Cataclysm

[caladein]

If your tank is really bad at positioning the boss away from the group and your damage is bad enough that you really can't afford to waste hourglasses, it's not hard to wipe on that fight.  But I haven't touched the place in a long time.

[Azazel]

With only a 5 level spread to cap I think they could pretty safely skip leveling dungeons entirely.

Except the sheer amount of the population that ONLY levels in dungeons would be angry ;-)

I have to say that having just cracked open my Cataclysm about a week ago, I've been enjoying running my L80 toons through the levelling dungeons. I don't see an issue with having a few dungeons that work for levelling and then you can have them as max level heroics. What's the prob?

[Simond]

Because this whole part of the debate started with:
A: "Why did they need to nerf heroics? People should have just run normals"
B: "What, all two of them?"
C: "So why not just get rid of levelling dungeons then?"

[FieryBalrog]

Well, looks like they went the opposite way.

> leveling dungeons only
> heroics at cap
> challenge mode

[Simond]

Bearing in mind that they seem to be redefining "Heroic" just as "Max level version of instance" rather than "Genitals + Cheesegrater = Party All Night", that's not really an issue.

[Azazel]

Yeah. The problem with Heroics in Cata was that what "heroics" actually meant to the playerbase had changed greatly from their introduction to the end of WOTLK. At that point Heroics pretty much were normals now, and the great unwashed masses would not tolerate going from heroics to not-heroics.

[apocrypha]

Cataclysm Post-Mortem blog.

One highlight that I suspect a certain hatted-monkey f13er might like:

Q. What didn’t work out as planned or expected?
Initially, we started off the Heroic dungeons at too high of a difficulty. The difficulty level rather abruptly changed when compared to the Heroics players experienced at the end of Wrath of the Lich King. This major change caught many players off guard, and frustrated some of them. The difficulty also increased the effective amount of time required to complete a dungeon to a longer experience than we wanted. With the release of patch 4.3 we’re now in a much better place. We’ve always talked about being able to complete a dungeon over lunch, and the Hour of Twilight dungeons get us back to that goal. End Time, Well of Eternity, and Hour of Twilight all provide epic play experiences to our players, but at the real sweet spot of difficulty, complexity, and time commitment.

[Wolf]

very tame interview in-house Q&A blog post. I don't know why I was expecting something different. Too bad they'll never let a person this high up do an AMA, it'd be great to pick his brain on details about encounter design in raids.

[apocrypha]

It's not really an interview, it's an in-house Q&A blog post.

[Wolf]

there fixed it. My point about him doing an ama-type thing, or a proper interview with a raiding guild stands. They'll never let him, which is the sad part.

[Paelos]

Cataclysm Post-Mortem blog.

Q. What didn’t work out as planned or expected?
Initially, we started off the Heroic dungeons at too high of a difficulty. The difficulty level rather abruptly changed when compared to the Heroics players experienced at the end of Wrath of the Lich King. This major change caught many players off guard, and frustrated some of them. The difficulty also increased the effective amount of time required to complete a dungeon to a longer experience than we wanted. With the release of patch 4.3 we’re now in a much better place. We’ve always talked about being able to complete a dungeon over lunch, and the Hour of Twilight dungeons get us back to that goal. End Time, Well of Eternity, and Hour of Twilight all provide epic play experiences to our players, but at the real sweet spot of difficulty, complexity, and time commitment.

That's the admission I was looking for. Thanks Blizzard! I've signed up for the free 7 day thing to see how the game has changed as of yesterday. I'll probably end up resubbing if it's back to facerolling and fun.

[apocrypha]

Well, put it like this, I fired up the 7 free days thing yesterday, after not having played for ~6 months. Logged in my mage in 346/359 gear, hit the LFD and within 90 mins had completed all 3 new dungeons without a single wipe nor complaint about my low DPS.

The only time I had to do anything more complicated than follow everyone else was one fight where I kept getting interrupted and someone said "stand behind someone else and the knife won't hit you".

[Fabricated]

The new dungeons can basically be outgeared for most gimmicks but they have some semi-interesting mechanics (Murozond's snapshot thing is pretty fucking cool) and definite floors for performance without reliving the Cata/Vanilla/BC shit with ridiculous trash pulls and bosses loaded with instant-death mechanics.

