Fantasy News and Views

World of Warcraft

                A lot of things have been released about Warlords of Draenor. I am going to touch upon the things that I think are interesting.

                Crowd Control

Silence will get removed from any ability that also interrupts. Silence will still exist as a separate ability. So now, you either silence a target or interrupt a target. Not both.  This change is only good for PVP. But for PVE this will cause more anger as soloing will get incredibly harder since you can’t stop and turn off a fight mechanic for any period time. The uphill fight for some classes this creates is so great that it may make some classes unable to solo some content at all. Keeping mages from casting spells is a mainstay for non-spellcasters and non-healers to solo content.

Disarms

No more Disarms. All of them are gone. It is the titular ability that I use on my rogue and the one ability that I center a lot of my playstyle with. Disarming was a very fun mechanic to me, and the reason why I used it so much. With it gone, I feel that Asmodea my see less game time overall. And I wonder what they are going to give rogues to replace the loss of that ability.

DR Catagories

Reducing the number of Diminishing Return groups. Grouping will be Roots, Stuns, and Incapacitate (which includes Horror). Charges that create roots are not part of the DR. This will clean up the DR groups and make PVP that much harder. It really doesn't have that big of impact on PVE and shouldn't really effect solo play.

Cast Times

The removed all ways to make CC’s instants with cooldowns. This is very bad plan for Soloist. This means that unless you have a pet, you will probably never get your CC’s off. Cast times for solo play will hamper their ability to manage encounters and successfully get through content. Casting times with groups is alright as there is always someone out there that can take the agro off of you so that you can get the spell off. And for PVP this will balance the playing field greatly. Good teams will know how to interrupt their opponent while also protecting their casters. And bad teams will get pounded that much faster till they work it out. The tactics changes and new depth to planning this does should make PVPers very happy.

CC Spell Pruning

Many CC spells will be removed. The rest will have increased cooldowns and increased restrictions on others. This is just vague enough to keep me from being sure what to think. SO I will have to wait and see what is exactly done. Pets CC will be limited, if not outright removed. This sucks for those classes (Hunters) that rely upon those pets to be a viable class. Making a primary ability that is relied upon to go away without any way to overcome it will so totally destroy Soloing as a hunter that people will wonder why they even have pets as a hunter. And, I think, this will reduce the useful toolkit that Hunters can bring to the game that they not be brought along at all. And my main is a Hunter, so this can be a long term problem for me. I am really scared about my ability to Solo play with the Airholen in WoD now. Other changes will include Cyclone being dispellable and fears being shorter in PVP. Also, PVP trinkets will protect from reapplication of effects from persistent abilities. All of these changes are good changes, especially the PVP ones.

Heroes of the Storm

                I received an Alpha technical access to this game. Having tried League of Legends for free one time, I wouldn't consider myself a knowledgeable person on this subject. But so far, it has been fun. I could see myself playing this when I want to do something different than WoW. Hopefully, I will get some more time into it and try out the other characters but I have only been playing the Demon Hunter Vala. I like her style of play.

                So that is the news for now for Fantasy based things. I will be back with more news in the future, but for now, Enjoy!