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HAVANA — The world stood at the brink of Armageddon for 13 days in October 1962 when President John F. Kennedy drew a symbolic line in the Atlantic and warned of dire consequences if Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev dared to cross it. An American U-2 spy plane flying high over Cuba had snapped aerial photographs of Soviet ballistic missile sites that could launch nuclear warheads with little warning at the United States, just 90 miles away. It was the height of the Cold War, and many people feared nuclear war would annihilate human civilization. Soviet ships carrying nuclear equipment steamed toward Kennedy's "quarantine" zone around the island, but turned around before reaching the line. "We're eyeball-to-eyeball, and I think the other fellow just blinked," U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk famously said, a quote that largely came to be seen as defining the crisis. In the five decades since the nuclear standoff between Washington and Moscow, much of the long-held conventional wisdom about the missile crisis has been knocked down, including the common belief that Kennedy's bold brinksmanship ruled the day. On the eve of the 50th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis, historians now say it was behind-the-scenes compromise rather than a high-stakes game of chicken that resolved the faceoff, that both Washington and Moscow wound up winners and that the crisis lasted far longer than 13 days. Declassified documents, oral histories and accounts from decision-makers involved in the standoff have turned up new information that scholars say provides lessons for leaders embroiled in contemporary crises such as the one in Syria, where President Bashar Assad has ignored international pleas to stop attacks on civilians in an uprising that has killed more than 32,000 people. Another modern standoff is over Iran, which the West accuses of pursuing a nuclear weapons program. In a recent U.N. speech, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu drew a red line on a cartoon bomb to illustrate that a nuclear Tehran would not be tolerated. "Take Iran, which I have called a Cuban Missile Crisis in slow motion," said Graham Allison, author of the groundbreaking study of governmental decision-making "Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis." "This same process is looming on the current trajectory, inexorably, toward a confrontation at which an American president is going to have to choose between attacking Iran to prevent it becoming a nuclear weapons state or acquiescing and then confronting a nuclear weapons state," Allison said. "Kennedy's idea would be, 'Don't let this reach the point of confrontation,'" he added. "The risks of catastrophe are too great." Among the common beliefs about the Cuban missile crisis that have been reevaluated: CONVENTIONAL WISDOM: The crisis was a triumph of U.S. brinkmanship. REALITY: Historians say the resolution of the standoff was really a triumph of backdoor diplomacy. Kennedy resisted pressure from aides advising that he cede nothing to Moscow and even consider a preemptive strike. He instead engaged in intense behind-the-scenes diplomacy with the Soviets, other countries and the U.N. secretary-general. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy met secretly with the Soviet ambassador on Oct. 27 and conveyed an olive branch from his brother: Washington would publicly reject any invasion of Cuba, and Khrushchev would withdraw the missiles from the island. The real sweetener was that Kennedy would withdraw Jupiter nuclear missiles from U.S. installations in Turkey, near the Soviet border. It was a secret pledge known only to a handful of presidential advisers that did not emerge until years later. "As the historical record has expanded, the image of the resolute president has given way to the resolution president," Cuba analyst Peter Kornbluh wrote in an article in the November issue of Cigar Aficionado, an advance copy of which was made available to The Associated Press. Nevertheless, the brinkmanship myth persists, with President George W. Bush in 2002 citing the missile crisis as a historical lesson in fortitude that justified a preemptive invasion of Iraq. "The storyline is a lot easier that Kennedy stood steely-resolved, faced Khrushchev down and that's it," said Allison, a professor at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and former senior defense adviser to several Democratic and Republican administrations. "If you hang tough enough the other guy will eventually yield — that is actually the lesson that became part of the popular mythology." CONVENTIONAL WISDOM: Washington won, and Moscow lost. REALITY: The United States came out a winner, but so did the Soviet Union. The Jupiter missiles are sometimes described as nearly obsolete, but they had come online just months earlier and were fully capable of striking into the Soviet Union. Their withdrawal, along with Kennedy's assurance he would not invade Cuba, gave Khrushchev enough to feel he had saved face and the following day he announced the imminent dismantling of offensive weapons in Cuba. Soon after, a U.S.-Soviet presidential hotline was established and the two nations initiated discussions that led to the Limited Test Ban treaty and ultimately the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. "The major lesson is the necessity of compromise even when faced with a crisis like that," said Robert Pastor, an international relations professor at American University and former national security adviser for Latin America under President Jimmy Carter. Pastor said he had many discussions about the missile crisis over the years with his late father-in-law, Robert McNamara, who was Kennedy's defense secretary. Pastor said domestic politics made it tough for both Kennedy and successive presidents to heed that lesson, as evidenced by Kennedy's intense efforts to keep the deal secret. President Barack Obama, for example, faces considerable pressure to maintain a tough line on Cuba. Among the issues are the U.S. embargo, demands for political change, an American government subcontractor imprisoned in Cuba as an alleged spy and five Cuban intelligence agents serving long sentences in the United States. "Look at U.S.-Cuban relations right now," Pastor said. "I don't think Obama would consider a compromise, because the pressure on him that 'You gave in to the Cubans' is too great." CONVENTIONAL WISDOM: It was a high-seas showdown. REALITY: It's true the missile crisis was full of tense moments. On Oct. 27, a U.S. warship dropped depth charges over a nuclear-armed Soviet sub and the Soviets shot down a U-2 spy plane over Cuba. It was "the darkest, most dangerous day of the crisis," Kornbluh said. Yet after Kennedy on Oct. 22 announced a U.S. naval quarantine around the island to prevent more military equipment from arriving, Khrushchev recalled ships carrying nuclear equipment the following day, according to the 2008 book "One Minute to Midnight" by Michael Dobbs, which was based on newly examined Soviet documents. That means that on Oct. 24, when Secretary of State Rusk made his famous "eyeball-to-eyeball" statement reacting to supposedly up-to-the-minute intelligence, the vessels were already hundreds of miles away, steaming home. "This thing about eyeball-to-eyeball, it never was. That confrontation never took place," said Kornbluh, who is a Cuba analyst at the nongovernment National Security Archive, which has spent decades working to get missile crisis documents declassified. CONVENTIONAL WISDOM: It was an intelligence coup for the CIA. REALITY: Along with being a day late on the turnaround by Soviet ships, the CIA missed several key developments that would have helped Kennedy and his advisers navigate the crisis. The CIA learned late in the game about the ballistic missiles' presence in Cuba, and they were already operational by the time Kennedy was informed of their existence. The agency was also unaware of other, tactical nuclear missiles in Cuba that could have been deployed against a U.S. attack. The Soviets had even positioned nuclear-tipped missiles on a ridge above the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay in preparation for an invasion. "They were going to obliterate the base," Kornbluh said. CONVENTIONAL WISDOM: The crisis lasted just 13 days. REALITY: This myth has been perpetuated in part by the title of Robert F. Kennedy's posthumous memoir, "Thirteen Days," as well as the 2000 movie of the same name starring Kevin Costner. Indeed it was 13 days from Oct. 16, when Kennedy was first told about the missiles, to Oct. 28, when the Soviets announced their withdrawal. But the "October Crisis," as it is known in Cuba, dragged on for another tense month or so in what Kornbluh dubs the "November Extension," as Washington and Moscow haggled over details of exactly what weapons would be removed. The Soviet Union also had problems dealing with Fidel Castro, according to a Soviet document made public this month by Svetlana Savranskaya, a Russia analyst for the National Security Archive. Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan traveled to Cuba that Nov. 2 and spent 20 days in tense talks with the Cuban leader, who was angry the Soviets had reached a deal without consulting him. Castro lobbied hard but unsuccessfully to keep the tactical nuclear weapons that the Americans had not learned about.
Cuban missile crisis 50 years ago was misunderstood
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Sunday, June 10, 2012
Thoughts on the Trinity
A Digression on Magic
A few years ago, according to Mark Rosewater, the Magic: the Gathering design team conducted an experiment. They stripped Magic down to its fundamentals, playing "vanilla" games with basic land, basic creatures without abilities, and basic spells. The simplest game of Magic you can think of.
They found that--far from being boring--these vanilla games were surprising fun and intricate. They didn't need the crazy complex spells to make the game interesting. The basic skeleton of Magic was more than fun enough to sustain gameplay.
They also discovered that a lot of the fun came from the interaction between attacking and blocking creatures. This did not happen as often in the Magic of that time period because cheap removal spells had made it a lot easier for players to clear a path, or evasion abilities to avoid being blocked.
Because of this experiment, Magic R&D cut back significantly on complexity in future expansions, especially on non-rare cards, made removal scarcer and creature combat more important. They moved Magic back towards its vanilla nature.
This approach has made Magic enormously successful, with current sets setting new sales records, and outselling previous sets. An outstanding achievement for a game that is approaching 20 years of age.
