Cataclysm

[Paelos]

So I need to grind some dungeons now to get to a soft cap, and that soft cap buys me one piece right?

[Threash]

Pretty much, seems a like a waste of time to me unless you already have them.  60+ dungeon runs for one piece when it will probably take about 4 once you hit 85.

[SurfD]

Final costs on the items are not correct yet either.   Cant remember where I saw it, but I am positive that a blue was quoted somewhere as saying that when the final numbers are in, an 80 badge item will cost 80 x Y Points, where Y is the conversion rate.  Right now, it is something like an 80 badge item currently costs 300 x Y.

[Rendakor]

Will these points be useful at 85? I assume they'll be wiped before then, or at best used to buy blues, so there's little point in hoarding them unless you still need gear at 80.

[Ingmar]

MMO Champ has the lists of what you buy at 85 with the various types of points. I don't think they're going to wipe them.

[Sheepherder]

Any kind of queuing system should have a toggle, which I imagine they aren't dumb enough to leave out. There's no way in hell I would want one when tanking, as too many of my abilities are totally dependent on the rage situation at play.

The queue only accepts input past 0.5 seconds into a GCD, and only stores one move.  Realistically you will only lose one GCD at a time to a non-optimal move unless you are a retarded spastic keyboard hammering turd burglar.  GCD locking yourself every second when you have rage to spend will utterly dwarf any TPS/DPS loss from non-optimal use of S&B/Revenge procs.

And it apparently has a toggle if you really want to lose a GCD every 15 seconds on a 100 ms ping connection.

[SurfD]

Will these points be useful at 85? I assume they'll be wiped before then, or at best used to buy blues, so there's little point in hoarding them unless you still need gear at 80.

From what i can tell, they wont be wipeing them, so it will be possible (if you have a lot of unused Top End badges) to go into cata already at the hard cap, meaning you wont earn new Points untill you spend some on the way to 85.

[Ingmar]

Yeah. I'm just going to use mine to heirloom up before Cataclysm, it isn't like the points are going to be tremendously hard to get at 85.

[DraconianOne]

MMO-Champ and WowHead reporting that release date for Cataclysm is going to be 7th December.   Extrapolated from datamined date of Arena Season 9 and a Blue saying that the season 9 starts a week after the xpacs release.

[Simond]

Goblin animations = best animations:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGrHuYSmPIA

[Hawkbit]

That movie was actually pretty cool.

[Paelos]

I'd like to see them shift away from one particular crutch they seem to use in a lot of late boss encounters that makes things "hard," but I'm wondering if they really can. What I'm referring to is the random ground effect. I think about every difficult fight we had in WotLK that really frustrated us.

Sapphiron - Ice Storm and Ice Block random ground effects
General Vezax - Random Saronite Vapor effects and shadow crash zones
Anub'arak - Putting floating ice on the ground to avoid burrows and ground effect kiting
Sindragosa - more random freezing blocks thrown in with dots
Lich King - Defiles, oh dear lord the defiles

Some later bosses avoided those cheap abilites, and those fights are lauded as some of the best. Yogg-Saron, Kel-Thuzad, and Mimiron jump to mind.

[Soulflame]

Mimiron?  Really?

Rockets, bomb bots, the flare thingy that could splash nearby people... and that isn't even talking about firefighter, which adds THE FLOOR IS ON FIRE OH GOD plus the frost bomb.

[Zetor]

What Cata needs is another Flame Wreath.

"Ok... blizzard patch, move out. Teleported to middle, move out. Fire patch under me, mov-- OH GOD" 

[Rendakor]

Kel'Thuzad also had instant-kill void zones. In fact, almost every fight in game has something on the ground (fire) that you need to get out of.

[Paelos]

Kel'Thuzad also had instant-kill void zones. In fact, almost every fight in game has something on the ground (fire) that you need to get out of.

The void zones were 5s before they did anything though, so they didn't really impact the fight at all. But yes, way too many ground effects in everything. It's like if they want a boss to be hard they HAVE to put in some kind of ground effect because that's their one trick pony.

I liked Thaddius, that didn't have a ground effect. Did 4 Horsemen? I can't recall.

[Rendakor]

One of the guys in the back on 4h did.

[Paelos]

One of the guys in the back on 4h did.

Ah yes, Blameaux or something. It was relatively minor though.

[Soulflame]

I think the 4H void zone did more damage if you had a certain stack on yourself from one of them.

Thaddius was H Mech first boss on steroids with the swapping charge, and random lightning bolting, which I think chained.

There were (IIRC) void zones on the tentacles for YS as well, but if you were standing on a giant tentacle, you were going to get what you deserved shortly anyway.

