f13.net

http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/2459-Patch-4.3-Interview-with-Greg-Street-%28Ghostcrawler%29

The link also has an interview with the Little Satan of Blactivizzion Ghostcrawler.

I really like the looks of some of those screenshots for the new five mans.  I think if they implement the changes well it could start to turn things around.  My main concern is about the raid finder, there are a lot of issues that could pop up and it had better not share lockouts with guild raids.  It also needs to be simplified enough that 25 random strangers can get the stuff down.

I am going to go with being optimistic that they will pull this expansion at least half way out of the fire with 4.3.  I don't think we'll see it until at least Decemeber though.  They will probably string us along for as long as they can while they try to crank out the next expansion so that the gap where 4.3 is the only content doesn't last for a year.

So if Tier 13 isn't going to be available at all with valor, why bother with the new heroics?  Also, I'm really glad they managed to get Mary Sue Thrall into this patch, because he's been so mysteriously absent in this expansion.

New heroics will drop gear that is an upgrade to T12, but is slightly worse than LFR-difficulty T13 loot. Maybe you'll do them for the new story too :p

Seems obvious that they are encouraging people to do T13 even if they normally wouldn't via looking for raid, rather than grinding heroics for VP.

I'd also like them to tell us what vp is for.  Is it a whole different set or just off pieces like neck, rings etc.

A blog is also now up for the first dungeon. (http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/3502665/Patch_43_Dungeons_Preview%2C_Part_One_End_Time-9_19_2011)

Looks like we will be fighting Sylvanas, Jaina, Baine and Tyrande...  that could be interesting.

Edit: It's already been pointed out that the final dragon boss' name is an anagram of Nozdormu.  It would be funny if this whole time the infinite dragon flight is actually led by a Nozdormu from the future who has changed his mind on how best to protect time.  Maybe he's actually been fighting against his future self and doesn't know it.

Seems obvious to me they are forcing people into T13 raids because they have no other content planned for the next 6 months.

So much for getting into raids and at least getting badges out of the deal. Now it's back to drops or you wasted your time.

Sure, we'll do them once.  And then never again, since there won't be any reason to do them.  There's a reason VP was put into the game, but in their effort to force people to raid they seem to have forgotten what that reason is.  Nice giant step backwards there, Blizz.

There was that quest in Dragonblight where you reveal the infinite dragonflight's leader and Nozdormu appears. It's also been hinted a few times in-game that he would turn heel in the future.


New heroics will also have a new set. I'll probably collect it on both of my alts. That means that, at least for me, I'll get quite a lot of gameplay out of them.

I'm a little conflicted about the 4.3 news. The new dungeons sound good, but we're still running full-steam on the 'recycled content' expansion. The deathwing raid will take place at Wyrmrest Temple and sounds like it will be AQ20/Hyjal style where the bosses come to you. At least two of the 5-mans will also take place in pre-existing areas of the game. Flying around on his back  across Azeroth sounds cool. Having Darkmoon Faire island be the most significant (or only) 'new' area in a patch with a raid and 3 new 5-mans is less cool.

This.  It was there for raiders to pick up pieces that JUST WOULDN"T DROP.  That's why raids give VP.  Sure, non-raiders can slowly build a set but it takes forever to do so that way.   

Tossing it out entirely is just eliminating any reason to run heroics at all, particularly if you're a raider - who are the people who carry bad groups as it is.  Think groups were bad before?  They're going to get that bad again.

It shouldn't.


(emphases mine, source (http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-09-19-killing-deathwing-in-wow-patch-4-3-interview?page=2), h/t Wowhead (http://www.wowheadnews.com/blog=195282/tom-chilton-explains-4-3s-5-mans-endtime-well-of-eternity-and-hour-of-twilight))

Also, either I'm misunderstanding you all quite a bit or you all are interpreting "Tier 13" in "Tier 13 will not be available at all from valor points." so broadly as to include all equivalent Item Level gear.

I would assume they're just moving the (normal-mode level) set pieces back onto the drop tables and leaving relics and a few other random slots mostly on the VP vendor.

Yeah - I read that comment as being 'tier 13 set pieces' won't be available for VP. I'm sure they will still have tier 13 level gear available for VP. Theresmno way they want to be going back to putting relics etc on the loot table for sure.

No, I understood they explicitly meant the set pieces.  You still get hosed on this as a raider.

For example, for 4 weeks in ICC we had not a single Shaman/Hunter/Warrior token drop of any of the bosses.   Now imagine if that had been the only way for them to acquire armor, instead of buying the lower-end T10 and then upgrading with the token. 

Or, you're going to have to expend DKP for a non-set piece.. and then DKP again for the set piece when your token does finally drop.  (Or if you're on a roll system, someone's going to win pieces 2x while leaving someone else unequipped.) That's only going to piss the raiders off even more.

It's a dumbass non-solution to a non-problem.  The only people it mollifies are the mouthbreathers on the forums who shout "you don't need raid gear!" while at the same time hurting them because they're just as short-sighted as the Tea Party.

Pretty sure I found the source for the bullet point, it's from the TenTonHammer interview (http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/174675/page/2?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss).  Nothing else germane in the other three.  You can read it both ways (to an extent) so here's the question and answer in full:

I get the feeling they would love to get rid of badges.

The badge system is actually not a bad idea but the implementation has been really cumbersome.

They may just do away with class-specific tokens and just have a generic hand/shoulder/chest/leg/head slot token for all classes.

I thought that after it was done in TOC they said they wouldn't follow that system again because it let people gear-up too quickly. 

I'm fine with that if they stop adding fire on the ground effects in every fight.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/3196392331?page=1#16

Once upon a time they said there'd never be an appearance tab, either.

If I can buy things that make my numbers go up with VP, I am fine with running the new heroics, especially if they're fun. I haven't raided at all this expansion, and it's looking pretty unlikely I'm gonna start. :P

Well, now they've released just enough information for both the casuals and hardcore to scream that the sky is falling, fantastic...

The game direction and PR decisions are now being made by a combination of Ghostcrawler, Satan, and the BCS computer system.

How exactly are they going to fit a new difficulty level in between heroics and raids?    I haven't played since Cata came out but they were already basically the same difficulty.   I'm sure they nerfed heroics plenty but that sounds pretty dubious.

Well then. Raids are much harder in Cata than in Wrath. There's room.

So now what, we've got ilvl gear from:

Questing/Crafting
5man normal
5man hard
10man raid normal
10man raid hardcore
25 pickup raid
25 raid normal
25 raid hard

I don't follow the game like I did since quitting a year ago, but if I'm even close in that list, doesn't that seem overboard?  A lot of that development effort could be used in other areas of the game, I think.  They simply seem to overthink much of this game.

I was thinking of coming back recently, but I don't know where I'd even begin.  My two favorite classes of my four 80+ characters had major revamps, and I likely don't have anywhere near the gold for getting myself up to speed with gear.  It's easier to just not play the game.

I doubt itemization is tremendously time-consuming, item stats are pretty formulaic.

Raid gear has been the same for both sizes since Cata launched.  And yes, they seem to just run a script to boost the numbers for the heroic versions as they show up in the files even for items that would never be made available (like the Avengers rep items).

Here is an item progression cheat sheet:
4.2 (now!) : level to 85 > run 3-4 nomals > run 3-4 heroics > run 3-4 ZA/ZG > raid

During that process you'll be spending Justice Points on 359 gear and Valor Points on 378 gear

4.3 (future!) : level to 85 > run 3-4 normals > run 3-4 heroics > run 4.3 heroics > raid

During that process you'll be spending Justice points on 378 gear and Valor Points on XX (whatever the new ilvl is) gear

I only needed to run, like, two normals on my most recent 85, the two purples from the Thrall Quest and the Hooray You Started the Firelands Bullshit were enough to push me over 329. :P

Full(-ish) Transmog Rules:


(source (http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/3196342583), h/t WHN (http://www.wowheadnews.com/blog=195310/4-3-preview-the-dragon-soul-raid-and-transmogrification-rules))

I should totally be able to transmog fishing poles to look like other fishing poles :-P.  Also, interesting that that you can transmog heirlooms but only with stuff the wearing character can wear (because mailing strips it).

I don't understand why they won't let you transmog a legendary appearance onto a normal item. Isn't that the perfect example of what people want transmog for?

Blizzard has to keep it's precious E-Peens sacred somehow!  :why_so_serious:

Wouldn't that totally validate e-peens though? "Check out my Atiesh suckers".

Yes, because I want to join a BG where everyone running around with Atieshs, Sulfuras hammers and Shadowmournes.  Why don't we just give everyone foam swords (http://www.wowhead.com/item=45179) instead?   :awesome_for_real:

Yeah, awesome.  Absolutely NO way to "farm" or aquire epic gems on a decent scale. Expect to see them going for OBSCENE amounts of cash in the AH if anyone is crazy enough to list them.  Hopefully the patterns to cut them will ALL be available through the JC daily tokens, or the first person who gets an AGI / STR / INT cut recepie drop is going to be an instant millionaire.   Sucks to be you if you were one of those people who stocked a bank tab or two full of pyrium stacks in the hopes of prospecting for them.

Can't say I'm disappointed.  That was the annoying thing about Wrath was to see rares not mean anything and greens non-existent.  Maybe in Pandaria they'll find a way for JC's to 'want' to make greens  :why_so_serious:

I would suggest putting some damn socket slots on the 85-through-whatever leveling equipment, then. I'd totally buy greens for that shit, but it doesn't exist.

What if they made the sockets only accept certain quality level gems?  Not ilvl, but, for example, my rare-quality boots I just got has two sockets that can only accept green-quality gems?

The main problem with gems in leveling gear is that 99% of the time, it's a waste of a gem (even if the gem only cost you 2g), because you are probably going to replace that piece of gear in 2 or 3 hours, or 20 quests down the road anyway.  Heck, even gems in "dungeon progression" gear once you hit max level are often ignored due to the same though process (Ie, why gem this iLevel 346 pant piece i just got in this heroic when i am just going to replace it with an iLevel 359 piece after I earn another 500 JP anyway).

"Heroic Deathwing will eventually be made easier after the top guilds kill it so that more people can experience it."

Have they ever said anything like this before?  I know they nerf content, but to announce a new raid and announce it's nerfing 'eventually' smacks of desperation to me.

I dont know.  That's sort of like Ford or Toyota outright telling you "you are going to spend 25 grand on this spiffy new car, and it is only going to be worth 5 on the re-sale market 8 years from now".  Everyone already knows this.

