The AT World of Warcraft Thread (Where do you play) and general BS

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RESmonkey

Diamond Member
May 6, 2007
4,818
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I want to start playing WoW again ( a little bit, not too much. starting college !). I have a 35 human lock on Gul'dan.

What's the best way to play with you guys?
 

Aikouka

Lifer
Nov 27, 2001
30,383
912
126
Originally posted by: RESmonkey
I want to start playing WoW again ( a little bit, not too much. starting college !). I have a 35 human lock on Gul'dan.

What's the best way to play with you guys?

Give me lots of money :D.

But we're actually quite strewn about with no centralized Anandtech guild or anything like that. See, if we brought together all this raw talent, we'd just simply be too good. People would start racing for "World Sloppy Seconds" after us :Q.

True story.
 

BassBomb

Diamond Member
Nov 25, 2005
8,390
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Originally posted by: Aikouka
Originally posted by: RESmonkey
I want to start playing WoW again ( a little bit, not too much. starting college !). I have a 35 human lock on Gul'dan.

What's the best way to play with you guys?

Give me lots of money :D.

But we're actually quite strewn about with no centralized Anandtech guild or anything like that. See, if we brought together all this raw talent, we'd just simply be too good. People would start racing for "World Sloppy Seconds" after us :Q.

True story.

ROFL

 

RESmonkey

Diamond Member
May 6, 2007
4,818
2
0
Originally posted by: Aikouka
Originally posted by: RESmonkey
I want to start playing WoW again ( a little bit, not too much. starting college !). I have a 35 human lock on Gul'dan.

What's the best way to play with you guys?

Give me lots of money :D.

But we're actually quite strewn about with no centralized Anandtech guild or anything like that. See, if we brought together all this raw talent, we'd just simply be too good. People would start racing for "World Sloppy Seconds" after us :Q.

True story.

Are there any newer servers out there? I don't have the expansion, but I'll get WOTLK later (I can play that w/o BC, right?).


Actually, that's what I want. Newer servers where freshies like me could play. I don't want abandoned towns everywhere. :(
 

Jax Omen

Golden Member
Mar 14, 2008
1,654
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Newer servers are actually worse for that than older ones, in my experience.

Populated Old servers have a constant influx of alts and newbies. New servers have a constant influx of transfers off to more populated/progressed servers.
 

BassBomb

Diamond Member
Nov 25, 2005
8,390
1
81
Originally posted by: RESmonkey
Originally posted by: Aikouka
Originally posted by: RESmonkey
I want to start playing WoW again ( a little bit, not too much. starting college !). I have a 35 human lock on Gul'dan.

What's the best way to play with you guys?

Give me lots of money :D.

But we're actually quite strewn about with no centralized Anandtech guild or anything like that. See, if we brought together all this raw talent, we'd just simply be too good. People would start racing for "World Sloppy Seconds" after us :Q.

True story.

Are there any newer servers out there? I don't have the expansion, but I'll get WOTLK later (I can play that w/o BC, right?).


Actually, that's what I want. Newer servers where freshies like me could play. I don't want abandoned towns everywhere. :(

you will probably have to get BC before WOTLK

I doubt you will see extremely empty cities in BC as many are still progressing through or getting an alt down for the launch
 

Aikouka

Lifer
Nov 27, 2001
30,383
912
126
I think the only time you'd want to play on a new server is a PVP server to avoid all the 70 gankers. Other than that, the economy is very slow so you can't really sell things to build money up quickly.

Also, I don't think you can play WotLK without TBC. I assume they'd require the earlier expansion as one levels the cap to 70 and the other to 80... I don't think you can leapfrog it... nor would I want to with all the grinding of mobs you'd have to do since you can't go to Outlands or the Draenei/Belf places without having the TBC flag set on your account.
 

exdeath

Lifer
Jan 29, 2004
13,679
10
81
Originally posted by: Aikouka
Hmm I need to see if I can 3-man Vim'gol. I got an idear but I kinda need to finish that and they kill Soulgrinder to do it. I know I can three man Soulgrinder... my shaman can destroy those non-elite mobs in seconds. But I'm more worried about Vim'gol's enrage and being unable to stop it since I'd only have three people :p.

