Cataclysm

[Lantyssa]

It's probably still limited to the same server, just linked accounts there.  Though it's a step closer.

[Selby]

It's probably still limited to the same server, just linked accounts there.

Yeah, you can mail heirlooms to a different faction member on the same server provided that they are on the same account.

[Ashamanchill]

So, after playing Rift, and then Dragon Age 2 gave me the itch again, I resubbed to WoW. I know, I'm weak.

And it seems I owe Ingmar, Sjofn, and others an apology, because they are right, heroics are back to a face roll now. Everybody spam their AOEs, stand in green shit, ignore boss mechanics, and the hell with CC. And I'm not saying this like guys like Maledict did, where they ran them as a guild group on vent and shit, I've pugged everyone of these as a slightly ungeared tank.

As long as you have a geared healer. Nothing else matters in the slightest.

So now only two real problems remain. A) The instances are a bit too far on the long side. B) Like others have said, all my friends are gone now. The game is emptier then I can ever recall. Remember the old wall of toons and blue names in front of the auction house vendors and how annoying that was? Well I play on prime time on my server, and that is just not a problem any more. All that seems to be left are dickheads zipping around on their Frostbrood vanquishers or Iron Proto drakes or other super heroics mounts.

Here's hoping these changes aren't a day late and a buck short.

[Paelos]

As long as you have a geared healer. Nothing else matters in the slightest.

Yep, that was sorta my whole point earlier as well.

[Typhon]

lol, Ghostcrawler just got the "800lb Gorilla Killa" achievement!

Yeah, yeah, it's premature, Blizz does what it take, blah, blah, blah.  I just imagined him with an achievement window popping up a la Scott Pilgrim versus the World with an (at first) excited look on his face, which then turned to dismay, and it made me chuckle.

[SurfD]

Just posting to say I agree with most of caladein's views on healing, I just don't have much to add beyond that. I never, ever want to go back to falling asleep on my holy light key.


EDIT: Oh wait, I have something else to say! I think if they made it easier for good players to piggyback shitty ones, that would go a long way to helping. Making it so, say, balance druids can be all "oh fuck, the healer died, TO THE RESCUE" for a trash pull or whatever rather than the current "welp." You know?

Actually, as someone with a Balance Druid main, I have done exactly that on a few occasions.   Sure, you wont last very long (you will oom pretty quickly if things turn into a complete furball), but if everything stays on the tank long enough for you to get a complete set of hots rolling on him you can usually keep him alive through an unlucky healer death on a trash pull.

Hell, a week or so ago I healed the last 30% of the Prophet fight in Lost City.   Didnt realise that the healer had DC'd untill one of the DPS died, so I Battle Rezzed the dead DPS, broke out the moonkin heals and managed to heal for almost 2 minutes with rolling hots and an Innervate and a lucky chance that i could push an eclipse once for the mana back.  One of the dps died again (standing in the fire beam thing for a bit too long + plague of ages) so then it was just the tank, one dps left alive and me healing instead of DPsing, so it took much longer then it should have, but we did down it in the end (if i remember, the tank eventualy died but the remaining DPS was a DK, who popped army for the last 2 %).   Was a truely fun seat of the pants kill.   Hell, It probably would have been much smoother, even with the healer DCing, if i could dispell diseases.  His plague of ages sucked up a lot of mana with unavoidable damage i had to heal on the dps.

[Sjofn]

I haven't done a heroic in aaaaaages (well, I did one like two weeks ago), so I was reaching BACK IN TIME for that little addition to my post. If the hybrids can TO THE RESCUE now, s'all good as far as I'm concerned for PUG-age.

Fordel, I get what you're saying, but I think there's room for "have to give a shit as a healer" and "the not-specced to do it hybrid can power through one pull when the healer eats it halfway through" in the game. I'm not the one who has to find the middle ground for it, though.

[Miasma]

I went to the official forums looking to soak up hardcore tears but only found wannabe hardcores complaining.  The real hardcores were all "good, I don't care, once 4.2 hits I just want to get my valor and gtfo".

