- Remember when someone asked ghostcrawler on twitter what his favorite feature of mists was?
- He said it has yet to be announced.
- The speculation began.
- I found out what that feature is, so you can stop speculating.
- It is a new UI that has complete design control.
- Kind of like it should have been to begin with.
- Once you play a game like Rift where you can move everything on your screen it makes warcraft seem like a dinosaur.
- A design that should be extinct.
- The question is when, not if.
- I am going to guess 5.3.
- Wish I could tell you where I got the information, but I can't give away all my secrets.
- Like how I announced the SoR and the free mount a day before blizzard did.
- Some things can be found out that don't come from data mining, this is one of them.
- I personally think it is about time the UI got an update.
- That would make for a few addons I no longer need to worry about.
- While I love the idea of addons I think blizzard really needs to take more of those ideas and run with them.
- If so many people download a certain type of addon don't they think that people want these things?
- And knowing the vast majority of players do not read forums and do not use outside resources which means no addons, wouldn't it be a good idea to just include these things that people in the know consider required?
- Things like quest helper were added.
- Things like the pet battle addon to tell you the rarity of the pet was added super fast.
- They seem to finally be adding some of the popular addons that just make sense to have in game.
- And a system that gives you the ability to move and design things on your screen is one that is long overdue.
- I have another new 90.
- Makes it 8 now.
- Finally got an MV clear on my main.
- I guess that is a good part of not playing my main that often.
- When you go do things on it, you already know how to do it.
- But shouldn't it be the other way around?
- Learn the fights on your main, clear them easy on an alt?
- Oh well, I'll take it any way I can get it I guess.
- Have you ever wondered why there is no achievement for finishing anything on normal.
- Only ones for LFR and heroic.
- I find that odd.
- There are a lot of strange choices for achievements out there.
- And there are a lot of things that could be achievements but they are not.
- I wonder what are the criteria for something being an achievement on the design team.
- It can't be difficulty, as there are some super easy achievements.
- Some you do not even have to try for.
- Everyone will hit 90 eventually.
- They will loot X amount of gold sooner or later.
- They all just happen.
- There are a few achievements I think they could have added, nice and easy ones really.
- Some I could have sworn were there at one point.
- Like killing all the named hozen from the tillers questing area.
- I could swear there used to be an achievement for that, but I could not find it anywhere.
- Maybe it was on beta.
- I wonder why it was removed.
- Like the plants vs zombies thing in cata.
- There were a lot of achievements associated with it and an unlimited mode on beta.
- That never made it live.
- I wonder why?
- Some things just make no sense, and giving no achievement for finishing raids on normal just makes no sense.
- If anything, it seems they are phasing out normals.
- Soon there will be only LFR raiders and heroic raiders.
- Which leaves people like me, who enjoy normal raids because they are both hard enough to take a few attempts to get down and easy enough to still be fun and not get caught beating your head against the wall, left in the cold.
- If they are going to abandon a type of raiding, it should be LFR.
- Seriously, while it is a fantastic idea for alts and people that can not raid at normal times, it is horrible every other way you can imagine.
- It just turns raiding into part of the daily grind.
- Something you want to do quick and easy for some gear and valor, nothing more.
- As such, people that do not deserve to be in there raiding will flock to it, and make it horrible.
- Like it currently is.
- I've noticed how the LFR has really changed the game.
- Pugs are nearly non-existent now.
- The few that do happen you usually get people that did it in the LFR and say they "know fights" when they don't.
- Try getting even the stone guard down with two tanks that "know fights" and tank all three of them together.
- It is impossible.
- LFR gives people the false assumption that they are raiders.
- They are not, and if they are going to phase out a level of raiding, it needs to be LFR that is phased out, not normals.
- What is next, not being able to even get achievements for other things in normals?
- Not to far away as it seems now.
- Raiding achievements will be for heroic raiders only.
- How can they make legendaries for everyone and not even make normal mode raiding anything more than a gate to heroic, not a tier of its own?
- If they want everyone to have everything, let normal mode raiders feel as if their doing normals counts as something of its own by having its own achievement.
- Otherwise, once you do it on LFR there is no reason to raid unless you plan to go through normals just to get to heroics.
- There will be no such thing as a normal raider any more.
- If they are going to give the same achievement for doing a raid in LFR and on normal, they need to add 10 man LFR.
- So what used to be normal teams can do it as a team and not be subjected to the nature of a group of random people.
- Seriously, there is no reason for there not to be one.
