!

There couldn't really have been any other choice for this. There's just something about Sindy's voice that makes it grate so very, very badly, and you'll hate her for that alone - not to mention the many wipes that most of us will have gone through on this fight at some point. However, making a boss hated by the players is not entirely a bad thing, and if nothing else that BETRAAAY is very memorable. Though personally I almost prefer her intro line of: "You are fools to have come to this place! The icy winds of Northrend will consume your souls!" I now find myself wanting to continue any sentence that starts with "You are fools" with this line.

Just how fail is YOUR Halls of Lightning pug?

Answer the following questions honestly and add up the number of points next to your answers. Consult the table at the end to find out just how badly your pug rates compared to the worst possible case. Note that general pug failures like the tank being unable to hold aggro or unnecessary wipes are not included in this questionnaire, because these things can happen anywhere. This is about people showing a very specific kind of incompetence that can only be observed in Halls of Lightning.

The test

1. Is your tank trying to skip groups of trash mobs by hugging a wall very tightly and outmaneuvering patrols, and it inevitably backfires?
Yes 1 / No 0

2. Does this happen more than once?
Yes 1 / No 0

3. Are people running around like headless chickens whenever they get arc welded?
Yes 1 / No 0

4. Does anyone actually manage to kill themselves that way?
Yes 1 / No 0

5. Is anyone but the tank getting hit by General Bjarngrim's whirlwind?
Yes 1 / No 0

6. Are the ranged dps and/or the healer getting hit by General Bjarngrim's whirlwind?
Yes 1 / No 0

7. Are people attacking the slags the moment the tank aggroes them or is the healer spamming heals on the tank before the group has made it to the stairs?
Yes 1 / No 0

8. Are people standing in the slags' blast waves as you dps them down?
Yes 1 / No 0

9. Are the ranged dps and/or the healer standing in the slags' blast waves as you dps them down?
Yes 1 / No 0

10. Does anyone die due to this?
Yes 1 / No 0

11. Are people trying to kill Volkhan's adds instead of dpsing the boss?
Yes 1 / No 0

12. In the hallway with the statues that come to life, do people run ahead of the tank (being feared doesn't count)?
Yes 1 / No 0

13. Do you observe anyone using any sorts of anti-fear measures available to them in this hallway (warriors breaking it, will of the forsaken, tremor totem, fear ward etc.)?
Yes 0 / No 1

14. On Ionar, do people inexplicably hug the rest of the party when they get static overload?
Yes 1 / No 0

15. When Ionar disperses, do people run away from him?
Yes 0 / No 1

16. Does anyone run off to the side and aggro an extra group of mobs during the disperse?
Yes 1 / No 0

17. Is your whole party getting hit by forked lightning from Stormforged Constructs?
Yes 1 / No 0

18. Is anyone except a hunter repeatedly getting charged by Titanium Vanguards?
Yes 1 / No 0

19. Are poison tipped spears and/or sleeps getting dispelled?
Yes 0 / No 1

20. Are charged flurries getting interrupted?
Yes 0 / No 1

21. Does anyone die to a charged flurry and then express complete bewilderment about what happened to them?
Yes 1 / No 0

22. Are the ranged dps and/or the healer getting hit by the Stormforged Giants' thunderstorm?
Yes 1 / No 0

23. Is anyone taking any visible measures to decrease the damage they take from Loken's lightning nova (running out, ice block, nature resistance aura or totem, survival cooldowns)?
Yes 0 / No 1

24. Is Loken getting more than two lightning novas off?
Yes 1 / No 0

25. Did you not know how to answer several of these questions because you weren't actually paying attention yourself?
Yes 1 / No 0

How did your pug score?

0-5 points: Admit it, that wasn't actually a pug. Can I join your guild?

6-10: Eh, some people were slacking a little, but things weren't too bad overall.