Everyone already knows that blizzard nerfs their raid content (in some form or another) after it has been out for a while, this is just the first time they have actuall said "yeah, it will happen".

You missed Mike Brown & Jerry Jones.

You've got 2 additional tiers in here.  10 and 25 man normal & hard drop the exact same gear now.  So it's actually:

5 N
5 H 
25 PUG
10/25 N
10/25 H

Only one more tier than it is right now.   My assumption is the new heroics will probably drop whatever ilevel the 1st Tier normal raid were, with the 25 PUG dropping the ilevel of current normal raids.

I haven't followed the numerization game, since I've PVP'd for gear since I started playing again.  It's much more interesting and entertaining than the bullshit slog of Heroic dungeons these days.  I had an hour before bed last night, joined a heroic queue with some guildies and we got ZA with 2 PUGs.. 45 mins later I was logging off without having killed a boss.

Yet I'm told it's better than at launch.  :oh_i_see:

That's not so bad, I suppose.  I thought 10s and 25s were dropping different ilvls. 

From someone whose raiding peaked in Vanilla, though, it sure as hell seems like a lot of work to figure out what best-in-show gear drops from where, then actually get the people to run it, and then hope that the damn item actually drops.  Maybe I've been away too long from MMOs.

In Wrath, yeah.  Then they pulled their heads out of their asses for at least a minute and said "Fuck it.  Make it all the same loot, and have more loot drop in 25."

And then Greg stuffed their heads back up  :why_so_serious:

Gearing as a whole is more complicated now than in Classic because sets are smaller, there are a few more stats, and reforging but the "where" of gear is much easier.  Because of armor specializations, inflation, and tighter drop tables, where your best gear drops (with very few exceptions) is in whatever the highest raid your group can do is.

At heroic gear levels, you're looking at one alternative piece per slot if that and it's all off the same bosses and a vendor or two.  Compared to Classic where there was an overlap in item levels between up to three instances and PvP at points even before dealing with resistances, percentage shenanigans, and dropping down armor classes.

I remember the time when Druid gear had Str, Agi, Sta, Int and Spi on it  :awesome_for_real:

At that point it didn't matter what they worse because the class was such a shitshow.

They should actually return to that sort of itemization, and give each class a reason to give a shit about all four of the primary stats not stamina.  Sort of like what they tried with mastery, but without making the "new" balance on the stats quite so ridiculously fucking broken.

Oh please, please let me transmogrify that.

No go, it's a grey.  I imagine it would have been excluded even if it wasn't.. much like I expect the cloth pumpkin heads (which are rares and do have stats) to be excluded.

The halloween gas mask would be pretty boss.

So you're allowed to play dress up, but not funny dressup?

Correct. We don't want to get too silly here.  :oh_i_see:

I don't think Blizzard understands the point of dressup.

I haven't really been following 4.3 that much, but why is loot that you get via the raid finder at a lower ilvl than even the Normal raid version stuff? Does using the raid finder make dungeons easy mode or something?

Yes, but only for the 25 man random raid.

Yes, LFR is supposed to be a lower difficulty (and 25m only) than the normal version of the raid.

Okay, that's not bad then. I assumed the worst and figured that Blizzard would throw the LFR people into the Normal raids for shittier loot as a sort of final :fuckcasuals:.

4.3 PTR is going up soon (this week/next week): http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/3229085851#2

Serious question.  Do you think Blizzard should make old raid content do-able solo?  I enjoy LOTRO's epic questline that you can solo all the way thru Moria.  Rift has done so already.

I'd resub just to do old raids and see the content, I never even got to kill Onxyia. *sniff*

Some specs can already solo 60 raids.

60? Some can do 70 or 80 raids that don't involve mandatory group mechanics or insta-kills.

Yes, but they can't do so as part of their normal progression.  While a bit more useful with Transmorgrification coming, it's not really something that matters to most of the players as it currently stands.

Blood DK's don't count  :why_so_serious:

Nah, i know a lock and a pally who do BC content solo. I don't know if they've tried WOT

Ed: Oh.. and my poorly geared hunter did Forge of Souls solo on normal.. tho I haven't tried Heroic yet I can probably do some of the simpler stuff on heroic.

:cry:

That's like saying my Prot Pally can solo stuff, well no shit!

Most classes can solo 60/70 raids at this point.

There aren't many raids that you can get through without hitting some sort of a "you need two people" cockpunch.  The only ones I know of are MC and Magtheridon.

You can also solo Kara, SSC, Gruul's Lair, and TK. I've never tried BT/Hyjal, but Hyjal should be doable solo as well.

Mag doesn't require 2 people anymore,  so long as you can kill the adds because they spam heal each other. The cubes don't add a debuff and don't require channeling to stop his channeling either.

MC doesn't require two people, either.  There's no more runes to stomp out for Domo, and you should be able to DPS Rag down before his punts become an issue (He's only got 1 mil health).  If not, there's places to stand that you'll hit a wall and not fly out of range long enough to get killed. 

BT and Sunwell I haven't heard of anyone soloing, but duoing is doable.  Hyjal I know some class with a decent AOE had soloed but I can't remember who it was.. probably a DK.  The pure melees can't do it because of the gargoyles and frostwyrms.

He was stating that MC and Mag are soloable, not that they aren't.

A DK has soloed the Lich King, Mimiron and Yogg+1

Kara: Chess.  So heavily RNG dependent that you might end up slamming your head against a wall.
SSC: Vashj.  Stacking damage buff if you don't kill the adds will get most people.
Gruul: Fall damage is bad news.
TK: Kael.  Silence + Stun + Fear + Disorient + Disorient.
BT: Najentus will chain stun you to death.  Do not pass go, do not collect warglaives.
Hyjal: Rage Winterchill chain freezes.

Typically any attack that doesn't target the tank will simply not be used if you're the only person there.

Pets are included as a player btw. I found that out the hard way on the first boss in AQ40. Now I just FD and let the pet kill the boss (Spirit Beast heals FTW)

Kael is a bit RNG but totally doable.

Chess is extremely easy to solo.

Most of the damage in Gruul came from shatter, which is a non-issue if you are soloing it. Fall damage isn't a big deal. High-king was actually much tougher to solo, but it was doable.

Vashj was very easy to solo.

Kael is rough to solo, but it can be done. Admittedly it's way more effort than i'm willing to put in, so the last couple times I did it were as a duo. The caster staff legendary you pick up gives a CC immunity aura.

If the stars align and the event thrown nothing painful at you.


Depends entirely on class.  Again, we don't give a fuck if you can solo shit on your DK, Druid, Warrior, or Paladin, we know you can Captain Obvious.


You're full of shit.

The only thing preventing many people from soloing Vash'j wast the cores rooting you in place when you picked one up, and the striders with their aoe Fear aura.   Now that they fixed the cores so you can move while holding one, the fight is pretty stupidly easy compared to the old days.  The striders are still a pain, but most people should be able to burn the boss to dead before they become much of a problem.

Mostly I've been solo'ing these raids on my rogue. Chess has never taken me more than two tries on any character I've done it on, and I've solo'd it every week on two characters for the past month. The fire can be bad, that is the only threat in the fight. If it hits your king, you need to drop what you are doing and move him out of it. That's the fight, in a nutshell.


Okay psycho.  :oh_i_see:

Add rogue, hunter, and warlock to the list of classes that can successfully solo a lot of old content, and you're talking about over half the classes in the game, that's hardly some corner case "oh well if you do this exact thing..." I wouldn't be surprised if shamans are right up there too.

Also what's with the douchey attitude?

Enhance Shaman can solo a fair bit - Wolves and Maelstrom heals plus burst damage.

Glass cannons as far as parts of Gruuls/TK/SCC are concerned though.

PTR is go.

PTR notes as of post (http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/3608419/Public_Test_Realm_Patch_43_Notes-9_27_2011#blog (http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/3608419/Public_Test_Realm_Patch_43_Notes-9_27_2011#blog)):


Commentary by GC, Part One (http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/3615095/Explanation_of_43_Balance_Changes_Part_One-9_27_2011#blog (http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/3615095/Explanation_of_43_Balance_Changes_Part_One-9_27_2011#blog)):


From MMO-C (http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/2475-Patch-4.3-on-PTR (http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/2475-Patch-4.3-on-PTR)), Priest and Hunter T13 previews:

Priest T13 is now my favorite armor art of the whole expansion, that's awesome.

It's not terrible, they could have toned the crown parts down a tad

Rokal.  Enough said.

At least hunter T13 isn't T2 dragon horns.

Just once I'd like a subtle hunter set - my poor Tauren has had to put up with looking ugly since vanilla WoW raid days.

Agreed, you've said enough.

Yeah I was thinking the same thing. That's goddamn fantastic armor.

I'm still not convinced you're not some PR bot from the future sent here to destroy us.

That's Lokar, watch out.

I see through your clever anagram disguise, Lokar.

A good-looking Hunter tier set? What the hell is this nonsense?

Also echoing the sentiments of how awesome the Priest T13 is.

Yeah priest T13 is pretty damn sweet.

The "Inquisitor behind a soulless mask" look never goes out of style.

How exactly does that look on tauren and worgen priests?

Yeah I don't know how they are going to make that mask work for Worgens.

Extra large helmet!

How do the other close-faced helmets - like on the DK sets - work on those models?

www.wowheadnews.com has the armor in their Patch news article for you to dress up people in.

Yes, it looks silly on taurens.

They usually push the whole thing forward and expose the neck (both under the helm and above the hunched back) to fur.  It's why hoods look so goofy on worgen too.  This design seems to have both a mask and a hood, the main fear is that it will be treated like a hood.

Edit:
(http://i54.tinypic.com/149za8k.jpg)

So they cut off the bottom of the mask to make it work, it's not as good but I still like it.

PvP sets: http://www.wowheadnews.com/blog=195681/4-3-preview-season-11-pvp-sets#.

The PvP Paladin armor would be great, if it wasn't for those random bits sticking out.

That hunter pvp set looks pretty awesome too. Really solid job overall with the sets coming in 4.3.

The Warlock set is great.  The others are okay.  Not hideous though.

For some strange reason, the Goblin Priest T13 mask also has the lower face cut off as well (similar to how it would look on a worgen / tauren).  Maybe cause male goblins have huge noses?

They also cut off the bottom of the face on all the female armor, I guess so their faces don't look male?  Beats me.

This.

FFFFFF, I would love the paladin set if not for those stupid shoulders. Woe!


Still, much nicer than this season's fugly-ass conquest set.

Seriously that one wing, one horn, one whatever the hell that is on the back just spoils what would be a amazing suit on the paladin.