[Ironwood]

At this point, they may as well just put tokens in those 3 dungeons.  It's a huge pain in the arse to constantly re-run them to gear up for LFR and massively frustrating to do another batch of 3 for fuck all to actually drop.  Even worse when shit drops that your alt could use and it gets dissed because no cunt wants it.

[Xanthippe]

Cataclysm Post-Mortem blog.

Q. What didn’t work out as planned or expected?
Initially, we started off the Heroic dungeons at too high of a difficulty. The difficulty level rather abruptly changed when compared to the Heroics players experienced at the end of Wrath of the Lich King. This major change caught many players off guard, and frustrated some of them. The difficulty also increased the effective amount of time required to complete a dungeon to a longer experience than we wanted. With the release of patch 4.3 we’re now in a much better place. We’ve always talked about being able to complete a dungeon over lunch, and the Hour of Twilight dungeons get us back to that goal. End Time, Well of Eternity, and Hour of Twilight all provide epic play experiences to our players, but at the real sweet spot of difficulty, complexity, and time commitment.

That's the admission I was looking for. Thanks Blizzard! I've signed up for the free 7 day thing to see how the game has changed as of yesterday. I'll probably end up resubbing if it's back to facerolling and fun.

Let me know, will you?

Isn't this admission basically exactly what you were complaining about way back when you quit? Take that, naysayers.

[Rokal]

That's the admission I was looking for. Thanks Blizzard! I've signed up for the free 7 day thing to see how the game has changed as of yesterday. I'll probably end up resubbing if it's back to facerolling and fun.

That wasn't an apology or Ghostcrawler being fired! I'm disappointed in you.

[Paelos]

That's the admission I was looking for. Thanks Blizzard! I've signed up for the free 7 day thing to see how the game has changed as of yesterday. I'll probably end up resubbing if it's back to facerolling and fun.

That wasn't an apology or Ghostcrawler being fired! I'm disappointed in you.

It's as close to an apology as you get from a corporation. Saying we made a large mistake in difficulty is what I wanted, publically. Firing Ghostcrawler would only be a cherry on top. Still, you being wrong about the game also makes me happy. You were an ardent defender of these Cataclysm changes, which as have been proven both in subs lost and overall designer quotes, that were terrible for the game.

[Rokal]

Terrible for subscription numbers, great for the game(play) 

I still think it could have worked with a more robust end-game for Cata, but that ship has sailed.

Even if it's depressing to hear that 4.3 dungeons hit the 'sweet spot' for difficulty, I'm still way too excited about pandas and Monks in MoP. Maybe challenge mode will turn out well and the game will still have some satisfying 5-man content for folks like me. Time will tell.

[Paelos]

As long as developers understand that your kind of fun should be relegated to the back burner, and never inflicted upon their larger playerbase, I'm on board. Challenge modes are fine for this. It's the developers just handing people the hammer for their nuts, but not actually taking much extra time to program it in.

Xanthippe, I'll post my thoughts on the game daily this week as I mess with it. I'll do some comparisons from what I left to what I'm seeing now.

[Lakov_Sanite]

I never got an email for the free 7 days, is it just automatic?

[apocrypha]

Lakov, yes I think so. Mine had been filtered into my junk folder though... there's so many Blizzardalike phishing scam emails out there that when a real one arrives from Blizzard it's hard to tell.

[Fabricated]

As long as developers understand that your kind of fun should be relegated to the back burner, and never inflicted upon their larger playerbase, I'm on board. Challenge modes are fine for this. It's the developers just handing people the hammer for their nuts, but not actually taking much extra time to program it in.

Xanthippe, I'll post my thoughts on the game daily this week as I mess with it. I'll do some comparisons from what I left to what I'm seeing now.

I'm back on Proudmoore still, so hit me up if you feel like trying them out.

[Miasma]

New scroll of resurrection seems to give a free server transfer, faction change, give you the Cataclysm expansion for free and do a "Character boost to 80".  I don't know if that means you just ding 80 or if it is a sidekick type temporary level up.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/2669-Scroll-of-Resurrection-Revamp-Free-lvl-80-Character-and-more!

[Fabricated]

Ah fuck. I could've gotten an alt bumped and a free transfer?

