Cataclysm

[Wolf]

1 - depends really, we still have 10+ people online daily on off-nights. On raid nights we go up to 20 quite often.

3 - 397 bracers are mostly BIS. If you can get your hands on the patterns, you can get good money crafting them. I charge 750 to bother pressing "craft" after they give me the mats.

I don't really agree with 4, what was the new dungeons requirment? 353? it's fine with any sort of functional 346/378 mix, even for a tank. What you lack, the healer and dps will compensate if they're not superbad. If cata did something, it was to teach people to half-pay-attention in dungeons. Just get some pvp blues, keep them in your bags to get your ilvl up and start running the dungeons, you'll catch up in no time. Pay attention on the justice vendor and make sure you're buying the 378 stuff, it's the first couple of pages.

And 6 - don't worry, since they changed threat mid-t12 it's fine. You had a warrior right? Make sure you have mastery on all your slots, reforge out of hit and exp, gem mastery (sta/mast blue, flat mast yellow, sta/mast red) and that'll compensate for quite a bit of missing gear. Don't be scared tanking LFR, here's wolf's all-you-need-to-know tanking LFR guide:

1) Morchok - there should be a tank switch at every 3-4 debuffs, can easily be solo tanked. When he starts channeling his thing go hide behind conveniently-placed-just-appeared pillars.
2) Zonozz - turn him away from the raid. end.
3) Yorsaj - there should be a tank switch at every 4-5 debuffs, can easily be solo tanked; Adds don't have threat, don't worry about them
4) Hagara - she has a channel (focused assault), if you move 3 feet it will be interrupted and you'll take 0 damage. Lightning phase - dont stay in the middle, run with everyone; Ice Phase - go to the outer circle, hug a crystal, wait for DANGEROUS WAVES OF ICE to start coming to you, run in a circle until they disappear
5) Ultraxion - if using bartender makes sure "Extra Action button" bar is enabled, once you pull the boss you should have a button to press. Just sit and tank and press your CDs whenever they're up, doesn't matter. You'll get a debuff "fading light" wait for it to get to 2s and press above button. After that Taunt. Always Taunt when you're not sure if you did or not.
6) Warmaster - p1 tank stuff, p2 tank boss, switch at 3 debuffs with other tank. Boss does a "shockwave type ability" you should run away from, but whatever. Can't really kill you.
7) Spine - dunno lol. If you end up tanking the amalgamation just tank it, collect the bloods on the ground when it's at low health (10-15%, they stack up to 9 and that's how much you need), leave it next to the front, run away. Or don't, you can't die. LFR spine  
8) Madness, there's a thing that spawns at the back called mutated corruption. It will do 2 "impales", you take one with shield wall, the other tank takes the other. It will die shortly after the second imaple. At some point some small adds will come, tank them. Repeat 4 times running after people. At p2 run after people - tankable adds are called "something terror", pick one up.

[Miasma]

Not much new in crafting, there are new recipes above 359 but they are expensive drops from raids and require very expensive components.  There are crafted ilvl 377 items if you pvp.  If you have alts without maxed tradeskills you can get a free +5 skill from the darkmoon faire.  The alchemy specialist quests are now in the capital cities, not outland.  They just want gold and potions to switch your specialization, it is very expensive now.

The molton front hyjal quests were okay for a few days but then you realize just how much the whole idea sucks.  Doing the Thrall line there gets an easy and good cloak.

[Wolf]

snip

Missed Sylvanas in End Time, she's the hardest boss in all dungeons :)

Goat Dude - When the eyes come just wait a couple of seconds, pop your shieldwall and go hug him. That way he find you, and it goes faster plus a dps doesn't get gibbed if the healer is asleep.

Mannoroth - the elf captain drops the sword that you click and throw at mannoroth which makes him killable. Every attack can make said sword to "proc", so the more attacks you generate on him the higher dmg you do, regardless of how much dmg your attacks do. I do like 60k on my paladin healer  

Ice thing - tank and spank for you. Stay out of "fire". Or don't, doesn't matter much. Pop shiedwall at the end when he starts channeling.

Rogue boss - move out of cloud, but still stay in totem. Goes faster. Just don't move unless you're moving out of the cloud, the dps and healers will adjust to you so you take the knifes.

If it looks more complicated then LFR, it is because it is 

[luckton]

I recently came back as well about a week ago and started a new DK.  Some notes from me:

- I agree that BC right now is fine. I say this because all I did was run LFD while doing Hellfire Penn. in between runs.  I completed the HP "I did all the quests!" achievement, ran a bunch of dungeons, and bam; I'm 68 in like no time and off to Northrend.
- I continue to LOL at people that run BC heroics and A) have no fucking clue what they're doing and B) get killed within a couple hits
- Why is Ironforge so fucking empty?
- Why have they not given DKs a free pass on skilling up tradeskills to level 55?  So not looking forward to having to fly around the old world to skill up.
- Unholy DK DPS is so  once you get Unholy Presence.

