f13.net

So, I've been watching the changes happening to PVP. 

(1) Blizzard looks like they're trying to get more and more people involved by reducing the barriers to entry (resilience) and making those items available to casual PvE players through badges and rep.  That's awesome.

(2) Blizzard has starting an Arena Only server where, for $20 bucks, over 6 weeks you may compete against other arena teams for a chance to win RL loot (75k grand prize).  They're really pushing this eSport thing.  This is a great idea, except that you have to be a currrent subscriber to do this.  The coolest part is you can make 3 max level chars that are fully decked out in PVP gear/enchants/gems and have some fun for $20.  Legitimized RMT imo.  If they dropped the current subscriber thing and had this going as 2-3 dedicated arena servers that are linked, it would do wonders.

(3) Why the fuck do we still have BG weekends and not BG weeks when we have dailys for honor and no more dimishing returns?

What else?

Agree, but the "no more diminishing returns" isn't in yet is it?  That comes in 2.4 unless I'm mistaken.  It is a bit too early to say they won't make a change to the holiday schedule.  I just wish that in whatever they do, make the current holiday a bit easier to find out in-game.  If there is currently an easy way to find out in-game, please to be telling me.

3 max level characters... let's see: rogue, warlock, and mage/druid. 

Neat idea though I think this is bound to cause them trouble.  Involving real money in a game just seems like a recipe for disaster unless you're able to control all of the variables (i.e. like a LAN party).  Cheat programs, latency exploits, etc will become the norm.   

Dren - just check out which "emissaries" are hanging out in the capitol cities.  Frostwolf, Defilers, Stormpike, Silverwing, etc.

Regarding the RMT aspect, it seems more to me that since they are boxing it to an Arena-only server, it won't affect anything on the "real" servers.  Except maybe the Arena queues.  Also, I suppose it could give "the rest of us" a chance, if all the really high-enders are off playing for real money.  If they are going to cheat, I'd rather see it there than on the real servers.  Also, $20/month/person may buy extra oversight; at least I'd hope that's where some of it goes.

Thanks I didn't realize those guys were tied to the holidays.

I also would expect that these special servers would be set up to be especially sensitive to cheating techniques of all kinds.  LAN parties couldn't be policed, but I don't know that they should be really.  They aren't all that much better than standard voice communications.

I am not a huge fan of RMT, but the premade Arena server sounds interesting. For 20 clams I might give it a whirl.

But I'm left wondering if the eSport deal (Which I am very skeptical about, what with lag and haxxors and whatnot) is going to devour the rest of the game. (Raid, casual PvE, etc...)

Ya, I think they're taking the initiative now and seperating it from the rest of the game.  They've already started to implement Arena only rules (water drinking).

Also, as far as I can tell, the 6 week is for 'qualifiers' then the top for each region goes on to regionals @ blizzcon.

If they do it like the last tournament (at the end of season 1) then they WILL be in control of all the variables.  What they did was fly the top 5 (or was it 10?) teams out to the convention and they all fought on Blizzard-owned and run computers.   The kick to the balls was none of them were allowed to use anything beyond the native UI either.

  I vaguely recall hearing that even macros using the in-game setup were disallowed, but that seems silly.  I think it might have been that they had so little prep-time after sitting down at a 'puter that macros were infeesable, but not disallowed.

/charge
/petattack

Best done with an Owl.

*SCREECH!* *SCREECH!* *SCREECH!*

I like it.  I like it a lot.  Seems like Blizz is covering their bases.  I should never doubt the ability of the borg.

Well yeah, some are simple but there's folks with insane focus, retarget, assist chain macros that do all kinds of funky shit for them WITHOUT even getting into add-ons. I think those are the ones who were crying 'oh unfair!'

Yup.

I use quite a few basic Rank 1/Max Rank and shift/alt/ctrl button modifiers so I don't have to go all the way to 5,6,7,8,9,0 if I want to hotbutton something.

If you're going to be competing, best try and do it macro free.

It's safest for Blizz to keep any possible cheating out.
Cause if I lost out on a cut of 75k due to a hax, I'd be pretty irate.

narrator: And this button-down, Oxford-cloth psycho might just snap, and then stalk from office to office with an Armalite AR-10 carbine gas-powered semi-automatic weapon, pumping round after round into colleagues and co-workers. This might be someone you've known for years. Someone very, very close to you.

It has devoured the rest of the game. They are tweaking class mechanics for Arena PVP balance and many times it has a detrimental effect on the PvE game. Having the best weapons for PvE, and some of the best armor pieces as well come from Arenas is kind of saying "we don't care so much about anything outside of making Arena WoW an eSport".

It probably makes sense - at some point they will start transitioning the bulk of their content people form WoW to Runaway_MMORPG_Hit_2.0. Probably around 5-10 years before they plan on shipping this imagined future game.

Exactly what I was thinking.  At some point they had to start transitioning into a mode of perpetual sport activity since that allows less company generated content.  Those resources can then be directed towards "The Next Best Thing." 

If done right, it could really be a hit long term.  It has worked on freeplay platforms in the past, but this is for a subscription that also offers RL cash prizes seasonally.  I can see the potential for addiction levels never seen before.

