2.4 is live

[Hutch]

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/

The site's getting a little hammered right now. You may have already seen the patch notes though, I don't think they've changed much since the PTR.

[Dren]

I downloaded and installed over lunch with no issues.  I read through the notes and didn't notice anything that was surprising.

[Merusk]

So do the badge vendors go live w/ 2.4, or do they require 'unlocking' crap from the new dailies? I never read for certain.

I'm still about 22 badges short on my nifty new x-bow. Rawr.

[Miasma]

I have a bad memory, where is the sunwell?

[Kail]

North of Quel'Thalas, I think.

Not sure how Alliance is supposed to get there; I assume there's got to be a teleporter somewhere.

Edit: Ah, Wiki sez a flight path from Ironforge, Horde have one from Silvermoon that's automatically active.

[Simond]

So do the badge vendors go live w/ 2.4, or do they require 'unlocking' crap from the new dailies? I never read for certain.

I'm still about 22 badges short on my nifty new x-bow. Rawr.

Unlocked from the dailies for the most part.

[SurfD]

www.mmo-champion.com had a really good writeup about pretty much everything related to the new patch, including gear lists and whatnot.

[Chimpy]

The badge vendor either spawns when the town is rebuilt through dailies, or when the gates are magically opened to the final 3 bosses in the Plateau. Blizzard never made it really clear as to which it is, since originally the quests to open the internal gates were sort of a sideline to the whole mess of rep farming dailies stuff, but the gate quests were removed due to "tahts no fairz to our less progressed servur" whining.

The Vortexes and gems will be available from G'eras in Shatt though, if that was something you were looking for.

[Merusk]

Nope, just the bow for now.  That's the biggest upgrade I'm going to get, the others are upgrades but nowhere near as big as going from an 83dps bow to 93dps one.  Yarr.  Good to know, though, thanks.

[Chimpy]

Nope, just the bow for now.  That's the biggest upgrade I'm going to get, the others are upgrades but nowhere near as big as going from an 83dps bow to 93dps one.  Yarr.  Good to know, though, thanks.

Shit...that xbow is better for BM than the 95 DPS bows off of Illidan and Archimonde. And probably better than the legendary (if the leaked stats are in fact the true ones).

Looks like goofy junk though.

[Merusk]

I'm an elf.  Goofy junk is perfect for me.

And lordy yes it's fucking uber (been beast since it was 'proven' to be awesome dps for much less work).  I was already kicking ass on raids.. now I'm going to be untouchable. buahahaha. 

[Chimpy]

Well...depending on the speed of your server, it could be yours as soon as tomorrow night.

The server I play on was at 15% of the town being completed by 7 o'clock this evening (when I logged on), and the instance server that all of the BC content (Outland, Exodar, Quel'Danis) is on was down for the 2 hours before that.

[SurfD]

Well...depending on the speed of your server, it could be yours as soon as tomorrow night.

The server I play on was at 15% of the town being completed by 7 o'clock this evening (when I logged on), and the instance server that all of the BC content (Outland, Exodar, Quel'Danis) is on was down for the 2 hours before that.

Are you sure it was 15% of the TOWN, or 15 % of the first PHASE.

From what i understand, you are liberating the town in stages. First stage is your current staging area.  Second stage is something else.  Third stage is the armory. Conservative estimates from what i was reading suggested that you wont see the Gear Badge Vendor for at least a week (possibly as long as 2 or 3 depending on your server pop), since it took the combined might of the test server two+ days ish to complete Phase 1 liberation.

[naum]

Some patch issues, obviously.

[Xerapis]

Damn...I wasn't expecting it this week. 

I'm totally looking forward to New Fishing Daily Quests!

Although, I still need to slog my way through to power level 9000+, past the vicious human paladins and nelf druids....

If only I had an awesome guild to hook me up! 

