AT World of Warcraft Thread (Cataclysm, Where do you play, General BS and all that)

[Aikouka]

I know it is possible but our guild didn't even want to try it out. The last phase they complained about. I told them to one tank and two heal it but they didn't want to. I honestly believe Madness can be steamrolled with 7 dps by my guild.

It's nice because the DPS is high enough that you can ignore the second set of tendril adds in the final phase, and just kill Deathwing instead. We don't have much of an issue with healing during any of the parts of the encounter when we have one healer down. The only thing that seems to ever kill anyone is when the tank doesn't have a CD for the Crush thing that the large tentacle does. The two healers that we have available for the fight are a shaman and a druid (our priest goes shadow).

You could always give it a shot for an attempt or two to see how it goes. I guess the only problem is that you have to hope one of your healers knows how to DPS properly.

 

[Slammy1]

I've become really disenfranchised with my priest. I loved him from level 15-65ish but I have been having trouble really keeping interest in him.

He's 71 now and I don't want to quit him but I dunno what I'll do with him at level 85. I don't really like its 2 healing specs. I much prefer my shaman or paladin for healing. On top of that I think I'm bad at shadow in addition to not finding it fun to play. I'm always last on the dps charts in dungeon groups. Just makes me feel inept. I think I may quit him soon.

There's always PvP... As a lock main I always envied the ability of SPs to do all the control stuff better than me AND they can heal. Just didn't seem fair.

Well, I did the 10 day and ended up subscribing for another month. I don't plan to gear, just messing around awaiting D3. It was nice, when I quit I split my money amongst friends and one still had me listed (14 mo later) and even gave me the money back.

Course, everyone expects you to already know the instances. It's not that they're hard it's just typically something specific either you know or don't.

Haven't worked on my tank, just my lock (dps) and shammy (resto/ele). Shammy is awesome, slapped together a dps set and he's always on top of the charts (plus decurses and off-heals), so 7-8 times out of 10 they want to requeue. Everybody is really sympathetic to the lock I think, yesterday I needed on some green pants and everyone stopped so they could inspect me. They were nice and looked out for me after that.

 

[AznAnarchy99]

DS is really easy on normal mode. The first seven can be two healed so you can steamroll through them. Then DW himself is three healed and you play repeat-a-platform with small adjustments. I have some friends on Kil'Jaeden and they had all of their alts with the Destroyer's End title.

Just did it last night after hitting 372 ilevel. What a boring end game boss. Had none of the epic feel of the Lich King.

 

[Phoenix86]

It's nice because the DPS is high enough that you can ignore the second set of tendril adds in the final phase, and just kill Deathwing instead. We don't have much of an issue with healing during any of the parts of the encounter when we have one healer down. The only thing that seems to ever kill anyone is when the tank doesn't have a CD for the Crush thing that the large tentacle does. The two healers that we have available for the fight are a shaman and a druid (our priest goes shadow).

You could always give it a shot for an attempt or two to see how it goes. I guess the only problem is that you have to hope one of your healers knows how to DPS properly.

We ignore the second wave of adds with 1 tank 3 heals and also get the tentacle thing down before it does it's second crush thingie (impale?). Because of that tanks always have a Cd available since it's only one CD/platform. We have some pretty solid dps, which is nice but we generally have issues 2 healing anything that's close to our level of progression. IIRC we 2 healed everything up last night except madness and the ultraxion.

edit: the fact our healers blow as DPS also contributes to this decision.

 

[zokudu]

There's always PvP... As a lock main I always envied the ability of SPs to do all the control stuff better than me AND they can heal. Just didn't seem fair.

Well, I did the 10 day and ended up subscribing for another month. I don't plan to gear, just messing around awaiting D3. It was nice, when I quit I split my money amongst friends and one still had me listed (14 mo later) and even gave me the money back.

Course, everyone expects you to already know the instances. It's not that they're hard it's just typically something specific either you know or don't.

Haven't worked on my tank, just my lock (dps) and shammy (resto/ele). Shammy is awesome, slapped together a dps set and he's always on top of the charts (plus decurses and off-heals), so 7-8 times out of 10 they want to requeue. Everybody is really sympathetic to the lock I think, yesterday I needed on some green pants and everyone stopped so they could inspect me. They were nice and looked out for me after that.

I don't PvP much but last I heard locks were facerolling last season. Dunno about this season but I doubt a ton has changed.

 

[Phoenix86]

I don't PvP much but last I heard locks were facerolling last season. Dunno about this season but I doubt a ton has changed.

Locks pair up with so many classes who need the dispel protection like a frost mage. Dispels are king but UA is the ace in the hole.

Pretty sure locks are still facerolling, especially outside of lol2s.

 

[thejunglegod]

Just did it last night after hitting 372 ilevel. What a boring end game boss. Had none of the epic feel of the Lich King.