I'm thinking that past the next expansion, you won't see much more content release outside of eSport.  Then the real whispers of the next MMO will start to creep in.  There might be more content patches, but only as required to stretch the timelines out to fit "The Grand Vision (of MMO Domination!)."

Well, not being an uber-achiever, I haven't seen it yet. I've been happy to dink around with pre-raid PvE and some Battlegrounds lately.
I'm wondering about a huge game shift where the PvE game is totally removed and WoW becomes a bunch of Arena servers only. Granted that won't happen overnight, but it might happen eventually.

I just wish someone had told me at the login screen that if I didn't play one of the chosen classes, that a large part of the endgame would be out of my reach.  I think that if I'm going to stay with this game that I'll be forced to play a rogue or warlock.  Decisions decisions.

Don't you think that's a bit dramatic?  Is your goal with WoW to be one of the top rated arena teams? If no, why sweat it? Have fun, and give the middle finger to all of the FotM/template-to-win garbage.   Skill is still going to take you pretty far (which is why my first forays into arena pvp have been comical.  I am terrible).

Still, it's not like it takes you a long time to level. :)

Wasn't meant to be dramatic.  Sorry about that.  I like playing the shaman, but it seems like there's not much to do without a group.  I guess I could respec back to enhance, get a new suit, and farm faction for a while.  If you look at the reality of it though, shamen just aren't competitive in small scale arena battles.  That being the case does limit the potential for what the toon can do barring changes to mechanics on Blizzard's end.

Eh, my 3v3 'for fun' arena team has a pve resto shaman (yours truly), an elemental shaman and a shadowpriest in it -- if you asked any "serious pvper" they'd probably be doubting my sanity for running such a horrible makeup, and they'd be right! But, it's still fun fighting against other groups, even though I'm fairly sure we'll never get above 1760 (our current 'record'). There have been some off-the-wall teams I've fought too, like the "ghost wolf cavalry" (resto shaman, elemental shaman, enhancement shaman, all 3 starting in wolf-form and charging us).

There's being not competitive in the high-end, and there's being completely useless... for all the complaining I've done about WOW's serious balance issues, I wouldn't say pvping as any class is 'useless'. Except for maybe prot paladins and prot warriors, though I know someone who ran a protpally / rogue team and ended up beating a stupid number of melee-based teams (they came up against a 2-rogue team once who just locked down the pally, killed the rogue, and turned on the pally in a 2v1... the rogues lost. :P).

However, I definitely agree that high-end arena means cookie cutters, and currently the ONLY 3v3 cookie-cutters shaman work with require the shaman to be resto: retpaladin/warrior/shaman and healer/warrior/shaman (healer being a holy paladin or discipline priest for dispels). And there's the entire "lolRNG" factor that makes some matchups purely luck-based... which is kind of silly, would it really make tennis matches better if the players had a 5% chance on each serve (independent on actual skill) to automatically score a point?


-- Z.

ALL the classes are 100% more fun in a group setting.  The problem is that you want to group only with friends.  So that being said, the barrier to entry is the Friends List/Guild, not the class at all.

Fair enough.  You, Kail, Righ, and I are all 70.  If we could find a time to be on simultaneously, we could all give a few things a go.  I think there are a number of people in the 60's now as well.  I guess we could always try some 2v2 in the arenas as well, but we'd need some voice com of some sort. 

The built in voice chat is actually very good qaulity. Sounded just like our vent server, though I am sure not having the ability to adjust each person's volume independently could cause an issue in the long term, if you have a small group of people using it I am sure it would be just fine.

I'm good for whenever; saturday nights are the only ones I'm probably going to be busy on usually (this week I'm also busy friday, the 7th, I believe).

As for the new arena servers, I've got to wonder if part of that isn't for testing.  You don't, on the live servers, have an ideal environment for testing PvP class balance, but this new server would theoretically get rid of a lot of unbalancing factors (gear being the most obvious).  Now Blizzard can hold things more constant and get some numbers on how bad class XY and Z looses when they're up against a team of AB and C.

  I"m not so sure it's going to be noticeable at all, the spec's will all be cookie cutter, and so will 95% of the teams.  There sure won't be any resto shaman in 2v2, it's just not an optimal build for a "competition", whereas they can have all the information they need from the live servers, where lots of people are playing "for fun" in 2 out of their 3 teams, and don't give a shit whether they win or not.

  It's not as if they're going to all of a sudden make resto shaman viable healers in 2v2 just because they're not very good there, or nerf druids because they are the kings.  We know there is imbalance already, and so do they.

  There's a reason that 40% of the 2v2 teams rated over 2200 are war+dru across all servers. Reference=http://www.realmhistory.net/arena-statistics/team-setup.html (http://www.realmhistory.net/arena-statistics/team-setup.html)

Do you want to actually play in arena?

I don't like arena, so I play the rest of the game without arena.  I level alts, and I get my battleground armor for playing battlegrounds.

Sure, I can't go 1v1 against some arena-armor-wearing opponent, and I don't dominate people the way I would if I was wearing arena armor.  But I tend to lose interest as I bump my armor up anyway, and switch to an alt.