The lesson here is that, for a game system, the very basic game system around which everything else is built should be fun in and of itself. You should not rely on complexity to add fun.
Relevance to MMOs
The above anecdote crystallized some of my thoughts on the Trinity. In my view, the very basic Trinity gameplay is a tank tanking a monster, the damage dealers killing the monster, and the healer keeping the tank up. This very basic, very vanilla, gameplay is fun. You don't need to have all the crazy, wacky abilities. Those extra abilities add spice and interest. But I think the Trinity skeleton is strong enough to sustain itself.
You don't need things like coordinating cooldowns or excessive dancing to make Trinity games fun.
This is in sharp contrast to all the non-Trinity gameplay I've played. The vanilla skeleton of those games is usually just a zerg, with the monster switching attacks at random. I don't think the zerg is fun. It contains none of the teamwork of the Trinity, none of the sense of the group being stronger than the individual components.
The Third Role
That's not to say that the current Trinity is perfect. But the real issue with the Trinity is that one role, damage dealing, is far more popular than the other two roles. The problem is not with Trinity gameplay, the problem is constructing the Trinity in the first place.
Here's an idea: what if the third role was not damage dealing? What if it was something else, like debuffs, or interrupts, or crowd control?
This would immediately allow the game company to equalize damage across all three classes. That would mean that healers or tanks could do as much damage as the other role. This would make soloing much easier, and would make tank and healer classes more attractive. It would also mean that you could do something like requiring a group of five to need one tank, one healer, one debuffer, and two others. That would give more flexibility for group composition.
A lot of Trinity games, especially WoW, have made threat a non-issue when tanking. And yet, when we look at the vanilla Trinity gameplay, I think threat is actually important. It's a large part of the interaction between damage dealing and tanking. I think basic threat is a large part of what makes the Trinity gameplay tick.
That means that the modern move away from threat is working against the natural skeleton of the Trinity. That it might be better to re-emphasis threat, to cut away the elements that make threat excessively pointless.
To re-emphasize threat means a couple changes would have to be made. The tank losing threat cannot always be an auto-loss. The tank needs to regain threat quickly, but the group should be able to survive the mob switching targets temporarily.
In my opinion, one really sees how this works when tanking in TERA. There, the trade-off between threat and reducing damage is explicit. I think it emphasizes something that WoW tanking has lost.
Those are my thoughts on Trinity gameplay. The basic skeleton is fun and engaging. In my opinion, vanilla Trinity is far more fun than any other proposed vanilla system, especially the zerg.
However, I am not sure that the third role in the Trinity should be damage dealing. It might be better to equalize damage across all three roles, and have the third role take care of a different function.
Finally, I think the move away from threat is a mistake. Threat is an important part of vanilla Trinity gameplay. However, I think that the complexity of modern fights has masked that factor. Trinity MMOs might be better served by reducing complexity, but re-emphasizing threat.
29 comments:
I suspect people need reminding that back in the days of Everquest when the term was coined the "holy trinity" was tank, healer, and *crowd control*. DPS was just along for the ride.ReplyDelete
The notion of a "holy trinity" was that you had to have those 3 roles if you wanted to go into a dungeon at all, DPS was just something you added after you had taken care of the important roles.
When WoW came out and largely removed crowd control, the trinity lost its third leg and people put DPS on the list to get the count back to 3. But in the original sense of the phrase it's just a "holy duo" nowadays.
I think Threat is actually a component of the "needless complexity" you are referring to here. In the vanilla skeleton gameplay, the boss is always hitting the tank - the holy trinity does not function otherwise. Introducing "boss sometimes switches targets because someone else passed an invisible line" is no different than any other complex mechanic.ReplyDelete
I am 100% behind you on the basic argument for the trinity though. As a player, I want to pick a role and specialize.
In M:TG you can be short on land and not cast anything. In a trinity based game you'll be short on tanks. Both is about the same amount of fun.ReplyDelete
The games don't move away from the trinity because the trinity is not fun. They move away from it because paying customers are not able to play the game.
> Here's an idea: what if the third role was not
> damage dealing? What if it was something else,
> like debuffs, or interrupts, or crowd control?
Damage is the only task that wins the fight. And it's the only task that can shorten the fight, therefore reduce the time in which you can make mistakes.
Your idea would be broken by the players who would replace as many player as possible with someone only focusing on damage and therefore making every fight trivial. (Remember the Ragnaros fight video back at level 60 with 35 mages, one warlock (CoE) a tank and some healers? Took them a little bit more then 35 seconds to kill him, neglecting all combat mechanics.)
To counter that you might have to make damage irrelevant and make each fight take a fixed amount of time. Then again, people love to do damage.
Threat is what really keeps DPS on their toes, and getting away from that makes the DPS' role kind of unexciting. If you know that the tank will always (or almost always) have threat, you can just spam away without any understanding of pacing. And, to be honest, pug stories are always more interesting when there's a Rogue or Boomkin or Destro Lock out there yanking the threat away from the tank.ReplyDelete
- Anonymous12:59 AM, June 11, 2012
I would go a step further back.ReplyDelete
Group RPGs had a front line of heavy plate wearers that were supposed to take the hits. But they always dished out damage aswell.
The leather armour midline was for CC and specials, but also damage.
The backline in robes were mages and clerics, for damage and healing mostly, but not exclusive.
The problem in MMOs is, that those roles got so reduced to one ability only aka stand still and take all the hits or stand still and cast (better two) heal spells every cooldown.
Specializations is a very nice thing, if you are better in doing it, not if it becomes the sole purpose of you being there.
As I already replied some time ago on Azuriel's blog: the trinity is the inevitable consequence of health bars. As long as "life" is represented by a number, the only possible "specialized" roles are tank/heal/dps. With DPS being the most important, since combat will end when the enemy's hp bar is at zero. My limited experience with systems not using the trinity is that all-out DPS is always the "win" option. This is also what happens in trinity games when survival becomes less of an issue: you bring less healers/tanks and beef up the DPS.ReplyDelete
BTW trying to get rid of the DPS by using debuffs/cc will inevitably fail: as I wrote: it's DPS which ends the fight, so all you'll have is a shift towards the classes which in addition to the debuff/CC, can dish out the more damage.
Threat: I'm happy that WoW is dumping it. As of today, too much of tank's gameplay was on "DPSing from the front". A TPS rotation is too much like a DPS rotation, I like the idea to move tanking towards a survival gameplay, with cooldown rotation, etc. I don't know if it will work, but right now tanking was too much like DPS + 2 buttons to press every couple of minutes for the -50% damage taken.
BTW I tried to design a combat system which does not use HP bars, but the thing spiraled out of control into an absolute complex mess (the idea was combo/countercombo based). It's hard to have a simple and visible thing like the "hp bar" without falling into the same trinity trap.
Very well put, and I happen to completely agree with you, Rohan.ReplyDelete
It is remarkable that when the holy trinity is removed, the system that replaces it is more akin to zerging than to an organized group. This was one of my main concerns regarding GW2. If there is no specialization (in the trinity roles, or comparable ones), there will be no structure in the combat, just an all in in which people take turns to get hit (and die, and get ressed). Which is coincidentally exactly what happens in D3 Inferno. Since all classes are damage dealers, and tanks (Barbarian, Monk) are not viable until they have an absurd amount of gear, there is no structure in the group dynamics.
- Juzaba5:46 AM, June 11, 2012
I disagree with the people posting that groups will just create the damage role anyway. Or, rather, while that may be true, it would be up to the devs of such a game to balance damage across roles and classes such that even if you used a Tank Class as your DPS, there was no actual loss of DPS. At least, that's what I understand Rohan's idea to be.ReplyDelete
There are other options for "third role" in addition to CC/utility. For example, D&D 4e includes "Striker" as a role in their 4-way of roles. Though Strikers most represent the DPS role, they specialize in burst damage. Presumably, a third role could also be filled by classes that do the same baseline DPS as anyone else in the game but bring burst damage as their tool, presumably for use during burn phases and the like.
Such a plan involves even more careful balancing than the CC idea, since you'd have to prevent Strikers from being able to turn on the burst in any situation. Perhaps abilities like "for the next 20 seconds, your abilities do X% more damage against Vulnerable targets" where there were only certain mechanics that created Vulnerability. Something like that, while feeling arbitrary, at least gives devs better control over burst damage than a base +X% damage buff.
Point is: I agree. The holy trinity is not borked as a theory.
Something you either didn't notice, or didn't highlight, in your post is that threat gain is dis-emphasized not because it's "unfun" to lose threat or anything, but because Tank DPS is scaled to be specifically lower so as not to compete. In a system where the "Trinity" did comparable damage, the tank would only need a marginal threat booster in order to maintain, and thus it would be a lot tighter.ReplyDelete
In other words, if the engine is only letting a tank do 100 DPS when the DPS is doing 1000, then the threat gain mechanics NEED to be utterly ridiculous, or else the system doesn't work at all.