Completely agree. WOW went seriously downhill when Cataclysm launched. Killing Arthas was what I had dreamed of ever since I first saw him kill his father in WCIII: ROC and it was as epic as i had imagined.
This might not be a good year for Blizz, with Diablo3 already generating a lot of hate due to its late/never release. A lot of pressure that. Also, Mists of Pandaria??? WTF???

 

[Slammy1]

I wondered why, when I was level 80 in wrathful, I did surprisingly good in the BG I went in with levels 80-84. I just assumed my wrathful set was better than most.

 

[zokudu]

I wondered why, when I was level 80 in wrathful, I did surprisingly good in the BG I went in with levels 80-84. I just assumed my wrathful set was better than most.

It is most people don't take the time to grind out level 80 PvP gear.

 

[Aikouka]

Completely agree. WOW went seriously downhill when Cataclysm launched. Killing Arthas was what I had dreamed of ever since I first saw him kill his father in WCIII: ROC and it was as epic as i had imagined.
This might not be a good year for Blizz, with Diablo3 already generating a lot of hate due to its late/never release. A lot of pressure that. Also, Mists of Pandaria??? WTF???

I really don't think Cataclysm is nearly as bad as some people make it out to be.

In some ways, I think making things easier to get into can make things better, but I think in some ways it also makes them worse. The new Raid Finder is nice in concept, but I think it has some serious flaws in it from an actual gaming standpoint. The biggest issue is that there's no real challenge to be had in it. Typically, each raid has an "easy boss" or the one they call the "loot piñata", and with LFR... the entire thing is a loot piñata.

It's essentially the equivalent of the pussification of competition that you see these days (i.e. everyone getting a trophy, etc.). How many players know what it's like to sit there wiping on a boss until you finally beat it? Of course it's frustrating, but there tends to also be a sense of accomplishment as you actually worked toward defeating the boss. A good example of this was in the early days with resistance gear. While I think resistance gear was a fundamentally bad idea, it allowed your guild/raid to work together in getting prepared for the encounter/raid.

It's a damn good feeling to finally kill a boss after so long of 1% attempts (that makes me recall a .1% attempt on H-Anub'arak! :'(), and some of these people have no idea what that's like. Right now, I'm getting that sort of fun with 5% wipes on H-Ultraxxion.

 

[lupi]

Cata by far isn't the worst, will take a real snoozer for BC to give up that honor.

People just have to remember that a large portion of this expansion was about non-max level content. If they had for once stuck to their dream about shorter turnaround production schedule this probably wouldn't have been as much of an issue.

 

[Aikouka]

Cata by far isn't the worst, will take a real snoozer for BC to give up that honor.

Hmm I didn't think TBC was that bad. What didn't you like about it?

People just have to remember that a large portion of this expansion was about non-max level content. If they had for once stuck to their dream about shorter turnaround production schedule this probably wouldn't have been as much of an issue.

What I find interesting is that even though people say a lot of time went into the leveling content, the expansion still shipped with more end-game bosses available than any following patch provided (13, 7, 8).

I'm also not that sure that Blizzard won't be following their 1.5 year plan for Mists of Pandaria. They could slip by a month or two, but that may not be too bad. The press tour event is happening next month, and they even had a pretty good amount of content to show off at last year's Blizzcon.

Speaking of Blizzcon, this was going to be the first year that I returned since I went in 2008. Unfortunately, a few weeks ago, they announced that there wouldn't be a Blizzcon this year. I guess I'll have to take a real vacation or something... how lame!

 

[zokudu]

I'm kind of sad I've never gone. I'm probably going to be leaving wow when GW2 releases and I don't know if I will be coming back. Is it a great trip Aikouka?

 

[lupi]

I think problems with end game for this expansion is from some stuff getting cancelled and staff being assigned to attempt and get the next expansion out sooner. As for the release date, given the current date I'd say a best case scenario would see a nineteen month publish cycle, but I for sure wouldn't bet on the under there.

As to BC, failure of the outdoor pvp material, pushing non-outdoor pvp towards the arena model, making a bad reputation system worse, retarded gating for heroics and raids, and the beginning of the epics for everyone and exploding char stats to hide our previous mistakes.

 

[Aikouka]

I'm kind of sad I've never gone. I'm probably going to be leaving wow when GW2 releases and I don't know if I will be coming back. Is it a great trip Aikouka?

It is once you learn the Do's and Don't's!

The two things that I would have rectified if I went again would be ensuring I get a close hotel, and not standing in a long store line again. When I was booking my hotel, I remember saying, "Oh, that one is a little cheaper and it looks really close!" Well, looking close on Google Maps is a lot different than when you have to walk it at 10PM after standing for hours.