For me, it's all about the getting there.  Being at end game is ok, but I don't raid, I don't instance much, and most of my crafting skills are maxed.  I like the economic game, until I get rich, and then I lose interest in that too.  I guess I could buy arena gear, but somehow I think I'd feel icky wearing it.

I guess this makes me a hardcore casual?

When WoW first came out, I was hoping that it would be a place for hardcore casuals. People who like to play, but just don't have an interest in extreme-raid-or-die. And in some ways, WoW did give us that. But it's still a place for the raiders and now arena participants. Those who don't do those activites are thrown the occasional bone, but it's definitley outside the scope of their major efforts.

I'm going to put myself out there and say that the possibility of the "next big thing" is a game like WoW, where the majority of the game's focus is on hardcore casuals. Put the big carrots out in the activites that HCC's do, and have raiding and PvP grinding as the alternate paths.

And I'm probably wrong, but it would be an interesting thing to see.

To be honest, I just want to play with a group of fun people.  We've been on this server for like 3 months and I've only ever grouped with guild folks like 2 or 3 times.  That was the entire reason I came to this server.  I've leveled two other toons on a pve server and I've really gotten bored with the solo game.  What Kail said really nailed it: I want to play the group game but I don't want to play in pugs... especially not as a resto shaman.  If I'm going to stare at health bars for hours, I don't want it compounded by teenage conversation. 

Well, you sure levelled fast! :)

I'd really love to play a priest, but I don't want to level it solo on a pvp server.   Lately I've been playing one on a PvE server.   It's a fun class. 

Was the ganking that bad leveling your shaman?

I think it's the combination of downtime and re-doing content from 1-70 a 4th time.  As a priest at least I could fear stuff and run.   For me, PvE is a mindless diversion from the stress of my 12h+ days at work.  I don't want to have to think about it much.   Especially considering most classes could kick my ass even at the same level. 

I may give it a try anyway... but the thought of grinding 61-70 again does make me cringe. 

I completely agree.  I just hit 70 on my rogue, so that makes 3 70's for me.  Got bored immeadiately w/ my rogue, so I went and played my neglected paladin.  The leveling is so nice and fast, and if you shut off the chat windows, it's a completely different game, just nice and quiet.  So I can see the point of PvE.  But I never want to be stuck without the option of transferring a character to a server I may want to play on, and I love PVP more than anything else.

All my leveling has stalled around 61-62 as the giant fucking wall hits me in the face.

The way I deal with this is to do the following:
1. Have an alt (or preferably multiple alts) that you are leveling to take a break from the 61-70 grind.
2. Cultivate some friends on the server so you can run instances at 61-70 (I've gained 4 levels SO rapidly this way).

Which instances would you recommend?  The f13 guild has a oodles of 60's now!

  I levelled solely in instances from 58-70, didn't complete any quests that didn't involve instances either.  The breakdown is something like ;

58-61 Hellfire Ramparts
61-63 Blood Furnace
63-65 Slave Pens
65-67 Underbog
67-68 Mana-Tombs
68-69 Sethekk Halls/Auch Crypts

 If not exact, that's pretty close to where I spent ALL of my time.  Throw in a few Durnholde runs in the mid-60's and you're all set!  It also lets you cap most of the outland factions from the dungeon rep before any quests, boosting you to revered+ in a really short amount of time.  The only instances we ever used any type of CC were Blood Furnace sap/sheep/enslave, and in Mana-Tombs we used MC, only because those two are extremely caster heavy, and a Paladin has some issues with that.

  The benefit to me was that I was able to level as Prot (Paladin), and completely gear up in all blues at 60, and upgrade right through 70, which put me right into heroics immediately.  The other important thing to note is that going back at 70 and completing all the quests over a few weeks netted me around 7000 gold, enough for my epic mount.  And I won't even mention how nice NEVER grinding for cash is, or grinding for rep, I think the only ones I ever "intentionally" worked up were Aldor, Sha'Tar, Netherwing and Sporeggar, the rest just came with playing.

I'm just questing/grinding to 70 since I hate to PUG and the instances I have done in Outland have been boring as hell.  With all the easy blue rep PVP gear coming out in 2.4, I'll be changing out a lot of my gear at 70 anyway.

Don't ignore the factions you need for that rep gear, though.  They're pretty easy, but some of them will still need dungeoning, unless you planned early and did all the right turnins and quests in the right order and such.  You need Honored with Sha'tar - not hard, takes doing the right quests and/or a few runs of Tempest Keep, Revered with Keepers of Time - that'll be the entire Caverns of Time quest series plus 1-4 additional runs of Black Morass, Lower City revered - perhaps one of the most annoying, get ready for a lot of Sethekk Halls or Shadow Labyrinth, unless you did tons of arakkoa feather turnins before you started the lower city quest lines, and Cenarion Expedition revered, which is gonna take either proper pre-planning with turning in Unidentified Plant Parts all the way to Honored before you touch CE quests, or anywhere from 5-15 or so runs of Steamvaults at 70, depending on how good your faction is when you get there.

The one piece you're basically guaranteed to have faction for is the gauntlets, which just requires honored with Thrallmar/Honor Hold, which everybody gets by the time they finish their Hellfire quests.  The other factions, while not hard, can't be taken for granted that you'll have.

