Patch 3.3

[Selby]

Mages
    * Talents
          o Arcane
                + Incanter's Absorption: This talent now only grants additional spell power when damage is absorbed by Mana Shield, Frost Ward, Fire Ward, or Ice Barrier. The limit of 5% of the mage's health on the spell power buff has been removed.

This kind of gives me mixed feelings.  I use this and enjoy it, but everyone says the points are better spent elsewhere.  So I guess I can recover them now and be like everyone else =P

[Mattemeo]

   * Dungeon Finder
          o The Deserter debuff given to players who leave a dungeon prematurely when queuing via the Random Dungeon option has been increased to 30 minutes, up from 15 minutes. The cooldown for using the Random Dungeon option remains 15 minutes.

          o Our Oculus bribe bag was a failure. If this new penalty doesn't work, we're just gonna come to your house and make you do it at gunpoint.

I'm down with that. Ditching Oculus is retarded. It's a 15 minute instance, tops. The only reason it takes longer is because people keep ditching it when they zone in and make those with a mental constitution stronger than a beached jellyfish wait for the next member.

[Simond]

    * Dungeon Finder
          o The Deserter debuff given to players who leave a dungeon prematurely when queuing via the Random Dungeon option has been increased to 30 minutes, up from 15 minutes. The cooldown for using the Random Dungeon option remains 15 minutes.

          o Our Oculus bribe bag was a failure. If this new penalty doesn't work, we're just gonna come to your house and make you do it at gunpoint.

I find it tends to be CoStrat (although hopefully this patch will fix that as well), Halls of Stone and bloody Old Kingdom that people quit out of now more than Oculus.

Mainly because one of the mandatory HoS bosses is terrible, the other still eats pugs from time to time and nobody wantd to do the other bosses. OK? OK is just flat out annoying. It's the Auchenai Crypts of WotLK.

[WindupAtheist]

I'm down with that. Ditching Oculus is retarded. It's a 15 minute instance, tops. The only reason it takes longer is because people keep ditching it when they zone in and make those with a mental constitution stronger than a beached jellyfish wait for the next member.

Have fun the first time your tank decides he'd rather pick his nose in Dalaran for 15 minutes and wait for the vote kick. Oculus is fucking garbage and their is nothing in Blizzard's arsenal that would compel me to do it.

[Mattemeo]

It's quick. It's easy. There's a bunch of achievements. There's a free bag of gems and emblems at the end. The only thing that ruins Oculus are those that ditch it on zone-in. Now, by the time that Tank's done waiting in Dalaran, I've finished an instance and am several emblems up and already queing again. A winner is me? Yep.

[Lakov_Sanite]

    * Dungeon Finder
          o The Deserter debuff given to players who leave a dungeon prematurely when queuing via the Random Dungeon option has been increased to 30 minutes, up from 15 minutes. The cooldown for using the Random Dungeon option remains 15 minutes.

          o Our Oculus bribe bag was a failure. If this new penalty doesn't work, we're just gonna come to your house and make you do it at gunpoint.

People actually stay in oculus now. it's halls of stone that i quit every single time. fuck you brann

[Selby]

It's quick. It's easy. There's a bunch of achievements.

Seriously.  I'm in and out in 12 minutes.  I don't quit any instance I come across, but I sure roll my eyes at getting OK yet again.  I don't understand the hate for HoS, it's a cakewalk as long as people are smart enough to stay out of the laser beam and the tank has enough of a pulse to pick up the adds.

[WindupAtheist]

Don't care. If they added "play tic-tac-toe for 15 minutes and get free badges and some worthless gems and shit" as a random instance, I'd quit that too. Vehicles blow. I've already canceled again anyway.

[K9]

Time to start hoarding Frozen Orbs

Also Oculus is a joke now.

[Gobbeldygook]

Not in the notes: There is no longer any cooldown on votekicking people.

[WindupAtheist]

Sweet. So now everyone will just go "kick plz" and nobody will ever get a deserter debuff at all.

[Evildrider]

Time to start hoarding Frozen Orbs

Also Oculus is a joke now.

Did I miss the note about Frozen Orbs?  Cuz umm.. i'm pretty sure everyone has at least 2-3 stacks of those by now.

[Triforcer]

What Blizz should do is give everyone five "idiot demerits" to hand out.  The demerits regenerate at one per day for the giver, and you can only have one of your demerits sticking to any specific person.  If a person gets a demerit, it takes two days for it to wear off.

If someone gets ten idiot demerits put on them (before the oldest one call fall off after two days from when it was put on), their character name changes to Donkey Raping Shit Eater and their character polymorphs into a literal jackass.  They can't use any of their skills and if they try to /shout, /tell, /whisper etc. the recipient only hears "I have no fucking skill and am a huge fucking jackass.  NEVER GROUP WITH ME EVER."  This state persists for 48 real life hours.  

