Cataclysm

[kildorn]

You tailor for free bags and leg enchants. That's about the only reason to do it. Even the raid patterns have been historically lackluster, IIRC.

Also, yes once you start running heroics regularly you'll have more than enough orbs if you roll on them. I'm sitting on 5 just by rolling greed.

I tailor because I have an alchemist who can convert volatiles for me and I play the market for the rest.

Right now, I tailor for about 800-1600g/day selling spellcloth. But otherwise it's the cloak enchants that you tailor for.

[Sjofn]

I wonder if they'll change these new orbs like they changed the old ones. Frozen orbs were BoP at the beginning of Wrath, weren't they? That might just be one of the many things Blizzard likes to nerf over time.

[kildorn]

Yeah, Orbs were BoP, then became BoE and badge bought (at the same time, or were badger orbs later?)

Right now Orbs are basically there to limit the rate of creation on the crafted epics. One of the reasons tailoring is easier imo is that it's the tradeskill that has a hard timesink instead of a heroic farming epic requirement. It takes a week to make a belt. Not "however long it takes to get X heroic item"

Later in crafting life, however, the hard time limit becomes the shittier option between "I need 3 orbs" and "I need 7 days"

[Paelos]

I must admit that I'm completely enamored with digging up crap, even though I don't have a use for 90% of it. There's just something about being able to shine a giant spotlight on yourself while summoning a ghost self and making 4 dwarven chicks dance around you that looks so funny.

[Paelos]

Also, a ran a Heroic Deadmines and it doesn't suck anywhere near as much as it did on release now.

[Setanta]

Went on a H-SFK run with a pally tank mate, me on my BM/Surv hunter. Random grouping gives us another hunter, a shadow priest and a holy(?) priest.

First boss: dps, dps, dps.... boss does strangle/heals self.


hmmm

rinse and repeat

"who's interrupting?"

Priests: "We can't interrupt"
Pally: "I can't interrupt this boss"
I look at my tool bar and see nothing other than Wyvern Sting, scattershot - hell, I even tried to trap him. Switch to BM spec after wipe. nope - Intimidation doesn't work either.

Put in chat "I'll get my Shammy to windshear" - log and group has fucked off - idiots.

Did I miss something or did we just end up with a boss that will always win against a certain group combination?

[SurfD]

Not 100% sure, but i believe the paladin should have been able to interupt.  Doesn't Avenger's Shield interupt spellcasts?  It's only a 15 second cooldown, which i believe should be plenty to get every cast after the strangle.  Not enough to cover interupting pain and suffering AND Mend rotten flesh as well, but at least it is one interupt. Also, i could have sworn priests had some kind of spell interupt as well, especially shadow.  Cooldown on it might be a bit long to get something with a short timer, but I am pretty sure they should have something.

Otherwise, yeah, if you somehow manage to get that one possible group comp that has absolutely no spell interupts, that boss would be pretty much impossible, but as far as i know, it should be insanely rare that you would end up with a group with absolutely no interupt capability.

[Ashamanchill]

Avenger shield could work, but the way the UI trains pallys is to spam that thing when it's available for damage, so it coulda been on cooldown. However, that pally shoulda had a HoJ in his back pocket for use. Unless he used it on a boss by accident 

I think what SurfD meant is Rebuke, and that is wholly a ret pally ability until next patch.

[SurfD]

Yeah, i meant rebuke, but then i went and looked it up on wowhead and corrected myself.

[Fordel]

Situations like that are basically why they are giving paladins Rebuke. Avengers shield is a interrupt and silence, but its also part of the paladins threat rotation, a large part. HoJ is probably far too long a cooldown to really cover the interrupting needed.

[caladein]

I look at my tool bar and see nothing other than Wyvern Sting, scattershot - hell, I even tried to trap him. Switch to BM spec after wipe. nope - Intimidation doesn't work either.

You should pick up a Gorilla or Nether Ray one of these days (or carry a Marks spec ).  Swap over to Beast Mastery, call one of those, and you have a Counterspell-in-a-box. 

[Zetor]

Spriest silence works too, though it has a long cooldown (should be enough to get 'stay of execution' though).

They're also nerfing that guy in the next patch so he will no longer cast 'mend rotten flesh', so tank interrupts should be more than enough... I think.