Well all this stuff (http://www.wowhead.com/?items&filter=qu=3;sl=5:10:1:7:3;cl=2;cr=82:12;crs=1:1;crv=0:0) that's coming in the patch just says honored.  Am I missing something?

Some of them were revered. It looks like they're all just honored now. Good, glad they realized faction grinding sucks.

Yeah, other than Keepers of Time I'm already set.  Where the hell ARE the Keepers of Time, anyway?

Tanaris.  SE of Gadget. Honored should only take one run through each dungeon.  You have to do a small tour of the zone and Old Hillsbrad before you can do The Black Morass.

added proper emphasis.

The Caverns of Time are inconveniently but necessarily located back on good old Azeroth. There's gonna be a portal and portal spell to the Caverns of Time I think next patch as well.

As mentioned you gotta do the quest series and complete Old Hillsbrad before you can touch Black Morass though. Both are really fun instances, with Black Morass being the slightly less fun of the two since you pretty much need to start the whole instance over on a good wipe.

BM can be tough if you are in with a new group, but if you are in with a vet group it is cake.  It takes a whole 45 minutes from the time you start getting rid of the alligators, panthers, and spiders to the last boss kill if you have a competent group.  We take new people through it for their Karazhan key and whip through it no problem.  Of course that's with fully Karazhan geared people.

Old Hillsbrad is the best instance in the game. They should promote whoever did it.

Was that supposed to be green?

I'm still having nightmares about that one time my guild decided to try heroics (back when everyone was in blues), and the 2nd heroic we ever did was heroic Old Hillsbrad.  :ye_gods: They're removing the lookouts next patch though, which should make it quite a bit less painful (except for Thrall being a distant relative of Leeroy Jenkins, apparently).


-- Z.

No, I think it's a great instance. What don't you like about it?

All of the Caverns of Time instances (including Hyjal Summit) suffer from the "hey look we can make this really cool scripted event that is 3x more monontonous than it has to be"

Durnholde also suffers from the fact that it is possibly the easiest instance in the level range but in heroic mode it is the hardest of them all.

Of course, I also had to farm Durnholde for the ironshield potion recipe, which sucked quite a lot and could be coloring my judgement.

I haven't done Durnhold on Heroic. I can't imagine anyone actually WANTING to suffer through that.  It's an easy enough instance on regular, but the damned thing goes on FOREVER.   Towards the end I just want someone to kill Thrall 3 times so I can say "ah well" and go do something else.

Durnhole on heroic isn't that bad with a good class setup. I wouldn't ever want to do it without a mage and a lock/hunter and a druid OT. Getting enough CCs and tanking jobs gets things done with minimal problems. Once the lookouts are removed, it'll be a joke, but I never thought they were that hard if you paid attention and aggroed them at the right times.

I never did any rep grinding there, and we usually go for the easy heroics so I've never tried it on heroic.

But if a 60 something friend wants to be ran through an instance Old Hills is by far my favorite. Doing it once a month or so for that reason hasn't burned me out on it.

Poor crypts...

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=4191340970&sid=1

Crypts I like if only for the sheer hilarity of seeing half your party punted off the bridge and have to run back.

Doubly hilarious when the same person (who is the one who says "don't get knocked off") gets punted twice in a row.

I didn't do many instance runs but all of Auchindoun except for Shadow Labyrinth sucked and crypts was the absolute worst.

I loathe Sethekk, just because I can't stand those fucking bird people.  Stupid CC intensive, crappy, cramped instance.  Glad most of my time in there was doing stealth runs. Only did Crypts once a long time ago.  Don't remember much about it.

Surprised so many people like Mech.  Hallway of death is not fun times and neither is that second boss with her retard killing elementals (it's amazing how many people have trouble with "don't stand in the fucking fire" bosses). 

I'd have to list Black Morass as my favorite, despite it being a cake walk.  It's short and there's no need for crowd control.  I really despise all of the crowd control intensive crap.  As long as everyone does their job, it's a quick and easy win.  Quick is probably the most important part for a time starved person like myself.

Black Morass is just a DPS fest. I'm not a huge fan of it because there's a very large risk/reward factor to somebody messing it up. I've never done it on heroic though.

Lemme sum up. No, lemme 'splain:

Things have about 2% more HP. Things hit slightly harder. Boss 1 ports everyone to him before doing a chain lightning.

Other than that, it is basically the same instance in heroic mode as regular. The beacons make the last 5 waves nap time. If it weren't so damn far away people would do it as much as mech.

I'd say heroic Botanica is a lot easier, as it IS pretty much normal mode with slightly harder hitting trash.

Black Morass heroic was kind of rough when I last ran it [which was a long time ago I admit]; the adds were spawning like crazy, some of them [executioners?] had a metric asston of hp and hit almost as hard as the elites in nonheroic. And the 2nd boss put up some sort of spell reflect for half of the fight, preventing the hasten buff from getting dispelled [the dispel would get reflected].

I've ran every heroic at least once and I think Old Hillsbrad is the hardest by far, followed by Crypts if you have a paladin/shaman healer, and Mana Tombs [first boss requires 2 heal-capable characters or a ton of SR on the tank, last boss requires very high sustained damage].


