Cataclysm

[Ingmar]

I have been pretty inactive for the last couple weeks, I needed a break after finishing the Firelands grind. I probably have one good surge of obsessive playing left in me before SWTOR hits, but all bets are off at that point.

[Fordel]

It depends on what comes first:

• SWTOR Beta
• 4.3 Patch
• 1.8 Minecraft patch

 

[Sjofn]

Sjofn's been playing on Moon Guard instead of Doomhammer when she plays, mostly, so as far as Nevermore can tell, I'm pretty inactive. :P

Really, I'm pretty inactive anyway, the Firelands grind + still can't buy my fucking PvE Tier Last shoulders and hat + not raiding = Sjofn playing Tropico 2 (yes, Two) instead of finishing her Alliance paladin's PvP suit because ... meh. The next patch better be reeeeeally interesting (hahahahaha) or else I might just play other shit until SWTOR comes out. It's sort of funny how pissy I am about Tier Last's shoulders, at the very least, still needing me to raid to get them. I will jump through all sorts of hoops just to fucking match, and if you won't let me match, your hoops can cram themselves right up your ass.

[Setanta]

It's sort of funny how pissy I am about Tier Last's shoulders, at the very least, still needing me to raid to get them. I will jump through all sorts of hoops just to fucking match, and if you won't let me match, your hoops can cram themselves right up your ass.

This x 1000.

7 toons all with frigging Troll shoulders because even the two I raid with never see the token let along fight it out with 1-2 others who are waiting for the same token. All I want is the matching set :(

As for Firelands dailies - screw that for a cynical "keep them busy" mentality.

Sadly, I just hit 79 on toon #8 - WTF am I thinking?

[Mattemeo]

I hate Firelands so much I've pretty much given up trying to grind out those dailies. Even my daily frustration with the mechanics of the jousting at the Tourney 2 years ago still had me compelled to participate. Firelands is a horrible, horrible mess of bad quests, unpleasant mobs and an eye-burning orange-red horror-show of a zone. For the last couple of weeks, I've logged on to Doomhammer in the hopes of chatting to people. I've done the SW fishing and cooking dailies each night, and that's pretty much it. I play a little on Moonguard but when no one's around on either server I'm finding it hard to drum up any sort of enthusiasm. If Cataclysm has killed the game for most people, 4.2 has kicked the corpse into a fire.

[Soulflame]

The new dailies are worse than jousting?  There needs to be a bigger  .

[Sjofn]

Not worse mechanically, just worse in the fuck me this takes forever arghghghghgh sense. It feels like it takes forever to unlock everything, the quests feel like they take ages to do, it's just shitty all around.

[Shrike]

They're not that bad. It took me about 30 minutes to tear through the complete set of them. Yeah, it takes time to unlock them and that was a good deal less entertaining than the Sunwell ones, but...eh, not that bad.

Of course, having said all that, I think I've only been back twice since I got my hippogriff--and I still do the TB dailys. Well, usually.

Trust me, jousting was far worse than the FL dailys. FAR worse. I still do ICC dailys for the seals for twink gear, but I won't touch that jousting shit for anything. Not ever again.

[caladein]

I generally prefer Molten Front to previous daily hubs but there's really nothing to get from it.  My Hunter could get a grand total of a piece of gear and an enchant (which I just got made by a guildie) out of the whole deal.  The achievement mount is alright, but I prefer the Cenarion Expedition one if I'm going to use a hippogryph.

Which is nice, in a way, in that I didn't have to bother with it in a serious way after the first couple of days.  Which is more than I can say about Tol Barad and that damn trinket.  But I'm terrible about doing dailies anyway, so your mileage may vary.

[Ingmar]

I hate Firelands so much I've pretty much given up trying to grind out those dailies. Even my daily frustration with the mechanics of the jousting at the Tourney 2 years ago still had me compelled to participate. Firelands is a horrible, horrible mess of bad quests, unpleasant mobs and an eye-burning orange-red horror-show of a zone. For the last couple of weeks, I've logged on to Doomhammer in the hopes of chatting to people. I've done the SW fishing and cooking dailies each night, and that's pretty much it. I play a little on Moonguard but when no one's around on either server I'm finding it hard to drum up any sort of enthusiasm. If Cataclysm has killed the game for most people, 4.2 has kicked the corpse into a fire.

