Cataclysm

[Sheepherder]

The absurdity of fighting a COLOSSUS as a little human. Not just a colossus, but a metal one. You are not Kratos. Seriously, what can you do to it? Hack its colossal toe? I hear if you hack a giant being's iron toe enough it falls over dead.

It's like tank versus mech.

I've soloed this guy on my paladin at level 60ish without using the gimmick wand, and the fucking thing didn't give me quest completion.  Dis kid was pist.

[SurfD]

Yeah, I always get a chuckle out of the idea of Gnome Warror Tanks in particular, tanking bigss raid bosses in game.    Nothing says WTF more then trying to picture someone 3 feet tall, with a shield that is practically taller then he is, who is literally the same size as one of the dragon's claws, attempting to "tank" a dragon.

[Sheepherder]

Yeah, I always get a chuckle out of the idea of Gnome Warror Tanks in particular, tanking bigss raid bosses in game.    Nothing says WTF more then trying to picture someone 3 feet tall, with a shield that is practically taller then he is, who is literally the same size as one of the dragon's claws, attempting to "tank" a dragon The Beast.

[WoopeeTuralyon]

But if all the dragon could do was breathe on you, she'd get a sore throat!

[WindupAtheist]

Between the specter of rated battleground trade pugs being the new standard for PVP, the new balancing system potentially locking the more populated faction out of world battles, all the "more than 1 or 2 world mobs kill anyone and dungeons are all about CC" talk, and talent trees being cut down to 31 points again, I'm just really not feeling this expansion anymore.

[Arrrgh]

Between the specter of rated battleground trade pugs being the new standard for PVP, the new balancing system potentially locking the more populated faction out of world battles, all the "more than 1 or 2 world mobs kill anyone and dungeons are all about CC" talk, and talent trees being cut down to 31 points again, I'm just really not feeling this expansion anymore.

Outdoor mobs? I got into the beta a few days ago, transferred my DK tank over, and I regularly round up 5 or 6 mobs at a time for the kill X quests. His health bar hardly moves. Death strikes easily keep up with the incoming damage.

He is doing this in tank spec/gear so if you're a non tank YMMV.

[Fordel]

What level are you?



The mob damage scales up dramatically around the 83+ range.

[Arrrgh]

What level are you?



The mob damage scales up dramatically around the 83+ range.

The DK is 81.

It would have to scale up drastically to force single pulls. I've yet to try his DPS spec since he kills things so fast and takes so little damage in tank spec.

[Fordel]

It does. At 83+. Mob HP roughly triples and their damage roughly quintuples is my guess. There is a huge iLvL jump in gear from the Vashjir/Hyjal quest rewards and what you get at Deepholm.


A tank DK can probably handle 2-3 without to much difficulty still thanks to high armor and self healing, but it won't be like how it is on live where you enter/exit a fight with 100% health. You'll have to use cool downs and you'll probably have to rest before the next pull.

My Moonkin is pretty comfortably in the 2-3 range, thanks to CC/Armor/Heals, but I don't purposefully pull multiples anymore. I'll pop 1-3 lifeblooms every other mob as required and be on my merry way. But the idea of walking into a mob spawn, smashing starfall to pull every mob in 40 yards and AEing them all down? That is completely gone.


Some specs can barely handle 1 mob at a time currently, due to a lack of armor or self healing or just plain sucking due to beta changes.. I hear fury warriors are currently total garbage, can't even handle a single even con without it being a 10% health left nail bitter every pull. Mages and Priests are having issues, I think warlocks are handling it better then the other clothies though. Non-BM hunter pets apparently have a very short life span too.


It's really funny to watch a Ret Paladin dive into 5 mobs, fully expecting said mobs to just explode like they would on live, then see him have to bubble and run before he can bring the first mob to half life. Enhance Shamans are guilty of this too, just diving into shit without any sense of what they are actually taking on. It's always these two specs that seem to do this, they can mow down 1-2's non-stop all day, but once they get that 3rd or 4th mob on them, they just crumple.

[Fabricated]

Between the specter of rated battleground trade pugs being the new standard for PVP, the new balancing system potentially locking the more populated faction out of world battles, all the "more than 1 or 2 world mobs kill anyone and dungeons are all about CC" talk, and talent trees being cut down to 31 points again, I'm just really not feeling this expansion anymore.

The talent tree thing is welcome to me really. Like half of each tree was "spend 1 point to get 1% more damage" so cutting that shit out kinda helps.

[Shrike]

It's really funny to watch a Ret Paladin dive into 5 mobs, fully expecting said mobs to just explode like they would on live, then see him have to bubble and run before he can bring the first mob to half life. Enhance Shamans are guilty of this too, just diving into shit without any sense of what they are actually taking on. It's always these two specs that seem to do this, they can mow down 1-2's non-stop all day, but once they get that 3rd or 4th mob on them, they just crumple.