-- Z.

Doesn't require 2 healers, or SR. Just requires "stop all attacking" (this includes you mr tank) when he changes. The shadow pulses only happen when he is attacked. We 4 manned him several times trying to get some doofus his enhance trinket.

unless your tank has a butload of HP, shadow resist gear is nice however.  Since Pandemonius meles for complete shadow damage, armor gives you 0 mitigation against his attacks.  And his AoE shadow knockback attack does hit for a fair amount also.  It is true though, that stopping attacks as soon as he begins to cast the shield is key (I watched an enhance shaman pretty much insta gib himself cause he wasnt paying attention.

I've never once done crypts. I don't even know what's in there beyond guessing some undead and priests.

Heroic Durnholde is fun and not too hard after you get the huts burned. Heroic Mana Tombs is nearly impossible at the end, I've never completed it on heroic on either of my mains.

Crypts fucking sucks. That's about all there is to it.

Of course you avoid the dark shell backlash from Pandemonius. The SR is there so your tank doesn't get gibbed to crap while you heal everyone else up after a knockback. I've solo-healed it as a resto shaman once [with no shadow resistance buff from paladin/priest and zero SR on the tank], but it was dicey as hell, the dps needed to use healthstones / healthpots / bandages, the tank and two dps were clustered up 'just right' for chain heal, the entire group was overgeared, and we still came very very close to wiping.

When I had the tank stack SR or I had a backup healer (can be a sp / feral druid / ele shaman / retpally in healing gear, though in our guild runs we just had a hunter switch in her holy priest for that one fight) who could take care of healing the dps while I dropped the big heals on the tank, it went a lot smoother; it's chain spamming big heals on the tank or he dies. Maybe it's been nerfed since then, but eh. On the other hand, a shaman makes the last fight ezmode (the highly advanced tactic I've used: ignore the adds except for maybe aoe fears and occasional cc, blow heroism/bloodlust and burn the crap out of Shaffar... then kill the adds or wipe to them, return and kill them, collect loot)

Crypts is all about 'hay guys im a gimmick fight lulz :awesome_for_real:' repeated throughout the entire instance. And trash mobs that instasummon more trash mobs. And unkillable invisible mobs that can knock you off the bridge.
But what makes it really 'fun' is that the first boss is massively biased against casters due to the stacking 'cast speed increase' aura that cannot be outranged at all. If your healer is a priest or druid, you're good since you have instant heals up the yinyang. As a shaman it's only barely healable if the encounter is done perfectly, and otherwise a single mistake means a wipe (assuming the party isn't massively overgeared) and I imagine it isn't much better as a paladin. Needless to say, I wish a great many frostshocks upon whichever dev decided the 'Inhibit Magic' debuff was a good idea. :p


-- Z.

Just drop a grounding totem.  The void blasts are a volley-type effect, so they will all be absorbed by one totem.  As long as everyone stays in range of it and you drop them every cooldown, you're cool.  Even if some people get out of range, it's still way less damage than without grounding.  >WWS< (http://wowwebstats.com/uqkacy4r4nyxa) from when I hit Heroic MT tonight with ele and enhance shaman, holy priest healing.

Crypts: The first boss is your basic stupid check.  Don't be an idiot and tank him on the stairs; position him in the middle of the platform he's on, and have everyone spread out around him.  He really doesn't hit that hard.  The real aggravation are the mind controlling mobs that MUST be killed instantly or you risk instawipe and the skeletons that randomly wipe their aggro tables.  For these reasons and others (like TWO BADGES?!), I never do Crypts.  It's simply a waste time - Even if it's the daily.

The only reason I seen anybody runs (normal) Crypts is because the Thrall/Nagrand questline makes you. Heroic Crypts was run as a joke by five people in my guild at the weekend (it was the daily heroic, iirc), and it took them well over two hours and more than one wipe...and this was made up of some of the "Just breaking into TK" raiding members of the guild, so full tier whatever epixxx+++ raid gear.

Heaven forbid that people try to run Heroic Crypts to try and gear themselves up.

Since we're talking about heroics, I really hope Blizzard understands the complaints about the uneven difficulty and the shitty reward-to-difficulty ratio of heroic instances.

Even really casual players can sneak into a Kara pug at this point, and a lot of rep/badge epics outshine the actual epics that DROP in the heroics. Like 90% of the heroic epics are just garbage. Off the top of my head the only decent heroic epic drops across all 11-something instances are the 3 reitemized druid pieces (that used to suck), the druid staff from Botanica, the rogue/feral belt from heroic durnholde I think, The Sun Eater from Mech, the Vanquisher's Legplates from Mech, Terrok's Shadowstaff from Sethekk Halls, the healer mace from Shadow Labs, and 2-3 easily replaced cloth pieces.

Only a couple of the items mentioned above aren't replacable within the first 3-4 bosses of Kara.

And this is ignoring that reward-to-difficulty ratio I mentioned. It's easier to pug Kara than run half of the heroics. Good fucking luck to you if you try Heroic Shattered Halls without a pally tank.

Kara is supposed to have its keying removed in 2.4 as well, apparently.

Yup.  All they need to do is drop the raid timer off it and it will be all set to be casual.