[Soulflame]

I think this is more of a hit to people who zone in, say queue for a random, zone in, and query, "Am I the replacement healer?  In Heroic Old Kingdom?  I am?  Okay then, I'll be damned if I'm getting a repair bill because you fuckers fail at whatever it was you failed at."  I'm calling out HOK specifically, because there are a couple of places where careless tanks can get themselves or healers killed, which of course wipes the whole damn group.  That, and it's happened a couple of times that I've been dropped into an HOK group where the dps were woefully undergeared, and they have no clue about killing guardians, or interrupting spell flingers, or not standing in flamestrike, or what have you.

As for H Oc, I'm of two minds about it.  I'll just stick around for it, because the instance is so damned easy now (HOK is now one of the more difficult instances remaining, hilariously enough, because of the various crazy mechanics the trash has) and it's not uncommon to clear the place in 15 minutes.  On the other hand, I also am not entirely happy about the instance, because I don't recall the option GREEN FUCKING DRAKE when I created my character, and I understand why people get irritated when they're shoved into a vehicle.

Anyway, I'm not pleased about this, no not at all.  The most likely result is tanks and healers will either 1.  figure out the mechanics of the debuff, and wait for the trigger to not get the debuff, or 2.  They'll stop running randoms as much, and run with guildmates instead.

[caladein]

Coming into a Random Heroic as a replacement healer or tank rocks (at least on my Priest and Paladin respectively), especially if I'm just doing it for the Frost Emblems.

As for the Oculus hate (above some "I HATE VEHICLES" types like WUA), I just don't get it.  The only "vehicle" portions are killing a few drakes in between platforms, moving between platforms, and the last boss.  It's been said before, but the only thing that makes Oculus a pain in the ass is the initial zone-in waiting for people to bail.

[WindupAtheist]

Hell I've been known to drop HTOC just to avoid the jousting. I mostly PVP, dungeons just aren't a big enough priority for me to suck it up through ones I don't like. They could make the debuff an hour and I'd just drop Oculus or whatever and go farm honor.

[apocrypha]

Increasingly punitive measures are never going to work, and it feels very contrary to the entire Blizzard ethos with WoW, the essence of which has been to remove the hammering-nails-into-your-dick aspect of MMORPGs.

If they remove Oculus from the rotation then people will have another instance they don't like. If they increase the "punishment" for ditching even more then it won't make any difference to those who want to leave a dungeon because they don't like it - as WUA illustrates they'll just go play another character or do something else until the debuff is gone. And why should people be *forced* to do things they don't want to do in-game? It's a game, it's supposed to be fun ffs.

Why not just remove the random element from the random dungeon finder? Just make the 1st heroic you do in the day give you 2 Frosties regardless of whether you choose your dungeon or not. So people won't run Oculus or HoS or CoS so often. So what? Who cares? The instance load balancing surely doesn't mean that there's limited ability to run more of one specific dungeon than another?

[Simond]

Time to start hoarding Frozen Orbs

Also Oculus is a joke now.

Did I miss the note about Frozen Orbs?  Cuz umm.. i'm pretty sure everyone has at least 2-3 stacks of those by now.

There's a vendor going into Dalaran that will sell "tradeskill items" in exchange for frozen orbs.

Don't care. If they added "play tic-tac-toe for 15 minutes and get free badges and some worthless gems and shit" as a random instance, I'd quit that too. Vehicles blow. I've already canceled again anyway.

Quests

    * Many quests which require vehicles have had their vehicle mechanics updated and improved in the interest of fun.

 

[caladein]

The whole point of Random Queues is to get people who just want to farm badges/honor in the same pool as people who want to do a specific (or specific group of) dungeon/battleground.

For example, my Paladin's last Elder was in DTK.  So, I queued up for a Heroic DTK and instead of being instant it took a minute or so to get a group.  If everyone ran AN once a day, that simply wouldn't have happened.

In the case of people who hate one or two dungeons, they can either queue up for all dungeons except those and not get the 2 Badges + Gold or eat the penalty if the LFD system comes up snake eyes every once in a while.  The game's not forcing anyone to do anything, but if you're setting up an incentive structure for your entire population of 80s, sometimes people are going to get screwed.

Edit: Grammar.

[apocrypha]

Fair enough, good point about making it easier (possible) to do specifics in the same pool as the badges per hour crowd.

In which case I support the change to 30 mins deserter debuff. That's enough of a disincentive to make people slightly more reluctant to ditch without good reason (and I consider "I fucking hate this place" as a perfectly good reason tbh) without overly punishing people with such a good reason.

The system is never going to be perfect, it involves humans, but it's still a bazillion times better than what we had before 3.3.

[K9]

Time to start hoarding Frozen Orbs

Also Oculus is a joke now.

Did I miss the note about Frozen Orbs?  Cuz umm.. i'm pretty sure everyone has at least 2-3 stacks of those by now.