11-19: Someone's going to be in for a harsh wake-up call come Cataclysm. There's still a good chance that you managed to complete the instance though, simply due to overgearing and/or someone compensating a lot for other people's failures. Unfortunately this is pretty average these days.

20-25: Holy crap, are you alright? That can't have been good for your sanity! Did you at least make a blog post about that run?

And in conclusion...

If so desired, this test can also be turned into a drinking game, where you simply take a shot every time someone does something that would score a point.

Interestingly enough, the pug that inspired this post "only" scored a 13... I guess it wasn't that bad after all.

Dps signing up to tank isn't always bad

So today's daily heroic for my mage took me to Halls of Lightning. We buffed up and made the first pull. I got about two arcane blasts off before both mobs fell over and died simultaneously. Okay, clearly we had some very overpowered dps in this group. On the next pull I threw a glance at the damage meter and... holy moly, a warrior doing over eight thousand dps! Well, that explained it - except, hang on, I thought we had only one warrior in this party? The tank!

I inspected him and found that he was indeed in full fury spec, kitted out in ICC25 heroic gear, dual-wielding Shadowmourne and a heroic Cryptmaker. I expressed some amusement about this fact and he smiled. Nobody else minded. And you know what? It didn't matter because he tanked just fine. Nobody else was doing even half his dps so we stood no chance at stealing aggro from him, and that aside everything was dying so quickly that it didn't make a difference either way. On most AoE pulls everything was dead before I'd even finished my first channeling of Blizzard (six seconds). General Bjarngrim died after twenty-four seconds, Volkhan after eighteen, Loken after twenty, before he could even cast his first lightning nova. Ionar only survived for forty-one seconds because we couldn't do damage to him while he was dispersed.

We only had one wipe when our tank charged into the first boss while he was empowered and standing in the middle of a group of trash mobs. Our little warrior went splat before anyone could even blink, but everyone just laughed it off and the tank himself summed it up very accurately with "lol pwned". After that he pulled more carefully.

I think it's definitely a sign of the current heroic system being broken when people are practically encouraged to run them like this, but fact of the matter is that it was the sensible thing to do. Even in full dps gear our tank had over 35k health, and with the damage he was doing no pug tank would have been able to keep aggro off him anyway. So why not embrace the fact that you're producing massive threat and can survive a few hits and just sign up for the role you're going to play anyway, whether you want it or not? I thought it was clever. In fact, other massively overgeared dps plate wearers and cat druids who still want to run the daily heroic for some reason should probably take a leaf out of this guy's book if you ask me. Long live the dps tanks! Until Cataclysm anyway.

Strangely enough, being squishy is fun!

I got my seventh character to eighty the other day, a draenei mage. After briefly testing the waters in a couple of normal mode runs I decided that my 2-2.5k average dps in a mix of greens and levelling blues should be enough to not draw anyone's ire in heroics, even more so as the average skill level seemed to be pretty low across the board in that battlegroup (that is to say, I saw people in full tier nine doing about as much damage as me and nobody complained).
So I jumped into a couple of heroic runs... and hilarity ensued! Why, you ask? Well, mages can be all kinds of awesome if the person behind the character knows what they are doing, like that guy who made all the "funny mage tricks" videos, or Euripides. However, if the player is not that good at being a mage (like me), the class really lives up to its reputation of being a glass cannon.

The scene: Halls of Lightning. Having struggled with healing the Loken fight often enough, I knew that I didn't stand a snowball's chance in hell of surviving the lightning nova with my piddly 14k fully buffed health, but I didn't quite trust myself to run out properly anymore either, so I thought I'd be clever - put on mage armour for some nature resistance, ice block through the first nova, throw up a mana shield before the second, and again for the third (yes, our overall dps was so low that we got *gasp* three novas) but I died on the third one anyway. Boo.