EDIT:  OH, SHIT I JUST SAW THIS!  "Interacting with objects (chests, mining nodes, herbs) should no longer aggro neutral creatures."  This means that when I check out the mithril nodes in that damn bug tunnel in Shimmering Flats, those stupid drones won't swarm me any more!!!  Hallelujah!

[Rasix]

I don't care much for the new content.  Maybe it's just been a crappy night, but all I've enjoyed is having more dailies and specifically a fishing one.

[Xerapis]

So, spill already, since I'm trapped at work....what's the new fishing daily like?

[Xerapis]

WORLD SERVER IS DOWN!!!!!

[Hutch]

So, spill already, since I'm trapped at work....what's the new fishing daily like?

I've done two now.

Yesterday was to go fishing in Orgrimmar (Stormwind for alli, I'd guess) and catch a baby crocodile. Seems they've gotten into the water supply.

Today was go to Nagrand and catch a humdinger of a mudfish.

Your reward is a bag of fishing treasures. So far this has included cash, some lucrative vendor trash, and a couple handfuls of fishhooks that grant +100 to your fishing skill for 10 min.

Here is a WoW angling site, containing a more complete list of 2.4 changes.

[Xerapis]

Sweet!  And thanks for the linkage.

[Damn Dirty Ape]

Tauren weapons are now tiny when sheathed but return to normal size when unsheathed.  Human females' are freakin' huge when sheathed but shrink to normal when in hand.  And according to a blue name on the WoW boards, this was intentional.      

[Kail]

Tauren weapons are now tiny when sheathed but return to normal size when unsheathed.  Human females' are freakin' huge when sheathed but shrink to normal when in hand.  And according to a blue name on the WoW boards, this was intentional.      

Oh, is that it... thought I was going crazy there for a minute.  Though I must say that the Oathkeeper now looks like a toy when my Tauren's got it on his back.

I'm also getting some infrequent bug where I'll cast something, but then the casting bar will disappear, and my character drops out of the casting animation, but a second (or whatever) later the spell effect goes off anyway.

Overall, though, I'm really liking the patch.  Partly for easy money, repeatable quests.  Mostly, though, I like that they added in a crappy blue armor set that my casual ass can actually work towards.  And by "work towards" I mean get in, say, a few weeks, not "Congratulations for finishing this incredibly difficult dungeon, here's your badge!  Now you only have a hundred-and-twenty-four more to go!"

[Ratman_tf]

Tauren weapons are now tiny when sheathed but return to normal size when unsheathed.  Human females' are freakin' huge when sheathed but shrink to normal when in hand.  And according to a blue name on the WoW boards, this was intentional.      

Tiny like 3 pixels across? Huge as in Onyxia huge? Got screenies?

[Kail]

Bigger weapons, like two handers, are worse (because they're supposed to be big), but it's hard to get them at a good angle.  Seems like a bit of a lame change (was there some kind of reason for it, anyone know?), but meh.

[Damn Dirty Ape]

No reason was given, but the blue name "highly" suggested placing requests for a revert in the general forum rather than the bug one.  It's weird, but I don't really care about the nerf my warlock main got through reduction in Demonic Knowledge yield; yet, I care about her staff being too big.  Hell, I spent the last week catassing in BGs (as an alliance PVP n00b too!  Sweet Jesus, my side sucks!) to get the gladiator robes, gloves, and shoulders to have something that fairly matches the voidheart crown I won on a roll in Kara, since I probably will never be on 25-man raids to get the rest of the tokens.  It's better to look good than to feel good, yo.

[Fabricated]

Tauren weapons are now tiny when sheathed but return to normal size when unsheathed.  Human females' are freakin' huge when sheathed but shrink to normal when in hand.  And according to a blue name on the WoW boards, this was intentional.      

Oh, is that it... thought I was going crazy there for a minute.  Though I must say that the Oathkeeper now looks like a toy when my Tauren's got it on his back.

I'm also getting some infrequent bug where I'll cast something, but then the casting bar will disappear, and my character drops out of the casting animation, but a second (or whatever) later the spell effect goes off anyway.