[apocrypha]

Damn, I'm glad to hear someone else say that shadow priests have no interrupt. Been playing mine a bit and been feeling really stupid because the only interrupt I could find was Psychic Scream, which is kinda limited in use. I haven't specced Silence but now that I realise it's the only other interrupt I'm going to respec her at once.

[koro]

Spriest silence works too, though it has a long cooldown (should be enough to get 'stay of execution' though).

They're also nerfing that guy in the next patch so he will no longer cast 'mend rotten flesh', so tank interrupts should be more than enough... I think.

Also from the way he described the group, the Priest was the healer; no Silence for non-Shadow Priests.

[Merusk]

He had 2 priests, shadow and holy.

Ran into another Stonecore group last night.. the combo of Enh Shammy, Spriest and Warlock doesn't do enough DPS to kill the adds, apparently.   The REAL kick in the seat was - after I left the group 4 wipes in - I waited a min or two, requeued and got the exact same group again. 

[Lakov_Sanite]

He had 2 priests, shadow and holy.

Ran into another Stonecore group last night.. the combo of Enh Shammy, Spriest and Warlock doesn't do enough DPS to kill the adds, apparently.   The REAL kick in the seat was - after I left the group 4 wipes in - I waited a min or two, requeued and got the exact same group again. 

Getting silence for shadow priests is a big waste of talent points in a pve build since they made it mandatory to take two points of the psychic scream talent.  It's always been like this actually and its even worse now that there are so fewer talent points, it makes those two psychic scream points even more atrocious.

[Merusk]

I wasn't debating that, only pointing out koro missed that there were 2 priests.

Now that you've brought it up, yeah there's a few talents like that that are deemed "PVP" talents but make sense taking in these dungeons.   Sure it's a 'waste' of two points because omg not max dps.  As has been pointed out many times before, dead dps is 0.   Additionally, not being able to get past a boss because you don't have an interrupt means your uberdps means fuckall.

[Ironwood]

I still don't understand why anyone would use Soul Swap.

Ever.

[kildorn]

I still don't understand why anyone would use Soul Swap.

Ever.

Because it's AWESOME.

It essentially trades 2 GCDs for 3 GCDs (BoA, Corruption, UA applied to the second target at full duration), letting you side DPS something for a relatively low cost over time. It's also fun on trash where you can pick up your dots at 5/10% and move them to the next burn target.

It's worthless unless you glyph it, though. And it depressingly doesn't move stacks of shadow embrace.

[Sheepherder]

Getting silence for shadow priests is a big waste of talent points in a pve build since they made it mandatory to take two points of the psychic scream talent.  It's always been like this actually and its even worse now that there are so fewer talent points, it makes those two psychic scream points even more atrocious.

If it's glyphed a SPriest can squeeze some value out of Psychic Scream.

[K9]

Lady Sinestra down after only a day or two

The comment from paragon is quite interesting, and by the sounds of things this encounter (which I will most likely never see until we can outgear it by multiple tiers) is utter clownshoes by Blizzard. It does stagger me that even simple things like the Dark Simulacrum bug get missed.

In general though there's nothing about this raiding tier which seems fun.

[Paelos]

Any bosses they deliberately hold back from testing by the populace are going to have issues. I'm fine with that because it's only a race to these people, so who cares?

I do find it hilarious that the absolutely most hardcore of the hardcore playerbase described this raiding tier as a "brutal grind."

If I'm Blizzard, I'm going OOOOOOOOOOOH FUCK, right now. That's not the message I want to give the masses to keep them involved.

[Khaldun]

Hotfixes between each attempt they made?

I am feeling like the old "EQ raiding was the greatest thing ever" faction inside Blizzard that I thought long since lost out has made a resurgence. But it's really about the trap that Blizzard has designed itself into. They make things too easy, everyone gets bored; they make things too hard, everyone gets bored: because something fundamental about the design cul-de-sac they're in is boring, and there's really no way out of it any more.

[K9]

Any bosses they deliberately hold back from testing by the populace are going to have issues. I'm fine with that because it's only a race to these people, so who cares?

They managed better than this in the past. Algalon and Lich King never had public testing yet they worked more or less as advertised.

On the other point I agree, raiding just doesn't appeal like it did in WoTLK where it felt more accessible.

[kildorn]

WoW swings wildly in it's development from "we need to appease the bleeding edge" and "we need to appease everyone else"

Cata is sadly trying to appeal the the harder core players, and not grasping that shit like a boss that is obviously not intended to be done yet (due to being broken about as badly as the Sleeper) is content tuned to like, less than a hundred people worldwide.

