u/_Llopis_

Requiring sitting is outdated game design. I can't think of any other successful game that does it. The vast majority of players don't enjoy it, and people have told me they stopped doing blitz just because they play a spec that has to sit.

My idea: make active capture points rotate. Original blitz Eye of the Storm had the right idea, except for some reason Blizzard linked the nodes rotating to the flag capture, which was dumb. Just make the points rotate on a timer that activates after a capture. In Arathi Basin, for example, the map could rotate between farm and stables being active and lumber mill and mines being active. Blacksmith can stay active the whole time for the freaks who love mid fights.

For Gilneas, maybe rotate between waterworks being active and mine and lighthouse being active. I'm not sure this would be great, but it would be better than requiring sitting.

As the next season looms, I want to give a tip that doesn't get much attention around here: You should leapfrog.

For those who don't know, leapfrogging is when you have multiple characters, typically of the same spec, and only play the one with the lowest rating. So if I have an arms warrior at 2400 and one at 2300, I play the one at 2300 until it reaches 2500, and then I switch back to the one at 2400 until that climbs to 2600, and so on.

This eliminates the risk of losing current rating. You can lose matchmaking rating on the lower-rated character, but you can't lose your higher current rating. It's equivalent to a system in which you can only lose matchmaking rating but not current rating.

Over time, this will push your rating much higher than it would go otherwise. One reason for that is WoW, especially in shuffle and blitz, has a lot of randomness. I'm sure we've all had sessions in which we get into lobbies that are perfect for our spec, or in which our teammates use cooldowns with us but not the other team, and we quickly climb. Leapfrogging lets you maximize the benefit of randomness while mitigating or eliminating the downside (as long as you have enough time).

How much can it help? The short answer is leapfrogging increases your rating by 250 to 300 compared with what it would be if you didn't leapfrog. This is an upper estimate, not a guarantee; it involves a bit of luck, and it won't apply equally to everyone.

The longer, wonkier answer: The formula I'm using is d* ≈ (1−p) · K / a. d* is the difference between current rating and MMR, p is your win rate, K is how much MMR changes in each match, and a is how quickly your current rating catches up to MMR. Filling out those variables requires some assumptions since we don't know everything about how WoW's rating system works, but the reasonable, if conservative, upshot is that you can get 250 to 300 rating higher with leapfrogging than you would without leapfrogging.

TL;DR: You should leapfrog. It can increase your rating by 250 to 300, and all it requires is setting up an extra character of the same spec.

Ribbit.

If someone makes a mistake, they are wintrading. If they use buttons in a slightly wrong order, they are wintrading. If they forget to use a cooldown, they are wintrading. And if they lose, or if they win, they are wintrading.

If you do any of the above, you are also wintrading. Don't deny it. We know you are.

We are all wintrading.

I'm thinking of abilities that are bad or unfun design even if the specs that use them aren't necessarily overpowered at the moment. What are some good examples?

WoW has always had bugs, but one thing we could do in the past is deal with them, if not exactly fix them, by downloading an addon. That is now much harder, if not impossible.

Two current examples, both of which players have repeatedly reported to no avail:

• Several buffs and debuffs do not show on enemy player nameplates, including any crowd control in the open world. This bug has persisted since Midnight pre-patch, nearly six months ago.
• The cooldown manager resets after some loading screens, including all PvP instances. This bug began more than a month ago, with 12.0.7.

In the past, I would have gotten around both of these bugs by downloading addons that displayed what is missing on nameplates or ignored whatever is causing my cooldown manager to reset. In fact, before Midnight, I did this when base nameplates for whatever reason stopped showing some buffs I wanted to see; I downloaded an addon that let me manually add buffs to nameplates. That's no longer possible.

People have complained a bunch about bugs this expansion. I often wonder how much it's truly the case that the game has more bugs or if it's harder to deal with bugs now that addons can't mask them. The answer is probably a mix of both.

Either way, my point stands: If Blizzard is going to keep restricting addons, it should fix base UI bugs and problems much more quickly.

CC does display on mobs' nameplates in the open world and on enemy players' nameplates in instanced PvP, but it does not show on enemy players' nameplates in the open world.

I have reported this every week since prepatch.

I know world PvP isn't the most important thing for everyone, but an entire zone (Slayer's Rise) is dedicated to it this expansion. At the very least, the default UI should show the information it's supposed to show.

Despite the demise of MiniCC, the default UI still lets you see buffs, including important offensive and defensive cooldowns, on nameplates.

To enable this, press ESC, go to options, click on nameplates, scroll down to enemy player buffs/debuffs, and turn on enemy buffs. Some addons can filter out the default display, so you might have to disable them or mess with their options too.

The default display shows up to two buffs to the left of enemy nameplates. If you have an offensive dispel, it will also show dispellable buffs. Don't worry. Important buffs, like shadow blades and cloak of shadows, override and display over the dispellable buffs.

It's not perfect, since it's limited to two buffs at a time. Some buffs are also missing, including void metamorphosis, fortifying brew, and survival instincts. Separately, CC does not show on enemy player nameplates in the open world (even though it shows for mobs).

But for arenas and battlegrounds, at least, the feature is pretty good.

The zones are rather limited, and the rewards need work, but the core concept is so fun. Navigating through a genuinely dangerous world is so much more interesting to me than what has become of all other open-world content. I actually had to use freezing trap and kite in open-world PvE last night!

I hope Blizzard expands on this feature going forward.

For once, someone wants to hear your bragging! Share your stories.

We recently started our cat on nightly gabapentin to stop him from screaming at night. It seemed to work for that — except it has also seemingly made him constipated. Last night, he woke us up at 6 a.m. screaming and repeatedly trying to use his litter box. He kept cycling in and out of the box until he pooped, at which point he gradually calmed down and eventually went to sleep. He has continued eating, drinking, peeing, and pooping since then. He's also calm, sleeping on my lap as I write this.

We try to avoid vet trips because they make him extremely anxious. (When we started our current vet, the vet was convinced something was wrong with the cat because his eyes were dilated and his heart was racing. All his blood work came back normal; he was just that anxious.) He's almost 17 and the level of stress the vet gives him is really not good for his age.

But is this kind of behavior concerning enough to take him to the vet anyway? We can try calling the vet, but he's not exactly responsive to the phone.

Have people had similar experiences? Any advice?

I'm referring to when the casters say "pre-wall" or something similar. I though it meant that a player predicted an enemy ability and used a cooldown right before that ability happened, but the casters often use it with things that clearly don't fit that description. What am I missing?