Actually, it's been this way all along for enhance (can't speak for ret, since I hardly play them). Once you were geared (say il219+), you could start to do silly shit like pull 6+ cultists out at the tournament or smackdown Chillmaw and co. solo, but mostly you were in trouble if you got more than 1-2 adds. Enhance always excelled at a quick, steady playstyle. You do have some CC, what with hex and wolves. With what little AoE they had now gone, they're back to the core playstyle. Once we overgear the quest content, then I'm sure silliness will reassert itself. 

[Merusk]

That sounds like every expansion to me, Fordel, when I compare it to my non-raid-geared alts.  Hellfire in BC was still that way for the warrior I dragged through it 4-5 months ago when I decided to finally move her on from the Bank Alt status I'd placed her at the end of vanilla.   Heading through the Outlands content I was regularly upgrading stuff but never was at a point I could take on more than 2 mobs at once, regardless of what spec I tried.   I recall blowing through stuff on my raid priest and hunter that had BWL gear, right up until post-Nagrand.

The same thing happened in Northrend. The Hunter and priest in Hyjal/ BT gear had little to no problems doing things, while my rogue struggled with more than a duo of mobs. (The War stopped at 71 but had the same problem. The DK we'll just ignore because they were stupidly powerful.)

So the biggest change, from what I'm hearing, is that what used to only be a challenge for the "plebes" because they didn't have access to gear beyond the 1st or 2nd raid now becomes a challenge for everyone.  No more cruising through on your high-tier raid purples until the last few levels.  It's just coming as a shock to people who were used to seeing raid-geared folks blow past content in the previous 2 expansions and are now wondering why they can't do the same.

[Azazel]

Between the specter of rated battleground trade pugs being the new standard for PVP, the new balancing system potentially locking the more populated faction out of world battles, all the "more than 1 or 2 world mobs kill anyone and dungeons are all about CC" talk, and talent trees being cut down to 31 points again, I'm just really not feeling this expansion anymore.

The talent tree thing is welcome to me really. Like half of each tree was "spend 1 point to get 1% more damage" so cutting that shit out kinda helps.

Yeah, I do hope though, that they keep the passive abilities and just make 1/1 the same as the many 5/5 we have now, rather than add too many new active abilities that need button-mashing. I'm out of space on my hotbars as is.

Also, how lovely to see that the playstyle my wife and I favour is not only encouraged in Cata, but mandatory, since we'd be shredded if we tried to solo the solo content instead of duoing it.  Hopefully they do a bunch more balancing, since what's been posted here seems a touch painful.

[WoopeeTuralyon]

What fun, I'll have to eat and drink after every pull 

And watching my mana in raids?! Heaven forbid!

[Fordel]

There is certainly the whole "your raid gear is virtually useless, so you suck like everyone else" factor to it, but the mobs are just plain meaner over all too. They usually have some kind of special ability that you'll have to avoid or double your down time, not a huge ordeal or anything, but you really need to not stand in their fire and back out of their flurry strikes or whatever.

[Lakov_Sanite]

I don't wow to be cock-stabbingly hard but I've actually been getting really bored with how easy the game is sometimes especially when soloing. I might as well be asleep for most of it, heroics included these days.

[Azazel]

OTOH, I like WoW because it's simple and easy to play. If I wanted to play something painful, I'd go back to EQ, or if I wanted painful grind, LotRO. When I get home from work I want to relax.

[Lakov_Sanite]

OTOH, I like WoW because it's simple and easy to play. If I wanted to play something painful, I'd go back to EQ, or if I wanted painful grind, LotRO. When I get home from work I want to relax.

There's a difference between killing 10k group required foozles to level and killing a few hundred hard ones solo, in both time and painfulness.  HUGE difference.

[Azazel]

Sure, but there is also a big difference between needing to be on your toes for every single "solo"'trash/quest mob vs relaxing and not needing to.

[Simond]

Dark Simulacrum is hilariously exploitable: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flmC1bBd0nI

[caladein]

Considering it says "single-target" most of the AOEs shown (Tranquility, Hurricane, Healing Rain) are bugs.  The NPC abilities are just going to get tweaked down or removed since that's in the ability text as well.  Also, beta.

[WoopeeTuralyon]

The absurdity of fighting a COLOSSUS as a little human. Not just a colossus, but a metal one. You are not Kratos. Seriously, what can you do to it? Hack its colossal toe? I hear if you hack a giant being's iron toe enough it falls over dead.

It's like tank versus mech.

I've soloed this guy on my paladin at level 60ish without using the gimmick wand, and the fucking thing didn't give me quest completion.  Dis kid was pist.

I did that on my shammy >.< if you soloed Overlord Arazzius or however it's spelled, I'd be imppressed..

[Sheepherder]

I have before, actually.  Wish I had the screenshots to prove it.

[Rendakor]

The guy from Cruel's Intentions? Solo'd that on my blood DK; that was in 3.0 though, before the nerfbat. The key is to kick his Infernal.