It really does seem like they didn't bring their A game to this expansion (though I like it, it's not their best work beyond the old world revamp), and quite frankly Blizzard, you have to bring your A game to heroics these days. Designing like you're still in Wrath just doesn't cut it ;)

[Paelos]

Cata is sadly trying to appeal the the harder core players, and not grasping that shit like a boss that is obviously not intended to be done yet (due to being broken about as badly as the Sleeper) is content tuned to like, less than a hundred people worldwide.

If they are trying to do that, they are fucking it up. The hardest segment referred to their shit as a brutal GRIND. If it was tough, or fun, or interesting, or wild, or all over the place, or dramatically unfair, that would be fine for the hardcore. To describe it as a buggy, shit-filled, grind? That's bad.

[Rasix]

Don't they usually describe it as worse?  I don't think I've ever seen a guild get done with a tier of raiding and say it was "an exciting romp through expertly tuned encounters".  They'll say that after they're disillusioned with the current tier, but not while they're playing it.   Screw placating them, you've already got their $15. 

[Ingmar]

Hard mode raids are something that really only a few people give a shit about. Unless the regular modes are also bad, getting the early tuning wrong on their heroic mode raids is not going to have much of an effect. Insidia spent the entire last expansion bitching about the hard modes without it really causing any problems, I don't think Paragon's complaints are really going to make a difference either.

[Azuredream]

Don't they usually describe it as worse?  I don't think I've ever seen a guild get done with a tier of raiding and say it was "an exciting romp through expertly tuned encounters".  They'll say that after they're disillusioned with the current tier, but not while they're playing it.   Screw placating them, you've already got their $15. 

IIRC the comments of the bleeding edge all loved Sunwell to death.

[caladein]

Don't they usually describe it as worse?  I don't think I've ever seen a guild get done with a tier of raiding and say it was "an exciting romp through expertly tuned encounters".  They'll say that after they're disillusioned with the current tier, but not while they're playing it.   Screw placating them, you've already got their $15.  

The ones that spring to mind are Ulduar, Sunwell, and maybe Classic Naxx.  I'd agree with the first in general and the rest were basically hardcore-only (and workingl) from the start.

Really though, this tier of raiding is pretty inconsequential as I'm just having so much fun with new alts and dungeons.  Fights like Atramedes and Conclave of Wind can stand up to most previous encounters, but not to spending a night in Southern Barrens or Mount Hyjal, especially when you factor in the preparatory work for flasks and food .

[Threash]

It seems like all they've done this tier of raiding is make half asses bosses and just to make it difficult make you fight more than one at once.  So far this applies to every fight my guild has attempted, Halfus wyrmbreaker, Omnotoron defense system, Valiona and Theralion, all boil down to "this guy does this two simple things, this guy does this two simple things now fight both at once".

[Oban]

So basically what they decided is that casuals would prefer to reroll rather than raid or do heroic dungeons, so they worked on new content from 1-60.

Which is odd since the whole way to get people addicted to a game like this and not have them cancel a subscription is the thought that the investment of time and effort put in to a main will gradually increase the value of the character over time.  Otherwise people will just burn out on the 1-60 content and then unsubscribe from the service.

[Rendakor]

They managed better than this in the past. Algalon and Lich King never had public testing yet they worked more or less as advertised.

On the other point I agree, raiding just doesn't appeal like it did in WoTLK where it felt more accessible.

Did you forget the guild that got banned for killing LK using the bombs to restore the platform and thus trivialize the valkyries?

[Setanta]

Vanilla Naxx - god that place was a freaking nightmare in terms of pain. WotLK Naxx got it right, opening the place up to the masses rather than a tiny percentage. It's only my opinion, but I think Blizzard has lost their way again, forgetting that hard-core raiders won't pay the bills but a large casual raider base will.

BTW, I rate Gruul's Lair and post-nerf Karazan as possibly the best, most enjoyable raids ever. Kara loses points because of fucking Aran popping every goddamn spell at the same time on release aka "move out of the storm while wreathed and having elementals shoot at you". Magtheradion would have made the list but Blizzard forgot that most people are retards and cant press a button at the same time :D

[Sheepherder]

Nerfed Aran was probably the best fight in TBC, just because it was always such a hilarious clusterfuck.