Now this I don't get at all, I found it way, way more palatable than the damn jousting. And I actually felt like I was making way faster progress unlocking stuff too - the entire thing can be done in a month (but maybe shouldn't...) I think the fact that we're not raiding and most of the people I logged in to play with aren't playing any more is what is keeping me away more than anything about the content itself, personally.

[Shrike]

Haven't seen anyone mention this yet, but GC (yep, one and only!) has a new watercooler post up on the death of threat in WoW.

Threat be a-changin'!

After the shitfest of lousy tanks in heroics this last weekend, I'm thinking this is a good thing and none too soon. I might even dust off my prot-pally and get back into things. Best of all, Omen can die in a thermonuclear fire. One less piece of shit cluttering up my UI.

[Rokal]

I hate Firelands so much I've pretty much given up trying to grind out those dailies. Even my daily frustration with the mechanics of the jousting at the Tourney 2 years ago still had me compelled to participate.

Firelands (the raid) is pretty awesome. Molten Front (the dailies) are pretty lame, but pretty much what I expected from a daily quest hub.

Btw, Blizzard announced the RealID cross-server grouping would remain free. A good decision.

[caladein]

Haven't seen anyone mention this yet, but GC (yep, one and only!) has a new watercooler post up on the death of threat in WoW.

Threat be a-changin'!

After the shitfest of lousy tanks in heroics this last weekend, I'm thinking this is a good thing and none too soon. I might even dust off my prot-pally and get back into things. Best of all, Omen can die in a thermonuclear fire. One less piece of shit cluttering up my UI.

Here's what Shrike's referring to: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/3300854.

Anyway, I got rid of Omen once they added in threat to tooltips.  It just hasn't been necessary for a long time if you have a threat dump.  That said, a decent part of the fun I get from playing a Hunter is from helping MD stuff to tanks (which will still be there in part) and having to fit Feigns in at the best time.

Part of me will miss hearing (and saying!) "Oh God, too much evil!  Too much evil!" on Vent, but I'm certainly not going to miss the massive pain in the ass that is the first 45s or so of Majordomo.

And yes, the Firelands raid is pretty awesome.

[Kirth]

I hate Firelands so much I've pretty much given up trying to grind out those dailies. Even my daily frustration with the mechanics of the jousting at the Tourney 2 years ago still had me compelled to participate.

Firelands (the raid) is pretty awesome. Molten Front (the dailies) are pretty lame, but pretty much what I expected from a daily quest hub.

Btw, Blizzard announced the RealID cross-server grouping would remain free. A good decision.

Considering they are staring down the barrel of hemorrhaging subs within the next 6 months I can't see them making any rock the boat type of decisions now or in the future.

[Ingmar]

EDIT: I can reed

[Rokal]

Considering they are staring down the barrel of hemorrhaging subs within the next 6 months I can't see them making any rock the boat type of decisions now or in the future.

Might want to read the recent dev post about threat. They're making some pretty massive changes via hotfix instead of testing them somewhere and getting feedback first. Sounds completely idiotic tbh. They want to believe that their fights are fun enough that tanks will have other things to do now that threat won't really be a consideration, but it's simply not the case for most fights, at least in raiding. I think the change will make tanking less fun/interesting, and the game more shallow.

Edit: For example, Baleroc is the most "patchwerk-y" fight in Firelands, since you mostly just stand still and do your stuff correctly for ~5-6 minutes. This is not boring for healers because they are following a rotation to maximize +healing stacks and the tank is taking some huge spike damage. This is not boring for dps because they have to rotate a DoT by being the closest person to a crystal that lands on the ground, getting away from it and letting someone else step in when dmg gets too high. The only thing tanks had going for them in the fight was a) trying to use cooldowns for massive spike damage and b) maintaining threat, since all the dps are going pretty hard and can focus well on their dps. Now the only thing tanks will be worrying about is cooldowns every 30-60 seconds when the spike damage comes. The rest of that time? I guess they could watch TV or play Angry Birds on their phone, nbd.