- Only excuses, not reasons.
- I don't care about excuses, just do it.
- Speaking of achievements.
- Finally did all scenarios on Saturday for that achievement.
- I did them with one of my characters that did nothing this week, so I could get the maximum valor from it.
- I queued over and over and over again trying to get them all.
- I eventually just had to queue for the one I was left needing when I capped on valor.
- Yes, I capped on valor before I got one of each, do you believe that crap?
- I got the same one three times in a row.
- Twice.
- I did the new ones at least every other one.
- And in all those runs, enough to cap me out, I only saw fives pieces of gear.
- So yes, the drop rate on gear does seem to be slightly more than it was, but it is still horrible.
- If I were gearing up it would have basically been only three pieces as two were duplicate pieces.
- Scenarios are just not a reasonable way to get gear, or to get valor, despite the fact I capped doing them.
- I did it for an achievement, nothing more really.
- Some scenarios desperately need to be shortened.
- And some are move complex then mechanics in dungeons, so teaching people is required.
- Like collecting all the resources for the one scenario.
- There was always one person that had no clue what to do.
- There were people that dropped it when they got in.
- On one occasion I basically solo built everything because the other two were just running around like a chicken with their heads cut off.
- At least they defended the village when it was under attack so I could keep gathering.
- I know it is a simple concept but please blizzard, think about the people that do these.
- They can not figure this stuff out on their own, so why do you make what is supposed to be the absolute easiest way to play end game so complicated for them?
- Yes, gathering resources is complicated for them, trust me, I saw that with my own eyes this weekend.
- Getting that scenario was like thinking, there goes a chunk of my life I will never get back.
- Maybe that is why some people drop it the second they see it.
- I only do scenarios on characters I can solo them on, which means tanks and hunters.
- I do not trust anyone that I get in a random to know what they are doing.
- And from experience, I am about 50% right because usually there was one person that had a clue and one person that was clueless.
- One time the one person that had a clue said to the one person that seemingly had no clue what to do.
- The no clue person said they had done it 100s of times, they knew what there were doing.
- So the clue person said, then why are you still so bad at it.
- Have to love exchanges like that.
- I find it funny people try to skip packs in them.
- I try to pull more, because that is the fun.
- The new one with the bugs, I drag the entire road up to the boss.
- It it awesome spiking over 300K DPS and doing 140K DPS with a 440 item level as a tank.
- I would never want to tank a random with a 440 item level knowing the idiots in them, but doing scenarios are just fine in my book.
- They are going to really need to upgrade that goodie bag if they want me to tank random dungeons.
- Otherwise I can see spamming scenarios as the new way to gear up tanks.
- Scenarios and the auction house and straight to the LFR, skipping dungeons completely.
- All we need is for them to increase the item drop rate in scenarios a little more.
- And, scenarios actually teach you more about tanking than dungeons do, so I would suggest it for the new tank.
- Saving idiots, that won't die ASAP anyway, becomes the norm in them.
- Being responsible for your own survival is important there, and I see many new tanks forget about that in dungeons because they have a healer and expect the healer to keep them alive.
- Dealing with losing aggro left and right to every one with a pet because they all keep taunt on all the time.
- Not that I blame them, for scenarios it is the smart move.
- But a good player would notice they have a tank and take it off.
- Good thing there are no smart players there, so it allows you to learn to deal with aggro theft a lot better.
- I think scenarios are a much better training tool for tanks to learn in.
- One run I had a mage and a priest who was disc spec.
- We saw we had a tank, a healer and a damage dealer, and adjusted our play style accordingly, on the fly, not talking about it but seemingly with smart players.
- We destroyed the whole scenario in a matter of minutes, the fastest I had ever seen done.
- It was insane, and it was how scenarios should be, in my opinion.
- 5-8 minute group quests, nothing more.
- Wish they were all like that.
- Did an random dungeon on my mage the other day and had a healer say, don't roll on the spirit mace at the end I really need it because I am still wearing a green and it is hurting my healing.
- I said, I am a mage, I do not use spirit so why would I roll on it.
- Can mages even use maces?
- First boss, healer dies from standing in bad, we down it without a healer.
- Second boss, healer dies from standing in bad, we down it without a healer.
- Third boss, healer dies from standing in bad, we down it without a healer.
- Last boss, healer lives, mace drops, healer says this will really help my healing, thanks.
- Tank says, you know what else will help your healing?
- The healer says what?
- Stop dying from standing in things, it will really help your healing.