The mage set pisses me off because it's an illustration of how goddamn stupid they are when they design lady armor. If it had a high neckline on the robe, the headpiece wouldn't look like 100% ass. But it DOESN'T, so she looks like she's wearing the world's most impractical neckbrace.

I like the warrior set a lot, but I'm a sucker for that sort of shit. It looks rad on a lady dwarf, if you assume she's wearing a shirt under it, WHICH SHE WOULD BE.

The cloth stuff from the 5-mans (http://www.wowheadnews.com/blog=195689/4-3-preview-end-time-5-man-coverage-dungeon-set-3d-models-dungeon-journal-entrie#dungeon-sets-preview) looks amazingzing.

Why hello there, plate set. You're looking sharp. I wouldn't transmorgify you. I'd turn the helmet off, but that's true 99% of the time, so don't feel bad, baby.

Don't really like the color for the mage set, which is the one I would be picking up, and I'm not sure how I feel about those shoulders, but it's not too shabby either.

That plate set is very nice. Much better than my DK's T12, although I'm probably still transmogrifying back into my T7.

I'm still going to be prancing around in my tier 0.5, just for the circular closure factor, although that set looks fine. I don't especially like the color the warrior set ended up with, but that's hardly a new problem.

What's it like, being so wrong?  :awesome_for_real:
One angel wing, one demon wing. One halo, one demon horn. It's almost like it was designed that way on purpose.

Because nothing ugly was ever designed on purpose?  :uhrr:

Yeah I don't give a shit what stupid artsy statement they think they're making, it looks awful.

Really?
Really?

But it's art! Duality or some shit. It's obviously a deep statement made by the guys who brought you the murloc suit.

Okay, are people seriously arguing that it's a bad set? Because that's just genuinely crazy talk

No. Can you read? People are saying it's a great set except for those couple random bits of stupid.

Which makes it more frustrating than the usual "lol paladin" suit, because oh god so close to awesome, yet so far.

You could even get away with the hat/halo on the paladin set and still look good and get your theme across. I think it's the wing that just kicks it into excessively ornamental.

And in retaliation for winning the PVE tier looks, the priest set is D:

New feature announced today: Inactive Guild Leader Replacement.

If the GL isn't on for 30 days, he gets flagged as Inactive.  The system then notifies the highest-ranked people who have been online in the past week that they can take over the guild.  First on that list to click becomes the new GL.

So.. if your GL takes off and your officers do as well, you can pickup the guild as a member, I suppose.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/3278811224#1

Seems like a band aid to something that wasn't that hard to do in the case of guild leader mia in the past. Automation to remove CusServ requests I guess.

We had to deal with that a lot with my "free bank space/chat room with my friends" guild.  Someone becomes active, has to petition for guild leadership because previous guild leader is inactive, goes inactive.. rinse repeat.

It's a nice feature for them to implement. 

It's part that and part to do away with the assholes who stop playing in the guild they're GL of, but boot anyone who sends in a CS ticket so they can manage the place.  I've had that happen on some alts.

In one when I noticed he'd been gone almost 4 months I put in a ticket to get the guild back on my officer alt so I could figure out what to do. The GM response I read in e-mail was "we contacted the GL and he's refused your request."  I was surprised he was even still active and must have been on an alt in another guild, because I was the only officer who'd been on in 2 weeks.  When I logged in the next day I'd been gkicked.

In the other; the GL spams invites, gives everyone the ability to invite and put money in the bank and stuff in the vault but no ability to withdraw, then disappears.   He shows up every few months to loot the bank and spam invites again.  I stay in only because it's amusing to watch and it keeps my bank/ auction alt from getting invite spammed.

I've never experienced that tbh, mostly my frame of reference is from raiding guilds when the gl burns out and fucks off somewhere so the officer core steps up and petitions a leadership change, always been pretty smooth.

Its a good feature however, like I said though less of a convenience for players more of a reduction of CS requests.

Well, if people are that hung up on the symmetry thing there's always the paladin T13. No demon horns or bat-wings, either.

Words really do just bounce off your head, don't they? It's like you see them, but don't know what they mean.

It's the wind.  He can't hear a damn thing with it blowing that hard.

I like the asymetry of the Paladin set, and to me this is the best Pala' set yet. Unfortunately my other love is a DK who would look like total ass in the new PvP "can-opener of doom" set. Fortunately I shall be transmoggin' my DK into the Acherus set with Ebon Blade Greatword.

EDIT: speelign

It's dramatic.  :drill:
Anyway: http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/201374/chaos-orbs-in-patch-43
At long bloody last.

Now I can finally craft all that sweet 359 gear on my alts  :why_so_serious:

Kind of nice in that now the two Engineers i have who are sitting on like 15 orbs a piece because orbs are practically useless to Engineers (but i still roll on them anyway) can send their orbs to someone who can actually use them, like my smith or leatherworker.

Depending what the minimum ilvl is for the new 5 mans it will probably be a lot easier to just chain run a few ZA/ZG/new-5mans-in-4.3 and get carried by your friends mains.

I'm guessing it wont' be hard to queue for the first new 5man (molten front daily gear helps ilvl rating) and this will be like the end of wotlk where icecrown pretty much invalidated the need for too much gears from the old 5man heroics.

The main question is whether the new heroics will drop weapons higher than ilvl 365. If they don't (or maybe even if they're tied at 365), there's still a need for the crafted ones that take 5 orbs each.

That's the joke. You'd have to be crazy to make any of the current items that use chaos orbs at this point, because you can get better gear for much less effort. Crafted gear is still very expensive to make.

The weapons are not crazy to make.

Maybe the weapons aren't entirely crazy to make right now. Looking at the mats for the 365 weapons, you'd still be using about 5k worth of mats (before the orbs). You could just run ZA/ZG for a 353 weapon and be happy. Or you could run faceroll t11 for a 365 weapon. Or faceroll T12 for a 378 weapon. Still, I could almost see the argument for maybe crafting a 365 weapon right now if you didn't want to raid.

But in 4.3 when this change is actually coming? You'd have to be crazy. New dungeons will probably drop 378 weapons that you can easily obtain. LFR difficulty will also be implemented so you can run easy mode Dragon Soul for weapons, and there is probably a good chance that T12 will be nerfed further.

I expect we'll see some new crafting recipes in 4.3 that use Chaos orbs, so this change won't be entirely useless, but most of the recipes that use chaos orbs stopped being worth making when the ZG/ZA remakes launched.

T11 weapons are 359, and we don't actually know what level the new heroics will drop I don't think. Also worth pointing out that depending on your spec, the 359 crafted items can be better itemized than the 353 stuff from ZA/G.

As of right now, new dungeon drops are 378 on the PTR. Maybe that will change before release though.

I completely boned up my earlier post. I was talking about the mats for a 359 weapon (~5k). 365 weapons require fiery cores from T12, so the cost for those is 10k+.

Um, no. There are no crafted 359 weapons AFAIK (shields, breastplates, belts, but no weapons, for blacksmiths at least - there are engineering bows maybe), the 365 weapons are from recipes that you grind the firelands dailies to unlock, and typically take 8 truegold, 5 orbs, and some other random bullshit that varies per weapon.

There are no crafted 378 weapons, but there are crafted pieces of 378 armor, those are the things that take the living embers.

You're right, my mistake. Still, I don't think any of this stuff with be worth crafting come 4.3

I don't think I've even seen one of the 378 crafted items (that I could wear) on the ah because of how crazy expensive and hard to get the embers are.  They are rare enough that they are made to order basically.  I wonder if the 4.3 stuff will have some kind of even higher tier of orbs/embers.

4.3 Valor Changes
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/blog/3077118

If you're a lootwhore:
Heroic Rag now or Heroic BRC in 4.3 you make the choice =p

I dunno.. this paragraph


implies that they'll be removing tier armor from Valor vendors.  In that event, Valor loses all point for anything other than off items that don't necessarily drop or drop infrequently but are highly desired.  i.e. rings, wrists, boots, capes.

We've known for a while that T13 wouldn't be on the vendor. I don't think they're going to remove the ones that were already there.

It pisses me off enough I can't get the fucking hat or shoulders (and thus no 4 piece bonus) without raiding, now they're regressing even further. Maybe the PUG raids will be jim dandy, but I am not going to hold my breath. It DOES make valor points pretty damn pointless though. Although I can at least turn those into conquest points.  :why_so_serious:

I'm hoping there's still someone at Blizzard with enough common sense to figure out that they still need to put something other than rings and trinkets on the Valour vendor (read: non-set armour of the same or similar ilvl) but my realistic side thinks that won't happen until 4.3.something.

Valor vendor doesn't seem to be up yet (at least nothing on a wowhead PTR search shows as purchaseable with valor points?) so who knows what will be on there. I do note that there are no shields showing up in a search of what should be the new 5 man drops, so that's a candidate for a valor purchase.

EDIT: Or not, I think I screwed up my first search, there are some 378 shields in there.

From the blog that was linked above....


It'll have more than rings/trinkets, but they'll be off-set items (or non-set slots)

They're still keeping two slots (shoulders/legs) off plus primary weapons, but everyone should have expected more stuff on the Valor vendor this time because I don't think there's a raid rep this time around.  That gear had to go somewhere.

The valor and tier changes do all hinge on the raid finder tool being successful, if it turns out to be a failure for any reason there are going to be a lot of pissed off people who can't get gear.  I am almost certain they will wind up making the looking for raid version too difficult for 25 random people who are only looking out for themselves and will have to nerf it into a cakewalk within a few weeks of its introduction.

If it doesn't work they'll just change it again for the next expansion. Now's the time to try it, since this expansion is already on its way out.

Yeah, the timing for this is about as good as it can be, probably, from a dev cycle standpoint.

However, if it's shitty? And comes out around the same time SWTOR does? Thaaaaat might be unfortunate. Especially if SWTOR is worth a damn.

Yes, from a business standpoint, I would agree with that. Fortunately for WoW, I think SWTOR will have fallen into blaaaah for a lot of people by the time their next xpac comes back.

But only if they market it completely different than this mess.

A bunch of fucking Pandas just screams casual so they'll be okay.

Legs you'll still be able to get from BH.

Hunter armor is up.  As expected, since Dragonstalker was already taken, you'll be collecting 'Wyrmstalker' pieces  :awesome_for_real:

Also:
Looks like if you're tanking you get a bonus on need rolls for tanking gear, and so on.

Hopefully the bonus is 100, so it becomes impossible to lose to DPS.

Very nice addition, although there will be whines from Tanks who like to need on DPS weapons  - particularly of the ranged type.

FIFY.