Overall, though, I'm really liking the patch.  Partly for easy money, repeatable quests.  Mostly, though, I like that they added in a crappy blue armor set that my casual ass can actually work towards.  And by "work towards" I mean get in, say, a few weeks, not "Congratulations for finishing this incredibly difficult dungeon, here's your badge!  Now you only have a hundred-and-twenty-four more to go!"

Actually that 5 piece blue PVP set is pretty good. It's not mad-dps for sure but all 5 pieces socketed and equipped you get 140ish resilience alone, which while not amazing will give you a surprising amount of survivability. I bought the whole set for my mage, and tried AV/AB a handful of times with my PvE set (which sported roughly 120-150 more spell damage and more crit/hit) and the blue PVP set. In my PvE set arms warriors and rogues could goddamn near instantly kill me (warlocks could melt me pretty easily too), where in the PVP set I actually lasted a good 5-15 seconds longer when I attracted the ire of people rocking S1+. Doesn't sound like much but it saved my ass a LOT since I could live to blink/ice-block off debuffs/nova/catch a heal.

I may actually PVP with my mage and sock away honor for season 4.

[Ratman_tf]

Huh. I've mostly played my Belf, so I didn't notice any change in weapon sizes.

Strange. Maybe it's asthetic for weapons clipping through capes and shit?

[Dren]

I haven't had much free time to truly play with this new content, but from the little PvP I've done in BG's, I have to say I'll be spending some time there.  I really like the gains they are giving now with the new system.  I have some large chunks of time available this weekend, so I'll be tallying up some nice honor points for all my alts. 

I really want to see if the arena queue times are better because that was a real drag before.  Our 3v3 team is tons of fun, but we end up spending 75% of the time sitting around waiting.  I also want to see if the new changes prevent us from running into a group of players that have 3x the gear we do too.  That will be very interesting.  Hopefully we can actually start gaining in scores so we get more points each week.

I'd like to try out that new World PvP stuff too.  I'm always up for that.

The PvE stuff looks interesting, but I'll gnaw on that later when there aren't so many people around.  I abhor racing around trying to get MOBs before others do.  The lag is not fun either.

I want to get into some of the dailies too.  Running alts on normal flyers is just painful, so the additional cash flow will be welcomed.

[Damn Dirty Ape]

Huh. I've mostly played my Belf, so I didn't notice any change in weapon sizes.

Strange. Maybe it's asthetic for weapons clipping through capes and shit?

After wading through all the threads in which Tauren players are wailing and gnashing teeth, I found a blue name stating that it was done for clipping reasons.  However, clipping for one-handers is now worse on female humans.  I really hope this is a lame April Fools joke on the part of Blizzard, and on Tuesday (April 1st) they can have their little LOL and revert everything back.

[SurfD]

well, we are now a few percent (10 or so i think) into phase 2 reclamation of the island on my server.  GG everyone having 2 or 3 level 70 alts to run the daily quests with :P

[Fordel]

15% On mine 


So how is the 25 man Kael Fight different from the 5 man version? Just more birds/orbs? More mobs to deal with? Do people's brains turn off when everyone starts floating in the 25 man fight too?

[SurfD]

15% On mine 


So how is the 25 man Kael Fight different from the 5 man version? Just more birds/orbs? More mobs to deal with? Do people's brains turn off when everyone starts floating in the 25 man fight too?

hmm, well, for one, picture 25 man kael as doing the 5 man Princess fight AND Kael at the same time.

In 25 man, kael has 4 adds.
2h warrior - hits like a nuclear weapon, moves slowly around randomly targeting and attempting to splatter someone
engineer - throws bombs and drops a random stun debuff on people
warlock - lots of fire damage, usually range tanked
shield warrior - aoe fear's.