The model they are doing could work by making more mechanics in fights that tanks will also have to deal with, but right now a lot of fights specifically avoid throwing those mechanics at tanks. It's a bad change to implement without any testing or other changes to the fights in the game.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Considering they are staring down the barrel of hemorrhaging subs within the next 6 months I can't see them making any rock the boat type of decisions now or in the future.

Might want to read the recent dev post about threat. They're making some pretty massive changes via hotfix instead of testing them somewhere and getting feedback first. Sounds completely idiotic tbh. They want to believe that their fights are fun enough that tanks will have other things to do now that threat won't really be a consideration, but it's simply not the case for most fights, at least in raiding. I think the change will make tanking less fun/interesting, and the game more shallow.

If you think there are more than 100 people in the playerbase that want threat in this game, you are smoking some heavily laced weed.

[Ingmar]

Have you tanked much Rokal? Speaking as a tank I think this is a fantastic change. It fixes the 'new tank in random dungeon' situation and doesn't really change much at all for geared tanks, who never lost aggro for the most part anyway except on a couple specific fights that were designed that way (or after tank swaps with... undergeared tanks). Oh well, Prince Malchezzar will be easier now, sky is falling.

[Merusk]

MF Dailes are aptly shorthanded because that's what I yell quite often.

Then again I'm doing them on a prot pally who has 3 bits of purple and whose offspec is pvp healing.   They're a tedious chore that eats through my defensive CDs because magic damage loves paladins.

Maybe if I did them on the rogue or DK I'd feel differently.  Right now they suck and I can only tolerate doing them every few days.

[Rokal]

Have you tanked much Rokal? Speaking as a tank I think this is a fantastic change. It fixes the 'new tank in random dungeon' situation and doesn't really change much at all for geared tanks, who never lost aggro for the most part anyway except on a couple specific fights that were designed that way (or after tank swaps with... undergeared tanks). Oh well, Prince Malchezzar will be easier now, sky is falling.

I still tank pretty often on my bear druid. Every ZG/ZA I feel like I need to fight pretty hard for threat, at least at the start of a pull. I don't think it's a bad thing, it's really the only consistent/exciting thing that happens for a tank. I'd be annoyed if someone pulled a pack for me so I started with a handi-cap, but I think the rush to get threat (and hold it) is one of the only things tanking has going for it that makes it fun.

Zanzil is an example of a fight that wouldn't really be affected by this change. There is plenty for a tank to do that will make that fight interesting even if threat isn't an issue. Bloodlord, Archaeology boss, and Panther are fights that I think don't really have enough going for them as a tank. The loss of threat will just make those fights boring.

[Rokal]

Just to keep 3 different conversations going at once...

It's sort of funny how pissy I am about Tier Last's shoulders, at the very least, still needing me to raid to get them. I will jump through all sorts of hoops just to fucking match, and if you won't let me match, your hoops can cram themselves right up your ass.

There are off-set head/shoulder pieces that use the same art as the tier pieces, so it's actually much easier to get 'matching' art if you want. They're usually on much earlier bosses too.

[Ingmar]

Just to keep 3 different conversations going at once...

It's sort of funny how pissy I am about Tier Last's shoulders, at the very least, still needing me to raid to get them. I will jump through all sorts of hoops just to fucking match, and if you won't let me match, your hoops can cram themselves right up your ass.

There are off-set head/shoulder pieces that use the same art as the tier pieces, so it's actually much easier to get 'matching' art if you want. They're usually on much earlier bosses too.

They're on bosses at all. You can't have a matching suit without raiding, is the complaint.

[Rokal]

They're on bosses at all. You can't have a matching suit without raiding, is the complaint.

7 toons all with frigging Troll shoulders because even the two I raid with never see the token let along fight it out with 1-2 others who are waiting for the same token. All I want is the matching set :(

I realize most are angry they have to raid at all, but some like Setanta may just be thinking "I'll have to roll against 6+ other people even if my token drops".

[Mattemeo]

I hate Firelands so much I've pretty much given up trying to grind out those dailies. Even my daily frustration with the mechanics of the jousting at the Tourney 2 years ago still had me compelled to participate.

Firelands (the raid) is pretty awesome. Molten Front (the dailies) are pretty lame, but pretty much what I expected from a daily quest hub.