I disagree with the people posting that groups will just create the damage role anyway. Or, rather, while that may be true, it would be up to the devs of such a game to balance damage across roles and classes such that even if you used a Tank Class as your DPS, there was no actual loss of DPS. At least, that's what I understand Rohan's idea to be.ReplyDelete
"Welcome to the world of tanks" :P
Unless there's some kind of tradeoff, in your game the best would be to have all tanks. Same DPS + extra survival! No healers needed :)
As for sustained/burst DPS, in WoW it's *already* a big deal (see the insane arcane mage stacking for HM spine which was used by Kin Raiders). Unless you allow DPS classes to multi-spec into different types, this opens more problems than it solves.
Not to mention the risk that given enough burst damage, you may end up with enough burst damage that it ends the fight before anything else happens.....
- Bearness7:50 AM, June 11, 2012
Really great post. I completely agree with all ideas. I think the holy trinity is the best model for any large group (4+ people). Also, it creates dependency (tank needs healers, people need tank to protect them from monsters, etc), which I think enhances gaming experience and makes grouping feel meaningful. Of course, it sucks when you have someone who is not good at their role, but that is the case for any model.ReplyDelete
I believe you're correct that 3rd role shouldn't be DPS because in holy trinity, you need to depend on each other for something unique you can't provide yourself. Everyone can DPS, it's just a matter of how much they can DPS. It's not something you "need" from another member. Vanilla WOW had it right that you wanted to sap/sheep a monster or two, and then take on rest of the group. But, it was missing the normalized DPS for all party members factor. Everyone should be able to do roughly same DPS while still performing their role.
I think best way to handle normalizing DPS would be like this. First, everyone's DPS abilities do roughly the same damage for obvious reasons. Second, DPS abilities for all classes should not require resources (mana, etc). Their only limitation should be cooldown. So, using your class specialty (for example, healing or pulling threat, or using CC) doesn't stop you from DPSing because you've used mana for healing instead of fireball. It will briefly interrupt DPS rotation, but that's it. Meanwhile, class abilities are based on something like a mana bar so that you have limited uses and must manage them during the fight. I think this will make the game play far more interesting and engaging.
- Anonymous8:49 AM, June 11, 2012
There are really only a few ways to eliminate the trinity. One is to make all fights trivial so that no one has to specialize--they can if they want but it isn't required. The other is to force everyone to specialize both in dps and "damage taking" since heal and tank are really two sides of the same coin. I suppose the third way is to create difficulty by way of "dance" mechanics, where fights are puzzles that have to be solved with moving around and using items or something.ReplyDelete
For me, specialization has become boring. I like single player games now because it is simply more interesting to have to use a broad range of skills to both kill and survive rather than rely on others to do the surviving while you do the killing.
- Protectorate9:06 AM, June 11, 2012
I think your thoughts on the trinity and getting back to basics are great. I much preferred I stanching in BC to now, but I didn't like the putting a group together and waiting forever.ReplyDelete
Speaking from a tanking role - I would love to get back to threat being an issue, it makes the game dynamic and more fun to me. However, unless game companies find a way to pair up good players with other good players in similar gear, bringing threat back with the current versions of quick pve matchmaking is a huge mistake. The reason threat became a non issue in WoW is solely because of the looking for group mechanic - a fresh 80 or 85 could keep threat when they were put in the same group as an ICC or DS dps.
- Bearness9:20 AM, June 11, 2012
@Protectorate, I agree threat is a fun mechanic and WOW should have kept it. Fresh tanks were having trouble because because threat = DPS. So, if everyone did roughly same DPS, and if DPS was only a portion of the threat equation (ex. big heals or CC/interrupt abilities pull more threat than big DPS), that would've been a better way to handle the threat issue IMO. But, then WOW would have to redesigned from ground up.ReplyDelete
- Anonymous9:52 AM, June 11, 2012
Your idea of the holy trinity going back to the basics and equalizing damage among all classes is a great idea and would work wonders for a PVE only game. The problem is WoW must balance for PVP as well and thats impossible if all classes do the same damage. Tanks would smash face while taking little to no damage and healers would heal to full then kill you. Arena and PVP balance is what holds WoW PVE back from being alot more interesting and more enjoyable to play IMO.ReplyDelete
@Helistar, I actually think that World of Healers is more likely with equalized dps, because healing depends on boss damage output. Boss does more damage, more healers switch to healing. Boss does less damage, some healers switch to dps.ReplyDelete
@Milady, the other alternative to people dying in sequence appears to be kiting. Whoever the monster is attacking kites the monster until it switches. I don't think random kiting is fun either, and judging by the reaction to Faction Champs in Trial of the Crusader, most raiders agree with me.
@Anon, I'm not really sure that PvP would be that badly off. If the third role had CC and interrupts, I think that would make things more equitable. It might even set up a rock-paper-scissors sequence:
Tank beats Interruptor because tank takes less damage.
Interruptor beats Healer because Healer's attacks are disrupted.
Healer beats Tank because the tank is eventually worn down.
- Wulfstan11:20 AM, June 11, 2012
The GW2 beta is a great example of what you miss when you lose the holy trinity.ReplyDelete
Every dynamic boss event lead to a zerging with no strategy/interplay between toons. Everyone swarmed the boss, spamming their abilities off CD, with the boss randomly turning and one-shotting people (mostly melee).
There might be a complex interplay of debuffs and cross-class combos somewhere in the gameplay, but it was no visible or trained. It would also be more complex to learn across strangers. As least with holy trinity you know what is expected on your role.
(following post on HT thoughts)
- Wulfstan11:33 AM, June 11, 2012
I think there are some risks to making everyone have equivalent DPS. This assumes that everyone wants to DPS, and I don't think this is the case.ReplyDelete
I believe the HT roles do specialise around distinctive gameplay...
For tanks it is mob control, and responsibility for self and others. There is a distinctive "leader" role. Raid tanking is about a partnership with another tank, rather than a competitive relationship.
DPS is about personal skill tracked in a very measurable way. It is very competitive between raid members. (Interesting dynamic in SWTOR without damage meters...)
Healing is reactive and responsive (even when done proactively), and again is a team relationship in raids.
The problems:
These roles don't appeal equally to people, resulting in inbalances.
Sometimes one role is harder than the others, forcing people into styles they don't like and further imbalancing numbers.
Threat is an interesting one: as a raid tank I took great pride in my threat output, and saw it as a measure of my ability. However, in 5-man PuGs I felt I was fighting my party, rather than fighting the mobs. For this reason, plus scaling problems, it had to get fixed.
In my opinion, the trinity tends to become fairly boring. If you take it down to its essentials it's a tank and spank. Tank absorbs, healer heals, and dps damages. It's only when extra abilities, fires, bombs, aggros swaps get added does it become fun in my mind.ReplyDelete
Thinking back to my time in WoW the most fun fights I had were ones that veered away from the trinity.
The Faction champs in Trials of the Crusader.
Razorgore using the kiting method.
Mage tanking Korsh Firehand.
I must the Vael fight in BWL was pure trinity distilled and was quite fun.
If I were to boil down my preference it would be a more pvp experience than a trinity tank and spank.
- Anonymous12:20 PM, June 11, 2012
With DPS being the most important, since combat will end when the enemy's hp bar is at zero.ReplyDelete
Doesn't that make the healer the most 'useless'? Even a tank does damage while body blocking the enemies. Only the healer plays a game of whack a mole to keep everyone alive.
In a good trinity game, shouldn't a tank be able to take quite some damage without needing to get healed?
With a self heal, would a holy duo system work, with 3 people blocking enemies and being able to eat damage and 3 other dishing out more damage from behind? Occasional potion/self heal to stay alive for everyone?
> It is remarkable that when the holy trinity is removed,ReplyDelete
> the system that replaces it is more akin to zerging than
> to an organized group. This was one of my main concerns
> regarding GW2.
I don't think that has anything to do with the holy trinity but only with the difficulty. You shouldn't compare WoWs hardmode raiding with GW2s quest "boss" mobs. You don't really notice the trinity in WoW's LFD runs anymore (besides the long wait time, unless you're a tank). Or when was the last time you experienced something like focus damage in an LFD?
An organized group or a zerg depends mainly on the required difficulty and not on if a trinity is used or not. GW2s system has a lot of potential for difficult fights. Like require ranged to cast conditions on the mob to reduce its damage and prevent it from killing melee. Of course, you don't see that on a level 3 world quest boss. But I also rarely see a mage sheeping in LFD heroics.