The scene: Utgarde Keep. We start the second fight, I run close to avoid getting charged (but not close enough as it turns out), have just enough time to shoot about three arcane blasts at Dalronn the Controller when Skarvald charges me for 11k damage and then instantly melees me for another 7k. Mage go splat! I whinged about that one a bit because I'm still not sure what happened. The charge is one thing, but I don't know why he started to melee me afterwards when I hadn't even touched him.

The scene: Gundrak. I knew that it was a run in progress when I accepted the popup, but what I didn't expect was to land right in front of Gal'darah, with the tank being the only person still alive. "Uh, not the best moment to join in," I commented and the rest of the party chuckled in agreement. I tried to go invisible but got slashed by his whirlwind before I could get out of range, so it broke and I died with everyone else.

On our next attempt I blew all my cooldowns right at the start and did great dps... then I got impaled. I didn't get any heals from our visibly struggling healer (who said that it was her first heroic) but figured that I should be able to survive the dot anyway... except that the moment I got thrown off, the boss decided to add a 30k damage crushing blow to my face. Yay for getting aggro while incapacitated! They still managed to kill him without me though.

Now, all this might sound more bitter than amused, but I actually had a ton of fun, (though I'm not even sure why). I guess I like the whole glass cannon concept and that it works both ways. I can't help giggling out of sheer surprise when something unexpectedly one-shots me. Not to mention that being so extremely squishy actually forces you to pay attention and play sensibly again because you simply can't survive being sloppy (pulling aggro, standing in the AoE). Or maybe it's just that seeing my mage dead on the floor cracks me up every time, seeing how female draenei have this rather silly death pose which makes them look like they just tripped and fell flat on their faces.

D'oh, fell over my own hooves again!

I was almost disappointed when I made it through my last instance for the night, heroic Old Kingdom, without even dying once. Though I have yet to figure out the best way to deal with the evil clones on the last boss as a mage - when I used my mirror images I could kill them easily, but without them I just spent the whole time flailing about and being unable to kill anything, only staying alive due to repeatedly spellstealing the tree's lifeblooms.

Strange five-man boss nerfs

While running multiple random heroics per day in the past week, I couldn't help noticing a couple of strange changes to some boss fights.

Ionar in Halls of Lightning only disperses once per fight now, instead of three times.
The Prophet Tharon'ja in Drak'tharon Keep only does his psychadelic "I'll turn you all into skeletons" thing once per fight now, instead of three times.
Grand Magus Telestra in the Nexus only splits once per fight now instead of twice.

I wonder if there have been more changes? These are the ones that I noticed anyway. I neither love nor hate them; more than anything I just find them confusing.

The first two changes were apparently part of a hotfix a few days ago, which immediately poses the question... why? Ionar and Tharon'ja have been among WOTLK's easiest dungeon bosses from the beginning (I'm not sure if I ever managed to wipe on either of them), so I don't understand why what little of interest there was left about their fight mechanics had to be taken away too. The only people that I can see benefitting from this are the manic badge farmers who were always sighing in exasperation about the way the bosses' abilities artificially extended the fight and prevented you from pwning him more quickly. But was that really such an issue?

As far as Telestra goes, looking at various websites they all claim that there's always been only a "possibility" for her to clone herself more than once on heroic, but in all the heroic Nexus runs I did before the latest patch she always split herself twice. I'm pretty sure it wasn't a lack of dps either, as it seemed to be tied to her health (first split at 66%, second split at 33%).

Telestra actually used to be pretty tough back in the day, and the double split certainly played a role in that, so I do consider this a "serious" nerf. However, once again I can only wonder about the reasons behind it, because people go into heroics with better gear than ever, so nothing is nearly as hard as it used to be anyway?

I can't help feeling that Blizzard is currently pushing the "farm everything into oblivion as quickly as possible" mindset a bit too much at the moment.