Oh and I wouldn't call beating a 60-tuned raid boss at 70 with high-end gear much of a server first achievement :p.

I didn't say server first, I said second. Even at level 70 and years later it's still the second kill of Kel'thuzad.

Even at 70 though in T6.5 it's still rough. We wiped once or twice (forget). Most of it was people trying to zerg though and like 10 people getting wiped out by a single fissure. At least one fight in Naxx is still fun and not just < 60 second zerg.

Also when we did Kael the same week, half the raid out geared it and had already done it and the other half have never seen it. Still took 7 attempts.

You know a fight is well designed when you try to just walk in and out gear it 10 levels later and get raped just as bad as you did when you were the appropriate gear/level for it. One of the reasons I love the Kael'thas fight; no matter how much welfare gear we whine about, there are still plenty of guilds who are 5/6 and 3/4. When you see "Silence descends upon Shattrath." you know someone earned it and is feeling pretty damned good regardless of gear. Kael'thas is the ONLY boss fight that I STILL hold my breath on at 5%.
 

Beev

Diamond Member
Apr 20, 2006
7,775
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Originally posted by: Izusaga
Stopped playing before Sunwell went live (at the time, we cleared through Brut on PTR). Considering coming back and would probably be willing to raid anything from SSC onwards simply to burn time in the evenings, though endgame content would sure be nice. Anyone looking for a tank? ;)

http://www.wowarmory.com/chara...t.xml?r=Thrall&n=Virge

My guild on Earthen Ring is working on T5 content. We usually raid 3 nights a week, which is pretty casual. Not sure how much you want to raid but we would love to have you :) We just got our first Solarian kill last night so we're 2/4 now in TK. Gonna make some Al'ar and Kael (lol) attempts this weekend.
 

Dangerer

Golden Member
Mar 15, 2005
1,128
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Originally posted by: exdeath
Originally posted by: Aikouka
Hmm I need to see if I can 3-man Vim'gol. I got an idear but I kinda need to finish that and they kill Soulgrinder to do it. I know I can three man Soulgrinder... my shaman can destroy those non-elite mobs in seconds. But I'm more worried about Vim'gol's enrage and being unable to stop it since I'd only have three people :p.

Oh and I wouldn't call beating a 60-tuned raid boss at 70 with high-end gear much of a server first achievement :p.

I didn't say server first, I said second. Even at level 70 and years later it's still the second kill of Kel'thuzad.

Even at 70 though in T6.5 it's still rough. We wiped once or twice (forget). Most of it was people trying to zerg though and like 10 people getting wiped out by a single fissure. At least one fight in Naxx is still fun and not just < 60 second zerg.

Also when we did Kael the same week, half the raid out geared it and had already done it and the other half have never seen it. Still took 7 attempts.

You know a fight is well designed when you try to just walk in and out gear it 10 levels later and get raped just as bad as you did when you were the appropriate gear/level for it. One of the reasons I love the Kael'thas fight; no matter how much welfare gear we whine about, there are still plenty of guilds who are 5/6 and 3/4. When you see "Silence descends upon Shattrath." you know someone earned it and is feeling pretty damned good regardless of gear. Kael'thas is the ONLY boss fight that I STILL hold my breath on at 5%.

Definitely a tough boss that I could hardly see any T6 pugs downing. It just simply requires too much coordination. That being said, my guild threw together a partial pug (15 of ours, 10 from trade channel) and managed to 2 shot him :D
 

xboxist

Diamond Member
Jun 25, 2002
3,017
1
81
What's the current state of competitive 2v2 arena? Druid + X, or fail still? How are queue times these days?
 

lupi

Lifer
Apr 8, 2001
32,539
260
126
Originally posted by: xboxist
What's the current state of competitive 2v2 arena? Druid + X, or fail still? How are queue times these days?