Maybe they'll also start tagging gear with roles as well, so you'll get the bonus if you're playing the role the item is intended to be received by.

xXhuntsalotXx: blizz put in role bonus so ima need everything for os
xXhuntsalotXx: u guys will get the bonus for ur spec neway

I do have to ponder how a weapon like this will be treated by the spec system:

one handed sword, with strength, hit (or expertise), and mastery. (Any 2 of those 3 really).

That's both a tanking weapon for warriors and paladins, and a DPS weapon for SMF and dual-wield frost.

EDIT: I see that they say some things will be flagged for more than one role, good enough.

I understand that they needed to do something... but its just goes more and more away from people needing to communicate with one an other.

Trust me, in this case, it's for the best. My paladin lost on the healer trinket during Brewfest every fucking time to some other asshat rolling on it, including mages because omg +int. It was a teensy bit infuriating.


What's sad is that in that post, I was most pleased to see them call the mage a "she."

Yeh your right, can't patch out stupid or trolls. Blizzard should implement tribunal ala LoL

What about +spirit items where dps druids/shaman/shadowpriests are concernered?

Do you mean besides flagging it as Damage/Healer?

then you'll get mages and locks rolling on it just to be douches.

Well, never mind my previous post then. Didn't expect the bonus to be +100.

http://ptr.wowhead.com/search?q=replica

 :yahoo:

They should still make people do the quest line to update their replica 0 into replica 0.5.  :-P

Haha, they totally should. EARN IT, BITCHES.

If I ever actually played my priest, I would probably want the tier 0 replica for her, it was pretty. The upgraded version ... was not.

Thought the upgraded version just had a blue tint? I liked it.

The priest one goes from purple to a garish pink I think.

Dungeon 1

(http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20060604133812/wowwiki/images/1/19/Nightelf-femaledevout.jpg)

Dungeon 2

(http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20071014233733/wowwiki/images/3/37/Nightelf-virtuous.jpg)

I had actually reversed them in my head. Both look sort of weird on a Night Elf, but I liked the second set a little bit better on my dwarf.

Dungeon 1 looks great on a night elf, you are smoking crack. Dungeon 2 is hideous on everyone.

Better on a night elf without green hair, I guess.

That helm...

The hat is just way too big on a night elf, and the ears unnaturally slide behind the side of the hat. The proportions are much better on a human

(http://www.dragonsworn.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/virtuous.jpg)

On a dwarf, the shoulders are huge, which I think looked pretty cool on the dungeon 1 set.

(http://www.scrollsoflore.com/gallery/albums/wow_renders/armorset_dwarf-male-priest-2.jpg)

I just cannot accept a dwarf in pink.

It doesn't look pink to me. It's white fading into beige.

Looks pink to me too. And ugly. Uuuuuuuuuglyyyyyyyyyy.

Also who gives a shit about hats? Hats are made to be turned off.

:(


No.

(http://wow.zamimg.com/uploads/screenshots/normal/131849.jpg)

That robe could be slavaged and worked into other ensembles.  The white and gold one I mean.

Am I blind, missing an image?


All I see is a Blue/Purple robe and a Yellow robe?

It's hideous whether you call it yellow, pink, or beige.

The yellow robe's non-yellow parts are pink. But like Lantyssa said, it's hideous no matter what color you want to call it.

Yeah even to color-blind me it is fugly.

Why would you look like that when you could have tier 5, 6 or 8 though?

Well, for starters, the replica stuff might be a lot easier to get, and I am lazy.  :oh_i_see:  It's why I'm almost certainly going to be mostly transmogging into PvP sets.

So, um, Deathwing's quite a big dragon: http://i.imgur.com/w19cm.jpg

Holy Shit.

Hah! That's pretty impressive looking.

That's the first thing in a while that has made me want to resub, but the work and commitment getting to that point is above what I could do. 

I wish they would allow for raid encounters to be experienced by solo players, sans loot.  Just so we could see what it looks like. 

Reading dungeon journal for 10 minutes and clicking "queue for raid" is going to be too much work/commitment?

I think you are grossly overestimating the ability for pugs to complete content.

We won't know until we see what the actual difficulty of LFR stuff is.

I think you are grossly overestimating the ability for a pug of level 85's to do content from previous expansions, let alone current(albeit nerfed) content.  It's not about numbers specifically, it's about coordination and raid mechanics that no amount of gear can overcome.

Mechanics they will allegedly be changing/nerfing for LFR.

I'm not saying you're absolutely wrong, just that we don't know yet.

Please, they PUG'd most of WotLK already. At level 80.

It comes down to the uninterrupted time required for seeing content.  If I can't put a game on pause for 15 minutes while a neighbor stops over, or family needs help, then I just don't bother playing. 

Like I said, I'm entirely okay with not getting loot, but I'd just like to see the story play out.  It is one of a few reasons I quit playing back in January, after seeing yet another expansion I can't see to fruition.  I'm not going to argue that they've made it easier; they have.  It just doesn't work for me, sadly.

I think when they say mechanics will be changing it will be much like the Normal-> heroic change.  You don't lose/ gain too many things to think about but the damage done is pretty different.

Using the last Heroic fight I dealt with - Sindragosa - as an example, you've got to worry about one additional ice tomb during air phase and unchained magic does AOE damage instead of just single target damage.   No significant changes but an increased amount of coordination.

For a "raid finder" version, you'd probably only get two air phase tombs and possibly a longer time on the AOE blast after her pull-in.  You've still got the major coordination problems.

If you've ever done old content in PUG raids once it was irrelevant (i.e. doing AQ in early WOTLK) you learned the hard way that even outgearing and out leveling coordination fights still causes wipes.  Twin Emps and C'<whateveR> killed my little AQ Pug a number of times before we got it right and we were all 80 - 20 levels and ridiculous item-levels beyond what it was designed for.

You may wipe (heroic LK is still a fucking bitch at 85, so many stupid insta-wipe moving parts arghghghgh), but wiping once or twice has never broken up a PUG raid I've been in. Wiping five times on a fight will, but once or twice, especially if the wipes were "good" wipes? Never.

That's...not really how most heroic fights are. I mean, yes okay you are still fighting the same dragon. But simply saying that damage goes up is misleading. Making the explosion from unchained AoE is a completely different beast; one person can trivially wipe the raid on heroic, whereas before that was basically impossible. Also, Sindragosa is a pretty bad example of a seriously different heroic boss; for example Freya heroic, Mimiron heroic and Lich King heroic were not even remotely the same fights. The only instance where heroic was 'like normal but harder' was ToGC, which was, by all accounts, a colossal failure.

The Cata heroic raids are really different from their normal mode versions, so I think it's fairly safe to expect that the easy-mode fights will be, well, easy. They've also gotten very good at overnerfing numbers; our first H-Rag kill was a good 3 minutes longer than our last one, and it was almost certainly better executed on our part. The trivialize bat can crush even the most staid of boss dargons.

And @Hawkbit: I sympathize that for people who don't want to raid/group being required to play in real time is kind of annoying, but I think that's one of the trade-offs you make with a multiplayer game in this genre. I realize that it is still occasionally touted as a 'great single player experience, PLUS all this other social stuff' but I'm pretty sure that's a load of crap. As a single player game, WoW is probably very frustrating, not particularly well done and difficult to fit into your schedule. So you know, not fun.

That's basically it, in a nutshell.

I played 40hrs/wk at launch and had a blast.  Raided, did all that stuff.  I had a lot of fun in the game, but watched stuff in my life tank.

Each expansion I've basically seen a 25% reduction in playtime for myself, but it all builds.  Once I went to casual raiding in BC, I had more time for stuff in life, but wasn't really able to keep up in game. 

Maybe when my kid becomes a teenager and no longer wants anything to do with me, then I'll get back into MMOs. 

I think you're conflating the mechanical changes with their impact on the strategy.  Or your bar's set differently as you mentioned Mimiron being really different, which I don't think it was even though I enjoyed it a lot.

Of the first six Firelands Heroics, none of them undergo what I believe are dramatic changes.  A low scorpion Normal Majordomo is basically the same as Heroic, just with less "God damnit, I was out of that thing."  Beth'tilac sort of gets there just because the tuning makes everything a massive pain in the ass, but that's it.

I get that you can't, at this point, raid regularly with your lifestyle. It doesn't seem like a stretch to suggest that you might be able to find an hour or two spare to run the LFR raids once. If something comes up, you could always bail and let LFR find a replacement anyway.

If you really want to check out the Deathwing fight, it should be pretty easy to do in 4.3 even as someone that doesn't group often. Even easier if you wait a month or two for everyone to over-gear it and learn the fights.

Same boat which is why I dont raid anymore, now I play for PvP pretty much or very light PvE(quick instances, etc).  Ive done this now for 4-5 years after being a heavy raider in EQ and WOW for years and I dont see me ever going back to that kind of time commitment, even if I have the time. 

Apparently, the valour point vendor is up on the PTR And...

...it's supposed to have full sets of armour (well, not sets but complete suits, if you know what I mean) as well as rings/trinkets/etc. Looks like someone did think things through. Oh, and DK T13 is on the dull side of mediocre. Hurrah for Judgement recolour + transmog!

DK T13 confirmed (as ugly): http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/3840431
Also people bitching about other class sets - look at DK stuff. Blue-grey plate with skulls and horns and a blue glow...quick, which set am I describing?  :awesome_for_real:
And people wonder why I collected the T2 paladin recolour and other stuff.

The last good DK raid set was warrior T3 :p

It's part of why I liked T9 for my (Alliance) DK. It was a nice break from SKULLS SKULLS SKULLS.

Why we need transmogriphication: http://www.orcisharmyknife.com/2011/10/minipost-this-is-why-we-need.html
 :awesome_for_real:

If I was playing I might be tempted to transmog my gear just to look like that, just to piss people off  :why_so_serious:

Just so long as you're not tanking in a dress.  Then we'd have to draw the line. :oh_i_see:

Monks will tank in dresses  :why_so_serious:

Judgement, has skirt, best pally set, etc.

My poor priest had pants like that in Outland, and it felt like it took FOREVER to get the poor girl a damn robe to hide her shame.

Nah, most leather gear doesn't have the dress factor unless it's Druid-specific.

Bet you at least half monk gear will be dresses. (The other half will be bondage gear).
WoW was created by EQ fans, remember?  :oh_i_see:

Yeah monk stuff is almost certainly going to be dress-oriented.

Or "kung fu pants" kind of stuff, a-la every fighting character in Dragon Ball Z.

Pretty much what I'm expecting, yeah. Even the Shaolin don't do kung-fu in dresses.

