Cataclysm

[Khaldun]

They've already simplified stats multiple times. Why not get it down to one class-specific stat and items whose entire budget simply buffs that stat? Because that would remove any remaining fig leaves that imply complexity or choice in building a character? Since you also don't really have many interesting choices in building talents any more, either.

The only way to make differentiations between characters that isn't about choices relative to time played is a: labor time and b: player skill in coordinating actions. The second of which isn't much point if you're not heading towards a twitch-driven model. The first of which is a demonstrable way to alienate everyone but the catasses.

[WindupAtheist]

WoW items may as well all be class-specific and just have one stat on them called "good". My old sword was +40 good, and this new sword is +42 good, therefore the new one is 2 better. It's not like you're going to put down your life-leeching sword to take up the one that does extra damage to humanoids or something interesting like that. This shit needs to be easily spreadsheeted by the guys designing instances around expected player stats.

[Maledict]

To offer a counterpoint to the incredibly negativity in this thread.

Cataclsym is easily the best expansion WoW has done, and the game has been re-invigorated for me and my friends after Wrath almost killed it. Players I haven't seen in 18 months have returned to the game, and the numebr of apps to our guild has increased substantially (we are a casual raiding guild). Whilst content *is* harder than before, it is not as hard as TBC was or original vanilla instances. It is also a lot fairer - you wont die to ridiculous cleaves, you'll die because you fucked up to something easily avoided generally. The new heroics do push you towards grouping with friends rather than pick up grouping it, but generally in my experience if you explain each fight and tell people what to do you should be okay. You will also outgear them madly if you keep doing them - what was really hard in the first two weeks is now substantially easier due to the very clear and organised loot system. (Again, a first in an expansion - everything makes sense, and the loot tiers are clear and understandable now).

The game is better balanced in terms of classes than it ever has been. More than ever before, you can raid with friends and as long as you fill up the requisite 2 tanks + 3 healers + roughly equal dps split you will be fine. I'm not sure where the idea that you need specific classes for raiding comes from, but it's flat out wrong in every way. Raiding is tougher than LK heroic modes without the big buff, but easier than Ulduar. We have killed one boss a night most nights.

PvP is borked, and the tradeskills leave a LOT to be desired, but overall this expansion stands head and shoudlers above the others. The levelling content is superb, the group content tough but fair, and the raids superb - Ulduar level quality.

[Ironwood]

God, I remember the good old days of Gruping with my friends.  Messy, but fun.


In other news, took another crack at Asaad tonight and downed him first attempt.

So, yeah, bunch around him and use Mass Dispel.  What a crock of shit.  Omg, Noobs, Lern2play, etc.  I still think it's fucking annoying and sneaky to play the whole game with chain lightning getting stronger the more people it bounces to, except this boss.

 

[Rasix]

So, should I just wait for fast flying before I bother leveling archaeology?  This has to be the slowest trade ever.

Just hit 60 with the goblin.  25 more levels, and it sounds like I'll be rage-quitting.  Thanks for the heads up, everyone. 

Also, is there a portal to Blasted Lands anymore? I'm not seeing it in Org.  Where it used to be is the goblin slum.  Home, sweet home.

[Selby]

Also, is there a portal to Blasted Lands anymore? I'm not seeing it in Org.  Where it used to be is the goblin slum.  Home, sweet home.

Down in the underground portion of the city near Ragefire Chasm.

[Maledict]

God, I remember the good old days of Gruping with my friends.  Messy, but fun.


In other news, took another crack at Asaad tonight and downed him first attempt.

So, yeah, bunch around him and use Mass Dispel.  What a crock of shit.  Omg, Noobs, Lern2play, etc.  I still think it's fucking annoying and sneaky to play the whole game with chain lightning getting stronger the more people it bounces to, except this boss.

 

Re Assadd. You dont need to dispel all his roots. His cast sequence after the first thunderstom goes:

Chain lightning --> static field --> chain lightning --> static field --> thunderstorm

The first staic field doesnt need dispelling because no-one needs to move. Also as mentioned earlier, jump when it starts catsing and it won't affect you at all. Tricky for the tank & healer to do, but dps really have no excuse.

re. the chain lightning - it's a bugger, and I still don't fully understand it, but it definitely has a HUGE range compared to normal chain lightnings. You really need to spread and use all the room, and ranged / healers stand at max range from the tank and mob.

[Minvaren]

So, should I just wait for fast flying before I bother leveling archaeology?  This has to be the slowest trade ever.

Just hit 60 with the goblin.  25 more levels, and it sounds like I'll be rage-quitting.  Thanks for the heads up, everyone. 

Also, is there a portal to Blasted Lands anymore? I'm not seeing it in Org.  Where it used to be is the goblin slum.  Home, sweet home.