You also want to plan out your events ahead of time, or else you may miss something. I didn't realize that server meet-ups were scheduled for certain times, and I missed the one for my newer server. Then I forgot about when my old server's meet-up was, and I missed that too. Fortunately, I think they have an app to help you plan stuff out.

Not that any of that matters since they won't have one until (possibly) next year.

But don't forget... BlizzCon isn't just about WoW!

EDIT:

As to BC, failure of the outdoor pvp material, pushing non-outdoor pvp towards the arena model, making a bad reputation system worse, retarded gating for heroics and raids, and the beginning of the epics for everyone and exploding char stats to hide our previous mistakes.

I think Blizzard's Outdoor PVP was amiable, but it was never a decent solution, and I'm not sure what they could have done. The issue with Halaa, Auchindoun and Hellfire Citadel were that the rewards were typically useless. The only one that people tended to care about was Halaa, and it still didn't present anything significant enough.

The problem is... Blizzard needed to make them not significant enough. If they presented too much of a benefit, it would exacerbate any population imbalances on a server.

What's really interesting is when you look at the world PVP that took place in Vanilla, and consider that none of it really took place for any reason. Southshore vs. Tarren Mill was mostly just people getting bored and wanting to have a little bit of fun. It started well before the Honor System ever came into play, which meant there was no benefit at all to players.

There was also world PVP that took place around PVE events such as Lord Kazzak. Out of our 40 man group, a single sub-group was dedicated to killing any Horde that approached. It wasn't hard to do, because they were naked and trying to get Kazzak to kill them (he healed whenever someone died). People would also sometimes fight around Azuregos just to give people the debuff so they would get a shot at the boss.

I don't think "epics for everyone" is a bad philosophy either. It actually helps out everyone if you consider that it allows raiders to gear their alts or guilds to gear up newer recruits much easier. Prior to this, you typically would poach players from other raiding guilds or other servers. It was simply impossible to get geared players unless you did this as PUG raids weren't that common outside of Karazhan (at least for me).

 

[Adrenaline]

I think problems with end game for this expansion is from some stuff getting cancelled and staff being assigned to attempt and get the next expansion out sooner. As for the release date, given the current date I'd say a best case scenario would see a nineteen month publish cycle, but I for sure wouldn't bet on the under there.

As to BC, failure of the outdoor pvp material, pushing non-outdoor pvp towards the arena model, making a bad reputation system worse, retarded gating for heroics and raids, and the beginning of the epics for everyone and exploding char stats to hide our previous mistakes.

I loved TBC and hated Wrath. The arenas aren't bad, just not my preference but fitting for more hardcore people. The reputation system is not bad to me, it gave me something to do in my spare time with guildies.

I loved the attunements for heroics and raids. Getting rid of the attunement for Hyjal and BT ruined the raiding to mein TBC and on. You should have to earn it, so you don't see horrible players in them and pugs were better on the server.

Epics for everyone wasn't bad. People still had to put in time and effort to get them. You just couldn't run out and get max gear at the beginning of the expansion. I did not see the exploding of stats leading to mistake prone people getting maxed out gear on my server. You had to always earn everything.

Wrath had Naxx, which sucked as a rehash, OS and EoE had a single boss. Ulduar I did not care for, people love it to this day, but I quit for over a year after we killed Yogg for the third time. Then I hear ToC sucked BADLY and ICC was fun but spread out and around too long.

Cata had T11 which was hard, the problem with it was the umbalance of range needs over melee for dps. FL sucked due to the deep loot table on bosses and RARELY getting things you need to drop in 10 man raids along with only seven bosses. Dragon Soul is awful in general and has eight bosses.

 

[GoStumpy]

I just *just* started playing WoW for the first time... talk about late to the game!! Just using the starter edition right now, if/when I get addicted and need to I'll buy the full battlechest... Wife already owns that and barely plays, lol :thumbsdown:

But if I start playin I'm sure she'll pick it back up

 

[cronos]

I reactivated a little over a month ago 'just to check out transmogrify' after a year of hiatus, and ended up deciding to extend another month because I really enjoyed it . I guess I knew I would be drawn into playing again, based on my previous 5 years of WoW addiction, so to speak. But anyway:

I had 3 level 85 already (DK/Paladin/Druid) from the one month I played in Cataclysm last year, but instead of gearing them up (and working on transmogrify like my original plan) I decided to level up other characters this time.

So I got a Priest (from 70) and a Rogue (from 82) to 85 and got them heroic ready. I had great fun with these two. Rogues are actually good again! This was my original main character that I raided extensively in vanilla and BC with, and back in the middle of LK I pretty much quit playing it because it kept getting nerfed (or so I felt at the time). The priest on the other hand was my first pure caster that I took to level cap (and probably my last , it's just not my thing). I initially wanted to learn priest healing but ended up enjoying melting faces a lot so this one is staying shadow for a while.