Otherwise, barring 3-4 hours of free time (time to set up a karapug and do it with a decently geared casual group who sorta knows what they're doing), heroics are the only way to get badges.

The only reason I can see heroics being done past 2.4 is for rep gains.  Even then, why bother for the most part.

I suppose true PuG players need someplace to get badges, but even then they will be farming the hell out of the easiest ones.  Plus, Karazhan might even be PuG'able after this change.  I wouldn't wish that upon even my worst enemy, but it IS possible.

You forgot many, many epics on your list, especially the ones that are meant for hybrid classes.  But don't be blinded by purple.  There are many excellent re-itemized blues in heroics that you would be a idiot to overlook.  Just a few off the top of my head, the retribution paladin libram from the first boss in BF was(or is; not sure how 2.4 will change this) best-in-slot, quagmirran's eye from quag, the icon in BF, etc.

Anyway, it's the design intent that the epics from badges are better than anything that actually drops in heroics.  If they weren't, everyone that could run kara or better would spit on heroics and never ever run them.  I sure as hell wouldn't tank most heroics; I neither need nor want any of the drops.  Dangle a shiny or fuck off.  I can get Tier 5(And in 2.4, Tier 6)-caliber gear for running mech, so I'm happy to do so.
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I completed Heroic Shattered Halls as a warrior inside the time limit.  You just need to be a bit more of a dick about PUG quality and bring two strong CC(rogue, mage, maybe a hunter).  Pull fast. My armory (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=The+Venture+Co&n=Modah) if you're curious; I did it a long time ago, so my gear was much worse (No gnomer trinket, no maiden gloves or moroes belt, no badge pants, ogri'la crossbow, ogri'la shield, no netherwing trinket, honored or so Kara ring, no lower city ring).
I can still only run Kara once a week.  That's only 22 badges/week, which is nowhere near what I need to fulfill my endless need for badges.

What should happen is they should retool all the old instances (all of them) to be heroic capable.  Options are win.

Also, while I'm dreaming, let me reskin my armor to be whatever armor I want.

ie.  I equip the scarlet mail set in my 'looks' tab and my stat equipment in my 'works' tab.  Then I have the gladiator set stats but w/ the scarlet mail looks.  Still have to farm both sets and lets me do whatever the fux I want with my looks.


Edit: They just need to drop the lock out on Kara and ZA.

I only said that from the standpoint of a casual player.  If you are able to cruise through Karazhan and hit multiple heroics on top of that within a week, I wouldn't classify you as casual YMMV.  It takes everything I have to make a full Karazhan run in a week.  For my time spent, Karazhan gives me more bang for my buck than a heroic.  Now, I say that based on me being in a guild that runs weekly Karazhan (1 or 2 groups,) so again YMMV.

I have to ask:  If you can spend that much time on badge farming, why not join a guild hitting mutiple raid instances for even better equipment drops?  I suppose the answer is that raiding isn't your bag or you like your independence, etc. 

For me, my time outside of Karazhan is spent on alts or PvP.

Z'A lockout is only 3 days right now. Which puts it pn par with the # badges you would get (and amount of time spent) from doing Botanica (most badges) 3 days in a row.

The trouble with ZA right now is that it is damn hard.  Our guild finally attempted the first boss last night.  They got him after mutiple wipes and putting all of our very best geared characters at it (geared from Karazhan.)

Until they "retune" the instance like all the past instances, it really isn't a "casual" experience.  It looks like you have to basically go do 25-man raids to get past the gear checks as they are now.  2-3 season PvP gear might get you there though.  Again, not casual.

It's several factors.

1. My guild is composed solely of people from corpnews/lumthemad/etc.  We have yet to recruit any...outsiders.  It's only last week that I finally organized an in-guild kara run.  We cleared it over a period of two nights in a total of six hours in-instance, not counting time spent finding PUGs.  Slow, but good considering it was the first time I had the entire gang there.  Building up to 25-man level is not in the tea leaves.

2. I can run a heroic any time I want to.  It takes me less than two hours to run any heroic in the game.  There are many that I can run in less than an hour.  25-man raiding requires I schedule 24 other people of varying levels of mouthbreathing, setup a DKP system, etc, etc.  More importantly, most of them will not be people I've known for years out of game.

However, we're planning to organize some Gruul/Magtheridon PUGs eventually; we simply fill all of the critical roles and throw some PUGs of varying quality at the boss too.  We can make it work

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ZA is probably overly tuned, but I dispute the idea that you need the gear from 25 man's to run it.  I believe a guild on my server cleared it with no more than Tier 4 - which is (mostly) not better than badge gear everyone has access to.  I've run the bear boss, and it's mostly a tank/healer check.  The difficulty was not helped by the other tank STACKING AVOIDANCE ARRRRRGGGGH.  I will get back to you on this in a few weeks.

Shattered Halls gives 5 if you do it right.

Z'A is a little overtuned, agreed. But the Blizzard perspective is that because it is non-linear, and it is "doable" with t4 geared characters, there is no need change the tuning drastically. You can go in and work on one boss for one timer, then the next timer work on another, and so on until you get to the point of being able to down 2-3 bosses, then 3-4, then it is all downhill from there.