Fast flying makes arch much more tolerable.

There's also a portal to BL in the troll area of the goblin slums.

[ezrast]

What I care about is that I can't tell which one to use because the 'better' part of 'better items' is utterly fucking marginal.

My strategy as a caster is "Does it have more int?  Does it have hit and am I above the cap yet?"  Anything more complicated than that is asking for trouble for the average player.

The "good" stat already exists. It's called ilvl. It's right there on the tooltip. Can't decide between 2 items? Jjust choose the higher ilvl one. You'll be fine, I promise.

If Blizzard wants the three stats to all "mean the same thing," why are they separate stats to begin with?   

Because believe it or not, some people like doing the math. Some people like the customization, limited as it may be. I like crit because it procs lots of fun things for my class. But I also have a lot of cast times, so it's reasonable that someone else in my situation might prefer haste.

Nobody's forcing you to look at spreadsheets and optimize reforging and whateverthefuck. If they added more variety in the itemization you all would be back to complaining about how shit for your spec never drops, or how half of the items are more useful for class X than class Y because they don't trigger class Y's mastery or blah blah blah.

[ezrast]

re. the chain lightning - it's a bugger, and I still don't fully understand it, but it definitely has a HUGE range compared to normal chain lightnings. You really need to spread and use all the room, and ranged / healers stand at max range from the tank and mob.

Fuck no. Stack up and just AoE heal through that shit. Standing on the edge increases the chance of someone getting fucked by Supremacy of the Storm.

[Maledict]

re. the chain lightning - it's a bugger, and I still don't fully understand it, but it definitely has a HUGE range compared to normal chain lightnings. You really need to spread and use all the room, and ranged / healers stand at max range from the tank and mob.

Fuck no. Stack up and just AoE heal through that shit. Standing on the edge increases the chance of someone getting fucked by Supremacy of the Storm.

Never had an issue with folks not having the time to run for supremacy, but I guess if the dispels are a problem that might work. Generally I just hate tactics which rely on healing through damage effects, as they put a lot of strain on the healer in a time when their mana and AE healing has been severely reduced.

Other thing about the root I forgot - it is a normal root effect, so any class that can escape roots can use it to escape static cling. Blink, demonic circle( ?), shapeshift etc. all work to escape. Not sure what other class have, but there's a lot of tools you can use.

[caladein]

There's still a Blasted Lands portal in the Troll area.

[Sheepherder]

Making the final bos drop an eipc item wouldn't change the stats at all. The itemisation formula changed in Cata so that epic items have exactly the same ibudget as a blue or green item.

Got any proof for that?

[Threash]

Making the final bos drop an eipc item wouldn't change the stats at all. The itemisation formula changed in Cata so that epic items have exactly the same ibudget as a blue or green item.

Got any proof for that?

I don't have a quote but yeah i did read a blue post that said color just meant rarity not quality now.

[Sheepherder]

I'll keep that in mind, it would certainly explain why a bunch of blues I vendored today seemed to be utter shit compared to higher ilevel greens.

[ezrast]

re. the chain lightning - it's a bugger, and I still don't fully understand it, but it definitely has a HUGE range compared to normal chain lightnings. You really need to spread and use all the room, and ranged / healers stand at max range from the tank and mob.

Fuck no. Stack up and just AoE heal through that shit. Standing on the edge increases the chance of someone getting fucked by Supremacy of the Storm.

Never had an issue with folks not having the time to run for supremacy, but I guess if the dispels are a problem that might work. Generally I just hate tactics which rely on healing through damage effects, as they put a lot of strain on the healer in a time when their mana and AE healing has been severely reduced.

I dunno, Healing Rain is essentially a Healing Wave ("big" heal) on every party member, for less than twice the cost of a Heailng Wave. The efficiency increase is so massive that in fights with mild-to-moderate AoE it actually is better to just heal through it. Or would be if all these dungeon fights weren't movement-fests, and if DPS would actually stack close enough for AoE to work.

[Rendakor]

It doesn't help that most "good" dps are trained to run immediately out of ground effects. Healing rain is the worst, since it looks almost identical to a current-tier boss effect.

[Ingmar]

Just confirming that it is correct that items of the same ilvl will have the same budget regardless of color.

[lesion]

Confirming confirmation...
Confirming...

Confirmation confirmed. Welcome back, Commander.

[kildorn]

It doesn't help that most "good" dps are trained to run immediately out of ground effects. Healing rain is the worst, since it looks almost identical to a current-tier boss effect.