The cynical side of me was dissapointed but the very small sliver of myself that still has hope for mankind got a nice boost.

[Paelos]

I trolled the mmo champion boards for a while poking the wannabe hardcores as well. Good times.

[Dren]

I'm also one that has been avoiding heroics, even within my guild.  What can I say?  I'm too casual for how hardcore they were/are (not sure if they have changed yet, that's how much I've backed away from WoW.)  The amount of concentration on gear levels and the strict movement, "jump now," etc. just created wipe after wipe and people getting pissed.  It felt too much like work for my gaming.  That's just me, but I don't think I'm alone.

I'm back to pvp again and I haven't even been into several instances, let alone finished them.  Yes, I've been playing.  I've leveled 10 character from 80 to 85 ang got them to iLevels that qualify them for heroics without stepping foot into an instance.  I don't do the instance on normal because the rewards are terrible, the length/time to finish are too long, and just aren't all that fun to me.

I feel Blizzard did well with everything outside of instances and raids in Cata, but that will only last so long.

[apocrypha]

So I decided to get my all-in-greens prot warrior a DPS spec and gear at the start of the week. Few days of heroics later and he's iLvl 346 and I understand now why people think they're overpowered. Just obscene damage output, and ideally suited to groups of 4-6 mobs, ie. pretty much every dungeon pack there is. Comfortably puts out 14-16k average and spikes up to 24k sometimes. Fun to play too. Galling compared to my shadow priest, who I struggle to get above 10k with better gear, but maybe I just suck at playing a shadow priest.

Also, been pointed at a nice alternative to Rawr. Mr Robot seems to work pretty well and is a lot faster and simpler than the chuggy, unreliable bloatfest Rawr has become.

[caladein]

So I decided to get my all-in-greens prot warrior a DPS spec and gear at the start of the week. Few days of heroics later and he's iLvl 346 and I understand now why people think they're overpowered. Just obscene damage output, and ideally suited to groups of 4-6 mobs, ie. pretty much every dungeon pack there is. Comfortably puts out 14-16k average and spikes up to 24k sometimes. Fun to play too. Galling compared to my shadow priest, who I struggle to get above 10k with better gear, but maybe I just suck at playing a shadow priest.

Also, been pointed at a nice alternative to Rawr. Mr Robot seems to work pretty well and is a lot faster and simpler than the chuggy, unreliable bloatfest Rawr has become.

It's sort of a best case/worst case situation that you're experiencing.  Arms is top-tier AOE damage when standing next to the mobs and threat aren't issues, like say, in a heroic dungeon.  Shadow on the other hand still has super-terrible on-demand AOE damage.

As for Rawr, I haven't had any speed issues with the WPF version although I haven't done anything serious with it as both of my character's modules (HealPriest and Hunter) are on the broken list.  Ask Mr. Robot is good though, just need to double check its settings and the like before you go nuts reforging everything.

[apocrypha]

Yeah that makes sense about the warr vs priest, good to hear it's not just me being a priestard :)

I've found with Mr Robot that reforging 1 or 2 items at a time then logging and re-loading is the best way.

[Samprimary]

As an enhancement shaman, I'm at a hard equipment block right now. There is pretty much no equipment progression I can achieve without being in a group able to kill cho'gall or nefarian.

There are no readily available drops for me anymore and the gear I can buy for points all has terrible itemization. I will be weilding PvP purples for PvE forever.

[apocrypha]

I gave up with enhance some time ago, my shaman is now ele/resto. Easy to gear up since spirit gives +hit for elemental now so you can use mostly the same gear for both specs in a pinch.

[Shrike]

As an enhancement shaman, I'm at a hard equipment block right now. There is pretty much no equipment progression I can achieve without being in a group able to kill cho'gall or nefarian.

There are no readily available drops for me anymore and the gear I can buy for points all has terrible itemization. I will be weilding PvP purples for PvE forever.

TBCv2.0. And, yeah, it sucks.