[Wolf]

- Why is Ironforge so fucking empty?

Portals to the cata zones are in Stormwind, everyone is there.

[luckton]

- Why is Ironforge so fucking empty?

Portals to the cata zones are in Stormwind, everyone is there.

Yeah, but still, Ironforge still kept a number of people around for AH/mail/bank botting and other social stuffs.  There fucking nobody here now 

[Fabricated]

I didn't miss Sylvanas, her strat is right there. :P

[Wolf]

the other elf lady with the russian accent then. Tyrande was the name. The one that has a thing for moons and stuff.

[Rokal]

5) Ultraxion - if using bartender makes sure "Extra Action button" bar is enabled, once you pull the boss you should have a button to press. Just sit and tank and press your CDs whenever they're up, doesn't matter. You'll get a debuff "fading light" wait for it to get to 2s and press above button. After that Taunt. Always Taunt when you're not sure if you did or not.

Fading light is a bit easier to handle on LFR, since groups will always have two tanks. When you get fading light, the other tank should taunt immediately and you can use the button to fade out at 4 seconds or less. When the other tank gets fading light, taunt. The end.

[Wolf]

always taunt. Preferably on CD. If you're not sure you taunted, taunt again. If you're absolutely positive you taunted just now - TAUNT AGAIN.

Sometimes I'm bored on my main and I go and do a quick ultraxion, because NUMBERS. At least half the times I play second tank and it's annoying because at some point the "good tank" that isnt dying from fading light forgets to taunt, and I can't survive if dispersion is on cd.

[FieryBalrog]

- Why is Ironforge so fucking empty?

Portals to the cata zones are in Stormwind, everyone is there.

Yeah, but still, Ironforge still kept a number of people around for AH/mail/bank botting and other social stuffs.  There fucking nobody here now 

It's been a gradual process of deserting IF. I know for a long time I still had my hearth in IF for alts between 1 and 60, and even my main hung out there once in a while.

Now IF might as well be Darnassus++. It gets a bit more traffic due to being a stopping point for Menethil Harbor (going to Theramore/Howling Fjord).

SW is way better now anyway. 2 AHs and 2 banks, portals right next to the dwarven AH/bank, and much cooler from a flying mount POV.

[FieryBalrog]

Also this strat posting makes the new heroics look harder than they are. You do have to pay some attention to the mechanics but it's really very easy, somewhere between the Wrath heroics and the ICC 5 mans. Definitely, definitely easier than Cata heroics.

In fact, even now the cata heroics are harder because the only people who run them are undergeared alts and undergeared newbies. I can heal through the stupid on my geared main, but when I ran a bunch of them on my rogue alt (who actually needed the gear from there) there was a much higher failure rate than the new HoT heroics.

As a matter of fact I can think of some wipes but not a single HoT heroic where the group fell apart and failed to complete.

[Rokal]

Ghostcrawler's Cata post-mortem, the final post-mortem

[luckton]

Ghostcrawler's Cata post-mortem, the final post-mortem

I get the feeling that he just does not give a single fuck about casuals.  Seriously, this post-mortem reads like the opposite of the last one.

[Rokal]

In what way?

[SurfD]

snip

Goat Dude - When the eyes come just wait a couple of seconds, pop your shieldwall and go hug him. That way he find you, and it goes faster plus a dps doesn't get gibbed if the healer is asleep.

Nah, when eyes come, run away from eyes by following the healer.  If a dps gets spotted, pretend to try to save them but let them die because they and should be following the healer like you (if the healer gets spotted, save them of course).  The longer you avoid eyes, the more stacks of the insane Crit / damage buff you get, which means that avoiding the eyes for 20 seconds usually ends up with a net gain of the boss dying MUCH faster then if you had just facepulled him immediately when eyes spawn.

I mean, heck, I saw a video someone posted on MMO champ of a fire mage soloing the guy, and that Buff is probably the single most awesome thing about that entire trash / boss encounter.

[Ironwood]

Ghostcrawler a massive titbag.  News at 11.

[Lantyssa]

I wonder if this will counteract some of the goodwill Paleos was gaining back.

[FieryBalrog]

He pretty much admits they fucked up with the difficulty, don't see how this is the opposite of the last one.

LFR is here to stay, heroics will be easy mode with challenge mode for the ballbusting crowd (aka me), continent to explore instead of scattered zones, less linear questing. Not seeing the failure here.

[Nevermore]

Ghostcrawler just doesn't get it at all.  

edit:

He pretty much admits they fucked up with the difficulty, don't see how this is the opposite of the last one.

