Monday, October 15, 2012

Monday Random Thoughts

- This weekend was a Glorious weekend.

- Finished that achievement without ever actually looking for any rares at all.

- Until I got the having only four left that is, then I started to look.

- When I had four left I looked up their spawn locations and made sure to fly by once in a while.

- When I was down to one, I camped it.

- I did all the others without ever looking for them, just came across them as I quested.

- I think that makes it more of an achievement than anything else.

- To get them all, or most of them, without trying.

- And I can say something most others can't.

- I did most of them, at level, and solo.

- I remember getting one group of four level 90 elites and the rare mob when I was 89, that was brutal and took a good 30-35 minutes, but I did it.

- I remember getting one in the golden lotus questing area back that first day when I was the only person there and those dragons were flying all over the place dropping stuff on me.

- With no one questing, many of those dragons up, lots of pats and adds, it was a constant effort in moving and took a long time.

-  I remember running into one of those monkeys in a cave and others noticing it as well but instead of them helping they all stood around waiting for me to die so they could steal the kill.

- I remember watching six of them die when he went bananas and stomped them.

- I don't think they realized them being there helped me kill him.

- So they watched hoping I would fail and instead I have to thank them for my success.

- I remember a guild mate finding one and I said invite me but he had already tagged it.

- So I killed it with him anyway and still got credit for it.

- So if you are going for the achievement, even if a mob is already tagged, as long as you are grouped with the person that tagged it you will get credit.

- Even if the mob seems grey tagged to you.

- Just thought that hint might help some a bit.

- Sad part is how insane the gear increase is.

- Those mobs that took me a good 10-15 minutes or more at level I now can walk up to, take one shot, and let my pet kill it by itself, never even needing to mend pet.

- From 85-90 the gear increase should not have been that insane.

- When I go digging and get a site in jade forest I can act like I am in westfall, just let my pet kill anything that attacks me.

- I finally found something game wise I think they really screwed up with in mists.

- Gear.

- There is no way we should be that much over powered over this expansions leveling content so soon.

- And I am not even geared out yet.

- Can you imagine when I am geared out?

- Can you image three raids from now when geared out?

- Will I be one shotting those 85 mobs with one arcane shot?

- They need to bring these stats down to earth, it ruins the game to out gear stuff that easily.

- There is no reason I should be able to go through this expansions content and letting my pet kill things without a care in the world.

- Even more so when it can kill rares all by itself now.

- Just shows you how horrible the increase of the stats on gear is.

- It does seem to be zone to zone type however.

- The forest, wild and valley all seem to be meant for people in lesser gear.

- Makes sense, gives the people that level later a little boost.

- Not everyone that levels will be in all DS gear when leveling.

- So it makes sense things should be easier to handle in those starter areas.

- Except for those virmen.

- Four characters through valley now and not one of them can say those were easy.

- When they gang up on you and start running they can be trouble for any class that over pulls.

- The summit and steeps seem to be a step up in gear requirements and then the wastes and vale seem to be another step up.

- It is the step up from the end of questing to heroic gear that stats go insane.

- When I get +200 main stats or more from quest gear to starter dungeon gear that is why things get too easy to quick.

- That step was the mistake they made in my opinion.

- A +200 main stat increase should be what we are getting by the time the second or third raid tier is out when talking from quest gear too that, not the first dungeon gear.

- Oh well, it couldn't all be good in mists, they had to fall back on old mistakes again.

- At least they fixed a lot of the things they did wrong in cataclysm.

- Just wish they would eventually get a clue about inflated stats.

- They do not grasp the concept that people will upgrade if something is 10 of a main stat better, it doesn't need to be 200 better.

- Ghostcrawler said he wants things to feel like an upgrade.

- Hey, 10 more of a stat feels like an upgrade because it is an upgrade, no need to make it 200.

- Sure, 200 feels like a better upgrade and I like it more, it just is not needed.

- Maybe in another three or four expansions they will get a clue that an upgrade is an upgrade and people do not need 200 more of a stat to upgrade, they will upgrade even if it is 10 more.

- Do you know when they will notice that?