I tend to stick both Raid (which I doubt I'll ever experience) and the dailies under one moniker as principally neither can exist without the other, ala ICC. That and 'Molten Front' suggests a liltte part of a zone, and 'Firelands' suggests the whole thing so it kind of sounds the wrong way round anyway.

[Kirth]

Considering they are staring down the barrel of hemorrhaging subs within the next 6 months I can't see them making any rock the boat type of decisions now or in the future.

Might want to read the recent dev post about threat. They're making some pretty massive changes via hotfix instead of testing them somewhere and getting feedback first. Sounds completely idiotic tbh. They want to believe that their fights are fun enough that tanks will have other things to do now that threat won't really be a consideration, but it's simply not the case for most fights, at least in raiding. I think the change will make tanking less fun/interesting, and the game more shallow.

Edit: For example, Baleroc is the most "patchwerk-y" fight in Firelands, since you mostly just stand still and do your stuff correctly for ~5-6 minutes. This is not boring for healers because they are following a rotation to maximize +healing stacks and the tank is taking some huge spike damage. This is not boring for dps because they have to rotate a DoT by being the closest person to a crystal that lands on the ground, getting away from it and letting someone else step in when dmg gets too high. The only thing tanks had going for them in the fight was a) trying to use cooldowns for massive spike damage and b) maintaining threat, since all the dps are going pretty hard and can focus well on their dps. Now the only thing tanks will be worrying about is cooldowns every 30-60 seconds when the spike damage comes. The rest of that time? I guess they could watch TV or play Angry Birds on their phone, nbd.

The model they are doing could work by making more mechanics in fights that tanks will also have to deal with, but right now a lot of fights specifically avoid throwing those mechanics at tanks. It's a bad change to implement without any testing or other changes to the fights in the game.

Couldn't read it at work, but I was more implying things like "Hey this great thing we devolved will be a premium access only feature". I seem to recall that they flip flopped on this before when the nerfed misdirection and other agro related things because then wanted tanks to work more for threat. 

[Fordel]

Making holding aggro easier is entirely about making tank fail less likely in a random dungeon. Which in theory would help get more tanks in the queue, which will help the queue times for DPS and etc...

[Rendakor]

Edit: For example, Baleroc is the most "patchwerk-y" fight in Firelands, since you mostly just stand still and do your stuff correctly for ~5-6 minutes. This is not boring for healers because they are following a rotation to maximize +healing stacks and the tank is taking some huge spike damage. This is not boring for dps because they have to rotate a DoT by being the closest person to a crystal that lands on the ground, getting away from it and letting someone else step in when dmg gets too high. The only thing tanks had going for them in the fight was a) trying to use cooldowns for massive spike damage and b) maintaining threat, since all the dps are going pretty hard and can focus well on their dps. Now the only thing tanks will be worrying about is cooldowns every 30-60 seconds when the spike damage comes. The rest of that time? I guess they could watch TV or play Angry Birds on their phone, nbd.

Have you actually tanked Baleroc, or just heroics? As a blood DK, Baleroc is my favorite fight out of the first 6 (attempting Rag for the first time this week) because I can take a really active role in my survival. Every DS I use is timed for optimal healing, AMS/DRW used appropriately based on what weapon he pulls out, etc. Although, even before this hotfix I never had threat problems; vengeance scales based on your HP and by the end of the fight I'm sitting at ~1.5m health, so I'm doing crazy damage.

Maybe DKs are the exception, but the only fight I've had threat problems on in FL is the trash during Beth'tilac. The only other fights where aggro matters are the tank swap fights (both BH bosses come to mind) but the issue is trying not to pull aggro back off the other tank because you have vengeance and he doesn't yet.

[Setanta]

I tanked on my warrior in Vanilla, my Bear in TBC and my Pally in WotLK along with a little DK tanking. Vanilla tanking was boring, LK was fun, TBC was challenging. I like threat, it keeps me thinking and reacting, especially on multi-pulls (Bear tanking without thrash was tear-inducing in Cata).

Now I can't compare a vanilla warrior to a Cata one, but I think I'd prefer threat kept in the game, DPS meters broken by Blizzard and DPS L2P/watch threat. If I'm here to tank, I want the challenge, not boredom.

[Rokal]

Making holding aggro easier is entirely about making tank fail less likely in a random dungeon. Which in theory would help get more tanks in the queue, which will help the queue times for DPS and etc...

