The Path to nowhere
Count me among the many that were disappointed by the announcement that the Path of the Titans was being scrapped for Cataclysm. I understand that they may have been unhappy with the iteration, and honestly the system had the probability of being ultimately very unwieldy, but the potential of PotT was so huge that I think it was worth the fighting for. There was something majestic about an ancillary system of customizing your character, where we could bask in an extra level of min/maxing. I rue that we’ve been robbed of that.
In the place of PotT, we’ll have medium glyphs. What are medium glyphs?
Medium glyphs are the kind of glyph you’d take if you had more choices.
The example they gave was cooldown glyphs for Fury Warriors. So in that example, major glyphs are the ones that directly affect dps, while the medium glyphs are the ones that are a little weaker that you would understandably avoid.
Also, please change that name. “Medium glyphs” is just about the laziest name they could have given to this feature. I’m sure it’s not final, but, gawd… terrible name. Even for a stand-in.
But I digress. Let’s think about what would constitute a medium glyph for Prot Pallies. Following the definition about the first tier/second tier preferences, I suppose one glyph that immediately jumps to mind as the kind that would be a medium is the Glyph of Salvation. It’s not something we’d take first-string because it’s pretty situation (ok, very situational), but it’d be nice to have full-time. Another glyph that I would love to have, but generally stick with improving threat over it is the Glyph of Righteous Defense.
Thought exercises aside, this discussion is pretty moot because (I think it’s safe to say) the whole stable of glyphs is probably getting seriously revamped. Or the abilities they currently modify are being changed, like taunts maybe going onto the melee hit table. We’ll have new glyphs for new abilities, new ones for old abilities, we’ll see the removal of crappy glyphs, and maybe the redesigning of some standbys. No point in getting too deep down into this at the moment.
And lastly, since we’re talking about glyphs, I’m pretty happy with the decision to let us “remember” glyphs we’ve used and swap them in as we will. This would be pretty handy for a situation like when my guild was learning Heroic Anub 10 back in the day and the Glyph of Holy Wrath was pretty helpful for the adds, so every night we’d do that fight I’d slip in a Glyph of Holy Wrath. Then once the night was over I’d put the Judgement glyph back in. Invariably I ended up with a stack of each Glyph, which I remember costing a bunch.
Hopefully Blizzard will work out some system that scratches that “alternate leveling” itch we all have. Being five levels short with nothing extra to show for it now is pretty lame.
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I’m not sure how I feel about the removal of Path of the Titans. It sounded neat, and I agree on the premise of it, but if it was scrapped then they probobly came across a stumbling block that would take either too much time, resources or effort that could be used for better effect elseware. I imagine we will see something else similar later down the line, years later, that started from the path of the titans.
Past that, thank God for the glyph changes so you don’t have to rebuy. I never really thought about it, but now that I look at it, it’s friggin annoying to keep stacks of glyphs so you can tank at your best on a per fight basis. Lots of cash down the tube.
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The reasoning and the decision make sense, but “Medium” has to be one of the crappier feature names we’ve seen. Especially if the label is applied in game.
@Rhidach
14 June 2010 at 1:45 pm #
I’m sure it’s placeholder… but, still, ugh.
@suicidalzebra
14 June 2010 at 7:53 pm #
In the Wrath dev cycle the three glyph types were ‘Major’, ‘Lesser’ and ‘Minor’. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Lesser be reused.
Something to watch out for is a number of Major glyphs being moved to Lesser, such as GoHoJ and GoCS, not actually increasing the net number of glyphs itemised. In addition, it wouldn’t surprise me if the number of Minor Glyph slots was reduced from 3 to 2, and perhaps even the number of glyph slots for each glyph tier reduced from 3 per (6 total) to 2 per (6 total). Unless the range of useful Lesser glyphs is a lot higher than I expect class spec options will effectively reduce rather than increase.
TBH, the issue with Glyphs has always been the utterly lacklustre Minors, combined with huge number of throwaway Major’s. What exactly does this change do to solve this issue unless they’re will to spend a heck of a lot more dev hours addressing them than they have to date? The art dept. is still overstretched so they can’t churn out enough ‘cosmetic’ minor glyphs that aren’t re-used ingame models (see Polymorph), and there’s only so much ‘XXmin duration buff now lasts 2*XXmin’ before we all write off minor’s as pointless. Same goes for long cooldown highly situational spells (LoH being the prime example). Lessers may be useful, but if they don’t serve to increase DPS/survivability/healing the community at large will swiftly come to view them as PvP toys.
That all sounds like a bit of a downer, so I’ll leave it there. Apart from saying that the chance to reuse ‘learned’ Glyphs is a change for the better IM, if only they could do the same with Gems.
I think that’s the point:
Minor are supposed to be cosmetic or ‘minor’ enough to be no big deal.
Medium or (please!) Lesser glyphs appear to be for the situational adjustments like GoDivinity or GoSalv. Nobody is going to choose a Lesser glyph over a Major glyph unless they really need a gimmick for the fight. Lesser glyphs sound like they could be more variable and possibly more than the other types.
Major glyphs sound like they’ll end up similar to today, though hopefully we’ll have more and more solid options. We’ll still likely have 1 or 2 ‘ideal’ choices for progression raiding.
All that time spent on Path of the Titans hopefully translates into a wider selection of useful glyphs. Or it could have all been shelved and they are starting relatively fresh on upgrading the glyphs. Either way, I feel better about further iteration of a current system than the appearance of a fresh one.
I think the real question will be, what will they add to inscription so the profession continues to generate revenue? Will inscription get a specific item enhancement they can sell (like Leatherworkers can make Leg Armor)? Maybe instead of grinding rep for shoulder enchants, we can get them from inscription?
@Rilgon
15 June 2010 at 8:50 am #
Quite frankly, Scribes already make enough goddamned money that they shouldn’t NEED any compensation.
And they’re getting it anyways – Scribes will make items needed to use the proposed “on-the-fly” glyph switching.
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Scribes are also, supposedly, getting the off hand slot.