[Rokal]

Interesting, does this mean someone that stopped playing in TBC could be upgraded with both Wrath and Cata for free? Pretty crazy promotion.

[Miasma]

Rumor is the new spectral mounts might be rewards for giving a scroll.  The boost to 80 seems to be just an instant ding 80 you're done, there is a new ilvl of armor on the PTR that would just happen to be perfect to throw at a newly minted 80 so that they had level appropriate gear.

If all this comes true we might need to organize a thread of scroll give away/takers...

[Rokal]

Pretty hilarious that they are now asking people to entirely skip the main feature of the expansion (new 1-60).

[Ingmar]

In practice it is just a way to skip TBC, this isn't for new players, and for existing players Outland is where alts go to die.

[Paelos]

Pretty hilarious that they are now asking people to entirely skip the main feature of the expansion (new 1-60).

By the time MoP releases, they are going to do their best amnesia routine with Cataclysm. Each step from this point forward seems to be them internalizing their mistakes and realizing how to better engage their players.

[Azazel]

Honestly, an overhaul of TBC would be a good thing - but it's a lot of resources to fix something like that - even if it were just quests and itemisation. With many of my wife and my own most recent alts, the TBC portion of levelling is largely getting power-levelled on a dozen runs through Ramparts, the instance next to it, and then some questing in Nagrand through to 68. Then Northrend.

With my hunter, I've taken a slightly different route. PL to 65, then doing some LFD to 67 (so far) and daily cooking and fishing. Next level - Northrend!

[Wolf]

I don't think they're doing another cata-style overhaul any time soon. They've said before it's the main reason for the generally low content levels of 80-85 and the endgame at release.

[Fabricated]

The quest flow in Outland is just fine IMO, and it doesn't take long to get out of there. I'd settle for them having an intern or one of the freshly unemployed GMs go through the quest rewards there and unfucking their stats and models. Unless people literally have nostalgia for the BC clownsuit era.

[Paelos]

First impressions after 1.5 hours back into the world.

1 - Most of my friends are gone, and the raiding alliance we used to have is dead. The guild is also basically dead. However, I still got a message welcoming me back from an old friend within 5 seconds.
2 - I completely forgot WTF I was doing. It took me a solid hour of rearranging my keys and fighting mobs just to get remotely comfortable again with the setup.
3 - I have no idea what changes have been made to crafting. I'll investigate this more as I go since all my skills are maxxed.
4 - My gear is hilariously out of date, but still very functional. I have no problem completely quests.
5 - I enjoyed the daily zone of phasing in Hyjal. I liked the fights although at times they felt more like me watching NPCs fight for me rather than me doing anything. Still, it's a nice area.
6 - I will wait until once I get my feet wet again with doing LFD stuff. Right now I don't feel like I can tank out of a wet paper bag with my learning curve. However, I still feel like a more powerful tank than I ever did in SWTOR as a JK.

[Ironwood]

1 - Yes, the winnowing from SWOTOR was fucking brutal.  Surprisingly, even though they're jacking that game in due to endgame content, most aren't coming back to WoW.
2 - This will be both due to you not being in for a while and, alas, also subtle changes to talents and keys and whatnot.  It took me ages to realise that my Lock was now specced into three utterly useless points and was using entirely the wrong rotation and Soul Swap was now worth it glyphed.
3 - Not a lot.  Crafting is fuck all use now due to the 359 gear being utterly owned by other upgrades.  Cut gems.  It's the only game in town.
4 - You may think it's functional until you hit the current 'endgame' where Kirk is laughing at your superior intellect.  It takes a while to gear up to get in there, but once you do, you're away.
5 - They still haven't done phasing right and Firelands is an utter dickwong in the cuntflap.  It just doesn't work even once, never mind with multiple alts.
6 - If you mean LFR, don't tank it at all until you're either so geared you won't care, or if, like me, you don't care about 24 other cuntbags calling you an asshole because the healers let you die.  If you mean LFG, it's the same retardery, but different day.

[Fabricated]

Basically the only thing you need to tank the HoT stuff is the gear level and some forewarning on bosses and like maybe 3-4 trash packs that can be trouble.

Endtime:
Baine (you get this if you get a firey area): Trash can literally be completely skipped. Ask someone if you can follow them to learn the timing. Literally just tank and spank on the boss, run to another island if he sinks or covers it in fire or whatever. I never had him last long enough to do so.

