Patch 5.2: Thunder, Thunder, Thunder, Thunder King Ho!

[Merusk]

Doesn't matter, too late.  I was the last stalwart casual here and I just realized I haven't logged on in a month. Game drove us off, I'm done again.

[Paelos]

Doesn't matter, too late.  I was the last stalwart casual here and I just realized I haven't logged on in a month. Game drove us off, I'm done again.

That's why they lost that argument. They realized our subs all ran out and panicked (again) at the numbers. This happened roughly the same time in Cataclysm when 7 months in they nerfed most of the old raids to the ground, along with the release of Firelands and daaaaaaaaaaaaailies.

Also the D3 annual passes are starting to fall off the books. I believe they run until April at the latest, then they are gone completely.

[Rokal]

When the next raid tier comes out they are nerfing the previous one. How is this news, or evidence of anything besides business as usual?

This thread is truly hopeless.

[Ingmar]

Yeah the tinfoil has gotten too strong. They've been nerfing raids when the new ones come out forever now.

[Simond]

Ghostcrawler said they weren't going to, this time. They wanted people to earn their gear, etc. etc. Whether it was his idea or if he was just doing his job as dev team mouthpiece I have no idea, but it was definitely the plan of someone with a lot of clout.

And yeah, suddenly reverting back to the WotLK/Cata rolling raid buffs days after saying "Nope, not doing it" means someone else with more clout has turned up with a spreadsheet full of sub numbers. Next up: Something along the lines of doubling up of rep gain on dailies and/or account-wide rep.

E: Seriously. account-wide rep is a bloody brilliant idea. Gissa job, Blizz. I can do that.

[Rokal]

I don't recall seeing anything to the effect of "we are not going to nerf this tier when the next tier arrives", just that they wanted people to do this tier (via LFR) before starting the next (via LFR or normal). Hell, they've already nerfed individual fights in T14.

[Paelos]

Also I don't recall them saying they wanted to go back to the "give prior bosses an across the board debuff" thing they did in Wrath. Perhaps they did in Cata, but I wasn't around to see it. That seems like a different approach to me to go back to that model of raiding.

[Rokal]

The Wrath debuff was actually a buff that gave + %damage/health/healing to players. The last tier of Cata raiding had a stacking debuff that gave - %health/damage to bosses/trash instead. The same mechanic already exists in MoP for the 5.0 raid zones and was datamined over a year ago in beta.

This was always the plan.

On topic: Dinoriders mount



From a rep grind or rare world spawns  

My immediate reaction is disgust at the thought of doing yet another MoP rep grind, but if they have lots of story breaks like the 5.1 Alliance vs. Horde factions I may be able to stomach it.

[Paelos]

That's a good point. The Wrath thing was a player buff. This is a boss nerf.

It was the idea of buffing the players again that the devs have said they were reluctant to do, because it made them feel weaker when they walked outside of raids.

[Merusk]

Yeah the tinfoil has gotten too strong. They've been nerfing raids when the new ones come out forever now.

Yeah my comment wasn't meant to be tinfoily, just that it's too late.  I'm done with the game.  Uninspiring content, raids that have blown and an equipment grind that sucks for those with bad luck with the RNG.   

The usual "boss nerf!" doesn't fix any of that. It only means you take less time finding out you didn't win anything again this week.

[Azazel]

Except Elegon, which is three lots of 3 minutes of trying not to fall asleep with two intervals of ing at idiots.
(This week it was "Who died this time? ....oh, the main tank" )

Elegon also features "do I 'accidentally' fall down and get myself a coffee for 5 8 minutes?"

 

[Zetor]

To be fair, playing as a healer tends to be at least moderately engaging in LFR. Mostly because you end up having to make up for everyone else's fuckups.

This one goes out to all tanks who doublepull the trash packs that cast "flesh to stone" and stun the raid for 15sec Thank Cthulhu for windwalk totem removing that shit! Also, the first 5-6 pulls in Heart of Fear, aka Healer Cooldowns 2: Cooldown Harder.

[Lt.Dan]

No amount of cooldowns will save you if you have twno LFR tanks who face cleaving mobs into the raid 

[Simond]

On topic: Hatte


(http://ptr.wowhead.com/item=93730)

[Rokal]

Patch has been announced for the last week of February, fyi.

[Azazel]

2 more weeks to suck up valour to level our pants! 

[Simond]

I'm hoping you mean two more weeks before the patch to do that. 

[Zetor]

What's happening to pants-levelling-via-valor/justice anyway -- are they just taking the entire system out behind the shed and already-upgraded items just remain as it is? I'm also guessing it's pointless to level pants with vp/jp, instead one should max out their vp/jp to get the phat loots after 5.2 hits, is that right?

[Simond]

Item upgrading is going away, but it might come back in 5.3 (Hint: It won't). Any upgraded gear will stay upgraded. However, VP are also getting downconverted to JP with the patch as well so spend away now.

[Paelos]

Yeah the player response to leveling your pants was about the same as it was in DAOC when they released ToA.

[Fabricated]

I'm kinda wondering if they're just using WoW to test out potential models and features for Titan now and seeing what sticks.

[Lakov_Sanite]

I'm kinda wondering if they're just using WoW to test out potential models and features for Titan now and seeing what sticks.

Exactly this.

[Soulflame]

Wait, the pants leveling bullshit was real?  I thought you guys were kidding.

Pants leveling was a complete and utter crock in DAoC.  Do MMO developers simply pay no attention to history?

Of course, Cataclysm and Mists clearly point out that WoW devs can't be bothered to learn from their own history.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Remember when adding a new feature or removing a bad one was a rare occasion?

[Merusk]

I'm kinda wondering if they're just using WoW to test out potential models and features for Titan now and seeing what sticks.

Brilliant way to drive your market share and brand name in to the ground.  Titan's taken so long to materialize as ANYTHING I'm more willing to bet it'll be scrapped than actually released.*  We're not going to hear anything for at least the next year since there was no Blizzcon 2012 and that's pretty damning.

* Well.. if it were the old Blizzard at least.  Nu-Blizzard will have to release it because they've dumped so much cash in to it.

[Paelos]

It's not that they have to release it because of the cash. They have to release it because they have nothing else in the pipeline except D3 expansions.

[Rokal]

I wish they'd at least keep pants leveling for blue items. It was the one useful way to spend JP.

[Fabricated]

Or they could just you know roll old valor gear down to JP?

[Fordel]

It's not a true ToA experience unless you have to level your pants in the rain.

[Ingmar]

Doesn't spending points to upgrade an item instead of replacing it preserve the gems? That seems like a pretty big upside to me.

[Merusk]

Doesn't spending points to upgrade an item instead of replacing it preserve the gems? That seems like a pretty big upside to me.

You can't "level Up" an item to ever be equal to the next-highest drop.   So LFR gear leveled-up is still 5 ilevels below Normal Mode gear and the same for Normal -> Heroic.

[Rendakor]

It's not that they have to release it because of the cash. They have to release it because they have nothing else in the pipeline except D3 expansions.

They've got a Protoss SC2 expansion too.

[Hutch]

Valor and Justice points not to be converted after all
(warning: link to official WoW forums)

I guess they got some negative feedback 

[Paelos]

It's a good move. The traditional means of converting was to prevent hording, but now they have actually 2 artificial caps to stop that, which is sort of   in and of itself.

[Paelos]

Looks like the new bonus boss in the heroic tier is going to have limited attempts. Given that devs outright said that limited attempts didn't work well in Wrath, I'm a bit  to see them show up again. Not that it really matters because almost nobody will ever fight this boss until the next expansion, but it's still pretty funny.