Kung-fu puffy pants are going to just look like dresses in WoW, though.

Guess what a new vendor in Acherus is selling on the PTR?

http://ptr.wowhead.com/search?q=acherus+knight#.
Also: Blue set, first runeblade (the Rivendare-lookalike), both quest reward weapons (sword and axe).

So much for being a unique snowflake.  Still, I'm sure that'll make a lot of people happy.  And a DK not wearing the set rare...

I fail to see why any DK would wear anything else.

I know a few that plan on wearing purple T10.  I imagine there's some who like the other tiers as well.

Then there's the DKs who'll farm a full Lofty or Bloodscale set.

I'm probably going to wear the Tier 7.5 stuff on my dk, although I'm also farming up the white recolor of the pally crystal set so I can look like a light warrior!  :why_so_serious: I'm pretty pissed that they aren't allowing weapon type transmogs and I'm stuck with a stupid axe; I've got a ton of cool swords and don't really feel like running AQ40 for the one axe model I actually like. Did they post the ilvl of the gear from the new raids yet, so i can see how likely it is I can get a non-axe upgrade in the first couple weeks?

Wait, we're not allowed to trans with our weapons ???

Baws.

No, you can trans weapons you just can't trans-type weapons.

i.e. an Axe can't use a sword model and a 1h weapon can't use a 2h model.  (Except Hunters, who can do it with their ranged weapons.)

I'm ok with the starter armor being available, but I'm slightly miffed that the starter runeblades are.  I've kept those for a long, long time just because they were really cool models.  It's not like bank space was particularly sparse unless you are a pack-rat like myself.

I wonder if this means they'll make the Malefactor's Eyepatch (only mail eyepatch model) available as a vanity skin.

Ah, that's ok then.

I wouldn't imagine them doing anything else, to be honest.

I still haven't found a 1h axe to have in reserve for my outfit, for those patch cycles when the tanking weapon is an axe. Otherwise I think I'm all set.

How about a monocle instead: http://www.wowhead.com/item=31218

http://www.wowhead.com/item=31268/abomination-cleaver

That doesn't match at all!

Possibly I would go with: http://www.wowhead.com/item=47148

Awesome - I'd kept both both the starter and the questing set but somehow had deleted the boots from the questline. Now I can get them back as both sets are awesome.

Soo there are like 30 guardian cubs on the AH on my server.  lol.

WoW and their money hats.

http://wowroleplaygear.com/ can be helpful for figuring out looks too, by the way.

Hakkari Manslayer was the only 1h axe I ever liked.  Don't know if you can get it now though.

I'd thought about it, but the eyepatch was much, much cooler. 
http://www.wowhead.com/item=31547

A little skull on it and everything.  /sadf

Isn't that Eyepatch still obtainable?

Quest-only item.  I did the quest on my hunter back when that was still a good item and better than some dungeon/ raid items.

I still have the cloth horde only warlock horns from back in bc. They're q felheart resin and no longer obtainable. I almost want to resub just to rock them

Nope, and I don't think they reused the model either.

I was going through my warrior's stuff today:

What about the Axe of the Deep Woods, Ingmar?
http://www.wowhead.com/item=811

It's mostly a matter of color matching - so far that blue lion head axe is the closest. It needs to go with the blue/gold coloring of Heroism (the upgraded Valor armor, warrior set 0.5), draconian deflector, the Slap tabard, etc. For a sword I'm using http://wow.zamimg.com/uploads/screenshots/normal/218893.jpg

Ah, gotcha.

Wish I had Heroisim.. I just discovered I have all the valor parts EXCEPT the pants.  I'd forgotten I'd never managed to get them to drop. 

I think I'll just slap on the glorious set. 

Well, I think they're going to sell replica things through whatever it is you do at the Darkmoon Faire...

Rumor is they'll have the Heriloom pantss at Darkmoon, too.. but that requires grinding and it's beginning to look like this patch isn't going to come out prior to KOTOR, either.

Im glad they have the old dungeon 0 sets available, but on the other hand, kind of irritated they also have the 0.5 sets available.  Having the 0.5 set actually required a lot of work and effort to get, and I kind of wish those at least had stayed unavailable to preserve their uniqueness.

I would be pretty surprised to see it push past SWTOR release given that they already have the background downloader going now. That said I could easily see it coming out the week before SWTOR but really they should release it end of nov or first week of dec.

While I kinda agree with you, since my .5 is in my bank too, I'm not THAT cut up about it, since the sets themselves kinda looked shit.

lol priest

Warrior set, I should clarify.

At least your character will never be short of a can-opener.

Eh, the Feralheart set on a Female Tauren is probably one of the best looking Druid Sets in the game.  Add on the Shadowstrike from Molten Core for polearm Transmog, and it makes a pretty sweet set for Feral.

LOL Vendorstrike.

Have they said anything about T2? I want to get my pally a set of Judgement Armor. And, well, Tier 5 for my priest. Just shoulders would do!

Considering that both of those are still in the game, and easily farmable with a group of like 3-5 level 85's, I doubt they will be adding them to vendors any time soon.

Well that sucks. Why bother putting in easy things that could instead be achieved by good old farming at max level.

The T0/T0.5 dungeon sets haven't been in the game since 4.0, so there's that.
Also: http://www.wowhead.com/transmog-sets

Ooh, nice.

actually, i think 90% of the T0 sets still drop normally in the game, just an odd piece here or there may have gone missing when they re-did scholomance as a level 40ish dungeon.  Though i could be wrong.  It is possible the level 60 pieces still drop off the new lower level mobs.

T0.5 is competely gone though, since i believe they removed the questline for it sometime around the time Wrath launched.

0 is gone entirely, did a baron mount run recently and he dropped no pants at all. ( :why_so_serious:)

The 0.5 quest line didn't go away until the 4.0 launch pre-Cata.

Yeah 0 is absolutely out of game as a drop.  If you see one of the BOE pieces on the AH it's because someone found a piece on a bank alt and is trying to sell it now that Transmog is around.   Or you're just seeing the heirloom pieces that match the old T0 models.

Wierd, i could have sworn that when i did Stratholm on my Goblin priest that Balnazzar still dropped a T0 piece.

This is out this week, by the way.  :oh_i_see:

kind of excited about translalala. Have about a billion sets I want to try with matching everything  :grin:

The only thing I am not looking forward to is the change to the paladin's "I'm a SUPER HEALING STREAM TOTEM" spell. That spell was fucking money in PvP as is, and I will sorely miss it. The rest I am either indifferent to (I don't raid, so whatever, Deathwing raid) or pleased to see coming (transmorg, obvs, but also the new five mans).

flipside is they broke the new version of holy radiance, so paladins in 391/397 (heroic tier 12) are sustaining 40k hps in stacked burn phases without dropping mana. So I don't think you'll be very unhappy over this particular change

Like I said, I don't raid. If the Alliance lets me cast it a bunch in PvP, perhaps it will soothe the pain a bit, but I will still miss the original version a lot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yz4ebjZCPg

Well, at least they've been consistent about how half-assed this patch is.

No doubt.  I clicked it expecting the final intro cinematic not just a bunch of random clips strung together.  Not even a VO? Wow, guys, way to phone it in.  I get you're in crunch to shove Pandaria out ASAP but still.

I'm surprised they didn't drop either translalala or LFR to be honest. I'm pretty sure most of the live team has been working on the pandas from before blizzcon :)

More people are interested in transmog than the raid.  :awesome_for_real:

This is true.  I'm happy I'll get to run around on my half-naked toons for  a day or two before my sub expires.  :heart:

Ahahah, Zul'Aman got a better trailer in BC and it had -zero- fucking content associated with it that wasn't the raid.

Wait, you have to go back in time to save the future? What did you I miss in the last lore patch?

You go literally to the future, THEN the past. Yes it's retarded.

To unlock the ability to go back to the past, you need to go to a future where Deathwing managed to finish destroying the world before somehow impaling himself on Wyrmrest tower; there you finally finally defeat the leader of the infinite dragonflight who is somehow keeping you from going to the past (but not the future?).

After that you can go back and help Illidan steal the dragon soul during the War of the Ancients which you then give to Thrall.

Then you go to Wyrmrest Temple and clean up a handful of bosses that didn't make the cut for the Raid for the final 5-man.

In the raid Thrall uses the Dragon Soul to literally deliver a Kamekameha to Deathwing and blast him out of the sky (while you rip his armor off so it can hurt him).

I'm speechless.

Sounds like the way Doc Brown explains how Zelda works.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHCbp5LTgbU

You missed the part where said leader is called Murozond, which is totally an anagram of Nozdromu. Awesome eh? Cool fight, though. Hasn't that always been the story with wow? Retarded lore, cool gameplay. I don't get why people are only paying attention once the gameplay bit wore off :)

He's also virtually a palette inversion of Nozzie with an evil vizier beard instead of the 'wise sensei' look.   :drill:

Why ?

Dragonlance story is Dragonlance.

Are we sure that's an official trailer and not something some random guy did?  It only has like 300 views.

I'm hoping the new raid zone is cool. LFR seemed to be well implemented (in theory) from what I heard, which is also going to be nice because 25 mans were fun to run, just not to try to organize.

My invincible DK tank is also getting a ton of buffs, which is a nice change from, oh, every patch since we came out.  :why_so_serious:

it's looking nice, no gimmicky fight from what I can tell. Lots of running around, lots of aoe, a couple of really cool encounters. The patch fight, has a nice flavour. We'll see how it pans out tomorrow. Kinda bummed my op staff was op for less than a month  :heartbreak:

Oh, also, some cool weapons-are-now-trinkets design on Detahwing drops - http://db.mmo-champion.com/i/77190/titahk-the-steps-of-time/ and http://db.mmo-champion.com/i/77193/souldrinker/ for example.

My guild is still 2 weeks away from our OP staff. Guess we have to keep running FL for a little while.

I guess because it's so silly that not only do you have to time travel, but they continue to not let you drop the killing blow. No, it has to be some convoluted thing where you act in a support role for a bunch of other real heroes to destroy the big-bad. How is that a payoff to the players exactly?

The last fight from what I've seen looks like, focus fire hand, focus fire tentacle, heal through ae, bunch up, back on hand, repeat 3 more times, kill face.

Everything I've read about LFR makes it out to be a train wreck where even the most obvious potential problems weren't addressed such as assigning raid leader, giving the tanks marking rights and where anyone can start the pull.  I guess a lot of the fights are started by talking to an npc so naturally people go and talk to them without realizing they are starting the encounter.  I stopped reading a few weeks back though so hopefully my opinion is out of date because the success/failure of the rest of this bad expansion hinges on LFR not being utter shit.