I then switched to a DK (my first serious horde toon. I do have several level 60 hordes but they all got to 60 through dual-boxing RAF) and brought it up from 60 to 78 now. I'll probably get started on the horde 60 Druid this week as well, switching back and forth with the DK to get at least some rest XP. I plan to LFD level this one as a Resto Druid, and see how fast I can level this way.

I find that leveling through LFD is crazy fast, especially if you have rest XP. Even as DPS I never had to wait for more than 10 minutes in the queue, mostly around 5 minutes. That's something I wouldn't have believed unless I experienced it myself.

It's clear that they have nerfed all these leveling instances to oblivion. Most runs are speedy AoE fest type that's a joy to do when all you needed from them was XP to level and maybe some loot. Because they're easy, almost all were great runs. I probably got one bad group for every 10-15 that I ran.

I need to cancel this subscription in the next few days or before I realize it it will be the end of the month again and suddenly I'll be in my third month. I really don't want to get sucked in completely again! :thumbsdown:

 

[Aikouka]

I never really found LFD to be that fast for leveling, because the groups were typically not very fast.

I got back into playing my Rogue as well, but mostly for the legendary. Although, I'm starting to remember why I prefer being an Enhancement Shaman. Frankly, there's just so much less to worry about in regard to cooldown timing, that I find it much more enjoyable... and that's mostly because Enhancement Shamans don't have a worthwhile cooldown! My cooldowns feel nearly worthless as an Assassination Rogue when we're fighting heroic Yor'sahj. You get adds almost every slime phase, and raising your damage on a single target for 30+ seconds (depending on T13 4 piece or not) just doesn't help. It also doesn't help much on Ultraxxion where you just get Fading Light whenever you use a cooldown.

Once I get my legendary daggers, I may just swap back to my Shaman for all normal mode fights.

 

[cronos]

I never really found LFD to be that fast for leveling, because the groups were typically not very fast.

That's what I thought too, but the runs I did yesterday were all super fast. It's very similar to back at the end of LK when everyone was extremely overgeared and ran Heroics to collect badges. Tanks were all over the place pulling half the room at any one point, and the healers never seemed to use up any mana at all. This is why I thought they just nerfed these instances again recently.

My DK went from 74 to 78 playing only a couple of hours just yesterday. I wish I had timed my play time so I know for sure, but the whole family was home too so it's not like I sat down from early morning to late at night just playing. I can probably say I only spent about 5 hours total. Maybe 6 hours tops.

I did have rest XPs for most of them, and I haven't done any of the instance quests at all so those helped quite a bit.

 

[Slammy1]

You're in the same shape as me, giving it up for over a year (I quit right when Cat was released) then coming back for about a month now. In my experience, I'd typically run my healer as dps and quest while queued. My tank I mostly did level through instances (just picked a few quests for specific rewards), but everything was instant (the once or twice it wasn't was prolly like 1 minute, but when you're used to instant that's just so long). My pure dps I didn't know what I was doing and almost exclusively leveled through questing. That was before LFD.

I have a couple other chars that I didn't level past a point, but between work and "other activities" (sleep, shower, eat) 3 is more than enough. And, hey, 1 of each. I've only got 2 of them to max level, my tank I'm waiting to learn the new instances better (made it to 81.5 questing past 80).

 

[cronos]

So listen to this, this is crazy. Got back from work today and I logged in to my 60 Druid that maybe has 3 or 4 bars in. I equipped her with a couple of heirloom for healing (cloth chest + shoulder, because that's what I have. lol). And this is what happened:

1. Hit LFD. Popped up instantly. Hellfire Ramparts. Picked up all instance quests. 20-25 minutes later, done. Return to quest givers, turn in all quests. Ding 61
2. Hit LFD. Popped up instantly. Blood Furnace. Picked up all instance quests. 20-25 minutes later, done. Return to quest givers, turn in all quests. Ding 62

 

[Glayde]

Pretty aggressive resurrection-scroll revamp.

- Character boosted to 80.
- Free server/faction transfer to your friend's server.
- Free Cataclysm upgrade (do you get wrath too?)
- 7 days of free gametime.

 

[Aikouka]

Pretty aggressive resurrection-scroll revamp.

- Character boosted to 80.
- Free server/faction transfer to your friend's server.
- Free Cataclysm upgrade (do you get wrath too?)
- 7 days of free gametime.

How long does an account have to be out of commission to issue a Scroll of Resurrection to them, and are there requirements on how long the person must subscribe for?

 

[cronos]

How long does an account have to be out of commission to issue a Scroll of Resurrection to them, and are there requirements on how long the person must subscribe for?

We can only speculate about this new system until account management is back up, but for the previous SoR it was 90 days inactive to be eligible for SoR.

Edit: I'm trying to think whether it's possible for a character that is boosted to 80 to not need LK expansion at all. Maybe it is, can't make a DK, can't learn Inscription, but can level to 85?