- When ghostcrawler or whomever it might be that made the horrible stat decision is fired and the new person comes in and tells them an upgrade is an upgrade, it doesn't always need to be huge.

- Perhaps I should apply for a job there so I can explain it to them.

- But I would not want to get the partial lobotomy that would be required to get the job.

- I do understand their point, they want to make upgrades exciting, so they make them big.

- Raid to raid upgrades should be exciting, not quest zone to quest zone, not questing to dungeon and not dungeon to that first raid.

- And it should be exciting by offering smaller, but still better, stats and set bonuses from the raid gear, not just flat our huge stat gains.

- If you are like me and currently leveling your third and forth characters through content you will see what I mean about the zones and their challenges/gear.

- Both my rogue and priest are now 87 and in the summit and it is only now that I can say I am not just destroying everything I come in contact with.

- That gives the people that did not come straight from DS raid gear a chance to catch up gear wise from quests because that is also about when you start changing your raid gear.

- If you are geared in normal DS gear that is, some heroic pieces lasted me to 89.

- My rogue is still a mystery to me.

- I've got it up to 87 but I swear I feel like I am back to the bad old days.

- I need to heal after every single fight it seems, recuperate is not enough to keep me up.

- Yet when I see a rare, even the ones that are brutal on melee, I can smoke them on my rogue.

- How come I can defeat hard opponents and end with near full life yet one on one with some BS quest mobs I near death every single fight?

- Like I said, my rogue still baffles me.

- I think it is more because I pay attention and take the rares as a challenge and I love that stuff and quest mobs I don't pay attention to and that is what gets me in trouble over and over.

- My priest is also 87 now and she needed to change herself up some.

- After doing the first few quests as disc it occurred to me that my days of leveling as disc were over.

- Mobs just had way to much life.

- Not that I could not kill anything, I could, but it took forever.

- I could pull 20 mobs and never die as disc, but it would take me three years to beat them.

- So if I wanted to level to 90 I would need to switch to shadow.

- I looked online for some info, asked a few questions I had to the excellent shadow priests we have in guild, and went right out with it.

- Five minutes reading and 30 minutes setting up keybinds and my shadow UI later and I was ready to roll.

- Single target big end quest type guy that I could get some time on and I was doing 30K+ DPS in my shadow spec.

- Not bad for someone that never played shadow for more than a few seconds before.

- Leveling as shadow seems to be no problem.

- I have even noticed certain quests that gave my hunter, druid and rogue some issues that my priest had no issues with at all.

- Goes to show you that every class has their strengths and their weaknesses.

- I have not figured out how to do most of the rares solo on my shadow priest.

- Did them all on my hunter no problem.

- My druid only ran into a few that gave it problems.

- My rogue seems to be able to handle every rare it runs into.

- My priest can mow through packs of mobs like they are going out of style but I get destroyed by rares of all types.

- I guess that would come with experience, like everything else.

- I really enjoy rare hunting.

- Even if my main has now killed them all and I have most of the goodies they have to offer I will still stop and kill every rare I see.

- Except for the high level pandas.

- I think they added a hotfix to them or something.

- I used to be able to blow through them, the worst they would do is try a back to back heal and sometimes get it off which made the fight longer.

- But my pet takes no damage from them and I take no damage from them, so they are not anything to worry about.

- However, they now cast the healing mists more often and I do not have enough interrupts for it.

- Tried one the other day and this is how it went.

- Started and notice it was double healing.

- Used readiness when I noticed it was triple healing.

- Just beat on it until everything was off cooldown so I could line it all up.

- Healing mists, interrupted with silence shot.  Healing mists, interrupted with scatter shot.  Healing mists, interrupted with intimidation.  Readiness.  Healing mists, interrupted with silence shot.  Healing mists, interrupted with scatter shot.  Healing mists, interrupted with intimidation. Healing mists, goes off, back to full life.

- How the F am I supposed to get 7 interrupts off in such a short time frame?

- Step back, dismiss pet, feign death.

- Call pet, mount up, fly away, I give up.

