Cracks starting to show?

[WindupAtheist]

So Tol Barad, supposedly the major new endgame PVP attraction, has finally come before the general public only to be greeted with universal revulsion and shock that something like this actually made it through testing.

Is this the end of the world or a harbinger of DOOOOOM? No. They'll patch it into something playable soon enough.

But Ali didn't used to take this many punches back in the sixties. Say what you will about Blizzard's weird grindy raid-gear-dominated PVP designs of the past, but at least it was theoretically possible for either side to win any of the battlegrounds.

[Rasix]

Dude, no more boxing analogies.  They're circling the drain.

[kildorn]

iirc, AV at it's introduction was HEAVILY alliance biased.

That said, in Tol Barad, horde and alliance have an even shot at winning the BG. The losers are whoever is attacking, not realm based. It's a world version of Strand right now, where the offense has a HUGE bias over the defenders. It's just that at least Strand lets both sides play offence in a round.

[Simond]

Blizzard will just hotfix it to "Defender needs to hold two bases" and consider it done.

[Ingmar]

That might actually make it work just fine.

[Paelos]

Blizzard will just hotfix it to "Defender needs to hold two bases" and consider it done.

Yep, and that's probably the logical fix.

[kildorn]

Make it hold two bases, give a bit more time to recap if you lose two, and I'd be happy with it. Right now it's comically easy to defend (and yet still, doomhammer alliance lost it)

[Ingmar]

This early in the cycle there probably aren't enough 85s to consistently have one side succeed. I could easily see horde taking it from us in a 10v10 type situation.

[Merusk]

When tanking, I totally think of my ghoul as less of a "more dps!" button and more of an "and you're a health potion. Seriously, just so we're clear about our relationship from the start."

I will admit I don't fully "get" when to use Army in a 5 man though, since they can taunt bosses and drive the entire group batty. Stop spinning the dragon you idiots and just eat him!

I do think we're back to early TBC heroic issues though. Which is that DPS classes without CC are worth less to me than those with CC. Warriors and DKs? Love yall, but a mage, rogue, shaman, lock, or priest is probably just flat out better for clearing this instance. Late TBC and Wrath swung too far into the "AE or go home", but the problem with early TBC was "have CC on every DPS or go home"

Well I meant I've learned as a DPS. Admittedly I'd ignored it as a tank during WOTLK, too, but as a DPS that 25% heal every 2 min has proven pretty invaluable.   Nice that it coincides with Unholy's ghoul summon timer, too.

I, too, feel bad about sacrificing him but mainly because "damnit, there's another dot that's not going for x minutes."  It's a pretty potent dot as Unholy, too.

Army is great for bosses that don't have breath mechanics and you can blow it to give the healer a break.  We started blowing it Coroborus last night during the last few seconds of the 2nd phase so we can beat the adds down quicker and give the healer a breather.

It proved very good in Halls of Origination.  Blow it after the 1st lever phase so they can taunt the boss while the healer tops everyone off or regens mana.   We also blew it on a few others but it's not sticking in my head atm.  Took me 3 hours to clear the damn place, it all started blending together.

I agree on the CC thing and it's one of the reasons I'm starting to look at tanking instead of DPSing.  At least there's still a role for me that way, unlike BC where a few classes had to sit on the sidelines because their CC wasn't reliable or reapply-able enough.

[Azazel]

I've kicked about 5 people from groups so far for outright refusing to CC.  One mage said "CC is for pussies" while the last hunter said "Fuck you."    5 might not seem like many, but I've been queuing as DPS, so with 45min+ queues that's a high percentage.

It's actually worse than I'd thought it would be right now, and the game is actually unfun to the point I'm thinking of leveling an alt instead of struggling through right now.  With people refusing to learn or use CC in normals, pugging them seems out of the question and within the guild our only heroic-capable healer is a priest who is lolsmite specced.. which apparently is stupidly broken and unworkable.  Bleh!

On the other hand I've quickly learned how to sacrifice my pet to keep my ass alive.  A button and ability I'd forgotten about the entirety of LK.

I've decided to not even activate Cata yet. I'll give it a couple of weeks or month or so to finish off the LK content and level up some alts to 80ish. I'm sure I'll still be able to make some money from ore in the weeks to come. Got to get a miner up that far first, actually...

[Azazel]

Dude, no more boxing analogies.  They're circling the drain.

Yes. Go with MMA ones. Much more up-to-date.

[WindupAtheist]

If you're a broski in an Affliction shirt.

[Azazel]

You say that like there's a higher form of art than skulls, wings, spiderwebs and random scratchings in a sketchbook style with the Olde English font plastered all over it.

Whatever happened to those f13 t-shirts, anyway. I'd probably buy some of the better ones now that I am permanently employed...

[Ivanneth]

This seems like the best place for a random Cataclysm gripe:

The Worgen idle sounds drive me up the wall. That dog mouth-smack/sniff-pant/snort noise irritates me so badly I have to yank my headphones off whenever I'm in town as alliance. Does it bug anyone else or am I just insane? (I know, I know false dichotomy)

[Reg]

Nope, I played through the Worgen newbie zone and don't plan to go back to the character until the snuffling and snorting stops.