I thought Thrall used the kamehameha to end the first Deathwing fight, then the players actually get the kill when he's melting on the ground in the second fight.

Miasma, people have wiped/fucked up raids for YEARS by talking to or clicking on something they shouldn't; I'm not sure how that's an explicit failure of the LFR system. Tanks not being able to mark is pretty stupid, I'll give you that.

Hence, you know, landing the kill blow. Also the real fight will be on heroic, like it was with Ragnaros. I'm seriously digging the extra phase thing.

Guildie did a couple of LFR runs on PTR, said they all went the full duration. As long as there's someone to take charge and you queue with mostly firends, I don't think you'll have issues. Now the first few weeks noone will know tactics, so I'm guessing it'd be utter shit. There is... I think one fight where a tard can make the encounter noticably difficult, most of the fights are done with LFR in mind, so single people can't wipe you, they can only die.

Not really.

I'm curious: is having a player vs. NPC land the kill shot important for some people?  Or, since it definitely seems to be the case for you Paelos, why?

For me at least, "I" beat the encounter as much any other player in the world did, so it doesn't really matter if anything else happens after the encounters done from my perspective.  (Heroic Cho'gall is the exception as that RP bit actually changed the late strategy on that fight.)

4.3 Trailer Fan Remix: Now with voice-overs  :awesome_for_real:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=aLqxJlGZXXA

It's posted on the official Blizzard YouTube channel.   I think the view meter was broken because it's showing 240,797 views now. There were a few comments addressing that it only had 303 views but 100k+ up/down votes. 

Fan remix trailer also only shows 303 views despite having over 400 likes, so something is broken. That fan remix trailer is so much better than the official one :(


Honestly, reading the encounter journal, it sounds sufficiently nerfed for a PuG. 80% of the raid just needs to follow someone, and only a few people actually need to worry about the main mechanics. It will be significantly more forgiving than many 5-mans were when they came out. We'll see how big of a limitation the tools are for real groups.

Did anyone really think Green Metzen wouldn't be the real ultimate hero?

Just did the three new heroics. They're way easier than the troll heroics, and even some of the normal heroics. I haven't seen anything that would instantly kill someone or wipe the group like Corla, Ozruk, Asaad, and to a lesser extent many of the grim batol, hSFK and hDM bosses -- Azshara came close, but it still wasn't too bad. I guess they want the 3 new dungeons to be the baseline for gear until Cata ends, which makes sense... no idea why anyone'd want to run the older heroics or ZA/ZG now (NB: I don't know the ilevel requirements for the new 5-mans).

Also my DK tank's damage skyrocketed past its already ludicrous levels (and not just during the gimmick 100% crit +50% damage part), probably due to the vengeance change. :awesome_for_real:

Youtube views always lag behind to prevent false positives or something.

A lot of charger's around looks like quite a few people took advantage of the d3/charger/1year offer.

MA did the math a bit earlier in the thread.  It was a good deal if you planned on getting D3 anyway and wanted to keep your WOW sub around for at least 4 more months.   Since lots don't like trying new MMOs at release and those left are hardcore fans (to have stuck with the game through all of Cata) it's not surprising.

Because the lore, which was always shitty, has somehow managed to get even more shitty. It's ... I never took WoW's lore particularly seriously. Oh, I knew what was going on, but I always knew it was the weak link, and nothing more than a thin reason to go kill whatever, and by and large their shitty lore filled that role fine, with very occassional flashes of "hey, that's almost sort of interesting," but mostly "That is ... adequate. Perhaps stupid. It'll do, though." But Cataclysm somehow got even more horrible, to the point where I am actually sort of amazed that it can be that terrible and still be something Blizzard is alright with having people endure. This last raid for Deathwing should've stayed in Metzen's Thrall Fanfic folder, not actually put into the game like it's a story worth telling.

It is a story worth punching to though.

Some of the 1-60 stuff is really pretty good. Presumably Metzen wasn't deeply involved.

Some of the 1-60 stuff is alright, yes, but it's frustrating because you know it'll never go anywhere satisfying. There's the whole "the Alliance's story is one about losing over and over and over and over and over" issue that only bothers me because I know it will never be resolved well. I'm cool with stories of loss (I love Dragon Age 2, after all), but you never ever get the sense that the Alliance will overcome it. And they probably never really will, because that might mean Thrall loses somehow, and fuck that.

Honestly, the best 1-60 shit is when they go "fuck it, let's just be goofy as fuck." Which is fun, but doesn't say much for their lore either, hm?

They went into that at Blizzcon on the Lore panel but only in a tangential way.  Some guy was bitching about some forgotten, trivial bit of lore that was actually really "important" to the whole pictures and Metzen blanked.  (IIRC it was just after the whole "Hey, where's Menethil's crown and why not offer Bolvar's sword for alliance since Horde can pick up Doomhammer?")   He spit something about there being 9 folks working on quests and he didn't know everything they put in.

Blizzard lore isn't controlled or planned? WHO KNEW  :why_so_serious:

It was a Dalaran related thing, the Forsaken plague or kill or something a bunch of Kirin Tor dudes because they're working with/for/whatever the Alliance (it's just a reworking of some older version of those quests, I believe), I think. And of course the Kirin Tor are neutral omg.

Yeah none of that 'band together to fight the greater evil' shit would happen FOR REALS. Spend 1-60 with the Horde deathbombing baby druids, but hey we get to Hyjal and Malfurion is all SUP BUDS.

Deathbombing baby druids, cutting down a gazillion sacred trees, the whole "we sort of killed Cenarious" thing ... but whatever! Water under the bridge, right?

No it's not even that, he scolds his own people for being UNREASONABLE towards the Horde.  :awesome_for_real:

Oh you silly Alliance and your imaginary Horde Bias.  AV should prove there's no bias!  :awesome_for_real:

Alliance are closer to the Stable in AB than Horde to the Farm, years of starting on offense in SOTA, etc. Horde might win the LOLORE, but you lighties have always had the edge in PVP.

The horde has the better trio of controls points in LM/Farm/Smith though  :oh_i_see:

Back in my vanilla PVP days, our favorite strat was LM/Farm/Stabs, because all the noobs always zerged BS.

It's too far between Stables and Farm, where if you hold BS/Farm/LM, you can float in the middle there near the bridge and reinforce any of the three.

I haven't tried the raid but the new heroics cleary show they have changed their minds about dungeons being hard.  As already mentioned they are much easier than the troll dungeons and probably easier than some of the older cata heroics that had difficult mechanics.  I watched the videos but probably didn't need to, queued up solo for a pug, wound up with four others who hadn't done them yet and we ran all three one after the other with only one wipe.  They are short and sweet, got a 378 headpiece as a quest reward too.

Only thing I would note is that if you do them one after the other (you don't have to queue, there is an npc at the end that ports you right into the next dungeon end time -> well of eternity -> hour of twilight) you don't get the valor points for the sequels as it were.  You would have to drop group and requeue it seems.

I'll probably try the LFR on the weekend.

from what I can tell even the BH boss is easier than occulthar. Just stay spread and you don't take any damage, then run away from marrowgar's whirlwind, without the fires. Also it seems Deathwing is dropping faster even than Ragnaros did. And the big US guilds aren't killing it so I guess there's a rep to farm?

Wait, the BH boss is in? Or is this just from test?  Cause I thought BH bosses didnt go live untill the new PVP season started.

There is a lot of CHATTY CHAT CHAT from the NPCs in the new 5s. People who hated that in ToC/ICC 5s will not be pleased.

From PTR, I think it'll be live next week.

Not a fan of the new 5-mans. They feel way over-scripted, and much too easy/fast. End Time is like 2-3 trash pulls>a boss>teleport>repeat x 2. They barely resemble dungeons. Some of the boss fights have a few neat ideas, but it's definitely not the sort of dungeon content I want to play. This is what I'm afraid MoP content will be like. An ilvl debuff and a time leaderboard would not make the 4.3 dungeons compelling.

 :uhrr: Honestly? Why would you want challenge in 5mans? Also, didn't we already prove that's the way most of us want them?

I was in a PUG that wiped 6 times on the Echo of Tyrande until we got a new healer. Difficulty seems just fine.  :oh_i_see:

I enjoy challenging solo/5-man/raid content. Thats not really a hard answer to grasp. I thought the dungeons were great at launch, and I enjoyed doing them. My goal when I run a dungeon is 'have fun' not 'get my gear/VP as fast as possible'. Fun dungeons for me mean dungeons where there is a risk of failing that keeps me from falling alseep. Dungeons that actually feel like an adventure into some nefarious villain's lair, not just a quick detour for loot. We're re-treading old water at this point though, the Cata thread was full of discussion about it and I was in the minority.

It seems likely that most players just want to shamelessly participate in a loot treadmill, so that's the direction Blizzard is going. Anything that inhibits your ability to gain ilvl upgrades every few hours is a liability. It doesn't mean I can't be disappointed about it, or lament that the game is getting worse as a result of it.

A better question is "why did they implement only heroic mode, but tune it like normal mode?" Couldn't they have just called it normal mode and let it drop the same exact shit? Why even have a heroic mode if there is nothing heroic about it?

There's one thing that's challenging in the new 5-mans: the eyes in the second instance that can murder careless tanks and melee dps in about 2 seconds. My resto shaman was doing 19k HPS and scrambling to triage the group (all of our dps was melee).

Azshara can also be pretty nasty... not really because of the HUGE TELEGRAPHED "INTERRUPT ME OR THE GROUP WIPES" 10-second cast ability, but some DPSer getting MC'd and stunning the healer under an arcane bomb. I think we used about 3 different battlerezes on the healer + his Improved Death holy priest ability in the pug run I did in that fight... but we still didn't wipe.

Overall the instances are fairly easy and more forgiving than even the starter cata heroics. I don't really have a problem with this... doing the dungeons at a locked itemlevel sounds like they could be fun, though.

Don't lump in raids and dungeons in the same place. I want challenge in my raids, none of the 5 mans were ever a challenge, they were hard because pugies were getting one shot, or not interrupting, or killing the mobs in the wrong order. I have no control over them and I don't want to have to explain fights and trash pulls over and over again and again. I want to sign up on any of my 2 alts that I keep raid ready and be sure I'll finish the instance.

I caped 2.5 characters in amani for 2 months. I don't want to do that ever again. That's an avarage of 17-18 dungeons a week. I have explained exactly why Axe Throwers should be prioritized and why they can wipe you to possibly 50 different people. That is the exact opposite of fun.