"The above anecdote crystallized some of my thoughts on the Trinity. In my view, the very basic Trinity gameplay is a tank tanking a monster, the damage dealers killing the monster, and the healer keeping the tank up."ReplyDelete
This is not how it works in WoW, nor MoP. You have raid and tank healers. The healers often play whack-a-mole (IMO quite boring). If you play a disc priest you can make it less boring (and more raid heal, less tank heal) by going atonement. Then you do damage while healing. This is a hybrid with a clear primary role and a secondary role. In MoP, more than ever before, the tank can play better by mitigating more. The tank is actually sortof a (tank/self) healer much akin to the blood DK is now (again, fun IMO). Why are they fun? You're busy whole time, you're playing whole time, you need to optimize whole time and in your secondary role you also help your team. The difference between such and e.g. GW2 is that in GW2 everyone's primary role is damage dealing whereas in a game like WoW everyone has a primary role (healing, tank, DPS) due to LFD/LFR mechanisms (in normal and hardmode this is likely to change).
I am not sure about the holy trinity, but I sure do find it unrealistic the boss is always trying to kill the guy with the shield first whereas that guy does little damage but is somehow "threatening". In a game like WoW, bosses (and trash) are very dumb in their target picking.
"This is in sharp contrast to all the non-Trinity gameplay I've played. The vanilla skeleton of those games is usually just a zerg, with the monster switching attacks at random. I don't think the zerg is fun. It contains none of the teamwork of the Trinity, none of the sense of the group being stronger than the individual components."
This is not what my experience is in GW2 beta. You make the mistake thinking "holy trinity" is all what defines roles, but that is not true if classes have unique abilities and builds. But also: if you don't play a "holy trinity" game but can (with due respect) "tank" or "heal" with some abilities such as kiting (slows, teleport, knockback) or CDs (absorb, heals), wouldn't that work as replacement? Games which don't have "holy trinity" still have roles. And in GW2 from what I've seen there is various abilities like slow, teleport, stealth, knockback, selfheal, teamheal, stuns with professions able to respec by switching e.g. weapon or "stance". Some comment said this is about ressing the fellow who just tanked in GW2. Wrong! Only if he failed to perform! I read someone comment about Diablo 3. Remember in Diablo 3 you cannot respec on the fly; in fact your spec cannot be perfect having all the utility, and once you reach 60 your valor buff discourages respec. GW2 doesn't have this issue since at the very least you can respec by swapping your weapon, in combat. Is it enough? I don't know... yet.
"Here's an idea: what if the third role was not damage dealing? What if it was something else, like debuffs, or interrupts, or crowd control?"
So we have alternatives to think about:
1) Dynamic (based on what?) tanking, healing looking at games which implement this. Alert players when they are about to tank?
2) Everyone damage dealer with additional functions meaning everyone has to do damage output + their unique role.
3) Enrage timers (soft or hard). They exist so you cannot stack healers + tanks.
Anonymous wrote: "Doesn't that make the healer the most 'useless'?"
No, see my point #3.
EQ2 had this going for a while, where Dirges (a class that buff melee - including tanks) were so powerful that we were effectively guaranteed a group slot (6-player groups) even though we played functionally like any other stabby rogue/scout. The result was often 3 DPS LF3M tank, heals, Dirge.ReplyDelete
As long as there is a non-zero number of DPS slots and DPS is fundamentally more desirable, adding more roles just means even more places for group-finding to bottleneck.
@Green Armadillo, but there would be no "DPS" classes under an equalized DPS scenario. Other means one of [tank, healer, utility].ReplyDelete
So a group could be tank, tank, healer, healer, utility, with one tank and one healer mainly dealing damage instead of formally tanking or dpsing.
Loved this post, and agree with its basic premise. I'm glad, also, that you brought up the example about how simple != boring, as the inverse is often true.ReplyDelete
I wrote a series on the necessity of the trinity system and how it manifests properly across the combat minigame. Might interest you.
The biggest issue of the trinity is that by the same virtue that it creates cooperation, it does also prevent it - due to its inflexibility.ReplyDelete
so maybe it would be useful to make observations about different types of cooperation; and ask players what they prefer because you cannot have it both ways in the same game.
all that means is that both an MMO like WoW and an MMO like GW2 have their own target audience.
is that such a bad thing?
I was glad to see you refer to TERA tanking, as I think the combat system as a whole in TERA moves toward eliminating a lot of the issues with the "trinity" in WoW and other games. In TERA, a really good tank makes it possible for the healer to do some dps, and no matter how much a DPS wants to just stand and do damage, he can't. Everyone has to move, dodge, and be responsible for himself during a boss fight or he will die. Yes, the tank takes most of the hits and mitigates that damage through blocking, but the other players will still take lethal damage if they aren't paying attention.ReplyDelete
However, the problem with the trinity in my mind isn't game mechanics, but socialization. I think the biggest draw back is the fact that groups are dependent on these roles to be successful,and that really comes down to finding a tank . . . so, why don't people roll more tanks? Are they not fun? On the contrary, I think tanking is a lot of fun, but there is the added problem of a tank having to lead the group through the dungeon, and we all know that tanks are quickly blamed if someone dies because of a threat drop, etc. In a way, tanks are held to a higher level of responsibility than any other player in the group (definitely more so than DPS), and this is why people don't really want to play tanks.
I'm not sure what the solution to this problem is, but as long as one type of character is held to a higher level of social responsibility, fewer people will play them, and we will continue to see an imbalance in putting parties together which is the biggest complaint against the trinity.
The question of threat is highly subjective one.ReplyDelete
For a long time, making enough threat was the main tank chore at WoW. The stories told about great tanks were about how tank got disconnected without his character kicked out from the game and the raid killed the boss 4 minutes later without pulling threat.
However, under this approach the tanking doesn't feel different from DPSing. You're still maching buttons bit prioritise high threat abilities over high damage ones.
For me the real attraction of tanking was the control I had over the mobs. The fights where tank does really shine, where tank makes or breaks it, are almost always about proper positioning, or movement, or using utility abilities (rather than shield slamming on CD).
The idea of making everyone a DPS+something else hybrid is an interesting one. If you consider the usual roles (DPS, tanking, healing, support, CC/debuffing), DPS is the only offensive one (CC/debuffing is ultimately a defensive one because its goal is to reduce incoming damage from the mobs). So I think you definitely have a point.
The problem with threat is that generating threat by itself does not harm the monster or help the group. Unlike other roles and other tanks' tasks, threat works neither against the enemies nor for the teammates but against the teammates. Additionally, WoW's threat does not work with the enemies being players. While allowing the tank to choose between a full attack and turtle mode for the group is not a bad idea, I would like to see it to be implemented in a different way. Maybe allowing the tank to decrease their enemy's defense at the cost of their own?
I think there is another problem with your solution is the three DPS+X hybrids, 2 pure DPSers. Based on WoW's trinity, it is possible people would aim for the pure DPS spots because of shared responsibility. What does the model offer to encourage people to try the hybrid roles with high personal responsibility (due to being the only one who is "supposed" to do the task)?
@Kring, I believe it is possible to set a low bound for defense, i. e. have the mob dish so much damage that X players need to play defensive roles no matter how much damage the offense deals.
@Milady, I haven't played any explorable dungeons in GW2 (despite being in 2 BWEs, my highest char is only 17) so I can't tell how it looks there but the huge events are not supposed to be too challenging. (@Kring says the same in his post, I think.)
The events also suffer from lack of parallel targeting which I consider to be a huge problem for bosses fighting huge groups. The boss's attack power has a soft lower bound based on how much damage can the group prevent and heal up, and a hard upper bound based on how much damage is needed to kill a single player no matter what. Since most bosses lack parallel targeting that would enable them to deal damage to more targets as a basic mechanic, there is a group size where the lower bound for the particular difficulty gets higher than the upper bound.

subset: commoncrawl


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The male Eastern Bluebird shows a brilliant indigo blue on the head and back, with a rusty reddish brown breast. The female is more softly colored overall, with elegant gray wings, tinged in shades of blue, and paler breast. Joe Ciaramitaro photo
Eastern Bluebird (Sialia sialis)
Several days ago my friend Joe from Good Morning Gloucester blog captured (with camera) a pair of Eastern Bluebirds. Everyone who responded in the comment section spoke so fondly of this beautiful bird that I thought we'd all enjoy knowing a bit more about its current status in Massachusetts. And too, sightings at this time of year give reason to share a favorite Emily Dickinson poem—"Before you thought of spring, except as a surmise…"
Before you thought of spring,
Except as a surmise,
You see, God bless his suddenness,
A fellow in the skies
Of independent hues,
A little weather-worn,
Inspiriting habiliments
Of indigo and brown.