[dd0029]

The snorting and snuffling is annoying.  I am also annoyed by the idle riding animation which, like the Draenei, is set to happen all the god damned time.  Its a wonder worgen aren't falling out of the skies judging from the exhaustion they exhibit when riding gryphons.  They yawn and stretch constantly.

[Ingmar]

The noise mostly just makes me miss having a dog.

[Reg]

On the other hand everything about my newbie Goblin Shaman is pure awesome.

[Rasix]

I love my goblin.  I mostly don't love the car noise with my mount.  I take off my headphones when I drive around.  This will be a non issue once I get another mount to use.  It's Exalted to use another racial mount, right?

[Xerapis]

Yes on the exalted.

Also, agree with the worgen-noise-hate.

I'm happily scanning the AH when some dogchick (bitch?) comes in and stands next to me. SNIFF SNORT SNUFFLE. At first I'm like, oh, that's new. By the second time, it was already OLD.

I might have to roll a gob soon. But it sounds like the trike suffers from the same problem the old roflcopter used to. They fixed the roflcopter now, though. Maybe there's hope for a trike muffler in the future too.

[Soulflame]

My goblin enhance shaman = awesome.  The trike constant rev up, shift, rev up, shift is not awesome.

Currently dungeoning my way to raptors.  Hm.  I may switch that to wolves.

Although a goblin on a chocobo may be awesome.

[Reg]

The trike doesn't bother me much but it'd be fun to get another mount anyway. I'm not going to grind for exalted though.  If I have to I'll just wait until I get to Ungoro and can get a Venomhide.

[Soulflame]

Venomhide is my ultimate goal.

I'm not grinding to exalted so much as leveling via RDF.  I tried questing, and was bored with it by level 16.

[Xerapis]

Oh geez.


Y'all are totally about to make me switch back to Horde.

[Reg]

Of the low level zones I've done so far the Horde ones have been the best. Silverpine for the Forsaken and Azshara for goblins have been just amazing.

[Ingmar]

I am pretty comfortable in saying now that I've been playing Cata for a while that there is really only one Giant Fuckup - victory conditions on Tol Barad. Total screwup, no real excuse. It hasn't changed hands in over a week on our server, ever since the population at 85 got high enough to have decent amounts of participation.

[DraconianOne]

When WoW Insider dedicate a whole post to "How to fix Tol Barad" rather than a "Ya know, Tol Barad isn't really that broken guys" then you know something is up.

[kildorn]

I am pretty comfortable in saying now that I've been playing Cata for a while that there is really only one Giant Fuckup - victory conditions on Tol Barad. Total screwup, no real excuse. It hasn't changed hands in over a week on our server, ever since the population at 85 got high enough to have decent amounts of participation.

We got within about 90 seconds of it flipping due to the horde monumentally screwing up, but yeah. It requires the defense to fail, not the offense to succeed.

[K9]

Another problem with Tol Barad is that the rewards are pretty meagre. You get a somewhat unimpressive chunk of honour, access to VoA Mark 2 and about 5 extra dailies. There's nothing you can get from winning Tol Barad that you can't get from losing. At least WG had the commendation gear which was frankly quite useful to people looking to gear up for PVP; Tol Barad does not parallel this in any way.

[Ingmar]

The extra dailies are enough to push it so you can actually cap out on Cata dailies, right now doing everything leaves you with 4-5 out of 25 still left. They also are a pretty significant boost to the rate you can raise that faction and get access to the mounts and trinkets - and the trinkets are a tier beyond anything you'll see in heroics for now.

[Sjofn]

There's nothing you can get from winning Tol Barad that you can't get from losing.

Given how fucked it is in regards to that right now, it's probably for the best. 

[DraconianOne]

Are the TB dailies limited to level 85 like the portal is or can you get there before reaching cap?

[K9]

I'd guess they are limited to level 85, although I haven't heard of anyone trying to be summoned onto the island. The fixed portal is 85 only, and there's no other normal means of getting there.

[Threash]

The extra dailies are enough to push it so you can actually cap out on Cata dailies, right now doing everything leaves you with 4-5 out of 25 still left. They also are a pretty significant boost to the rate you can raise that faction and get access to the mounts and trinkets - and the trinkets are a tier beyond anything you'll see in heroics for now.

Meh the epic dps trinket is actually below the blue heroic ones.  TB is worth it just for access to the loot pinata that drops t11 gear though.

[sinij]

It is really interesting to see how unimportant PvP polish is in Blizzard's eyes. Current state of arenas, BGs, Tol is nothing short of complete clusterfuck. Hunters and Rets (classes that got reworked) are total non-viable mess in PvP.  I wonder why they even bother adding new PvP content if they going to release it in such rough shape?

As to making ToL work? 2-base cap will guarantee it changing hands every time - too easy to zerg. Ideal solution is to turn each base into mini-IoC, where you have gates + cannons to get past in order to re-cap it.

A lot more interesting trainwreck to watch is how fundamentally player base fucks-up in Looking For Dungeon system with current slightly more difficult dungeon system. They increased difficulty and retards about to clog entire system - queues are already 50+ min for DPS and most "random" heroic groups only take 1 random person for a buff.