Five mans were always sort of a palate cleanser for me in WotLK. I did all my thinking and challenge-getting herding my guild's cats when we raided. In the heroics, I essentially wanted brain off, faceroll on. In Cataclysm I don't care quite as much, as I do not raid so I'm just doing PUGs for the hell of it, essentially. But I am not at all surprised most people want the five mans to err on the side of "easy."

a couple of translalala PSAs

make sure you repair when you go from the bank to void storage, it won't take items that are not fully repaired. I'm a retard so I had to go back to a repair vendor on both of my void storage runs.

make sure you translalala before you put the items you want to change to in void storage. They have to be on you, you can't transmorg from the void storage. I'm out like 500g.  :oh_i_see:

Or, alternatively, don't lump your ideal content in with mine. I raid for 2 days a week, 6.5 hours total. I like having other compelling content to do outside of that window. I think the 5-mans at launch were reasonably difficult. Throngus was really demanding on everyone in the party, and Drahga would kill your group fast if people didn't have situational awareness and switch/slow targets fast enough. Commander Springvale was also a pretty tight fight, and Baron Ashbury asked for excellent timing on 3 different interrupts (one of which you didn't want to interrupt immediately) and was also pretty tight for healing the last 30% before people geared up. Ozruk really kept everyone on their toes initially. The challenges you faced in launch 5-mans weren't really any different than what we faced in raids. That's not to say 5-mans were as hard as T11 raids, just that the type of things the content asked from you was the same (coordination, awareness, timing). It's cool if you thought they were easy, difficulty is subjective. I thought the difficulty was just right. Most people seemed to think they were too hard. For me, the 4.3 5-mans aren't hard enough. They feel boring, insubstantial, and transparent to me.

Again, re-treading old water, but I don't PuG much. Back in the old Cataclysm thread that was one of the major reasons why my Cata-launch 5-man experience was better than most. I want the option of challenging 5-man content for my composed groups. I'm not going to do a PuG with 4 idiots I don't know just for valor points/gear. That doesn't match my goals in the game, and it isn't fun. You say you got bored of running ZG/ZA for 2 months on 2.5 characters. The obvious question is: why the fuck would you run ZG/ZA for 2 months if you weren't having fun running ZG/ZA?

Most of the impressions I'm reading about 4.3 seem positive, and the general theme I'm hearing is that "these dungeons are great because they have big upgrades that are easy to get". I think that's pretty shitty criteria to judge content by, and it's sad that people are still playing WoW if they're just repeating a gear-cycle every 6 months and not even enjoying what they're doing to get the gear.

Challenge Mode content should be exactly what I want out of 5-man content (a consistent high challenge that is still as challenging 6 months later), but it's totally possible that challenge mode dungeons will lean more towards time-trials of extremely short/easy dungeons like End Time rather than than dungeons that feel substantial. If I only feel like I'm fighting the clock, the feature doesn't work for me. I was optimistic and thought that Challenge Mode might mean that Blizzard would be able to make (almost) everyone happy, but I thought the same thing about LFR. I thought "maybe the firelands nerfs wouldn't have happened if an easier LFR difficulty existed." However, general consensus seems to be that normal Dragon Soul is tuned much easier than T11/12, so it doesn't look like LFR actually had any effect on how they tuned normal mode.

He's the remaining 1% rep here, don't argue with him you'll only get bored of it.  The rest of us who raided regularly before life caught us never had his entitlement problem.

I raid on a 3 day/7 hour schedule, so that's not that different. I'm sorry but the dungeons were never challenging in a guild group. I never turn off my brain, and my raiders don't either, but the "hard" dungeons created tensions between raiders and casuals in my guild and it was on me to deal with that. Also I could not carry the way I could in wotlk or later on with gear in baby heroics. So I ended up pugging, instead of getting stuck with a guild group full of casuals that did not want to learn and I couldn't drop right away.

I kind of get where you're coming from, I can respect that to an extent, but I still don't agree that there should be a serious level of challenge outside of heroic raids. Normal raids should be around the level of amani, not easier like they are at the moment. Heroic raids should be brutal and what we had in firelands is not fun for me.

And I did amani for 2 months because we had attendance issues over the summer and people quitting, and I value being able to get a raid up more than my own fun. I don't see that changing in the futre and I always have my healing spec up-to-date, a ready to do heroics tank and a DPS that compliments my own ready to step in at any time. So I'm rather happy I can easily pug dungeons without having to worry about dying on trash because of puggies.

But you're right, no need to revisit that. I'm just bummed I didn't get to argue in the cracks thread  :uhrr:

ps: I'm plenty 1% thank you, I'm making my guys have raid ready boomkins  :-P

No, 1% is a mindset, not a progression indicator.  That you care about casuals at all sets you apart from that mindset, no matter how many raid kills you rank up.

From what I understand, Rokal is also that type of guy who completes the normal raid content, can't hack the heroic content, and then complains about challenges in 5 mans.

I was expecting the 4.3 5-mans to be a loot cannon regardless of Blizzard's seeming change of heart on accessibility just because it makes sense for people gearing alts and people coming back to be able to quickly gear to get into the raids.

of course god dammit. We get one good tier and my horns clip straight through the fucking head piece (http://i.imgur.com/UoCi2.jpg).  :argh:

Right but that made sense of the ZA ones too back in 4.1, despite it not actually being the case.

Not really. My complaints about 5-mans would exist if I was 7/7 H last tier pre-nerf or 0/7 N the day before 4.3 dropped. I didn't raid at all in Wrath, so 5-mans were my 'end-game' for the brief amount of time I played and I didn't like them. I don't think raiding should be the only end-game that offers any sort of challenge for players that want it.

I would also say the "1%" analogy is bad because I'm arguing for better distribution of content difficulty for more of the game, and you're asking for all of the 5-man content to be tailored to your needs. I think there should have been a lot more normal mode 5-man content in Cata, probably with better gear offered (when compared to heroics), but I also think heroics should have stayed heroic. 4.3 dungeons are normal dungeons with a different name and the entire concept of a heroic dungeon has been lost.

I think Blizzard could have achieved a successful heroic model by making the rewards less tempting, so that people who just wanted VP/easy gear could run normal mode. Quick examples: normal 5-mans could have offered the same loot, but the heroic version could have offered one extra piece of loot (same table) from the last boss. Or something cosmetic. Or just a small amount of extra VP so that people had some motivation to run heroics, but not a huge enough one that people felt they had to (i.e. 100 VP from normal mode, 110 from heroic). Blizzard could have done this in 4.3 as well, but they took the cheap route (with pretty much everything related to this patch)

That's what MoP challenge modes are for. There's no way they were going to change the design for an end-of-expansion content patch.

I'm arguing for someone to tak the bricks out of the briefcase so you don't feel like you're doing a job when you run a dungeon. Blizzard's design of 5 mans has been as precursors to raid content. People need a way to play where they can be successful and get stuff without reading things outside of the game to win. They need something where they can show up, get useable rewards, and walk away pleased.

I am also in favor of a better distrubtion of content diffculty, but not at the 5 man level. That way has created a sticking point that caused the game to walk the dark path.

These aren't mutually exclusive options though. I don't think the real failing of Cata dungeons was that they were too hard. It was that Blizzard ignored normal mode in the same way that they are ignoring Heroic mode in 4.3. Would we have seen the same complaints about Cata dungeons if every level 85 heroic also had a level 85 normal version that dropped almost-the-same loot? Probably not. Blizzard decided this was too expensive or otherwise not worthwhile to do. MoP will take it one step further by having no normal mode level 90 dungeons, and instead having only 'heroics' at 90.

This is the model Trion is using, and I think it works pretty well.
Leveling dungeons: "dungeons"
Level cap versions of dungeons: "Tier 1 dungeons" (aka heroics)
Hard version of level cap dungeons: "Tier 2 dungeons" (aka 'legendary' or something similar)

Doing a model like that requires more work though, and Blizzard is doing the bare-minimum and taking 5-6+ months per patch as is.

As a Rift player, I will note that the T2 Dungeons, while originally that hard, were significantly nerfed not long after release. There is a single new Master Mode, theoretically more on the way, that one kind of fits your bill for challenging five man content on a par with raiding. However, it is outside of the gear trail. You don't need loot from the master mode to move onto the first raid tier. Heck, you hardly need T2 dungeon gear to get into raids as anything other than a tank.

You know who else hated casuals?
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1172957888?page=1

 :why_so_serious:

The PUG I was in wiped probably 20 times in the first two dungeons last night. (As a fury warrior I can only do so much to save them.) I could tell from Recount that they were not very good, but the dungeon finder is letting them in there. Therefore, the content is not too easy.

I don't get it. Is this like a internet-famous post or something?


How do you even...

New mechanics + very loose gear restrictions + PUG factor.

Or things like the rogue, in near full pvp gear, with 2 Brewfest Mug weapons, doing 8k dps on boss fights and 9k dps on trash, that i had in my last End Times pug.

DPS breakdown at the end of my End Times run was something like:

Me - 18k
Tank - 9k
Mage - 8k
Hunter - 8k

And I am not exactly rocking the gear world or a tremendously good DPS warrior. I just mash buttons, probably in the right order about 2/3 of the time.  :awesome_for_real:

hey I healed a pug that died a couple of times (3-4) and got acused of being a shit healer. I had my legendary on and everything. Now I'm not amazing, but I'm decent, I've 2healed everything in 6/7 heroic fl. It's just that people have a serious disconnect with their interrupt buttons, that's all. As long as there's something to interrupt people will be wiping. Also bosses kinda differ, tirande is way harder than any of the others.

Went in with a guild group and fake nozdromu is way fun with the never-ending-heroism.

Yeah if my interrupt was fast enough to get every cast of stardust I'm pretty sure we'd have made it through Tyrande much more easily.

People who don't interupt make me so pissed off arghghghghghgh. I can't wait to do these new five mans.  :why_so_serious:

that and there are 2 more avoidable abilities that people fail to avoide.

They need more abilities like rude interruption in Fury - I get a 5% damage boost for a while every time I interrupt something.  :heart:

My arcane mage has one like that, I don't think my rogue does, though.

Ingmar just sucks at interrupting to begin with.

My bear druid alt was able to keep primal instincts (50% dmg reduction) and berserk (free mangle with no cd) up for pretty much the entire fight. This was about 1/50th as fun as time reset was on my rogue. Tanks are no fun.

depends on the tank, buddy. Dedepnds on the tank.

Forever Wings  :drill:

I've done two of the three new heroics, I think they're pretty fun. Surprisingly short, though.