No, he thinks the dungeon difficulty was fine and it was something that players were clearly asking for.  He flat-out said that.

[Ingmar]

I really don't see whatever was so horrible about that post.

[Rokal]

I wonder if this will counteract some of the goodwill Paleos was gaining back.

We can only hope.  

Still wondering what specifically people are getting offended about. The reason we get sanitized non-answers (like the last Cata post-mortem) is because people jump to conclusions or willingly misinterpret what's being said in these community interactions to validate the opinions they already have. I already see people complaining about the 'legendary accessibility' comments from the blog, when it's pretty clear he's talking about how common they were. Specifically, that multiple people in each guild had them due to the over-lapping quest progression (especially for heroic guilds). Most casual guilds got 1 legendary per tier. He's not talking about us.

The difficulty at which we pegged our heroic dungeons and raids was controversial. They were designed to be about as tough as the dungeons were back in Burning Crusade, but the game has changed since then. Coming out of Lich King, we'd gotten the message loud and clear from players that they wanted tougher challenges. They liked the convenience of Dungeon Finder, but they missed using their crowd control and survival abilities and having to strategize about how to beat a given encounter. We designed the Cataclysm heroics with that in mind, and the players who wanted challenging content were thrilled.

The problem was that we had this whole group of players who felt like they couldn't make any progress on their characters. Even if they wanted to end up raiding with their friends, they couldn't earn the gear they needed to get into those raids (especially in the absence of Raid Finder). I don't believe that the instances were too hard; it's obvious there are players who enjoy that content. I believe the problem was that there were no alternatives. With such a diverse community, the goal is to have experiences that players from all over the spectrum can enjoy. We don't want to shut anyone out. So, we're addressing that with Challenge Modes in Mists. You'll have normal and heroic mode dungeons, and then Challenge Modes, for players who are looking to prove their mettle. Likewise, you'll have normal and heroic raids, and Raid Finder for players who don't enjoy wiping on a boss week after week until they can master it.

The dungeon difficulty wasn't too hard for the people that had requested that sort of content, but there wasn't alternative content for the people that weren't interested or ready for that difficulty of content.

What's your problem with this statement again? This is the same conclusion I came to: without a lot of non-heroic 85 content, the heroics became the only content to do and were a turn-off to a lot of players.

[Jayce]

Ghostcrawler just doesn't get it at all.  

edit:

He pretty much admits they fucked up with the difficulty, don't see how this is the opposite of the last one.

No, he thinks the dungeon difficulty was fine and it was something that players were clearly asking for.  He flat-out said that.

Since you clearly do get it, what is the problem? I, too, clearly remember people wailing that WOTLK dungeons were too easy, an AOE-fest, and that they had removed crowd control from their bars completely.

The problem was that some people liked that, but the people who don't have what they want are always the vocal ones.

[Maledict]

I'm sorry but the "outrage" about this interview with Ghostcrawler is utterly beyond me, and looks like mindless hatred on a figurehead right now.

Seriously, there were a large number of people complaining about Wrath dungeons being mindlessly easy - including myself and most of the people I played with, and I was hardly hardocre. Let's not pretend that all was fine and dandy in Wrath and then suddenly Blizzard went off the deep end making everything harder because they hated us. At the end of Wrath there was a very vocal section of the community that wanted harder content. I have to say, I *much* preferred Cata heroics to Wrath's.

What Ghostcrawler says, and he is completely correct, is that you need content for everyone. Wrath pissed people off because the 5 player content was dross and so easy it became a painful grind, cata pissed other people off because they want to have fun and not tortuously have to play with bad PuGs on content they just want to enjoy not slog through. WoW is too large to focus on just one segment of the playerbase, and it needs to cater to all its players. No one section should be able to impose it's standards of play on the rest of the population.

I honestly cannot see the problem with that, or why it's a huge about turn from earlier stuff, or why it's a slap in the face of more casual players. Isn't that the ideal - that there is enjoyable content at everyone's level, and not just what we want? Or are we still raising pitch forks and shouting "rabble rabble"?

[Fabricated]

People voted with their wallets and Ghostcrawler is pretty much proven emphatically wrong.

Seriously, there were a large number of people complaining about Wrath dungeons being mindlessly easy

Grognards on the official forums aren't "a lot of people". Thanks.

[Simond]

Ghostcrawler just doesn't get it at all.  

edit:

He pretty much admits they fucked up with the difficulty, don't see how this is the opposite of the last one.

No, he thinks the dungeon difficulty was fine and it was something that players were clearly asking for.  He flat-out said that.