[Samprimary]

Enhancement is in a good spot overall in terms of how good they are at dps and raid utility, thankfully, it's just .. there's ONE bop epic weapon from raids for us. One. Crul'korak, the Lightning's Arc. And it's a 10% or less drop from Nefarian. If you're looking to upgrade to ilevel 372 for PvE, you can look at how often it drops for Heroic 25.

http://www.wowhead.com/npc=41376#drops

It's a bit mindboggling. I don't mind that much, as the PvP axe looks the best anyway. But if, unlike me, you're a sane and rational individual who doesn't pvp and/or can't get conquest points anyway since you don't arena or rated BG? You're fucked. You buy the claws off of the AH for 30,000 gold plus (one of which is strength, not agility), then sit on it and spin as your friends slowly progress to heroic raid gear.

[SurfD]

Yeah, out of all the loot decisions they made, that one strikes me as one of the most peculiar.   I mean, on one hand, you have Best-in-slot weapons for Feral Druids / Hunters dropping like candy off the first boss in BoT,  and Caster daggers / Strength swords / Rogue daggers / 2h Maces dropping off the first 2 bosses in BWD, and then on the other, you have enhance shamans, who get the shaft with a choice between hopeing their guild downs neff every week, or praying / paying for a BoE Claw / Axe trash drop out of the raid instance with a total of 16 trash mobs.  16!!  Thats like, the same amount of trash in the first 2 / 3 pulls in BoT.

Its like someone really hates enhance shammies.  Really, they just need to make a fast offhand weapon viable for them.  That might solve at least a chunk of their problems.

[Shrike]

No, Blizzard just needs to fucking itemize like they did in ICC, but noooooooooooooooo...we get a TBC style loot paradigm--again--same as the shit in Naxx, Uldaur, and ToC. Then there was the horseshit move to give rogues axes since it'd make it easier to itemize for enhance, but--again--except for that brief shining moment in ICC, it's been the same bullshit for enhance that it's always been.

Hell, after seeing this shit--again--I'm all for putting on the tinfoil and demanding they make enhance DW/2h neutral. At least then we could get some decent fucking weapons on a regular basis...maybe. Oh, yeah, and fuck a bunch of claws. Sick of seeing that shit, too.

[caladein]

ICC-25 had all of an off-hand and a one-hand.  Heroic 10 added two more one-hands and two main-hands, but I don't think running a whole other lockout on Heroic is a better solution than getting BoEs.

Enhancement itemization is only going to get "better" if they kill off slow off-hands, that's just the hole the spec is in.

[SurfD]

Yeah.  The entire problem with Enhance is that it is the ONLY mele spec in the game that requires A: Agility Weapons, and B: A slow Mainhand AND Slow Offhand combination for optimal dps.   Combining both A and B makes for really really shitty drop availability.    Which is complicated even further by Blizards insistance on makeing a lot of weapons MH only or OH only.

[Sheepherder]

Or, they could base all instant melee attacks off of a multiple of weapon DPS rather than weapon damage.

[Samprimary]

Or they could make it so that there's more than just the axe that drops one out of ten nefarion kills for heroic mainhand upgrades

i mean there are so many potential answers here

[Setanta]

All reasons why I stopped playing my enhance shammy main (no dual-spec, enhance4lyfe) and went back to my original vanilla WoW hunter.

Also the reason why I'm logging less and less frequently

[Samprimary]

I have to say though, that Enchantment is still wicked fun; the gear situation isn't doing much to hamper that.

And, when 4.1 drops with a big fuck you to COLASSUS SMUSH, Enhancement shall be the Kite or Die monster it was supposed to be.

[Shrike]

Hmmmm...eh, fuck PvP...but...hmmm...purple axes...

[Paelos]

This itemization reminds me of when they used put the best shield drop in the game for tanks on the last boss. Like the shield on Illidan in TBC. I was like WTF??? What the hell good does it do to have your main tank get their best and probably most important tanking upgrade after you've managed to effectively beat the game?