With specimens of song,
As if for you to choose,
Discretion in the interval,
With gay delays he goes
To some superior tree
Without a single leaf,
And shouts for joy to nobody
But his seraphic self!
Bluebirds do indeed appear to sing with great joy from the treetops, and reading this poem always makes me smile, thinking about "a fellow in the skies" singing to nobody but his rapt self. As is so typical of her work, Emily Dickinson's poem is an astute and honest observation of the natural world, but I also interpret her poem to mean that joy is an emotion that doesn't need an audience; that it can be expressed for the sake of joy itself.
Eastern Bluebirds sing several types of songs; one is a liquid birdsong—sort of a turee song—and another is a soft melodious warble. When trying to attract a mate, unpaired males typically sing from a high perch, and sometimes even in flight. Both male and female sing in all seasons to keep in touch with each other and to signal to nestlings that food is on its way. Bluebirds are in the Thrush Family, as are American Robins, and Robins too sing a lovely liquid birdsong.
From the Mass Audubon State of Birds:
"The very widespread breeding distribution seen in the Eastern Bluebird in Massachusetts today is, in large part, the result of considerable support received by concerned citizens who, for more than half a century, erected large numbers of nest boxes across the state and helped save the species from near-extirpation."
What does "extirpation" mean? Not that a species has become extinct from our planet, but that it is no longer found in a particular area. We are very fortunate that the Eastern Bluebird did not become extirpated from our region. Bluebirds are cavity nesters and use suitable bird boxes, tree cavities, and old woodpecker holes in trees and fence posts to build their nests. During the era when settlers cleared forests and planted fields and orchards, the Eastern Bluebird became quite common. In the 20th century their population decreased by nearly 90 percent for several reasons, two of which are because vast areas of New England have reverted to forest, and because the bluebird is competing for nesting sites with the alien European House Sparrow and European Starling. The return of the Eastern Bluebird during the spring and summer breeding period is due in large measure to citizens throughout the state building and placing nest boxes along "bluebird trails."
Eastern Bluebird and Winterberry
If you are fortunate enough to have bluebirds visiting your backyard, you may want to provide them with supplemental food. Bluebirds are primarily insectivores. They do not visit bird feeders because their bills are not designed for cracking open seed and nut shells (but they will eat hulled sunflower seeds). They eat berries at this time of year because there aren't any insects. The winterberries won't last long on the bush with flocks of hungry birds descending to your garden. Mealworms (which aren't really worms at all, but are the larval form of the darling beetle) are the most nutritious supplement you can provide bluebirds. For more information on feeding mealworms to bluebirds go to this fact sheet: North American Bluebird Society's Mealworms Fact Sheet.
For a wonderful FREE downloadable 15 page education packet designed for grades 1-5, with coloring pages and puzzles follow this link: Education Packet
For more information on how to build, and where to site, bluebird nest boxes, along with plan drawings, follow this link: Getting Started with Bluebirds
To read more about the devastating effects of European House Sparrows and European Starlings follow this link: House Sparrow Control.
Just this past week, 15 Eastern Bluebirds were spotted at Allens Neck Wildlife Sanctuary in Westport, Massachusetts. See Bluebird Nestbox Walk at Allens Neck post for information about an upcoming.
Additional images courtesy Google image search.


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Stanley Cup finals Game 4: Blackhawks win OT thriller to tie series
BOSTON — The Bruins had a chance to make Wednesday night their final home date of the season.
With a victory in Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Final, they would have gone up 3-1 on the Blackhawks and could clinch the coveted hardware Saturday night in Illinois.
Instead they got away from their style of hockey and put themselves in a best-of-three for the championship.
Brent Seabrook scored at 9:51 of overtime to give the Blackhawks a wild 6-5 victory and send them home in a 2-2 series.
The Bruins were left shaking their heads at a series of turnovers, bad decisions and missed assignments, plays they normally make and had excelled at in allowing one total goal in the two previous games.
"There were a lot of unforced errors," Johnny Boychuk said. "It hasn't been like this in a while."
Jonathan Toews scored on a rebound in the second period when Zdeno Chara fell down and left Boychuk to defend Toews and Bryan Bickell in front.
Just over two minutes later, Patrick Kane had a rebound goal of his own. Tuukka Rask — superhuman in his previous seven games with a 0.81 goals-against average, .973 save percentage and three shutouts — allowed a juicy rebound to the right side. Kane held, settled the puck and backhanded the shot past Rask.
After Milan Lucic scored to get it to 3-2, Marcus Kruger finished a 2-on-1 to push the Blackhawks' edge back to two goals. Dennis Seidenberg jumped out at a bad time and left defensive partner Chara out to dry.
"I don't think we played our best game tonight," coach Claude Julien said. "A lot of different reasons. I think our decision making wasn't very good at times. Didn't think we were moving the puck as well as we had been in the past."
In a 4-4 game in the third period, Milan Lucic coughed up the puck to Kane in the defensive zone. David Krejci was forced to hook Kane. It put Chicago on a 4-on-3 power play, and Patrick Sharp finished in tight for the lead.
The Bruins kept battling back. But they couldn't overcome miscue after miscue.
"I don't think we helped Tuukka tonight," Rich Peverley said. "Some goals, some breakdowns, we didn't make the plays. It's not Tuukka's fault."
Seabrook scored on a shot from the right point that deflected in front as Toews provided traffic. It gave Chicago six goals after they had five total in the first three games.
"We had some breaks around the net, found some loose pucks," Chicago coach Joel Quenneville said. "I thought we had way more traffic than the last game."
Less than two minutes after Kruger's goal, Patrice Bergeron completed one of the odder goals you'll see. On the power play, Chara blasted a slapper from the point that went above the crossbar. The puck bounced off the end boards and right back into the crease. Bergeron was none the wiser to finish.
It was the showstopper of a circus act type of game. There were three instances of multiple goals being scored within three minutes of each other, including three goals -- two Bruins scores bookending Kruger's goal -- in 2:39 in the second period.
"It's a rollercoaster a little bit, I guess," Seidenberg said. "You want to try to stay even-keel, but it's tough when there's so many ups and downs. We're back, we're trailing by two, we're even, we tied it up, and then we gave one up again, so it's a lot of mixed emotions."
Chicago took a 1-0 lead at 6:48 of the first period on a shorthanded goal when Tyler Seguin didn't protect the puck in the offensive zone as he neared the blue line. Brandon Saad took it from him, sprinted down the right side as Chara backchecked and passed to Michael Handzus for the score.
The Bruins didn't find their game until a scrum broke out after Peverley drove and drew a Duncan Keith tripping penalty. Peverley scored on the ensuing power play. Saad twice had chances to clear the puck in the final seconds of the penalty.
The Blackhawks reclaimed the lead early in the second period behind the remade line of Bickell, Toews and Kane. Those three played together at the end of the Western Conference finals and put the finishing touch of the Kings, Kane scoring four times in the last two games.
Toews and Kane's back-to-back goals made it 3-1, the Bruins' first multiple-goal deficit since Game 7 of the first round. The trio of Bickell, Toews and Kane combined for five points Wednesday after being silenced in the first three games.
"I like that line," Quenneville said. "Big picture getting reunited, they seem to have some chemistry. Scoring certainly helps."
Lucic tipped a Chara shot past Crawford at 14:43 of the second to make it a 3-2 game. But Kruger scored on a 2-on-1 49 seconds later to make it 4-2.
After Bergeron's end-boards goal, he scored again 2:05 into the third to tie it. After Sharp scored on the power play, Johnny Boychuk hammered in a slapper to tie the game with 7:46 left.
That sent the crazy Game 5 to extra time. But the Blackhawks got the victory to change the tenor of the series. The Bruins know they'll have one more home game now, and will need a steadier game to get the series back in their favor.
"I guess we didn't communicate enough," Bergeron said. "We know that's a good team, if you give them time I guess they can get some speed and attack on our defensemen with speed. We got to do a better job at that, look at videos and get back at it in Game 5."


text:
The Game's Tia Mowry to Star in Nick at Nite Comedy
Tia Mowry, best known for starring in Sister, Sister and The Game, is set to star in the new Nick at Nite comedy Instant Mom, Deadline reports.
The cable network has ordered 13 episodes of the multi-camera comedy, which will first premiere on NickMom and then repeat on Nick at Nite.
Photos: See child stars all grown up!
Instant Mom centers on young party girl Stephanie (Mowry) who must kiss her single life goodbye when she marries an older man, Charlie (Spin City's Michael Boatman), who has three kids. She slowly grows into a full-time stepmom, but struggles to maintain her former single self. Sheryl Lee Ralph will also star as Stephanie's mom.
"Instant Mom is the perfect addition to our NickMom nighttime comedy block designed to let moms unwind from the day and laugh at the often hilarious experiences of parenthood," Bronwen O'Keefe, the channel's SVP of NickMom, said in a statement. "This show has a fantastic cast and at the center is Tia bringing all her warmth and talent to this funny and relatable character."