[dd0029]

Azzazius by the broken in the SW corner of the zone is not that rough.  Cruel Intentions though.  That is rough.  I've only managed to solo it twice with DKs.  The first time was pre-nerf bat swings and was cake.  The second was recently.  That I had to wait until I was 63 in a blood DPS spec.  I did have to blow all of my CDs though.  The key I found was interrupting the pyroblast cast as late as possible and then Death Strike to victory. 

The Horde version of Drill the Drillmaster, The Foot of the Citadel is a real bitch though.  The Alliance version is a single 30k elite.  The horde version doubles it to two of them and the second comes with a pair of 11k hp guards.  That took me about 4 tries, consumables, all of my CDs and a healthy dose of luck.

[dd0029]

Fordel's post and this recent Have me kind of worried about the direction of things.

Almost every "Wow, things are hard" thread I have read on this and other forums are a direct result of not having Uldum and Twilight gear yet. We thought long and hard about whether it was a good idea to bump the level cap without that gear in place. In the end, we thought it was worth getting feedback on the quest design and some of the encounter design. But encounter balance is enormously dependent on having the right gear. Just keep that in mind. Things will feel better when you have ugrades available.

  They seem to have forgotten that prior to the Tournament, heroics, while not cockstabbingly hard, were a challenge.  There were definitely heroics to be skipped as not worth the time.  Heroics only got much easier when everyone and their moron inbred cousin started rocking the ilvl 232 gear.  Even right when that opened, things were still tough as the weapons were not that much better than what was available.

[Shrike]

The Horde version of Drill the Drillmaster, The Foot of the Citadel is a real bitch though.  The Alliance version is a single 30k elite.  The horde version doubles it to two of them and the second comes with a pair of 11k hp guards.  That took me about 4 tries, consumables, all of my CDs and a healthy dose of luck.

I remember soloing this on my BE blood DK tank. I was rather apprehensive going in, but basicaly buried the lot of them without too much trouble. This was in quest gear, too. You've got to use cooldowns, but it was the usually heart strike/death strike spam to victory. There's probably some luck of the draw in here. A couple of missed deathstrikes could break you at a bad moment.

[WindupAtheist]

Almost every "Wow, things are hard" thread I have read on this and other forums are a direct result of not having Uldum and Twilight gear yet. We thought long and hard about whether it was a good idea to bump the level cap without that gear in place. In the end, we thought it was worth getting feedback on the quest design and some of the encounter design. But encounter balance is enormously dependent on having the right gear. Just keep that in mind. Things will feel better when you have ugrades available.

Oh well shit, what's everyone running around in beta with then? WOTLK gear?

[Ingmar]

If I am reading it right I think the issue is they didn't have the leveling instances itemized fully yet?

[Rasix]

If I am reading it right I think the issue is they didn't have the leveling instances itemized fully yet?

It's nice that they'd assume everyone does instances while leveling. 

[Ingmar]

I was reading it wrong, it is the leveling zones that weren't itemized.

[Rasix]

That could be an issue. 

[Morfiend]

I think its more the fact that people are jumping straight in to level 85 instances with their level 83 questing gear and getting stomped. He is saying that it should be much easer and doable in level 84 and 85 gear.

People are to used to just mindlessly running through instances these days. And yeah, it did start with ToC. I dont know if anyone tried to do Halls of Lightning with level 76 to 78 characters in questing blues and greens, but it was HARD. I like hard instance as long as its balanced hard. Heroic Shadow Labs, no fucking thanks.

[Fordel]

Oh well shit, what's everyone running around in beta with then? WOTLK gear?

Some people are, those are the ones that die hilariously all the time because they think their 2% superior DPS is any way comparable to the extra 50k HP you get from the new gear.



But yea, they haven't put quest items in for any zone past Deepholm, and Deepholm is a 82-83 zone. I'm already at like 75,000 HP with my deepholm gear at 85, I fully expect to see 100,000 being the norm and tanks or PvP'ers heading into the 150,000+ HP range.

[Fabricated]

Almost every "Wow, things are hard" thread I have read on this and other forums are a direct result of not having Uldum and Twilight gear yet. We thought long and hard about whether it was a good idea to bump the level cap without that gear in place. In the end, we thought it was worth getting feedback on the quest design and some of the encounter design. But encounter balance is enormously dependent on having the right gear. Just keep that in mind. Things will feel better when you have ugrades available.

Oh well shit, what's everyone running around in beta with then? WOTLK gear?

The gear shift this time is huge. Between stat changes and item level increases NO ONE will be going into level 85 heroics using more than 1-2 pieces of WotLK gear. WotLK was a lot softer; entry level greens were pretty much Karazhan level (entry BC raid), with level 80 greens/quest blues being vaguely better than BT/Sunwell gear. You're not gonna see people clearing the first tier of raiding in Cataclysm wearing 90% of the gear they had at the end of WoTLK.

I don't mind really, but there's gonna be some serious butthurt when people actually realize they're gonna be tossing Heroic Lich King gear and Shadowmourne for quest greens.