I am so guilty of running out of healing rain when the expansion started. It's just instinct at this point "hmm, fighting trash I've never done before. Shit on ground, getting the fuck out of it, check"

And re: Asaad: I'm not entirely sure you can safely outrange that chain lightning. My lock gets hit by it at about 30 yards out, so spreading out unless it's an exactly 35 yard to outrange it thing just means the healer can't use AE heals to deal with it. That said, you can usually ignore the chain lightning damage until the grounding field phase and just heal then. I think that's why he's getting buffed. :D

Also did H-Stonecore last night. Which I maintain may have more "will wipe you in 5 seconds" fights than H-GB, but H-GB has far more fights where one person messing up can screw you for good (messing up the malignant trogg, fire elemental kite fails, nobody snaring/switching fast enough on adds) while stonecore is just happy to outright kill a party member if they fail to do X (stand in shards, eat slabhide's AE, fail to gtfo of shatter, fail to see rock)

I SO ate a rock on the last lady when she was at 1%, too.

[caladein]

It doesn't help that most "good" dps are trained to run immediately out of ground effects. Healing rain is the worst, since it looks almost identical to a current-tier boss effect.

I prefer that to the implementation of either of the Paladin AOEs though.  Holy Radiance is still a bit difficult for me to get a read on and Light of Dawn is the most annoying spell graphic in the world if the Paladin is moving.

[Khaldun]

It doesn't help that most "good" dps are trained to run immediately out of ground effects. Healing rain is the worst, since it looks almost identical to a current-tier boss effect.

Thank you. I spent the first three weeks freaking out about it every time I saw it. It also makes a lot of other ground effects hard to see or read.

[Hawkbit]

Turned 85 last night on my mage, mostly from Vash/Hyjal, PvP, dungeons and Arch.  So, I decided to head into TB to see what all the daily stuff is there.  WTF happened to mana regen and mob health in the jump to 85?  I realize I'm in ilvl 305 gear and that will change as I quest in Highlands and fill out more through dungeons, but damn.  I'm casting about 12 frostbolts to drop a mob.  If I get an add, run. 

Expecting a few l2p comments, but holy crap that was a drastic change. 

[Merusk]

TB Mobs are tougher than leveling-hub mobs.   I chew through stuff in TH 4-5 mobs at a time without a problem but the TB mobs give me a run for the money if I get just 2 in my heroic gear.

[kildorn]

TB mobs are mean, yeah. My DK does TB dailies in tank spec/gear because the chain spawning can murder me in frost spec. My priest doesn't even do TB dailies.

Amusingly, my lock just stood in the middle of The Leftovers spawn areas and farmed the mobs 3-4 at a time for cloth :P

[K9]

I normally try and grab a guildmate for the dailies, there's usually no problem getting at least one other to do it. Failing that asking in general helps too. It just makes them a lot more bearable

[Paelos]

I'm down to needing an orb. Life would be a lot simpler if they allowed you to sell the damn things.

[Ironwood]

But they're fairly easy to get and in 2 months you'll be swimming in them.  I have 3 already I can't use.  Made my shield and my belt.

[K9]

The orb system makes fuckall sense in its current implementation. Also five orbs for one dreamcloth?


 

[Threash]

It doesn't help that most "good" dps are trained to run immediately out of ground effects. Healing rain is the worst, since it looks almost identical to a current-tier boss effect.

Thank you. I spent the first three weeks freaking out about it every time I saw it. It also makes a lot of other ground effects hard to see or read.

This is horrible in raids, i feel like i'm dpsin in the middle of a fireworks display.  Then get yelled at because i didn't move out of the visual effect that i had absolutely no way of seeing.

[Ingmar]

I think that orb->dreamcloth recipe is in there is for down the road when you're swimming in them. That's not the only way to make dreamcloth, after all.

[Ironwood]

Tailoring is extremely item intensive.  Also, there's actually not a great deal of good shit.

I got to 500 on the lock and just stopped.  Fuck it.

525 on the BS tho.

[Lakov_Sanite]

seriously, you get max tailoring and you can make...2 belts and 2 pairs of pants, one spirit and one not. Whoop-de-freakin-do. Oh and each pattern costs a dreamcloth just to learn. There's also a bag with 2slots more than the last big bag but it costs a whopping 8 dreamcloth to make. There's just a sore lack of variety here and while each big patch will surely bring some new shiny raid material needing patterns, its sort of a waste of time now.

[Merusk]

You tailor for free bags and leg enchants. That's about the only reason to do it. Even the raid patterns have been historically lackluster, IIRC.

Also, yes once you start running heroics regularly you'll have more than enough orbs if you roll on them. I'm sitting on 5 just by rolling greed.

[kildorn]

The orb system makes fuckall sense in its current implementation. Also five orbs for one dreamcloth?


 

It's a 7 day cooldown to turn 30 volatile ___ into dreamcloth, or a 0 day cooldown to turn 5 orbs into one. It's basically saying 5 orbs is worth 7 days and about 300g.

Personally, I wouldn't burn non LFD based orbs on dreamcloth yet.