Phase 1 - You fight each add individually (fairly easy).
Phase 2 - When they are all down, Kael animates their weapons and you have to fight them. When the weapon dies, you can loot a copy of it (sweet Legendary weapons) which have various usefull effects essential to beating kael.  (usually fairly easy)
Phase 3 - After a fixed amount of time, Kael then revives his adds, and you then have to fight all 4 at once, AND whichever weapons you havent managed to kill yet. (not very easy, especially if multiple weapons are still up)
Phase 4 - After a fixed amount of time, Kael himself joins the fight (you also prob still have adds up at this point also, though all weapons had better be down).  He casts fireballs, summons pheonixes (though i hear this no longer happens, might be a bug), drops flamestrikes, Mind controls random people, periodically does a raid wide aoe damage+stun, and periodically pops a special shield, which you need to burn through while he casts INSANELY nasty pyroblasts (which need to be absorbed by the special effect of the Shield Weapon Drop).
Gravity lapse is actually easier in 25 man mode, cause the room is MUCH bigger, he doesent hit everyone with a constant DoT, and there are no stupid energy globes to dodge. However, you cant mele him during gravity lapse.

[Fordel]

My group was having TREMENDOUS difficulty with the 5 man gravity lapse phase.


Was our first time in the new dungeon, we went in cold Turkey, not having a clue as to what anything did. The first boss was laughably easy, we killed it despite managing to lock our healer outside of the room and have one of our DPS go rambo on us and dieing. The second boss, we weren't even sure what we were supposed to do exactly outside of "use mana fish buff to burn boss" which we did, 2 DPS died again but we won. The third boss and her little team of jackasses was far more difficult, but we managed to get her on the first try as well with only a mage death I think, tanking it seems fairly impossible, so we just went PvP on their asses.

Then we got to Kael, everyone was inside the room, I started to tank him, nothing spectacular is happening, I'm tanking the nukes just fine, the hunter is kiting the bird around, down goes the egg, oh here comes the floaty phase... why is everyone dead?  So after a few comedy minutes of a lone prot paladin flying around the room trying to peck Kael to death between phases we try it again. Well people lived at least 5 seconds longer that time. Between the 2nd and 3rd attempts, running back to the room (fuck you invisible balcony wall), one of my group asks "wait, we can move during the floating phase?". 

Half a dozen attempts later and a couple of class swaps, Kael finally dies. We spent more time on Kael then we did the entire rest of the dungeon. Kael looks like its going to be one of those fights, where some people just can not manage. Like the end boss in Sekthic or Murmur, some people can't avoid the boom, and it looks like some people just can't avoid the orbs. Kael also seems to be a giant "Fuck You" to Paladin healers.

We started with:

Prot Paladin
Holy Paladin
Marks Hunter
Fire Mage
Moonkin Druid

We did everything in the dungeon up until Kael with only the normal "hey this is totally new" dungeon pains. By the time we got Kael down, our group was:

Prot Paladin
Marks Hunter
Marks Hunter
Fire Mage
Resto Druid

This was after a half dozen attempts and our Holy paladin basically going "fuck this place, I'm going to bed." To which I can't say I disagree. Kael definitely seems to prefer a Priest or Druid healer over a Shaman or Paladin. At least the shaman has healing stream 

Having DPS that can shoot and move at the same time seems to also help. Our Mage was a floaty gnome corpse like 80% of the time. I wasn't much better once the floaty stage started up. I tried to taunt/tank the bird if it was still up, but to little effect. Kael doesn't seem to require any kind of tanking once he starts floating people.


Now lets try the heroic tonight 

[Chimpy]

MT is really really difficult to heal on a pally. We did it regular the other day before the raid with our guild leader healing (full t6, trinket and mace off Illidan) and we wiped a couple of times, even lost 3 people (healer included) on Kael when we killed him. Our DPS was all in t5 or better.

It is not that the fight is inherently difficult, it is just one of those where having a pally healer is definitely sub-optimal. Kinda like how Heroic Shattered Halls is retardedly easy with a good pally tank.

[Paelos]

Yeah, but they probably need to tune the fight a bit better than it is. It's kind of stupid to give a big fuck you to all other healers besides priests and druids.