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Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Goodbye Decursive
Relmstein has the news that changes to the scripting language in the Burning Crusade expansion will make addons like Decursive stop working. Basically there won't be any addons possible any more which automatically target people based on a condition. Now if you ever played a priest, paladin, or mage in a raiding guild, you will probably have been instructed to install Decursive, and in some boss encounters your job was to just stand there and spam that one Decursive hotkey. Many Molten Core bosses, like Lucifron or Baron Geddon, have area-of-effect debuffs which are quite lethal, and have to be dispelled quickly. Doing that this fast will be very hard without the Decursive addon.
But in a way the current situation was untenable, because the difference in power between a player with Decursive and a player without Decursive was too big. Debuffs are for example heavily used in PvP, and Decursive can make quite a difference there. So Blizzard would either have to integrate the function of that addon into the game itself, or change the scripting language to turn it off. They chose the latter, to the delight of PvP warlocks and the dismay of raid decursers.
At least they got the timing right. Few people will worry about MC encounters getting harder for level 60 characters on the day they can start leveling to 70. And if the level 70 raid dungeons have similar AoE debuffs, well, at least the new raids are limited to 25 people, making manual targeting and decursing obviously easier than 40-player raids.
While Decursive made my life in raids a lot easier, I don't think I will miss it terribly. There was no skill involved in decursing, you just spammed a single key without thinking. Necessary, but boring. Iwouldn't uninstall it yourself, as that would be shooting myself in the foot, and get me angry comments from my fellow raiders. But if it is turned off for everybody, I can live without it. Macros and addons like Decursive are a terrible slippery slope to playing a bot.
- posted by Tobold @ 10:56 AM Permanent Link
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I've been asking around, and it seems mods with decursive-like functionality would still be possible- the only change would be that you'd have to fully populate the priority list, and it would just go down and target/cast on each in the list (triggering the small cooldown from trying an uncastable spell, but otherwise not changing much). It'd still be much more complex than the current version, but would allow for less twitchy folks to participate.
Related, I do wonder how BC is going to work, for raids. Naxxramas is mind-blowingly hard, compared to, say, Molten Core, but the new instances will likely have to provide a challenge for both MC guilds and folks who can clear Naxx. I'm hoping for at least some content as a ladder up to the hardest encounters (the large number of raid instances would seem to support it, but it'd be nice to know).
Related, I do wonder how BC is going to work, for raids. Naxxramas is mind-blowingly hard, compared to, say, Molten Core, but the new instances will likely have to provide a challenge for both MC guilds and folks who can clear Naxx. I'm hoping for at least some content as a ladder up to the hardest encounters (the large number of raid instances would seem to support it, but it'd be nice to know).
# posted by 
: 10/10/06 15:18
: 10/10/06 15:18
The skill is in deciding who to decurse first, and even, if you aren't able to decurse everybody in time, who to decurse at all.
Sorry don't mean to spam, but this issue hits a nerve with me. :)
Being able to watch the players around me, noticing a change in color/graphic on them to be able to dispel them would be be challenging yes. But since when are healers able to watch players around them?
They added bars that you can see over your raidmates heads, but have you ever tried turning that on? It is insanity trying to watch them that way. So once again I have my bars over to the side and play whack-a-mole.
Just commenting on this makes me realize the whole interface - the whole idea of healing needs to be revamped if not by Blizzard, then by a new company in the next mmorpg released.
Perhaps its time for me to level up a warlock.
Being able to watch the players around me, noticing a change in color/graphic on them to be able to dispel them would be be challenging yes. But since when are healers able to watch players around them?
They added bars that you can see over your raidmates heads, but have you ever tried turning that on? It is insanity trying to watch them that way. So once again I have my bars over to the side and play whack-a-mole.
Just commenting on this makes me realize the whole interface - the whole idea of healing needs to be revamped if not by Blizzard, then by a new company in the next mmorpg released.
Perhaps its time for me to level up a warlock.
/mourn Decursive
After years of raiding in EQ, I loved the much easier dispelling way Decursive ran. Having to target 52 people individually to dispell some nasty debuff stinks.
It's not like the priests/healers don't have enough to do during a raid, but now have to play Hunt the Wumpus at the same time.
After years of raiding in EQ, I loved the much easier dispelling way Decursive ran. Having to target 52 people individually to dispell some nasty debuff stinks.
It's not like the priests/healers don't have enough to do during a raid, but now have to play Hunt the Wumpus at the same time.
# posted by : 10/10/06 17:15
: 10/10/06 17:15
One of the most common arguments against Blizzard's decision regarding this is that it turns into "Whack-a-mole". Well I read a statement here that with Decursive as it is now it's still Whack-a-mole, just with one single mole.
I doubt I'll be much affected by this. My main, a rogue, has only one addon that I can think of that will most likely not function, Insignia of the Horde. Yes, it was already rendered more or less inactive a few patches back when you couldn't hook functions to movement keys. I however just changed it's function so that it was bound to a single key and then decided what to use. You still have to react to use it though, but just be prepared when facing warriors, priests and warlocks and it's fine. The funny thing about this is that I actually started to use this addon back when I was still playing my warlock. I was so pissed off at all the priests/mages/paladins/whatever that ran decursive and dispelled all my dots within fractions of a second of me casting them that I installed it while thinking "If you can't beat them, join them.". Both Decursive and Ioth were heavily discussed back in those days as borderline cheating.