On healing the Loken fight

Loken used to be one of my least favourite heroic bosses in WOTLK, right up there with Ley-Guardian Eregos of Oculus infamy. Even though I ran heroics as soon as I hit eighty on my first character, I was one of the last people in my guild to get the Timely Death achievement. Somehow this fight just turned every Halls of Lightning run into a nightmare. To this day I've never seen the "proper" strategy of running out of the lightning nova seen executed efficiently. Eventually I'd always be pressured into just healing through the damage as everyone stayed in (because "it's much easier that way" - yeah right, for everyone but me), people would die left and right, and only with some luck the tank and I would eventually finish the guy off after kiting him around the room for five minutes.

Lately however I've managed to overcome my fear of Halls of Lightning in general and Loken in specific. Today the instance was a "double daily" on my server and I ended up healing through it three times, once on my priest, once on my paladin and once on my druid. We never wiped, but it was certainly insightful.

On my priest, the main thing that struck me was what an immense difference good gear makes on this fight. I remember when we did this with the whole party wearing mostly blue-quality items, the dps doing maybe one thousand damage per second each (if we were lucky) and me being expected to heal through three, four, five lightning novas without running out of mana (which I never really managed). These days, in Ulduar gear, everybody does two or three times that much damage, so Loken dies much more quickly, and my heals also hit for a ton more. I never had trouble topping everyone off after each nova, even though we never tried to avoid it.

The lesson I learned on my paladin was that the class of your healer doesn't really matter on this fight. I've noticed that holy paladins have a tendency to moan about their lack of a big aoe healing spell as if it was something hugely crippling. I've always had my doubts about this, considering that whenever we raid it's a holy paladin who tops the healing meters on nearly every fight. The experimental instance runs and Naxx raids that I did as holy myself only confirmed my suspicions that the class's aoe healing is really powerful anyway. Sure, every now and then there was an occasion where I thought that having something like circle of healing would be handy, but that's no different than me sometimes wishing that my priest had more heal-over-time spells or that my druid had prayer of mending. It's situational. Overall I did fine.

Especially in small group content like a five-man instance, beacon of light and the glyph of holy light are extremely powerful group healing tools. In the end I actually found healing the Loken fight on my paladin much easier than on any of my other characters, because you don't even have to do much thinking. On my priest I have to decide whether to cast prayer of healing first, or prayer of mending, or put a renew on myself first... whatever. On my paladin I just have to make sure that beacon of light stays on the tank and then I spam holy light bombs on whoever is lowest on health until the boss is dead. It's a no-brainer and it works, because if I get my self-buffs up at the start, a holy light only takes as long to cast as one of my priest's flash heals, while healing for much more than a priesty greater heal would do in a hundred years. Paladins lacking group healing power? Bah I say.

Finally on my druid, the lesson that got driven home was that gear really matters on this fight. Wait, didn't I say that already? Let's change it slightly to stamina matters. My druid's healing gear is actually pretty nice for someone who hit eighty only quite recently, but several pieces of it are cloth and thus low on stamina. We only managed to one-shot Loken due to the paladin tank's skill and burning of cooldowns, as I actually died on a nova early on. With buffs my little tree has about 17k health. That's fine for surviving a nova of 14.5k damage. It's not fine when you immediately get hit by arc lightning right afterwards for 2.5k damage. Splat. In hindsight I suspect that this was the reason for a lot of the wipes I experienced early on when both healer and dps only had about 16k health max. People would always go "oh, that's fine, his nova only hits for 14k" without taking into consideration any damage that could follow immediately afterwards. I don't think you can consider yourself safe to survive the nova with less than 18k health really, only if you get lucky with whom he targets with his random attacks.

In summary: Any healing class has the tools to heal through the aoe damage of the lightning nova. However, good gear makes a huge difference in the difficulty of this endeavour, and a healthy amount of stamina is pretty much required - I'd recommend at least 18k health buffed for everyone. Also, if anyone ever figures out a way to make a whole party of people run out of the nova properly, let me know. I'm still kind of intrigued by the idea.