Mowry starred on the first five seasons of The Game, but it was announced in May that she and Pooch Hall would not be returning. Mowry also stars in the Style network reality series, Tia & Tamera, with her twin sister Tamera Mowry.
View original The Game's Tia Mowry to Star in Nick at Nite Comedy at TVGuide.com
Other Links From TVGuide.com


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Today's News: Our Take - Omarosa Calls Bethenny "Mediocre," Ridiculous Argument Ensues
Talking out your differences isn't so easy - even on a daytime talk show!
Bethenny Frankel invited Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth on to her talk show Bethenny, in an episode airing Wednesday. But after three years of insulting each other in the press, the ladies decided to do it in person.
"It's different for you and I, I am an African American woman. You get to walk around and be mediocre and you still get rewarded with things. We have to be exceptional to get anything in this business," Manigault-Stallworth said, eliciting boos from the audience. "I wasn't calling her mediocre. Clearly she's doing well. I am here on your show and I think that's fantastic."
Frankel tried to move past the comment, but became defensive when she had trouble getting in a word. "I think that you do have a career; I invited you here. I don't think you have a brand. I think you are infamous; that's what I really think," Frankel said. "I am on the show because I want to give a point of view and let you give your point of view. I don't think you have a brand. What is your brand?"
9 bubble shows - which will survive?
Manigault-Stallworth and Frankel both got their starts on reality TV'sApprentice franchise, and began feuding way back in 2010 when Frankel criticized Manigault-Stallworth's career (or lack thereof, in Frankel's opinion) on The View. "Today she tried to act like her show was superior to my new show and her book was superior to my book or her career was superior," Manigault-Stallworth told Perez Hilton at the time. "She is making a living in the world of reality just like me."
Things escalated on the show when Manigault-Stallworth responded. "I am a strong businesswoman who celebrates being smart, and there is a brand in being smart," she said. Frankel shot back, "So your brand is being smart? Omarosa's brand is smart. Is that in your business plan?"
Watch the full exchange below:
What do you think of the ladies' latest showdown?
View original Omarosa Calls Bethenny "Mediocre," Ridiculous Argument Ensues at TVGuide.com
Other Links From TVGuide.com


text: Although I am known as a designer of fashionable crocheted wearables for women, I own up to the fact that I've been other places. Here's a smattering of published objects from the vault, including home dec, bags, hats, ponchos and odd (even weird) crochet designs you may or may not have encountered in your crochet travels. Think of this as being forced to watch vacation slideshows from the past decade!


text:
When you're on a gluten-free diet, the holidays can seem like a minefield of tempting foods with unknown ingredients. A few easy strategies, as well as a few great gluten-free recipes, can make holiday get-togethers much easier.
When going to a holiday party or other event:
- — Understand that you will need to find your holiday cheer in the good company and conversation, not necessarily in the food.
— Eat before you leave home, so you're not overly hungry at the party. This will reduce the temptation to eat something that is not safe.
— Bring your own dish or dessert to share (like the gluten-free lemon bars below), so you are assured there will be something you can eat.
— Bring a gluten-free granola bar or nut bar (Larabars and Kind bars are tasty and filling), so you can sneak away and have a quick snack if there's nothing safe for you to eat.
— Be an early bird. Food left on a buffet table easily can become contaminated when guests use the wrong serving spoon, dip their pita in otherwise gluten-free hummus, or break bread over the salad. If you are at the party early, you can go into the kitchen and reserve untouched portions for yourself. You'll also be able to read package labels.
— Let your host know in advance that you cannot eat anything made with wheat, rye, barley and oats. Tell the host that she doesn't need to make special foods, you would just like to determine which foods will be safe for you to eat. If you can find out the menu, focus on two or three dishes that seem likely to be gluten-free and ask about the ingredients in those specific dishes. If the party will have a buffet, ask the host to put aside uncontaminated portions for you in advance.
— When in doubt, leave it out. Don't eat food unless you are certain it is gluten-free.
For easy desserts to bring to holiday get-togethers, check out these Gluten Free Nosh recipes:
- — Gluten-free lemon squares
— Gluten-free meringue cookies
— Gluten-free chocolate truffles and chocolate-covered strawberries
— Gluten-free dark and white chocolate pomegranate bark (you can also vary this recipe to make gluten-free peppermint bark)


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Bitrue Review – Is This Broker Right For You?
There are a lot of things to consider before joining a new broker. Let's look at the Bitrue offers. This broker has many options for a trader to customize his or her trading interface. This includes depth charts, unlimited customization, and a range of indicators. To help you trade, you can also use order books and drawing tools.
What is Bitrue?
Bitrue, a cryptocurrency exchange, offers a variety of trading options and investment options. This exchange is best for traders who are experienced, but not beginners. Its system can be a bit difficult to understand for beginners, but it's still a convenient way to get started with cryptocurrency trading. The site features a comprehensive help center and a number of FAQs. You will also find updates on market trends and new features. You can also connect with the Bitrue team via email or social media.
Bitrue has a history of security breaches. It was implicated in a 2014 cryptocurrency exchange hack, in which $4.5 million of crypto was stolen from hot wallets. However, Bitrue soon compensated all lost customer funds. This is due in large part to the security architecture of Bitrue, which ensures that funds remain in offline multi-signature cold wallets.
Is it safe?
Bitrue reviews often include the following question: "Is Bitrue safe?" The company has taken steps to ensure that its users are safe. It offers two-step verification to prevent fraud and hacking of accounts. This includes preventing transactions from being performed from compromised IP addresses or devices. Additionally, users can change the security code in their account at any time. If the email they receive does not match, users need to be cautious about any emails claiming to come from Bitrue. These emails are most likely fake.
Bitrue, a cryptocurrency trading platform, offers more than 100 cryptocurrencies. You can also access the platform via a mobile app or 24-hour customer service. This is a very simple way to get started with crypto trading. Before you sign up, however, there are important things to keep in mind.
Bitrue offers an array of features and services to traders and investors. You don't need KYC to trade, it is available in the United States and has many trading pairs. It also offers quick customer support. It integrates with TradingView. Bitrue is a great option if you are interested in trading cryptocurrency.
Your assets are safe from theft thanks to the company's KYC system. Site staff regularly adopt new security measures to protect assets from fraud. This way, you can trust your funds in Bitrue. Bitrue offers email support and telegram support. Users can also contact customer support via Twitter. Within one day, a representative will respond to any question.
It's easy to sign up for Bitrue. An email address, password and verification code are required to sign up for Bitrue. Once you have verified your account, you can start trading. You can withdraw up to two BTC per day. However, if you live in Texas, New York, or China, you'll have to undergo KYC.
Customer Service
Bitrue allows you to trade and deposit crypto. To sign up, all you need is an email address and password. To avoid identity fraud, make sure you choose a code that is unique to you. If your email address does not match the one on your account, it is possible that you are receiving phishing emails.
Bitrue offers support via email as well as a help ticket system. While this isn't the best customer support, it is adequate for a self-service platform. Customer reviews of Bitrue are mixed, with some complaints focusing on the freezing of accounts or lost funds. However, many users praise the reliability of the platform and its ease of use.
Before you deposit any funds with Bitrue, you should be aware of their fees. Although it is possible to make deposits in fiat currency, it is more convenient to deposit crypto with Bitrue. The company also has an OTC desk that allows you to wire transfer and trade crypto for fiat currencies.
Bitrue charges fees based on the coin pair you trade. If you use the platform's proprietary token, you will get a 30% discount on your standard Commission. Additional fees are required for traders to trade fiat currency. These fees include network fees. Bitrue's fees, however, are less expensive than other exchanges.
Bitrue, a Singapore-based cryptocurrency exchange, is available. It has an impressive list of currencies for spot trading, as well as several advanced products designed for more experienced traders. It also has a loan feature, which is unique among exchanges. However, the company has experienced hacking in the past and has been required to refund customers' losses.


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This domain name is available for purchase.
If you would like to make an offer, click Enquire Here and follow the prompts on the displayed page to submit a bid or Buy It Now.
If your offer is accepted by both parties or you have completed the Buy It Now process, you will receive a notification advising you of the next steps. This process is managed by Private and/or its partners to provide safety and security, ensuring you get the domain you are looking for.


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Barrages & Cakes
We sell all types of fireworks here at Fireworks Shop! Feel free to browse all our categories and see the range that we have. We have fireworks for all occasions and they are at very competitive prices!