EDIT: Tyrande is a bitch.

And inexplicably has a Russian accent.  But that whole instance makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Perma Army of the Dead and DRW? Yes please.

Not only that, but the ghouls that are out don't die or disappear when time is reset.  :grin:

I  have no idea what accent Tyrande has. I do enjoy that she, Malfurion and Illidan all have wildly different accents, though. And I could listen to Illidan shovel huge fistfuls of scenery into his gaping maw all day.

But! What I meant is her boss fight is a pain in the ass. I did not enjoy healing it at all. ><  All the other boss fights I've done are fun, though.

Oh, I thought you where talking about Well of Eternity.  I haven't run into her in End of Time yet.

She is much harder than any of the other bosses in End Time, if you ask me. Healing it was a huge, messy, ugly pain in my ass. She's a boring non-entity in Well of Eternity. Although I laughed out loud when she "ran out of arrows." So useless.

I would say both fights she is involved in are the worst among all the 4.3 dungeons.

The last fight in WoE actually wiped us because we just ignored her and got overwhelmed with adds.

on the whole lore front

Actually, now that i have done her a few times, the only real difficult part is that haste buff she gets at 80 and 50% health.  As a tank, i can interupt every one of the stardust casts untill she has 2 stacks of the haste buff.  That cuts down on alot of the damage.  The rest of the group damage is largely avoidable untill she hits 30% and starts dropping the rain of death on the group.  Of course, pugs are notoriously bad at avoiding avoidable damage.

I went to read WoWwiki to see what you were talking about and it's not updated but.. wtf.. Thrall is so fucking over the top he even replaced a Dragon Aspect in some ritual?

Man, Fuck Metzen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYVA0Hh6u3U&feature=player_embedded that's the after Deathwing cinematic. Obviously spoilery

In this case I'm OK with it since it fucks a Knaak character, who are even worse.

I guess I'll spoiler this for the one person who would be totally bummed out by ruining the epic ending to this Pulitzer quality story.

I think technically the red dragons did as much as (or more than) us in the Malygos fight.

I have no idea who Knaack is and don't think I want to know.

My sub ran out yesterday so I only got 1 day in the BGs and only 2 "wtf" stares at my Dranei mage in Polychromatic Visionwrap, ancestral Woolies and pointy red hat.  I'm a little disappointed I didn't get more but not $15 worth of disappointed.

When does thrall ever become an aspect? as far as it looks, thrall is still just a very powerful shaman. fuck spoilering bad stories. It just looks like to defeat deathwing all the dragons used up their power, they didn't just quit being aspects for shits and giggles.

It's 2004 all over again:

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/doomhammer/Thorgrim/simple

Wish they would finally get around to re-adding the pose changing in the armory.

Biggest disappointment: can't currently use the guild logo cloaks for transmog.

Did you swallow ?

From what I understand, Thrall does not actually become an aspect, rather, he acts as the "stand in" for the Aspect of Earth (since Deathwing is all batshit-insane-oldgod-possessed and all) during the ritual, oweing to the fact that him being the most powerful shaman on Azeroth supposedly gives him the next closest thing to an "aspect level" connection to the forces of Earth Deathwing would normally have had dominion over.

Of course, everyone is just butthurt over the fact that a Horde character is saving the world, or something like that.

No, in this case it's pretty much limited to Metzen's green Mary Sue.

whatever you want to say about the lore, the fight is really cool. It's chokfull of different shit to dps, different healing phases, prolly a tad bouncy on the boring/MAGADIMMABEONESHOTIFOFFTANKDOESNTTAUNT side for tanks . It's one of the more interesting fights I've done in recent memory and there are a lot of different ways to deal with mechanics based on your composition and what order you use the aspects in.

Actually the whole instance is full of interesting fights. Are they undertuned so everyone can do them? Of course they are, we're not used to clearing a normal tier on the first reset, but I'm not butthurt over that, we have heroics to look forward to.

How'd you do that, Ing?  My chars aren't showing their x-mutes.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/alleria/Morriand/simple

I didn't do anything special to make it happen, I dunno!

Funniest thing about the cinematic:
Intended reading - WC3 Medivh retread, with the "You no longer need us any more" thing.
My reading - "So N'zoth just managed to permanently depower the other three Titan-appointed Aspects for the piddling sacrifice of his pawn? Great job handing the world to the Old Gods, Thrall!"

Hey, at least this (hopefully) means Thrall's done. 'Saved' the world, got the girl, and babies ever after in Nagrand (or wherever) while Warchief Hellscream can just get on with winning everything.  :awesome_for_real:

It can be both!

There is often so much shit falling from the sky or whatever, I have a hard time seeing where I can safely stand AND healing my group. I am sure the fight is simple enough as a DPSer or tank, but it's a bitch to heal right now.



EDIT: As for the cinematic, I pulled an eyerolling muscle at Alexstraza lovingly carressing Aggra's womb. Just ... Christ. We just saved the world, can we have five minutes where we're not getting a fucking update on Thrall's homelife?

I think it just takes time. Mine took a few days to update after the patch.

I wonder if it's like the armory in general, where you have to log to the char select screen to make it update.  I'd quit out directly a few times.

This (http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/moon-guard/Aendrys/simple) is my favorite of my dudes so far.  :awesome_for_real:

Possible, I have never tried the fight as a healer (i just dont do healing, lol).  From what I understand, there is really only two mechanics you have to watch for as a healer untill 30%.  The light wave thing that zaps outwards like a line of moonfire, and a pulsing orb thing, that circles around her pool.  Dodge the ligthwave, step into the pool and back out again whenever the orb circles around.  Of course, at 30% the shit hits the fan with the rain of doom (the tooltip in the dungeon journal seems to indicate you might be able to avoid the damage), but really thats when you should pop your cooldowns and hope she dies.

The lightwave is the thing that's hard for me to see while I'm healing.

the issue is that she's nowhere near the difficulty of the other two I've seen (Baine & Sylvanas), I'm calling nerfs in a couple of weeks.

All 3 of the other ones are easy.

Baine is pretty much a strait up tank and spank.  Having heavy mele in your group actually makes the fight stupidly easy (if you dip into the lava and then out again, you get a mele buff that causes all your mele hits to do 10k extra fire damage or something.  He pretty much just melts.

Sylvanas is pretty easy also.  Most of her shit is heavily telegraphed: Get out of this or insta die kind of stuff, that anyone with a functioning brain can easily see and avoid.  The ghoul phase is also really easy, unless you are tryiing for the achieve.

Jaina is similar to sylvanas.  Tank damage, boss ports, dodge insanely easy to see ice spike things, repeat.  Mix in a magical land mine that someone just needs to run over to and damage soak asap, and it is alltogether super easy.

Just put a brace of these (http://www.wowhead.com/item=18486/mooncloth-robe) up on the AH...at 9999.9999 gold each.
Let's see if anyone bites.  :awesome_for_real:

I don't know for how long this will last, but for the past week we've had 30+ people online in the evenings. Before the patch we'd get to 13 on raid nights, with people getting passed logging off to play something else :)

It'll last as long as the last post-patch surge did.  Perhaps even less as Darkmoon was the major casual draw and that goes away after this week until January.

I found the best food vendor: http://www.wowhead.com/npc=56041/rona-greenteeth#sells

This is pretty funny.  When design ideas fail to factor in how the community plays the game and only looks at ilvl.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/3711311271?page=1

Sadly, no drinks for us mana types.

They do need to add some logic to the item level calculations (which aren't new to Cata) at some point, but the Wrath queue worked the same way basically without serious incident.

Random aside -- I took my blood dk into some battlegrounds and.... holy shit. Vengeance stacks up to max in about 2 seconds (there's no such thing as "don't hit the blood dk / use tranq shot / shiv" in a random battleground), and then it's time to drop a few 70k death strikes. Healers are a problem.. until they go OOM and/or eat a burst of 8 necrotic strikes, as apparently dancing rune weapon applies its own copy. :why_so_serious:

Tank specs in general seem like 'holy shit stay away or you DIE' juggernauts in pvp now.

it's the melee buff more than anything. 10% AP is a lot, and tanks didn't need any help as it is. My prot pally, that is no way undergeared, goes up to 20k on most LFD bosses with "special mechanics". And hangs around 15ish on the others.

Hotfixes, getcha hotfixes here: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/blog/3368932/Patch_43_Hotfixes_-_December_23-26_12_2011#blog
tl;dr - Trollroics nerfed again because fuck them in the ear.
And some other stuff.

they brought them in line with the baby heroics, since people are running them to get gear for the new ones. Friend of mine was complaining that people just insta quit out of trolls, since they took way more time.

Class balance at the raiding level is completely out of whack atm. Melees are balanced to compete with legendary casters, so if you don't have a legendary or a melee character, you'd better not show up. Rogue daggers are silly, even the 397 version. Healing is also messed up - all but 1 fight are basically stack on top of the paladin and watch him jump up to 40k, while the other healers are struggling to get their stuff going. I actually did 60k on LFR ultraxion on my undergeared pally just pressing 2 buttons.

Meh. Still like the fights in DS, but I don't think many people will be sticking around for longer then a couple of months :)

A lot of my guild is pretty much done, at least until MoP hits. After getting DW in the first week and farming him for a few, I just don't have the patience or desire to wipe over and over on the stupid Heroic modes just for slightly higher level trash that's getting replaced in the new xpac. At least in FL, I could justify it because the Heroic gear helped with the next raid tier, but now it's truly pointless. With SWTOR scratching the MMO itch, I'm not sure how much longer I'm going to keep logging into WoW at all.

http://www.wowheadnews.com/blog=199818/lunar-festival-jan-22-feb-12-guide
Not-ChineseNewYear, now with new (tradeable) pet.

(Tip: Get spares, sell to pandaren alts for ridiculous money when MoP launches).

I did the year-long achievement on 3 characters.  Fuck Lunar and Fire festivals in the ear.  Those were the 2 I dreaded each time because they were just so goddamn time-consuming.

Even Hallow's Eve, which is similarly ridiculous, wasn't as bad because at least every bucket was on a flight point.

Lunar is the one big one I still need on my main; I'm glad I already have a couple protodrakes in cooler colors than purple or I'd have felt obligated to grind this shit out.

I am never ever subbed around new years, which sucks because I really wanted this achievment. Not for the mount, just because I like the name of it. Not pay 15 bucks for a game you aren't playing right now like it though.

Official moggy gallery: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/media/screenshots/transmog#/1

(I'm half-tempted to make a "Let's Dress Barbie: WoW Edition" thread rather than keep bumping this one).