Monday, October 09, 2006

Decursive gets the Boot

A bombshell was dropped in the UI and Macro Forums over this last weekend when it was announced that in the expansion the scripting language would be changed so that it could not target or cast spells. This means that all intelligent targeting macros would be out of the game as of the next major patch. While you might think at first this isn't that big of a deal I can think of several addons used by most raiding guilds that will be affected. Decursive will be the major one but also Emergency Health Monitor and CastParty might be caught in the crackdown. Basically any intelligent addon that automatically targets something based on preset criteria will be banned in the expansion.

My first thought on this is one of outrage. Current raids will become much harder with the way that most boss mobs cast area of effect debuffs every 20 seconds. Without decursive I can see a lot of raiding guilds having problems on zones they previously had on farm status. True once the expansion is out most raiding guilds will trim down their memberships and focus on the new raid zones. But what about when people want to go back and revisit the old raid zones. At the moment MC mobs make massive use of debuffs. Basically the amount of time it takes for someone to call out they got hit with a debuff then have someone target them is probably 5x the time it would take for someone to just use decursive.

Plus even if the new dungeons are designed around players not having decursive I just don't quite trust the developers when it comes to boss behavior. Just look at the Baron Geddon fight in Molten Core, which I believe was originally designed before the decursive mod was widely used. Trying to do this fight without decursive would be very hard and most likely Geddon's debuff would be reapplied before it could be dispelled from every caster. Maybe that was the original intention of the developers but either way the fight would have had to been adjusted if decursive hadn't become popular.

In fact the major problem I see with the scheduled changes to the scripting language is that its going to raise the skill level requirement for most raid encounters. Healers and Dispellers are going to have to get much more skilled at picking targets out of a raid. A lot of raiding guilds aren't going to have enough members with fast reaction times to do any encounters that make use of debuffs and other tricks. Most intelligent targeting addons were originally used much like a set of training wheels. Guilds slapped these addons onto new recruits so that they could keep up with the rest of the guild instead of having to slow down for them to learn how to raid heal or dispel.

However, over time the recruits have mostly replaced everyone and now you have an entire guild on training wheels. With this new change Blizzard is basically issuing a recall and now we're all going to have to learn to ride the bike like big boys and girls. I for one expect a lot of falling flat on our face on these new raid encounters and perhaps Blizzard might have to tweak them more often. We will just have to wait and see if this make us all better players or just seriously freaking annoyed at how fast Blizzard expects us to be at targeting.

http://blue.cardplace.com/newcache/us/32184244.htm

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

you gotta be KIDDING me

Anonymous said...

In fact the major problem I see with the scheduled changes to the scripting language is that its going to raise the skill level requirement for most raid encounters. Healers and Dispellers are going to have to get much more skilled at picking targets out of a raid. A lot of raiding guilds aren't going to have enough members with fast reaction times to do any encounters that make use of debuffs and other tricks. Most intelligent targeting addons were originally used much like a set of training wheels. Guilds slapped these addons onto new recruits so that they could keep up with the rest of the guild instead of having to slow down for them to learn how to raid heal or dispel.



this paragraph sums it up pretty nicely. Yes, raids will get harder, and maybe "Dispellers are going to have to get much more skilled at picking targets out of a raid"... cut the fat. if you can't dispell, maybe it's high time to learn how. as a warrior, i know a bunch of slugs with macros like '/cast sunder, /cast revenge, /cast afk and go make a pizza' and they just spam one button over and over.

i think it's retarded. it's about time people began playing their classes instead of being woodpeckers .

Anonymous said...

Hey, I just have one thing to say, my many guilds that I've been through that have imploded and split from time to time have always done fairly well. We are now getting a new set of new recruits off and ready for the next big dungeon in AQ40/Naxx. Thing is that during this time I was always trusted on cleansing as a paladin when the encounter demanded it. I did a very good job and always did it without decursive. Matter of fact I tried for a long time to get others not to use it but they wanted "easy" loot.

Which I think is the reason Blizz did this, I mean all these encounters are fairly easy when your not really playing the game. All you do with auto-target mods is push a button to do a preset command based on someone else having a problem. I just think that the game should require more from the players and as of now doesn't. It isn't that difficult anyways, have certain peopel incharge of groups when an encounter demands cleansing spells. That way people don't need to have their eyes wander so much.
Just a thought,
Burgdorn out.

Anonymous said...

Also, As a paladin, I have never used decursive. Noted as well, is that not ALL mods will be useless. Many unit frames mods flash a certain color that is related to the type of debuff a person has. This makes it very easy for any class with curing ability to pick out the appropriate targets within the raid and effectively cure them. Srsly, it's not that hard...MIRITE?

Anonymous said...

Best news I've heard since release!

Turn the easy mode off! Too many skilless noobs walking around in epics they didn't deserve in the first place :D

Anonymous said...

Ugh - hurray for hardcore raiders? Aren't you (dunno your name since ur anonymous) tired of being an elitest loot snob? Guess not.

Back to Relmstein...I'm hoping that they are planning to tweak the existing bosses and took this into consideration in the new bosses. If not, boss meet raids w/o targeting mods. Raids meet wipes. That will only happen for a while to guilds that have an instance on farm. It will however, make it harder for guilds that start after this change. That's not all that fair is it? It will be interesting to see how it all shakes out.

Anonymous said...

As someone who plays a support role in pvp decursing (or dispelling in my case) will be horrible. Which I guess was the point. Last night I tried to see if I could tell by looking at my teammates if they needed dispelling. Trying to target them in all the furious action was rough. For some things, the graphics was easy to spot, for others not so much. And since when has a healing priest been known for looking at the action around them more than the bars on their screen.

While I can tab-target to dispel enemies I don't have that option for my teammates. Or am I missing something?

I'm going to try my best to learn how to do what I need to do. But I'm not sure I have the reaction time. :(

Anonymous said...

Damnit.. as a priest, and usual MT healer, this is devistating news. Healing is already hard enough! I don't need healing made harder as WELL as decursive being nerfed. I'm a full time healer, and don't have time to be picking through the whole raid looking for debuffs! That's what decursive is for, letting me focus on my main job.

Anonymous said...

As a mage all I can say is Ugh! It's not that i can't click and /remove curse its that now thats ALL i have time to do. So why bother. I don't actually get to play... like target a boss throw a spell??? I play a mage because I Like dps. Considering that this change only effects a few classes it seems very unfair. I didnt see rouges nolonger being able to stealth or hunters without pets so why remove my ability to play the fun part of my class and lock me into a box I can't get out of??? I am pissed is all I can say.