What are Barrages
Firework barrages are also known as cakes or single ignition barrages (SIB). They are a display in a box and the user only needs to ignite one fuse to let the display commence. Barrages consist of multiple tubes that are linked together by a fuse, tube to tube, to provide a series of aerial effects. Each tube will fire a single shot - for example, a 16-shot barrage consists of 16 tubes and provides 16 aerial shots.
Barrages vary in tube sizes (the maximum in the UK being 30mm). As a rule of thumb, the larger the tube size, the more powerful the shot is, and the bigger the effect, as it contains more powder.
Barrages come in all shapes and sizes and vary in tube size, powder weight, duration, pace, effects, firing pattern, and noise level. Don't take for granted that a smaller sized firework has less power than a larger sized firework - it may only contain 16 shots, but the tube size could be 20mm, 25mm or 30mm. As well as other information, each product on our website details the powder weight and tube size for your consideration.
Our firework barrages are popular because they provide many effects, colours, and sounds. Combining multiple barrages in succession and mixing different products makes for an impressive fireworks display, with some being suited to starting a display or for a grand finale. Many people experiment with this arrangement of barrages to create their own display and impress guests.
Remember, if you are not sure what is best for your fireworks display, or you need advice about our products, then call Fireworks Shop
We have all types of fireworks and you can view all these on our website. We have divided the barrages into price ranges for your convenience, and we have provided filters so you can personalise your search. If you can't find the firework that you're looking for, feel free to contact us and we will be happy to assist you in finding the right one!
For your convenience, we have videos of all our products which you can view on our website or in our shop.
As a retailer, our promise is to provide you, the customer, with the best possible service we can; this means any fireworks we sell, we make sure that they are of the highest quality!Read Less
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TNB: Beast in the East
China is rising. Everyone says so. Business experts cite imminent Chinese takeover as the result of our stupidity, laziness and poor monetary habits. Fox News utters the country's name in hushed tones and with terror, as if the boogeyman in the closet is no longer afraid to show his face, and we need to call for our mommies.
China is rising. Everyone says so. Business experts cite imminent Chinese takeover as the result of our stupidity, laziness
and poor monetary habits. Fox News utters the country's name in hushed tones and with terror, as if the boogeyman in the closet is no longer afraid
to show his face, and we need to call for our mommies.
I wasn't sure what to expect when I flew to China in April for a movie shoot with Chris Sharma and his girlfriend, Daila Ojeda. I knew China was cheap,
though the food was alleged to be challenging for Western intestines. (Chickens' feet anyone?) Yangshuo was cool looking. Cooper Roberts and Brett
Lowell from BigUP had done a Dose there, and Todd Skinner, Mike Tupper and Sam Lightner had pioneered the first routes there back in 1991 or so. From
all the photos I'd seen, the Moon Hill arch looked ridiculously amazing, the stalactites grow from its underside like fungus and just beg to be humped.
I had three weeks to make a movie about a star climbing in paradise. When I arrived, Chris, Daila and their friend Corey Dwan had already prepped the White
Mountain crag with two new, sick-looking projects for Chris to try. Chris bolted them in a day, and they looked world-class. A short walk across orange
groves and peanut fields led to a 45-meter wall of brilliant limestone. Slabby by Spanish standards, the wall overhangs 15 to 25 degrees at most. It's
similar to the Blasphemy Wall at the Virgin River Gorge, only steeper.
On the left, Chris found a line of face holds and dead tufas (as in, they've stopped seeping) that he redpointed in just a few tries. He called the route
Spicy Noodle (5.14b), and it is a contender for China's hardest line. The adjacent route American Gangster was originally rated 5.14b
by its first ascentionist, Michael Fuselier, who also drilled a grotesque three-finger slot at the crux. Chris climbed this route without the chipped
hold on his second try, and thinks that that sequence may make this route a bit more difficult than Spicy Noodle. (The locals have since renamed
the route French Gangster.)
The line that Chris bolted next to Spicy Noodle has two starts: an easier one that traverses in, and a wicked hard direct one. His working names
for the two routes are The Route of All Dumplings and Necessary Dumpling, not only because of the similarity to the Blasphemy Wall's twin jewels Necessary Evil (5.14c)
and Route of All Evil (5.14a/b), but because Chris reckons that Necessary Dumpling will be a project for a next-generation climber.
On paper, the trip was great. I shot a lot of great footage, projects were sent, and we all enjoyed the amazing scenery and interesting culture surrounding
us. But sometimes, even in an exotic climbing paradise, life can still find a way to kick you in the nuts.
One day halfway through the trip, two friends from Spain walked to a solitary crag to find a corpse, tortured and hanged, at its base. A tee shirt had
been thrown over his head.
The next day, I came back to my third-floor hotel room, in the nicer part of town, next to a government building and half a block from a police station,
to find that my room had been robbed. The stolen items included my second camera, iPod and, most painfully, my laptop. All gone. I felt like vomiting.
Corey,immediately understood what to do, promptly bringing me a double Scotch.
We were all shaken from the sequence of events, the murder and then the robbery. What was happening? Was this normal?
Bad shit happens, more often than we'd like to think. Climbing is a great excuse to travel to the wildest spots on earth. The climbing successes and failures
are easily forgotten, but the sunsets, drunken dinners and epics all contribute to making us who we are, and comprise the memories we keep. Sometimes
we are intoxicated by the memories, and sometimes they teach us something else. To use caution. To remember that humans can be horrible to each other.
To appreciate the moments but not to let our guard down.
I'm editing the footage just as soon as I get a new computer. Chris left two major projects in China (one that will most likely be in the 5.15 range, and
one of the best any of us has ever seen). His interest in China was to promote the climbing there, to give something back to the local climbers by
leaving them with something to shoot for. And despite the rough events, I think he'll go back to try the routes soon.
Unlike what climbing videos usually show, fantasy trips can involve nightmares, too. Would I go back? Yeah, I would. It's all part of it. And it's worth
Mike Call's website, www.momentumvm.com, will show the film, as will www.sanuk.com after he gets a new computer, of course.


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PlanetEthiopia.com is a non-governmental, non-religious, non-political and yet non-profit making Ethiopian popular videos, music, and multimedia entertainment website, founded in February 2008 to reach all Ethiopians and Ethiopia friends worldwide who miss being in Ethiopia.
Our purposely informal, not modern, typical Ethiopian website design has been favored as the best comforting entertainment website design by many Ethiopian visitors worldwide. Every content of design on our website, including the Ethiopian made players, is carefully studied and tested, so it was not a coincidental creation. That's why it got a very positive psychological impact for homesick Diaspora Ethiopians looking for a substitute to comfort their yearning.
Many of our visitors frequently ask regarding our audio music collections: Why do we not add every song? The answer is simple:
PlanetEthiopia.com does not do mass uploads because we value Ethiopian art, whether it is music or film, of its quality but not of its quantity, so we carefully review and select the medias before we post them.
Why we give away the sophisticatedly created virtual gifts instead of selling them?
The giveaways are just "thank you gifts" for our loyal visitors, criticizers, feedback givers, who help us improve our website. The gifts serve also as a promotion and advertising strategy for our website.
Enjoy your stay!
Your second home
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WASHINGTON (AP) – The poor rich.
With Washington gridlocked again over whether to raise their taxes, it turns out wealthy families already are paying some of their biggest federal tax bills in decades even as the rest of the population continues to pay at historically low rates.
President Barack Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress say the wealthy must pay their fair share if the federal government is ever going to fix its finances and reduce the budget deficit to a manageable level.
A new analysis, however, shows that average tax bills for high-income families rarely have been higher since the Congressional Budget Office began tracking the data in 1979. Middle- and low-income families aren't paying as much as they used to.
For 2013, families with incomes in the top 20 percent of the nation will pay an average of 27.2 percent of their income in federal taxes, according to projections by the Tax Policy Center, a research organization based in Washington. The top 1 percent of households, those with incomes averaging $1.4 million, will pay an average of 35.5 percent.
Those tax rates, which include income, payroll, corporate and estate taxes, are among the highest since 1979.
The average family in the bottom 20 percent of households won't pay any federal taxes. Instead, many families in this group will get payments from the federal government by claiming more in credits than they owe in taxes, including payroll taxes. That will give them a negative tax rate.
'My sense is that high-income people feel abused by being targeted always for more taxes,' Roberton Williams, a fellow at the Tax Policy Center, said. 'You can understand why they feel that way.'
Last week, Senate Democrats were unable to advance their proposal to raise taxes on some wealthy families for the second time this year as part of a package to avoid automatic spending cuts. The bill failed Thursday when Republicans blocked it. A competing Republican bill that included no tax increases also failed, and the automatic spending cuts began taking effect Friday.
The issue, however, isn't going away.
Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress insist that any future deal to reduce government borrowing must include a mix of spending cuts and more tax revenue.