- I could have got another pet with another interrupt but I do not think it would have helped.

- 7 heals in a row, that was insane.  Either they hot fixed it so they could not be soloed or it was a bug.

- I can still over power lower panda rares and I do, but the 90 rare pandas I avoid now, not even worth trying solo.

- When I get more gear and can over power them like I do the lower ones I will start killing them again.

- There is no single class that could interrupt 7 spells in a row and still be putting out solid high DPS.

- Even if I switched pets I could do 7, but the panda would just do an 8th.

- Glad I got them all before that change.

- At least I can say I soloed every single one of them, most at level, even the pandas.

- I guess it is the other way around now.   I beat the nerfed version and now they are unnerfed.

- If that is a change and not a bug, there is no class that will ever solo that one with just quest gear on as soon as they hit 90.  Impossible.  Not with the interrupt requirement or DPS requirement to out DPS a heal that can bring them from 30% to full.

- So those are my thoughts, all about rares and leveling.

- Now to think which class will be the next to leave for pandaland.

- Plan to get everyone at least to 87.

- Enough to get to open the farm and then head to the summit so I can go to the white tiger and open the gate to the vale.

- Once I get everyone there, and with easy access on their own to the new city, I will be happy.

- I thought pandas were supposed to have rested last twice as long.

- I have a level 5 panda I left to get rested.

- Used all its rested on one quest.

- Now it is sitting gaining rested again.

- At low levels you burn through rested fast.

- So I am leveling my panda monk, one quest a week, at least until I am done with my other 10 classes.

- I wonder what level I will get out of the starting area if I do it all on rested.

- I am guessing 15 or 16.

- Have a great day all.

8 comments:

  1. While I do agree with the Stat inflation issue you mention (if it's any solance, it's worse for 80's with the 409 MoP BoE's), I think that what GC means is that they want you to see a significant increase in Damage, Crit chance et. - and due to scaling and way too many character levels for a game that (now) foucsses on end-game content that means a crapload of Stat bonusses to achieve a 2% increase etc.

    I don't have MoP myself (in fact, I've let my subs lapse as 'voting with your wallet' is the only option you realistically have) but I have heard it from other people: are the mobs in MoP 'harder' because they only jacked up the health, or do they deal relatively more damage/ actually get to use special abilities/ has their AI improved (the last one being a pipe dream but hey) compared to 1-85 mobs?

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    1. They are only harder because without the gear they take longer to go down. They are not harder actually. A few do have some moves that can and will destroy you but once you get some gear and are killing things in 3 seconds instead of 30 seconds all those things become non-issues.

      People seem to forget those low level mobs were the same. When you did not kill them fast enough many would own you. The issue is with the stats, we kill them so fast so we do not see those abilities and forget they are there.

      There is nothing in mists that is different, it just seems that way because battles are not 3 second battles any more.

      I like it some, but just moving from a few quest gear pieces to a few dungeon, LFR and raid pieces and now I can blow away things that were dangerous a few days ago.

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  2. Shut up all ready about the stat increases, jeeze. :D I don't want no one at Blizz changing it, ok.

    Anyway hi Grumpy!,
    I made it to 89.5 level yesterday! Me so happy!!! And I also found Savage the blue-eyed white tiger and Stompy the blue goat.

    Explored almost all of Pandaria as a lvl 88 and climbed the highest peak in the game, planted the "Remember Theramore!" standard and took a screen shot of it. Ok, that's out of the way -

    I had a someone steal a rare from me by doing what you said - waiting for me to die and he only had 2000 hp left (I know, I know, I shouldn't have, but I am NOT use to a regular keyboard since my Z-Board died on me.). So that is something these asshats do on a regular basis. Why? (not a question to be answered,just can't spell rhetorical - and if that is right way of spelling it, it is an accident!). Strange, I usually jump in and help someone without being invited kill one of those rares. Too many folks are just too weird and unfriendly these days. Seems all the malcontents are playing WOW.

    Also, saw lots of Horde using the lvl 85 flying cheat or exploit in The Jade Forest. :(

    Finally made it to the BIG CITY! Bought a yak mount, lol. Looks like I am riding a boar. Ok, take care! Chat later.