The difficulty at which we pegged our heroic dungeons and raids was controversial. They were designed to be about as tough as the dungeons were back in Burning Crusade, but the game has changed since then. Coming out of Lich King, we'd gotten the message loud and clear from players that they wanted tougher challenges. They liked the convenience of Dungeon Finder, but they missed using their crowd control and survival abilities and having to strategize about how to beat a given encounter. We designed the Cataclysm heroics with that in mind, and the players who wanted challenging content were thrilled.

The problem was that we had this whole group of players who felt like they couldn't make any progress on their characters. Even if they wanted to end up raiding with their friends, they couldn't earn the gear they needed to get into those raids (especially in the absence of Raid Finder). I don't believe that the instances were too hard; it's obvious there are players who enjoy that content. I believe the problem was that there were no alternatives. With such a diverse community, the goal is to have experiences that players from all over the spectrum can enjoy. We don't want to shut anyone out. So, we're addressing that with Challenge Modes in Mists. You'll have normal and heroic mode dungeons, and then Challenge Modes, for players who are looking to prove their mettle. Likewise, you'll have normal and heroic raids, and Raid Finder for players who don't enjoy wiping on a boss week after week until they can master it.

Yeah, I'm not seeing how "We listened to people who wanted harder heroics and they were happy but it fucked over everyone else so we're not doing that any more" can be read as "Cataclysm heroics were fine".

[Rokal]

People voted with their wallets and Ghostcrawler is pretty much proven emphatically wrong.

You're still misreading the blog, and from the looks of it you're misreading the posts in this thread as well.

[caladein]

I think what they learned is that the usual means of "content for everyone", starting hard and then making it easier over time doesn't cut it anymore.  (The reasons why that's the case is a whole other can of worms.)

They tried to shorten the timing, like with staggered T11 heroic nerfs or the big nerf to Firelands coming before Dragon Soul was out, but they finally accepted that the expectations are that everyone should be doing the "same" content with a difficulty slider.

[Nevermore]

The dungeon difficulty wasn't too hard for the people that had requested that sort of content

This was the big problem he doesn't see.  They listened to a small number of forum whiners and took that to mean the majority of their subscribers felt that way.  For all the 'too easy' content in WotLK, Blizzard never had more subscribers than during that expansion.  Cataclysm comes along with its ballbreaking heroics and WoW starts to hemorrhage subs, yet Ghostcrawler still clings to the idea that the dungeons were fine despite the bottom-line evidence to the contrary.  That's the part I think he doesn't get.

[Ingmar]

We're guessing when we say 'small number' and 'majority of subscribers'. They haven't lost over half their subscribers, by all accounts.

[Rokal]

The dungeon difficulty wasn't too hard for the people that had requested that sort of content

This was the big problem he doesn't see.

I'm pretty sure he gets it. He acknowledged it in the very next sentence. Seriously, I even bolded it in my post that you're quoting.

I'm pretty sure Blizzard gets that a very large portion of end-game 5-man content needs to be accessible to people that want easy/quick runs. I can be sure of this because of their actions (4.3), the things they've said previously regarding Cata/MoP difficulty, and this very blog post.

Simond's post sums it up pretty well

Yeah, I'm not seeing how "We listened to people who wanted harder heroics and they were happy but it fucked over everyone else so we're not doing that any more" can be read as "Cataclysm heroics were fine".

[luckton]

Fine, maybe GC does 'get it'.  Hindsight is 20-20, after all.  Or at least most of the time.  I think the angst comes from reading so much of his blue posts in the past, getting a sense of his style and personality through those posts, and then when you see him put out answers like above, well, the two just don't reconcile.  This post-mortem gives him the excuse to sound all apologetic and mea culpa-ish. 

[Fordel]

I thought I explained this like 10 times before. Your hate against GC is misplaced, you want to hate the Evil Kalgan.

[Nevermore]

I'm pretty sure he gets it. He acknowledged it in the very next sentence. Seriously, I even bolded it in my post that you're quoting.

I'm pretty sure Blizzard gets that a very large portion of end-game 5-man content needs to be accessible to people that want easy/quick runs. I can be sure of this because of their actions (4.3), the things they've said previously regarding Cata/MoP difficulty, and this very blog post.

Oh, I'm sure Blizzard gets it but Ghostcrawler comes across like someone who doesn't see what the problem is personally but will acquiesce to going back to a more Wrath-like model while still hemming and hawing about how his design was fine in Cata.  "I don't believe that the instances were too hard" isn't something you say when you've lost more subscribers at one time than at any other time in the life of the game because they, in fact, thought the instances were too hard.  

It's his particular brand of douchyness where he'll go ahead and change things but not because he was wrong.  He'll just leave it as an excerise for the reader to figure out who must be wrong since it wasn't him.

[Rokal]

You realize he's the class designer, right?