Yes and pretty short (I hear people complaining about 2-3 minute queue times)
 

rh71

No Lifer
Aug 28, 2001
52,844
1,049
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Originally posted by: Izusaga
Originally posted by: AntiFreze
being a rogue, druids dont give me a problem.

You must never face good druids.

seriously, between the 3x entangling and the 3x cyclones (before we even consider deminishing returns over the time it takes to get them down) and trying to chase them around while they're abolishing your poison and switching forms out of snares... you'd blow all your cooldowns just to reach them. If they happen to be in trouble they still have insta-heal (so you get to chase them around all over again) and of course they still have bear form with possibly an /lol at you. Any amount of resilience on them and you're having fits.

I did finally almost get one down then he whipped out his war stomp and healed... just have your /sigh macro ready.

How do you melee beat them? Hope they run out of mana / innervate?
 

BZeto

Platinum Member
Apr 28, 2002
2,428
0
76
Question, will applying a libram to a boe item make it become soulbound? I'm almost positive it will not as I remember doing it on my MC fire resist gear back in the day. Just want to confirm so my twink plans aren't ruined though, lol.
 

Aikouka

Lifer
Nov 27, 2001
30,383
912
126
A little news on Naxx:

Naxxramas - 4 Horsemen encounter mechanics changed so the non-traditional tank classes (similar to warlock tanking in Black Temple) will have to tank some of the 4 Horsemen.


Originally posted by: MustISO
I finally got my beta key today. Anyone sell one on Ebay? I think I'd rather sell it then play it.

You should give to meeeee.
 

xboxist

Diamond Member
Jun 25, 2002
3,017
1
81
Originally posted by: rh71
Originally posted by: Izusaga
Originally posted by: AntiFreze
being a rogue, druids dont give me a problem.

You must never face good druids.


How do you melee beat them? Hope they run out of mana / innervate?


Well I like to cut myself, so I played season 2 and 3 with a pally (I'm a warrior). When druids first started to become dominant, they didn't know how to handle the Judgment of Justice zerg, so we actually owned Druid/X for a awhile there. But at some point they figured out how to counter it and we were like all the other teams getting stomped. Druid/hunter = auto loss for us. They need more CC, seriously.
 

exdeath

Lifer
Jan 29, 2004
13,679
10
81
Originally posted by: xboxist
Originally posted by: rh71
Originally posted by: Izusaga
Originally posted by: AntiFreze
being a rogue, druids dont give me a problem.

You must never face good druids.


How do you melee beat them? Hope they run out of mana / innervate?


Well I like to cut myself, so I played season 2 and 3 with a pally (I'm a warrior). When druids first started to become dominant, they didn't know how to handle the Judgment of Justice zerg, so we actually owned Druid/X for a awhile there. But at some point they figured out how to counter it and we were like all the other teams getting stomped. Druid/hunter = auto loss for us. They need more CC, seriously.

We beat druid/hunter with pally/warrior. Took 45 minutes but we did it. This was after losing to the same team 3 times in a row and thinking the same thing, auto lose. Then I did a little research and came to the conclusion that it's actually the other way around, pally/war is the worst team for druid/hunter.

Reason being is that when the warrior gets in the hunters face, their DPS goes to zero and you can take as long as you need to drain the druid and kiting/killing the pet.

MS warrior stays in the hunters face the entire time with BoF cast every time it's up, effectively reducing their team's dps to zero while the druid slowly burns mana spam healing though MS while the pally just kites the pet. Pally slowly works the scorpid and keep it LoS from the druid while warrior is in the hunters face then stun/interrupt the druid long enough to focus fire and tag team and trinket bomb the pet the rest of the way and it's over. Position the scopid around the column out of LoS and range of the druid or hunter, and stand out a little bit so the warrior can intervene to you then burn the pet quickly behind the column.

At this point the warrior moves to the druid for the rest of the fight waiting for the innervate (only reason for dps on hunter is to negate dps from their team while you drain the druid with MS on the hunter and keep them both busy while pally gets the pet low enough for a zerg).