I don't really have much in the way of commentary on Z'A atm as I have not been in the zone in 2 months. We tend to just do kara for badges/cash because Z'A is a royal pain in the ass getting the right raid comp, and half the time when we do, we end up having to go for the timed run which is possibly the most stressful 90minutes you can have in wow.

You can do parts of ZA in T4. And by parts I mean that you can do the animal bosses with a lot of practice and the correct classes.

Then, you get to Malacrass, and that goes right the hell out of the window. There's absolutely no way I can see people that aren't in some semblence of T5 or better gear dealing with the 9k AE on everybody, 4 adds, and the crazy amount of mana drain the healers have to get through. Oh, and stacking damage every minute, soulstealing abilities from your classes, fears, mind control, mortal strikes, etc.

Getting everyone up to 150 SR with the shadow protection Buff (requires about 75 SR, easily obtainable from 1-2 green BoE pieces and a BoE JC neck) cuts the dmg from his SB volley by more than half.

The first time we did it outside of our timed runs in the first 2 weeks the zone was open we did it with alts/non raiding people in a smattering of Kara/Badge gear, our main tank was wearing nothing from a 25 man instance, and the only t5+ person in the raid was a pally healer. And we cleared the whole place, so the whole place is doable in t4/badge gear, it just takes more work. The issue people in my guild have with Z'A is that the zone is 80% about execution, which, outside of Archimonde/Kael'Thas/Vashj, you really don't need that level of precise execution to succeed, and Most of the zone is like that. No amount of tier 6 is going to let you brute force through that zone with half your group afk like you can in kara, thus the reward is outweighed by the effort. Illidan has a larger margin of error than the dragonhawk trash does.

There's some really pimp blues in heroics yes but not in terms of armor/weapons. Trinkets, rings, and totems/librams/idols yeah, but badge/kara pieces are far better and easier to get. Kara particularly since some classes can goddamn near get a whole set together from the first 5 bosses + Chess.

The item level of the heroic epic drops aren't what concern me, they're about right (ignoring the weapons which need bumped to ilevel 110). It's just that most of them are so poorly itemized it's a joke. The tank pieces SUCK. A little defense and a smattering of STR/AGI/STA does not a tank piece make. The caster pieces largely blow their budget on raw stats and provide little in the way of hit/crit/+dmg, or somehow manage to spend their budget in such a way that they're a side-grade from better itemized blues. The rogue gloves had the questionable Immunity to Disarm, which was nerfed. The anti-silence caster neck was nerfed repeatedly. The odds and ends (shitty hunter sword, rogue shoulders) are gimpy compared to some blues. When I took my then, all blue'd mage into heroic Slave Pens I was far more interested in the trinket than the epic boots that drop there since my blue quest-reward boots were largely better.

Basically, what I'm saying that is if you're doing a heroic in all blues and an epic piece seemingly itemized for your class and spec drops, it should be an upgrade instead of an "eh, shard it."

Probably my biggest issue with heroics is how damn variable they are in 'difficulty' depending on what classes you bring and which instance you decide to do. The drops being useful would really help things too mind you, but it's the leap from say Heroic Pens where I'm like "this isn't so bad, harder, but doable" to things like Heroic Mana-Tombs where I'm going "OW, my Pancreas!"


I have a harder time tanking the trash in half the heroics out there, then I do tanking anything in Kara itself.

I will have to admit one thing.  It seems like Karazhan favors Healadins.  Not only have I benefitted from this, but I've seen two other healadins in our guild get fairly well completed sets from there really quickly.  I'm constantly seeing us DE healadin items now or giving them to paladins for their off-heal gear.

My priest and warlock do not get the same level of love by comparison.

Rogue do fairly well.

Well, priests/mages/warlocks do have a huge advantage over all other classes in that they can get tier5+ quality gear through tailoring. And kara gear is somewhat balanced around the assumption that they would have those items.

Kara is a crapshoot for loot, depending on the luck of your group you could see every item you want from there in one run, or be exalted 12x over and never see the one item you really need. It is not a lack of loot for a given spec (well except ret pallies who get 0 love in kara) or a edearth of items for another, it is just that there is so much different loot with so few "drop slots" that sometimes the zone seems to hate you.

That's sort of my issue as well. That sort of execution error has no place in a 10 man.

Who else can use the crap?  There might be one healadin in a kara raid.  If ANY piece of plate heal gear drops, he gets it because he never gets need-fucked out of gear.  Once he gets his one piece, you never want it to drop again.  Tanks often finish THEIR DPS sets at the same time actual DPSers are doing so because the tanks never have to fight anyone but the rare DPS warrior(Most of whom are just lazy useless fucks unwilling to eat respec costs between PVE and PVP) and other tanks for drops.  Meanwhile, all pieces of leather DPS gear are viciously fought over by enhancement shaman, DPS warriors, feral druids, and rogues.  If you're interested, I generated a graph (http://img513.imageshack.us/my.php?image=classesbyinstance20hqli7.png) that shows what % of people with Kara loot are a given class.
Why not?  Why should 10 man instances = lol n00bs collect your epics?  There's no reason we can't have REALLY HARD content for every group size, although it's much easier to make hard content when you're dealing with a larger group.