    -roo

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    1. You are almost there, congrats, because I am sure you will have that last half really soon.

      Some of those rares, like monkey jumps and rain dance is sometimes a matter of luck on if you live or die. One wrong move and instead of running away from one you hit it and at lower levels it is instant death. So they can still be dangerous. But still easier for a hunter than any other class thanks to our pets.

      Should do what I do when those things happen. I high-tail it out of there and come back when they are done. lol

      I help people when I see them as well. Unless it was one of the last four I needed, then I might have turned selfish.

      I saw two horde working their way to one clearing the area yesterday when I landed on it. I could have stolen it form them but they were both 87 and I figured they would need the gear more than I and I already had it. So I helped them clear the area and waiting for them to tag the mob and then blew it to pieces for them. I waved and left after.

      I wonder what was going through their minds when they saw me land. Alliance scum is going to steal out kill. But I didn't. They did not wave back or do a thanks emote or anything, but I did not stay long enough after it died so maybe they tried too.

      I do not know about that cheat or exploit.

      Have fun hitting 90 soon and enjoy that flying. Makes it feel awesome when you earn it like that again.

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  3. Kind of unrelated to the gear, but I find the rares interesting. On my Ret Paladin, I am awful at DPS and just manage to eke my way through questing. But I have an easier time with most rares than I do on my DK, who does at least double the DPS, simply because the Ret Pally can heal pretty well. Some types of rares, like the Jinyu casters, just whittle my DK down before she can overpower them. And my Death Strike heals for a pitiful amount. It's interesting.

    As for the Panda rares, I know they have certain behaviors that trigger if someone isn't close? So maybe your pet doesn't count as being close, but instead they think their opponent (you) is far away, making them go into defensive mode. I'd be curious - maybe next time try standing really close, like melee range, and see if they heal as much?

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    1. The thing the panda's do when no one is at range is a blot of some sort that hits for roughly 100K. It does not do that so it does count my pet as near. Just changed with how much they heal. I think they changed it on purpose because they did not want people soloing them so easy.

      I've heard a few reports from other people in my guild about other ones, that they hit harder now. I would not notice as they only hit my pet and I keep mend pet rolling so I never really noticed it.

      If I had to guess, from what I have seen and what I have heard they gave a small buff to the rares so that they are not as easy to solo. Not like it changed anything for me as a hunter, I can still mow anything down, except the level 90 pandas because of the 7 heals in a row. I killed an 88 panda yesterday and noticed it was doing the same thing, healing 5 times in a row or more. But at least that one I could over power. In time with a bit more gear I will be able to mow down the 90 the same way as well.

      Without a doubt, rares got a buff. Trust me, I've been killing at least 10 a day since day one and I can tell they are not as easy as they were originally. It is an undocumented buff.

      And I know what you mean about different characters acting differently. Like I said with my rogue, I do great against rares, but suck against quest mobs. Sometimes you just do better against different things based on the skills your character has.

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  4. With your rogue, do you have leeching poison? It's pretty decent as keeping your health high and throw in a recuperate to top yourself off. There is also a talent that resets your Slice n Dice and Recuperate after each kill which is great for chain pulling mobs. I definitely recommend these two talents for leveling rogues. If you're undead you can also canibalize - best RP racial ever. I'm sad to hear my Priest wont be able to level as disc. He's only ever been disc, one of my few toons that is not dual spec because Disc could do anything!

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    1. I had not thought of leeching poison, thanks for the idea, I will give that a shot. I keep recoup running all the time however, that goes without saying when questing, at least for me.

      You can level as disc, it can do the job. But once you get to higher mobs that stun you will need to watch your pulls, chain stuns and you are dead, your bounce heals will not be enough when you are constantly stunned.

      Things just take too long to die with disc but it would be doable if you want to take your time I guess. I gave up pretty quickly and I was in the same boat, all I had ever been was disc. My priest was dual spec disc / disc PvP. Guess there was no need for that any more, so the PvP spec is now shadow. I am enjoying it.

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