On the other hand, maybe I'll have more fun playing my warlock in the expansion because of this change. :) Yeah, I know there are quite a lot of people saying warlocks are overpowered. But as a player that definitely has a rogue as a main but has seen both sides I can safely say that warlocks deserve every single buff they've had. I still don't have much problem killing them in BGs, unless they've got a lot of epics of course. But that goes for basically any class out there as I've mainly got blues myself.
I doubt I'll be much affected by this. My main, a rogue, has only one addon that I can think of that will most likely not function, Insignia of the Horde. Yes, it was already rendered more or less inactive a few patches back when you couldn't hook functions to movement keys. I however just changed it's function so that it was bound to a single key and then decided what to use. You still have to react to use it though, but just be prepared when facing warriors, priests and warlocks and it's fine. The funny thing about this is that I actually started to use this addon back when I was still playing my warlock. I was so pissed off at all the priests/mages/paladins/whatever that ran decursive and dispelled all my dots within fractions of a second of me casting them that I installed it while thinking "If you can't beat them, join them.". Both Decursive and Ioth were heavily discussed back in those days as borderline cheating.
On the other hand, maybe I'll have more fun playing my warlock in the expansion because of this change. :) Yeah, I know there are quite a lot of people saying warlocks are overpowered. But as a player that definitely has a rogue as a main but has seen both sides I can safely say that warlocks deserve every single buff they've had. I still don't have much problem killing them in BGs, unless they've got a lot of epics of course. But that goes for basically any class out there as I've mainly got blues myself.
# posted by : 10/10/06 18:14
: 10/10/06 18:14
I just had a thought but isn't the new priest ability "Mass Dispel" an area of effect spell? Maybe some fights in the expansion will require priests to just do mass dispel while paladins and druids are the healers?
Takes a whole talent tree to get to that ability though, and it's (going from memory here, WoW site blocked at work, of course), like 30% of your mana and a long long refresh. Not going to help a lot on those fights where the guy spams his debuff.
# posted by : 10/10/06 19:59
: 10/10/06 19:59
They will probably slow down the ability of bosses to spam their debuffs in the expansion. I just hope they go back and do the same to all the old world bosses also. I am sure some people would still like to explore the old raid zones even after they are 70.
Decursive is just the most popular one. There are way more harmful addons than this. Decursing won't get more diffcult or will take more skill. Read about the new UI stuff they will put into the game, the template system. Instead of hammering one button right now, you will hammer more buttons to just do the same auto-targeting-spell-casting mechanism and this will be total "whack-a-mole". Raidbars will flash or change color and you will then have to click the cure-button preassigned for this target. Fun times.
They also said, that "future content will be designed around this change", just like Noth in Naxx was designed around /decursive. What that means is not so sure. It could mean less curing, or more curing for cheap difficulty.
Those UI changes first and foremost allow blizzard more control over the UI and the even out the current situation, who has wich advantages addonwise. Think about arena-fights were you do not want to win the UI fight, but the arena fight.
To learn something out of this mess: someones needs to come up with new designs for support classes. What decursive prooves is that it's not fun to watch status bars as a class role. Build a healing system around mechanisms like vampiric emprace, judgement of light were you need to be active and not be in a passive role waiting to get something to do. Support in WoW is so static and non-stacking and still there are soon 4 classes for it.
They also said, that "future content will be designed around this change", just like Noth in Naxx was designed around /decursive. What that means is not so sure. It could mean less curing, or more curing for cheap difficulty.
Those UI changes first and foremost allow blizzard more control over the UI and the even out the current situation, who has wich advantages addonwise. Think about arena-fights were you do not want to win the UI fight, but the arena fight.
To learn something out of this mess: someones needs to come up with new designs for support classes. What decursive prooves is that it's not fun to watch status bars as a class role. Build a healing system around mechanisms like vampiric emprace, judgement of light were you need to be active and not be in a passive role waiting to get something to do. Support in WoW is so static and non-stacking and still there are soon 4 classes for it.
# posted by : 11/10/06 12:03
: 11/10/06 12:03
I totally agree that whack-a-mole isn't the most complex and intellectually challenging game there is. But Decursive basically was whack-a-mole with only one hole and one mole, which wasn't a game at all. Sure, CTRaidAssist or similar programs will show the cursed character flashing in red, but you'll have to click on the red flashing character and then press the dispell button. Which isn't much unlike the current healing game.
Priest always have been "playing the UI" more than playing the game in a raid. On my typical raid screen I see barely enough of Molten Core to not run into the lava. Other than that I'm mostly occupied looking at the CTRaidassist UI.
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Priest always have been "playing the UI" more than playing the game in a raid. On my typical raid screen I see barely enough of Molten Core to not run into the lava. Other than that I'm mostly occupied looking at the CTRaidassist UI.
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