I'm sure some of you noticed this in the 3.3.3 PTR patch notes:

    * Frozo the Renowned has moved into the Dalaran Magus Commerce Exchange and will be trading your Frozen Orbs for various other trade goods.


For those curious, here are the items for which you can trade your Frozen Orbs to Frozo. These each cost 1 Frozen Orb unless noted otherwise in parentheses:

    * Crusader Orb (6)
    * Runed Orb (4)
    * Eternal Fire
    * Eternal Earth
    * Eternal Water
    * Eternal Air
    * Eternal Life
    * Eternal Shadow
    * Frost Lotus
    * Pattern: Frosty Flying Carpet [Tailors Only] (6)

[apocrypha]

Awesome, I've got 80 of the bloody things stored up in the guild bank. Will help to bring the prices down on a lot of crafted stuff.

And a new flying carpet for tailors? Awesome again 

[Rendakor]

I understand that forcing people to queue for a Random helps people get specifics done easier, but allowing us the option to opt out of a few dungeons while queuing for randoms would be a big help.

[Drubear]

Not sure totally what the problem they're trying to solve: if they just want more people doing Oculus, just double the Triumphs you get from each boss or have the final drop a Frost too. Maybe that would make it too good and thereby annoy someone else?

I can just see some dev/designer somewhere stomping his/her feet (Dev QQ?) that people don't like their dungeon and demand MAKE THE REWARDS BETTAH!1!

YouTube vids: "LEAVE ... (sniff) ... OCULUS ... (sniff) ... ALONE!!!"

[Jayce]

I still think Oculus is fun.   

[WindupAtheist]

I understand that forcing people to queue for a Random helps people get specifics done easier, but allowing us the option to opt out of a few dungeons while queuing for randoms would be a big help.

This.

[Sheepherder]

Except it's still contrary to the point of random LFG, because everyone will simply un-queue everything they don't like unless they need it, leaving the ones that do need it in the lurch.

[Lakov_Sanite]

On a side note, could the prince look any more like a douchebag now?

[Simond]

He is truly his father's son.
Poor sod. 

[caladein]

They really are making some spectacularly ugly characters/redesigns these days.

[WindupAtheist]

Except it's still contrary to the point of random LFG, because everyone will simply un-queue everything they don't like unless they need it, leaving the ones that do need it in the lurch.

You only let people blacklist one or two dungeons. Not everyone is going to blacklist the same ones. Let the retards who just have to specific-queue for Oculus run it with the people who hate Halls of Stone more. I mean fuck, battlegrounds take anywhere from 20 to 80 people (two sides, remember) and I've been getting into those just fine for years without a random function.

Oh, except Isle of Conquest. There are between zero and one of those running on my battlegroup at any given hour. (Because everyone just LOVES vehicles!) I guess random BG queues will help with that. Of course without marks of honor to farm, random-queuers will be the only people in there.

Seriously, this is someone at Blizzard butthurt that people would rather /dance in Dalaran for 15 minutes than do a couple of their shittier dungeons, and farm half-decade old AV rather than shoot themselves out of catapults and all that other silly shit they worked so hard on for IoC. They're usually immune to this sort of pettiness, but not always. That whole arena/esports thing was SOMEONE'S baby, and look how long it's taken for them to give up on that.

[Fordel]

To be fair, the problem with Conquest isn't the actual vehicles, but WoW interpretation of a siege. If everyone was just able to DPS down the door normally, it would still be unpopular, since the keeps themselves aren't designed with any kind of practical defense in mind.

[Paelos]

Old content is old content. It's even dumber when it's bad old content. I don't mind farming dire maul or strat to this very day. Why? Because I can solo it and make some money while having a good time relaxing. Time away from the forced runs, the forced shit, and the forced achievement gearscoring morons.

[Fabricated]

I think the primary dungeon everyone hates to pieces now is CoS, and way more so than Oculus. None of the pubtards drop oculus anymore when I get into one, but the last 6-7 times I've gotten CoS since the oculus bribe bag+dungeon streamlining patch I've come in and have had the group beg me not to drop.  I actually like CoS so I never do, but I guess 5 minutes of RP is just too much for people to bear.

I know people whine about OK but I never have anyone drop that. We just skip Amanitar and Jedoga. And now we don't even skip Jedoga anymore since it takes 10 seconds to get to her. This is coming from a warrior tank though; I can negate the most annoying trash there with spell reflect. The spell flingers will literally instagib themselves if I reflect their big nuke.

[Lantyssa]

Had our healer drop from Oculus yesterday, but things went fine after that.  Was a clean run, only one death on the severely undergeared fury warrior I duo with.  Their first time through ever, my first time as melee.  Maybe we're strange, but we both like that place.

OK gave us some serious trouble last time through.  Jedoga, is that the lady who picks out a volunteer?  Whomever, we started fighting her then suddenly we get swarmed by the volunteers and die very quickly.  We thought maybe it was positioning, but it happened again.  Are you supposed to leave her alone until they take up positions?