Of course every tank worked around that by doing arenas to get the tanking version of the pvp shield which beat every pvp drop, and thus began the "arena rating" requirements in subsequent seasons.

[Fabricated]

I'm to the point where I want to literally murder anyone dumb enough to suggest that hard heroics make people better. I completed a heroic Stonecore run (hardest heroic still IMO) with 2 DPS pulling like 2k because the healer was completely decked out in heroic raid gear. Surprisingly the healer never bitched or tried to kick anyone despite everybody being from different servers (and thus likely not friends), and just gamely kept me alive as me and him duoed all but one of the bosses (one DPS was pulling 10k but had pretty poor "not stand in the bad shit" awareness). I've had a lot of these types of runs; either everyone is in raid gear/clearly getting raid gear and it goes fast, or it's people in heroic blues who can't find their asses with both hands and a stick equipped with assfinding radar. There's no "struggling guy who just wants to get better", they're either good already or they're terrible and won't improve.

[Paelos]

The raiders want to keep the bads down because if they don't, and they complete the same shit they just did in raids, then they suddenly realize that defining themselves by a game is probably shallow.

People who don't care about this just say, "I'm glad I beat it pre-nerfs because I'm awesome," and they move on with their lives without caring what everyone else is doing.

[Merusk]

Shit, I preferred everyone decked out in Epics just because when I wtfpwnd them in randoms there was no way they could claim it was all gear and they'd TOTALLY own me if only they had the same stuff.

[Selby]

I'm to the point where I want to literally murder anyone dumb enough to suggest that hard heroics make people better.

I had a similar story the other night.  I have half raid gear and half blues still.  I can heal raids just fine without issue, but most PUG heroics make me see red.  People stand in shit, do 3-4k DPS, tanks don't know how to position the bosses or mobs, etc.  So I can be a semi-superstar and keep people alive for a while... but my mana regen is not unlimited and I WILL run out if all 4 people are taking massive damage all at the same time.  I point this out to people and I tend to get bitched at for somehow implying that they suck.  Oh I'm not implying you suck per se, but that there is a finite time window we have to get the boss down before I go OOM and everyone starts to die.

[Ivanneth]

I'm to the point where I want to literally murder anyone dumb enough to suggest that hard heroics make people better.

I don't get why Blizzard thought harder heroics were a good idea in the first place. The latter part of my WotLK "career" was spent healing my tank friend through heroics. A lot of groups were great, but we also carried quite a few and had fun doing it. Wipes rarely occurred, and having an unskilled member or 3 just meant we finished in 30 minutes instead of 15. When Blizzard first announced that they wanted to change things up - make CC to matter again and such - my thoughts immediately turned to the scores of players who, as you put it, "can't find their asses with both hands and a stick equipped with assfinding radar." Making CC important meant that not only would my friend and I not be able to carry the bad groups anymore, but that we would have to rely on people to figure out how to play competently. I then spent the months leading up to Cataclysm telling myself I was wrong and that Blizzard wouldn't be that shortsighted, only to find out that they were.

What were they thinking? These guys have been running the most popular MMO for years now. This feels like a newbie mistake that should have been identified and eliminated in the early planning stages.

Edit: forgot a word

[Lantyssa]

C-team and trying to design for the customer they wanted instead of the customers they had.

[Lakov_Sanite]

C-team and trying to design for the customer they wanted instead of the customers they had.

C-team yes but I disagree with the 'why' of it. I believe they saw a general drop in subs, probably not dramatic and most likely people just getting tired of a six year old game.  However they misdiagnosed the issues, thinking that to retain these bored people they would need to make things harder again, more challenging because they assumed it was the things like oldschool aq40 and naxx40 that kept people coming back week after week to do the same content.

[Ingmar]

I still see no evidence for this C-team stuff. The same people all appear in the same jobs in charge of the overall product, and those are the people who are going to have made the call "OK team, we should make the heroics harder this expansion." Nobody new got up in front of the crowd at Blizzcon and said "Hi, I'm the new guy in charge of X".