Jaina: Let the DPS/Rogues collect the shards you need to summon her. Clear the two packs that patrol through the area on your immediate right when you zap to this area. She has basically one thing you need to care about as a tank: she'll blink away and cast these 3 really slow moving ice blades that come out in a fan. Don't get hit by these. She'll also summon a flarecore which someone has to run into and eat as fast as possible but it's not really your job as a tank.

Sylvanas: Kill the two or so trash packs that patrol directly on the path to her; which is on your left when you zap to her area. Sylvanas has nothing important for you to do outside of her one real gimmick. She'll summon a ring of zombies around her, which collapse inward. They form a ring which makes a nasty ground effect behind them as they constrict in. Mark an area with the raid marker (or ask someone to), and everyone dogpiles that zombie every time to open a path for you to run away from her. Tank and spank.

Murozond: The trash has to be cleared and can kill you. The casters need to go ASAP or be CC'd. Have somebody CC one, then pounce on the other and keep it stunned or silenced. The boss will come down at the edge of the room. You literally have nothing to do here besides rotate your CDs as needed. Just charge him and rotate him away from the group (standard dragon rules apply). His gimmick is pretty cool; he has a fuckload of HP, does pretty solid damage, and spawns void zones all over the place that will inevitably cover the room. At the beginning of the fight a "temporal snapshot" gets taken; when it looks like the DPS/healers are going to be overwhelmed by the damage/void zones, the ranged hit the hourglass and you literally reset back to when the snapshot was taken. Yes, this means your CDs all reset and your HP/Mana are back. It's basically a DPS race to finish him before you run out of resets (5 in total). Easy however.

---

Well of Eternity:

Trash: Just stay near Illidan as much as possible and follow everyone, he gives an aura that gives you like a 100% crit rating so most groups (especially melee heavy) will fucking obliterate the trash when he's around.

Goat Dude: Tank, spank, don't stand in void zones I think. He'll emote at some point and Illidan will cloak you all. Get away from him, and everyone has to hide from these eyeballs he summons. Someone will inevitably get found (LFG remember), so get ready to spam your taunts/intervene because he'll focus on someone and try to rip their head off.

Trash: Meh. Standard trash containment fun. No CC needed but the eyeballs/casters might be an issue if you don't silence/stun when appropriate.

"Lady Azshara": I put it in quotes since you never actually hurt her. She just stands around. There's like 6 trash mobs which release in pairs, a melee and caster. The caster needs to go, ASAP. Azshara will occasionally start a TEN SECOND long cast that you need to interrupt to avoid a wipe. Yes, people fail on this, but tell the DPS you're busy and that it's their job. Free loot.

Trash: More meh. Stand in the light buff that drops to obliterate it.

Mannoroth (sp?): There's a bloodelf captain guy with this encounter. I don't even know what the fuck really goes on here honestly; it's a clusterfuck of a fight. Just tank and spank, and flying demons will fly over and drop lines of fire off and on which will make you kite the boss around a bit. Then there's basically fire and a gigantic fucking zoo of trash mobs that appear; just handle what you can and keep on the Mannoroth. You eventually get a buff that'll let you teabag him to 0%.

---

Hour of Twilight:

Trash: All of this consists of following thrall as he relives his escape from Durnholde and blunders into multiple generic trash packs. First set has elementals that spawn behind you, so mind that. Last sets towards the end of the instance have faceless ones who have a hell of a backhand.

Ice Thing: Who the fuck knows. Just interrupt everything you can.

Rogue Boss: Move out of gas cloud. That's it. If you're feeling really nice try to body-block for the healers by standing between them and the boss because she throws a nasty silencing dagger at ANYONE who casts.

Benedictus: Two phases at are the same, light and dark. Thrall gives you help on the first one, not on the second. He'll summon three orbs that'll hover in the air before shooting off and random people and leave a void zone, don't stand in them. Other is he'll summon a wave of light/dark that will p much instagib you if you get hit by it, don't get hit by it. Thrall will helpfully pop 2/3 of the light bubbles and drop a shield that you can stand in to totally avoid the light wave, on dark mode you're on your own. That's it really.

There you go.