"LF3M rogues for heroic..."

"Many crowd control abilities no longer cause creatures to attack players when they are cast. The creature will not attack the player when the crowd control wears off, and nearby creatures will not become hostile to the player either. However, if a visible player gets too close to the target creature, the creature will remember and attack the player when the crowd control effect wears off. The intent is to make it easier for dungeon groups to manage crowd control assignments and pulling packs of hostile NPCs. The abilities affected by this change are: Hibernate, Entangling Roots, Wyvern Sting (will still cause hostility when it begins to deal damage), Freezing Trap, Polymorph, Repentance, Shackle Undead, Blind, Hex, Bind Elemental, Banish, Seduction".

So saith Blizzard, so shall it be done.

It's been a wee while since my last blog and I reckon this topic is as good as any other to ease myself back in - I've been on vacation, after all!

Most of the commentary regarding this projected change revolves around two camps:

1) A nice quality of life change to smooth out and speed up dungeon runs.
2) A significant PvE nerf, caving in to the demands of "bads" everywhere.

Let me start off by clarifying what this change is actually going to do before commenting on how effectively it will do it. Roughly speaking, every crowd control listed above now works like Sap. That's literally it. Once applied, it will have no affect on nearby mobs, and there will be no effect on the mob itself once the CC wears off. Some people have moaned that CC isn't such a big thing in the Zandalari instances, so Blizzard are way off the mark again.

I disagree.

First of all, particularly in Zul'Aman, there are several pulls that are made markedly easier by controlling a couple of mobs. Secondly, and possibly more pertinent, is the change to those below the gear floor for the Zandalari instances. With those touting mainly raid gear now queuing exclusively for some action with the trolls, the lower dungeons of Cataclysm's launch are now robbed of their better geared players - bringing CC back to the fore again. Essentially, anyone running any heroic dungeon is going to benefit from this change.

The key word here is "benefit". I am overwhelmingly in favour of this change, and those against it have utterly missed the point if you ask me. If I can be blunt, this is only a very small mechanical change, subtly implemented, but is one of the most positive things I've seen from this development team. Perhaps this type of thing is a sign that the new team are growing into the job and "feeling" out solutions a bit better. Let's hope so.

There will be almost no alteration to those in guild groups coming across this change, while the lesser skilled and practiced (or those in PuG groups with less communication) will be able to learn the finer arts of CC at a more manageable pace. Not to mention, this will speed runs up significantly by players simply applying their CC and then dealing with the pulls more effectively.

The added benefit to me, of course, is the annoying "immune" message that sometimes pops up. For some reason that nobody can discern, certain mobs are immune to conventional CC and this can blight a run. Planning out a pull for five minutes, only to see it shot to ruins because a humanoid mob ended up immune to Polymorph is absolutely no fun whatsoever.

Alas, this change will not solve many problems encountered in a PuG.

- The tankadin that obliviously mashes his AoE buttons, breaking all the CC.
- The shaman who won't cast Hex as, according to him, there's "no need lol".
- The mage that continuously tries to Polymorph a scary elemental.
- The rogue that doesn't think kicking a healer is all that important, really.
- The warlock that DoT's up the caster that he feared less than 3 seconds ago.
- The warrior who forgets that auto-running into mobs WILL still aggro them all.
- The hunter that didn't potty train his pet, swearing blind it was on passive.
- The myriad of players that don't grasp why attacking before the tank is bad.

We've all seen them. Bad groups will remain bad, and nothing Blizzard do will ever change that. To wrap this up, I think Zarhym said it best:

"We promise that the average group will still wipe in dungeons even with this change. We have plenty of data to back that up that supposition".

Indeed.