[Rendakor]

The void zones on KT were annoying if you tried to solo-tank it (usually because the OT got himself killed), because the adds were very large and having 4 of them + KT on you didn't leave a lot of ground visibility.

That said, getting out of fire is pretty much the core raid mechanic of WoW besides "Make boss health bar go down".

[Lakov_Sanite]

Thaddius had ledges, those were 100x more annoying than void zones because ever since the jump in wailing caverns people have not learned how.

[Ingmar]

Some later bosses avoided those cheap abilites, and those fights are lauded as some of the best. Yogg-Saron, Kel-Thuzad, and Mimiron jump to mind.

These fights all have WORSE 'don't stand in me' problems than (at least some of) the other ones you mention. Yogg-Saron had moving dont-stand-in-me's, KT had the move-or-die-in-one-hit zones, Mimiron had like, everything.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Closing the lids of his eyes, the glowing orbs that give the forsaken priest sight fade away like the sun at dusk. Dried, gray lips wrap themselves around a cigarette while dead, tar filled lungs take in the smoke as though it were all he ever cared to breath anymore.  When he's finished, when the smoke billows out from his lips and seeps out through a wound in his chest, his eyes open and he looks to you. To say there was emotion in those glowing orbs would be false but there was something, something that you could never understand unless you'd seen what those eyes saw and then, he spoke.

"Have you ever done firefighter with 25 people kid? I have.  I have......"

[Morfiend]

WTF just happened. 

[Paelos]

WTF just happened. 

I think I started something awful.

[Soulflame]

Firefighter with 10 was bad enough.  I can't even imagine how clownshoes it would be with 25.

I think that's what Lakov was getting it.  It's so bad, IT MADE HIM RP REMEMBERING THE ENCOUNTER.

Edit:  I just wanted to add that healing phase 2 of Mimiron made me hate life.

[Chimpy]

Four Horsemen (at least the original) was the worst fight in history for "don't stand there, you will die" due to the huge radius of the marks, and shit like Thane's meteor (meant don't stand spread out), Blowme's void zones (HI HALF THE TIME YOU CAN'T SEE ME), ziliek's chain holy bolt that doubled with each hop (don't be within 5 yards of the dude closer to him or you will die) and there was only the tiny ass "safe zone" in the middle where no marks would hit you but you couldn't do shit. Oh yeah, there was also an enrage timer, and the last one alive also becomes enraged when the others die.

They nerfed it down quite a bit for Naxx 2.0, but it still had a lot of random bullshit that could rape you.

EDIT: Oh yeah, there was also the requirement of needing 8 warriors wearing 4pieces of Dreadnaught for the improved taunt, and having most of them wearing shit like the reel from Z'G for spell hit to keep taunt from being resisted because 1 taunt resist usually meant a wipe since it would drop an extra mark stack on people in the safe zone before someone could wrangle the mob back.

[Soulflame]

I thought that Illidan Council was the worst fight ever for standing in stuff.

Of course, I only saw that fight at 80.   

[Chimpy]

I thought that Illidan Council was the worst fight ever for standing in stuff.

Of course, I only saw that fight at 80.   

It was called the "Superbowl of not Standing in Things", yeah. But the shit you had to avoid (and the ways you had to avoid them) were no where near as annoying as the damn marks in 4h.

[Paelos]

Illidan himself was pretty bad for "don't stand here" stuff as well. You had flames, blaze patches, beams, blades, AoEs that are wider than graphics, etc. Ugh.

[Lakov_Sanite]

The council fight was particularly onerous for he sheer amount of HP they had. The fight took fucking forever!

[SurfD]

The council fight was particularly onerous for he sheer amount of HP they had. The fight took fucking forever!

And the fact that even though they "shared a HP pool" you could really only effectively DPS the Paladin mob, and he had to be moved around ALL the time to avoid standing in consecration.

[Sheepherder]

I liked four horsemen.

I still don't get why they removed the red rider of war.  Just give him a different weapon, for fuck's sake.

[Chimpy]

I liked four horsemen.

I still don't get why they removed the red rider of war.  Just give him a different weapon, for fuck's sake.

He was "redeemed" in one of those questlines in Icecrown so they had to remove Mograine from Naxx.

[apocrypha]

"Have you ever done firefighter with 25 people kid? I have.  I have......"

Funnily enough we did firefighter on Thursday night, with 25 people. All level 80 in 6k+ GS's, on vent, with some very experienced raid leaders/guides. We managed it but it took 4 goes and was total chaos and ended up with under 10 people left standing.

This was also my first ever trip deeper into Ulduar than Flame Lev/Razorscale/Ignis and bugger me but that place is impressive. After we finished I spent a happy 10 mins just playing with the train.