After warrior switches to druid, hunter has no choice and goes after pally then because he can't out dps your heals and sole purpose is to drain the pally before the druid is oom and not let the pally drink. Then pally kites the hunter and stops him from summoning a new pet while the warrior works down the druid with BoF.

When I'd see the hunter try to summon, I'd sit down in range of him to get a few ticks of drink then interrupt him at the last second. We checked each other the whole fight. If he wanted to summon, it meant allowing me to drink right in front of him, and for me to drink or LoS him to avoid viper stings I had to make sure he wasn't trying to summon. Eventually the druid goes down because there is no dps on the warrior. If hunter is dumb and is on the warrior, then they still lose because the warrior/druid action will still proceed just the same, but the pally can heal and drink at leisure and once again negate the hunter.

The bridge level is especially bad for them, makes kiting the pet in the first part retarded easy. It's all about that damn pet for the pally, it's the free drain from the scorpid that burns you in the long run. It shouldn't be allowed to stay alive more than absolutely necessary and should be a top priority for the warrior if the pally calls to burn the pet.

I'm not even all that great of a PvPer simply because I don't have patience for BS (can't seem to break 1650 on this group, it's like 1650 on this battlegroup is equal to 1850 on other battle groups or something). But this one I plotted out in depth. 45 mins and only 17 points but damn it felt good.
 

lupi

Lifer
Apr 8, 2001
32,539
260
126
Tom Chilton and J. Allen Brack interview on Gamona.de
Gamona.de had the chance to interview J. Allen Brack (Production Director) and Tom Chilton (aka. Kalgan, Lead Game Designer) and ask a few questions about Wrath of the Lich King. The most interesting parts of the interview are :

[*]Premades characters level 80 will be made available near the end of the beta testing process. Whether it will be done on a new server or on the existing beta servers isn't decided yet.

[*]The next beta build will most likely feature new level 80 dungeons and remove the level cap.

[*]In the current state of WotLK beta testing, the retribution paladin is doing a lot more damage than expected and will most likely be nerfed.

[*]Naxxramas mechanics changes to suit 25 players raid include a new version of the Four Horsemen allowing non-tanking classes to tank some of the bosses.
[/list]

Quote from Blizzard staff
How is the beta going ? Is everything alright ?
T.C. - Things are definitely going very well, we've got a lot of very good feedbacks through the beta process. We've been making a lot of changes and improvements based on the feedback but overall it's coming along very well.

The beta servers have been very unstable in the last days, is there any improvement ?
J.A.B - We've got our server team who is looking into all problems, the point of our beta process is to actually figure out what problems we have and get them all fixed before we do the big release.

Is there any plan to open more beta realms ?
T.C. - We do actually have plans to start up a realm that has premade characters at level 80, the reason being that we're going to want to give players another opportunity to test some of the end game content without having to go through the leveling process. We can probably do that near the end of the beta process but it might be on a different server, this isn't decided for sure.

When do you plan to open more instances and rise the level cap to level 80 ?
T.C. - Each time we do another patch on the beta we try to open up new content for the players. [...] I don't know if we'll be able to patch this week while we're being here in Europe but that should be coming very soon.
J.A.B - For each patch we try to evaluate how much content do we have, is it time to give players the chance to open that up ? We're talking internally about when it is time to rise us up to level 80 but we're getting close.

Why didn't you separate PvE from PvP more?
T.C. - We made that decision because prior to The Burning Crusade, what we found as people increase their gear they die quicker because PvE gear is specialized gear. For DPS classes as an example it is designed to do the most damage as possible in the shortest time as possible and it does not have a lot of survivability. If that's the best gear players have available, then what happens is they take that into PvP is that they die very quickly and there's not much time for their strategies to evolve. What we've found is that in PvP we had to create gear with balanced offensive capability and survivability and because of that we had to create this separate set of gear with the new stat called resilience to make sure fights lasted long enough so that they are interesting and have depth. [...] Well, certainly something that we want to do for Litch king is better crossover so that when you're doing PvE you are actually able to accumulate some PvP gear in case you decide to try out some PvP you'll have a good starting point. The same would go in reverse, if you're doing a lot of PvP, you might have a couple of really good items that you could use into PvE and do pretty well.