Making interesting new 5-mans would help more :p I don't tank very often on my druid anymore because I'm bored of all the heroics and I don't need anything from them any more.

Have you actually tanked Baleroc, or just heroics? As a blood DK, Baleroc is my favorite fight out of the first 6 (attempting Rag for the first time this week) because I can take a really active role in my survival. Every DS I use is timed for optimal healing, AMS/DRW used appropriately based on what weapon he pulls out, etc. Although, even before this hotfix I never had threat problems; vengeance scales based on your HP and by the end of the fight I'm sitting at ~1.5m health, so I'm doing crazy damage.

Maybe DKs are the exception, but the only fight I've had threat problems on in FL is the trash during Beth'tilac. The only other fights where aggro matters are the tank swap fights (both BH bosses come to mind) but the issue is trying not to pull aggro back off the other tank because you have vengeance and he doesn't yet.

I main a rogue, so I haven't tanked baleroc. That said, we've done the fight with a paladin, DK, and warrior tank. Out of those, DKs had the most control over their survivability by a wide margin.

[Lightstalker]

Maybe the add tank can make it up to #2 before Shannox gibbs the MT for slow normal mode kills now?  That would actually be a notable difference and reduction in difficulty for that fight.

Baleroc is a really dumb example for the threat change having consequence.  Dude is tauntable and vengeance goes nuts on that fight. 

Making every tank behave more like a DK is not going to end well.  DKs are the least played of the tanks and their reactive mastery places them at a severe disadvantage to Paladins and Warriors for bosses with Frenzy effects.  Baleroc's normal melee attacks are more trouble for me than his Decimation Blade and his Inferno Blade is the easiest portion of the fight - it allows everyone to catch up; while I had to take myself off Beth'alac as a tank because I just can't equip a shield (from a dead tank at 15 stacks to a boring kill at 33 stacks).  This threat change will have minimal impact on raiding tanks, it'll only put off the problems with noob tanks in 5-mans (a 3 vs. 5 multiple also doesn't scale), and the interest in making all tanks play more like DKs will probably drive more players away than any of the current problems with tanking in the game. 

[Ingmar]

Making holding aggro easier is entirely about making tank fail less likely in a random dungeon. Which in theory would help get more tanks in the queue, which will help the queue times for DPS and etc...

Making interesting new 5-mans would help more :p I don't tank very often on my druid anymore because I'm bored of all the heroics and I don't need anything from them any more.

Not at all. The supply of tanks who don't go because of bad experiences is much higher than the supply of tanks who don't go because they don't need/want any gear from the instance, I would bet money on that.

[Paelos]

Making holding aggro easier is entirely about making tank fail less likely in a random dungeon. Which in theory would help get more tanks in the queue, which will help the queue times for DPS and etc...

Making interesting new 5-mans would help more :p I don't tank very often on my druid anymore because I'm bored of all the heroics and I don't need anything from them any more.

Not at all. The supply of tanks who don't go because of bad experiences is much higher than the supply of tanks who don't go because they don't need/want any gear from the instance, I would bet money on that.

That and if you are remotely social as a tank you can handcraft a group of people you know aren't morons whenever you play. People will adjust to your schedule usually.

[Merusk]

I love tanking for guild groups. Nothing better.  I won't touch PUGs as a tank anymore.  You're never going fast enough or you're being too cautious if you're not doing pulls of 4+ mobs.  That's great but uh I'm still in blue gear that's not happening.

I've only done ZA once because of this. My Horde guild simply doesn't have the skills to raid and if they did they're not on often enough.  It took us 3 nights to do ZA and it involved many, many wipes - none due to aggro loss on my part.

Fuck the 5-mans with a rusty spoon if you think I'm going near that in a PUG.  The shit's not fun and I was bored of ZG/ ZA 3 1/2 years ago.

So good luck to Blizz getting more tanks with this change. Threat wasn't the problem.

[Ingmar]

Well it wasn't the *only* problem, anyway. I've definitely had plenty of tanks I've ripped threat off of when playing as a fury warrior so this will help that at least.

[Paelos]

Blizzard can't solve the real problem of making tanks babysit people, especially stupid/impatient/mouthy people. When you strip social systems down to their barest essentials, you get shitty results.