I disagree with this entirely.  This is exactly what there should be more of, in all levels of content from 5 to 25 to infinity-man content, things that require good execution and skill on the part of the players.  It's also exactly what lots and lots of people say they want (they obviously don't REALLY want it, cause they bitch about it when they get it) - content that provides good rewards, can be done quickly, is very difficult without requiring huge numbers of people.  I've not been to Zul'aman yet, but from Chimpy's description that's exactly what this is, and what happens?  .....yeah.  Thought so.

I'm fine with ZA being as hard as it is.  It is just like Karazhan in the beginning.  Let those that love the hard content go bang their heads on it.  They like it.  I don't.  Not a big deal.  Karazhan is the right difficulty level for our guild.  ZA is a bit out of reach, but we are getting our toes wet.  By the next launch of the new 10-man, I expect them to soften ZA so that the new 10-man is the Pinnacle of hard-core difficulty.

Will we always be behind in being fully geared in the very best stuff?  Yes.  I don't think anybody in our giuld really cares.  A few might care.  Those are probably the ones that PUG into some alliances we have for the 25-man stuff and ZA.  Good for them.

I'm patient.  I can wait for my carrot.  Actually, while I wait, I get my carrot via PvP!

Thanks for weighing in on something you've never done. Bravo.

You also missed the point. ZA isn't hard, it's poorly paced and overly punative. ZA has one major issue right now that have to be corrected in order for it to be properly tuned to the pacing they want. The Dragonhawk trash is retarded. It took all the stupidity of the BWL suppression room and made it worse. If they fixed that one area, and perhaps took out a few of the groups on the way to the Lynx, it would be perfectly paced. Also, the boss fights take way too fucking long at the end.

Dragonhawk trash is fine.   Controll the Scouts and it is almost easier then the Eagle gauntlet.  Scouts can be stunned and snared, and have rather low HP, just have a rogue or someone keeping an eye out for them, and slaugher them before they get to react.  That, and you can skip like a large chunk of the dragon hawk pulls.

I see. So you're ok with this design decision then? Gauntlets are an acceptable way of controlling raid content? They add something to the game for you?

The gauntlets are not really a problem. They are there primarily as the major hurdle that needs to be overcome if you intend to do a Bear Mount chest run (in which case, you are going to want gear that is somewhat better then base karazan gear).

The Eagle Gauntlet and DragonHawk semi gauntlet are not that difficult if you are not trying to beat the timer.  As i said, the dragonhawk part is pretty easy.  All you need to do is gangbang the scouts, drop the flamecasters fast, and keep an eye out for new scout spawns, and you should have no problem with it.

The only place I've seen that kind of thinking is on the WoW boards, with level 10 alts trying to oute-peen the other level 5 alts, and the occasional level 70 main from a BT guild. All the players I've spoken to in-game want more content, not more difficult content.

I am posting on my alt of my 70 main in an Illidan farming guild to say: "I want fun content, and more variety to said fun"

And retard-checks end up not being fun because it is seemingly impossible to group with more than 5 people at once and NOT have one person who would have fit into the cast of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. And 80% of the fights in BC raids are retard checks, 10% are gear checks, and 10% are "is your luck good today?" checks.

I still find it somewhat maddening that the absolute most fun encounter Blizzard's raid encounter team ever designed was at the end of the worst overall zone design. C'Thun is the one pre-expansion fight I have any real desire to ever see again.

Nevermind, I read that wrong.

I just did C'thun last week, and when I think about how that fight was at 60 with 40 people, I can't imagine it being anything but a retard check.  Don't react to every single thing exactly right and the entire raid blows up.  Stand too close to other people, raid blows up.  Don't spread out immediately after fleeing from the red beam, raid blows up.  Don't take out the right tentacles in the right order, raid blows up.  Tank not paying attention and doesn't grab the giant claw tentacle in time, three random people bite it.  Don't stun the giant eye tentacle fast enough, raid blows up.  Not to mention the little tentacles that mind flay probably weren't soloable by healing priests back then, meaning you needed to have fast on-the-ball DPS to run around killing them.

Yes, that was an astonishingly fun fight, but as far as I see it's because everybody had to be performing very well throughout the encounter.

My personal favourite with C'thun was always the "someone aggroed him before we were ready and 2/3 of the raid instantly bite it (last person hit eats a 9 million nature damage hit)"

From what I hear now, warriors can spell reflect the beam and send him into phase 2 immediately.

Ya it was a retard check, but nowhere near on the level of BC stuff. As long as you could get people to stay spread out in phase 1, and get them to understand how far they needed to run on the big beam it was not too bad. It you set up your positioning for phase2 with everyone on one side it was a lot easier because no one had to run all the way around him to get to the tentacles.

Fight was fun even for the retard check-ness. Being crit for 44million nature dmg with 44million resisted, YOU DIE. was a much more enjoyable death than "boss X's dispellable DoT hits you for 1000 dmg, you die".

Yep, and it's very easy to make. With about ~500g seed money on an alt, and suppling two friends (shadow cloth tailors) with mats I had all three parts of the frozen shadoweave (http://www.wowhead.com/?itemset=553) done at 62.