What about the paladin, is there any plans to nerf the DPS Paladin's damage from what it is on beta servers now?
T.C. - We are just now beginning on going through the heavy tuning phase, we really don't do that until the end of the beta generally, where we start going through all of the classes and finding the things that are way out of balance and there's no doubt right now that the ret paladins are doing a lot more damage than what we would expect.

Are you satisfied with how the death knight is going?
T.C. - Yeah, the death knight has been coming along very well, we've been getting a lot of good feedback from it, people seem to like the class, they seem to enjoy the starting experience very much, we really kind of put our heart into the death knight class, hopefully that's going to pan out.

What talent tree do you prefer on the death knights?
T.C. - Personally, I really enjoy the frost talents, but I believe all three trees are very strong, they all definitely all have a strong role to play.

What else do you plan? Are there any more instances coming?
T.C. - Well, certainly, there are a lot more instances we plan to release, CoT: Strath instance, Ulduar, a handful that we are play testing internally that are pretty much ready for players to see, should be one of the patches that come out any time now [...] but it should be rolling out there very quickly.
All the instances were very well designed, however, I consider it unfortunate that say, Azjol-Nerub only has three bosses, its very short.T.C. - Most players would consider that a fortunate thing, we've been getting a lot of feedback in the past that some of the instances were taking too long, so we're going for the middle ground here, we want to have some diversity between the instances too, there are a lot of players that miss the old big dungeon crawls, like BRD, etc. We want to find ways to deliver that too, but ultimately I think the core experience is that players should be able to get through an instance in less than an hour. Its something that we're trying to be very conscious about in Wrath, unlike in Burning Crusade when we had the heroic instances, those take a very long time to get through, 3 hours, 4 hours, 5 hours depending on your quality of gear. We're trying to make sure when Litch King comes out that when you do the heroic instances, it doesn't take as much time going through it as you did before.
But, we need the epic feeling from the Blackrock Depths too.T.C. - We're trying to capture that too as much as possible.

How do you plan to balance the 10 and 25 man raid instances? Are there any changes in boss design?
T.C. - There definitely are changes in boss design, for example, not only do we have to have changes in boss design even to get it down to 25 from the way Naxx used to work, certainly in the past at level 60, the four horseman boss took eight different tanks for instance. There definitely has been design change, but the integrity of the encounter remains the same, you still have the four horsemen, they all are still there. The mechanics of the fight are different, you will tank them in different ways, the horsemen will be tanked by different classes, even non tanking classes, kinda like what we have done in the past with warlocks tanking. We have some mechanics like that in place so that we can maintain the integrity of the encounters even though the actual mechanics will be different.

Will Naxx still be one instance?
T.C. - It is still a single instance, it still has that epic feel.
When will Wrath be released?
T.C. - When its ready. Specifically, the fifth of when it's ready.
 

Aikouka

Lifer
Nov 27, 2001
30,383
912
126
The WotLK cinematic is available by the way...

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/wrath/intro.xml

I'm downloading it, so I haven't watched it yet.

I watched that Chilton interview and I found it amusing how he kind of dodged the PVE-PVP question. I took it as why it's essentially easier to gear in certain aspects through PVP than PVE... like how my mage has the S2 staff, my Shaman has 2x S2 axes, etc. My warrior actually uses a couple pieces of S2 for DPS... 'cause there's so little warrior DPS plate around even in normal instances. The Doomplate set is mostly heroic, so that's out :p

Also, the "fifth of when it's ready"... hrmmm :p.

EDIT:

Originally posted by: BassBomb
Did Kara last night again

O_O 14 badges in one night!

Give up early or something? Got 20 yesterday, 'cause we couldn't beat Netherspite (only had 9 people and some were pitifully bad DPS). Gotta try to get a group today on my Shaman! If I can get the items I need... my god, he'll become a damage machine (even more so than he already is... and let me tell you, he's quite a beast!).
 
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