'I am prepared to do hard things and to push my Democratic friends to do hard things,' Obama said Friday. 'But what I can't do is ask middle-class families, ask seniors, ask students to bear the entire burden of deficit reduction when we know we've got a bunch of tax loopholes that are benefiting the well-off and the well-connected, aren't contributing to growth, aren't contributing to our economy. It's not fair. It's not right.'
On Sunday, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said Republicans are committed to reducing the budget deficit without raising taxes again. In a separate broadcast interview, White House economic adviser Gene Sperling called that position unreasonable.
The Democrats' sequester bill included the 'Buffett Rule,' named after billionaire investor Warren Buffett. It gradually would phase in a requirement that people making more than $1 million a year pay at least 30 percent of their income in federal taxes.
The rule targets millionaires who make most of their money from investments – capital gains and qualified dividends, which have a top tax rate of 20 percent.
'It's fairness,' said Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. 'We're not raising taxes with the Buffett rule as much as we are correcting an inequity in terms of, one guy can be working at one end of the hall and because he's working with hedge funds, he gets taxed at 20 percent. Another guy at the other end of the hall is on a salary at an insurance company and he has to pay (39.6 percent). That's just not fair.'
On average, households making more than $1 million this year will pay 37.2 percent of their income in federal taxes, according to the Tax Policy Center. But there are exceptions.
For example, the Internal Revenue Service tracks tax returns for the 400 highest-paid filers each year. Those taxpayers made an average of $202 million in 2009, the latest year available. Their average federal income tax rate: 19.9 percent.
That's still higher than the tax rate paid by most middle-income families, but not by much.
The middle 20 percent of U.S. households – those making an average of $46,600 – will pay an average of 13.8 percent of their income in federal taxes for this year, according to the Tax Policy Center. Over the past three decades, the average federal tax rate for this group has been about 16 percent.
The Associated Press analyzed two sets of data to compare tax burdens over time.
The CBO produces data from 1979 to 2009; the center has overlapping data from 2004 through 2013. Both get tax data from the IRS, but they use slightly different methodologies to calculate federal tax burdens.
Still, their numbers track closely enough to make some general observations. For example, it is clear that for 2013, average tax bills for the wealthy will be among the highest since 1979. It also is clear that federal taxes for middle- and low-income households will stay well below their averages for the same period.
Liberals and many Democrats say rich families can afford to pay higher taxes because their incomes have grown much more than incomes for middle- and low-income families.
Average after-tax incomes for the top 1 percent of households more than doubled from 1979 to 2009, increasing by 155 percent, according to the CBO. Average incomes for those in the middle increased by just 32 percent during the same period while those at the bottom saw their incomes go up by 45 percent.
'You've got to think about the context,' said Chuck Marr, director of federal tax policy for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank. 'We just had three decades in the United States where we had a tremendous increase in inequality.'
The growing disparity in income is a big reason why tax bills for the rich are approaching 30-year highs, Williams said. As the rich get richer, a greater share of their income is taxed at the top rate, he said.
High-income families also have been targeted by tax increases this year, including a new tax law passed by Congress on Jan. 1 as well as tax increases in the president's health care law.
The new tax law made the federal income tax more progressive, increasing the top tax rate from 35 percent to 39.6 percent, on taxable income above $400,000 for individuals and $450,000 for married couples filing jointly. Lower tax rates on income below those amounts were made permanent. Also, tax breaks for low-income families first enacted as part of Obama's 2009 stimulus package were extended through 2017.
Conservatives say raising taxes again on the wealthy would reduce their incentive to save and invest, hurting long-term economic growth.
'Raising taxes hurts the economy, and raising taxes on upper-income individuals – whether those who work for salaries or those who save and earn capital income – always hurts the economy the most,' said J.D. Foster, a fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation. 'Spite and envy are not sound bases for public policy.'
Besides, Republican leaders in Congress say, one tax increase a year is more than enough.
'Let's make it clear that the president got his tax hikes on Jan. 1,' House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Friday. 'This discussion about revenue, in my view, is over.'
— Follow Stephen Ohlemacher on Twitter: http://twitter.com/stephenatap


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Mc Donalds Gift Certificate Cash Voucher
- Brand: Forexengineer
- Product Code: MCD Voucher RM5
- Availability: SOLD OUT -->(60 already sold)
- Ex Tax: RM5.50
Ops! This product just sold out.
We will recall this product from outlets and we'll notify you through whatsapp / sms once it become available (normally within 4 - 5 business days).
Why you need ask our help?
Because: we've access to all outlets within Malaysia.


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* Available while quantities last. Items are limited and may not be available in all stores. We reserve the right to limit quantities sold. Prices and labels may vary by location. We are not responsible for printing or typographical errors. We welcome cash, EBT, Visa, MasterCard, Discover, American Express, most debit cards and all forms of contactless payment. No checks please. We do not accept Manufacturers' Coupons.
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ROME — The judge who presided over Amanda Knox's second murder conviction says he suffered over the verdict, but that he and the jury reached agreement that she was guilty in the death of British student Meredith Kercher.
Judge Alessandro Nencini also suggested in an interview with Corriere della Sera published Saturday that the decision of Knox's ex-boyfriend and co-defendant, Raffaele Sollecito, not to testify may have worked against him.
"It's the defendant's right, but it certainly deprived the process of a voice," Nencini was quoted as saying. "He limited himself to spontaneous declarations. He said only what he wanted to say without letting himself be cross-examined." Knox did not appear at the trial, but sent a letter to the court saying she feared wrongful conviction.
The newspaper said Nencini consented to the interview because he knew the sentence would create a media storm. The case has been top international news since Kercher was found in a pool of blood with her throat slit on Nov. 2, 2007, in the apartment Knox and Kercher shared in the university town of Perugia.
As the case has moved through Italy's court system, prosecutors have offered differing explanations for Kercher's killing, asserting in the first trial that Kercher was killed when an erotic game went awry and in the latest trial saying the violence was rooted in a longstanding disagreement over cleanliness. Both Sollecito and Knox deny involvement.
Nencino did not give a specific reasoning behind the verdict, saying the court settled on a motive that would be made clear in the written explanation, expected within three months.
Nenci, another judge and six lay jurors reinstated the guilty verdicts on Thursday against Knox and Sollecito that were first handed down in 2009, sentencing Knox to 28 1/2 years and Sollecito to 25 for the murder. An appeals court had acquitted the pair in 2011 and ordered them freed from prison, but Italy's supreme court threw out the acquittals and ordered a third trial, in Florence.
Lawyers for both Knox and Sollecito have said they would appeal, saying there was no proof that the two had committed the crime. Knox has said she will never willingly return to Italy to serve any sentence if the verdict is upheld.
Nencini said the court worked long and hard to process what he called a "half-room" worth of documentation in these months. Asked if the final verdict was unanimous after 12 hours of deliberations, Nencini hedged, saying it was a "shared" decision.
"I can say that in all these months, and in particular in the last meeting, we sensed the gravity of a sentence against young people and entire families," he was quoted as saying. "This is something that has affected many lives."
"I feel liberated because the moment of the decision is the most difficult," he was quoted as saying. "I also have children, and inflicting a sentence of 25 and 28 years on two young people is emotionally very tough."
A third person, Rudy Guede, was convicted in a separate trial and is serving a 16-year sentence.
Nencini hinted at what the court had found to be the most plausible explanation for what happened, saying that up until 8:15 p.m. on the night of the murder, Knox and Sollecito had other plans: In Knox's case, she was supposed to have gone to work at a bar, and Sollecito was supposed to have gone to a train station to pick up a friend's luggage.
"At the moment I can say that up until 8:15 of that evening, the kids had other plans, but they skipped them and an opportunity was created," Nencini was quoted as saying. "If Amanda had gone to work, probably we wouldn't be here."
While the changed plans that night have been well established by evidence presented to the courts, Nencini didn't explain how those details factored into a motive for the murder.
He justified not imposing any restrictive measures on Knox, who remains free in the United States. If necessary, the court would re-evaluate the measures imposed on Sollecito to prevent him from leaving the country, he said.
Sollecito had attended the morning session of Thursday's court hearing but then drove to Italy's northern frontier with Austria and Slovenia. While the judges and jury deliberated, he and his girlfriend visited Austria, but came back to Italy to spend the night.
In an interview with U.S. broadcaster NBC News on Friday, Sollecito said he wasn't trying to flee Italy by going to Austria. He said he had been planning to take a trip outside Italy if acquitted, but turned back as soon as he learned he had been convicted.
"I didn't want to flee, or to get away because I actually went back," he said.
He said he checked into the first hotel once back in Italy because he was tired. Police found him there Friday morning, and confiscated his passport and ID papers, as mandated by the court, but then set him free.
Follow Nicole Winfield at www.twitter.com/nwinfield
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