- That really says it all, the mace won't do a damn thing for him, he is a bad player and gear can never fix that.
- So I will leave you with the adjusted to fit for everyone statement from the tank, words of wisdom to live by.
- Stop dying, it makes you a better player.
- Have a great day.
Blizzard Watch Weekly: Family togetherness
1 hour ago
I know I was so annoyed when I saw that normal achievements for raiding were gone. They had that with DS a bit, but at least you had the Deathwing one - Destroyer's End. Now I'm not saying I want a title, that's fine, but I'd like an achievement. As normal raiding is a lot harder than LFR. LFR is a joke and only made hard by people ignoring mechanics, which really annoy me. I won't queue for it anymore as I get so annoyed. On Wind Lord, how no-one will cc and it's just AOE, wipe, AOE, wipe, AOE, wipe until the healers and tanks manage to stay alive long enough to get a few adds down. If I was tanking I'd be annoyed, but probably love the insane dps and would live. In fact I'd probably love the fact that I get to use my cooldowns, and have the challenge of surviving. I still wouldn't like it though as it's an unnecessary risk, plus it's getting into bad habits. In my view you should do it right even when you don't need to, to prepare for when you do. Besides I don't need gear on my tank now, and haven't for a while, so I'm forced to queue as dps. I hate that and sometimes intervene like on terrace, no-one dispels cleansing waters and the tanks don't move them. So sometimes I get fed up, interrupt, taunt and move them. The last time I was there, if I hadn't done it, we would have hit beserk. I was one of the top dps there on my OS, and I was doing a lot of self healing. Anyway, end of that they should separate normal mode from LFR more. As LFR isn't normal and really it's not raiding at all.
ReplyDeleteSorry for the rant but LFR is getting worse over time. I have no proof of the causal link between raiders no longer needing to go, and it going downhill. I strongly suspect that's the case though. I only queue for Terrace now as that's the only place that'll give me any upgrades for my OS. I get my valor through a quick daily hc, no stress, much quicker and virtually same amount of valor.
I'm disappointed if a ui upgrade is the feature. I would have preferred something a little more relevant, though I guess relevance is very personal. To me, I have my ui just how I like it. Yes I use a lot of addons but I sort of forget that, it is what it is. It surprises me actually if I login to a new char with addons disabled, I sort of expect the default to look like mine is and it doesn't of course. A new ui just seems so boring.
As for normal raiding I don't have your alt vs main problem. I have another problem of getting the raids to happen in the first place. I seem to spend half my life looking for healers or recruiting. I used to look forward to raid night and now I groan when it reaches the weekend as it means it's raiding again. Half the team is dependable, that's the half I like, the half I've known for a long time, and am friends with as much as you can be friends with anyone in a game. So on my guild there are pug raids, as I'm usually looking for people every week. I think I've had 10 from my guild once, maybe twice, since we started all those months ago. I've built up a contacts list of good pugs, but they're pugs and can't be counted on either. Honestly if I didn't like those aforementioned friends so much I would have taken the recruitment offer. I got asked to join another guild, a much more progressed guild. I know a few people in it and I was very tempted but it's the people that make the game. I made a commitment to my guild, a promise if you like, and I don't break my promises. Though the stress is getting to me. You've been a raid leader years, how do you cope?
I've always been the same way. Even if it is not needed, always do it right. We do guild LFR runs, that is the only time I enter them now, and I tell people I do not care if something does not hurt, practice, so you get better at it. There is no excuse for not doing mechanics.
DeleteI agree. The LFR is too hard for the people it is meant for and it is NOT raiding. They need to realize that the game can not teach people how to raid. People need to find a group of people willing to work with them. It is how I learned, how you learned, how every raider learned. Sure I use it to bring new people into it to teach them, but it is still me teaching them, the LFR itself does nothing to teach them. It should stop being referred to as a raid as it is not and it should be a lot easier so it can fit the role it has become meant for. A quicker way to valor cap and gear up alts. It is nothing more.
I am sort of like you now. I try to bow out of farm night stuff if we are not doing anything new. Let someone else get the chance to go in. Last week someone said, but we can not run without the raid leader. I said, sure you can, it is all older content. If you get up to a new boss, get some practice in on it. It is bad when the raid leader does not even want to raid.
How do I do it? I feel I have to do it because someone needs to and if I don't do it the entire team will fall apart. Not sure why I stay around being I have been offered spaces in many better guilds, even on other servers, but I like the people so even if I hate the situation sometimes I sit back and think for a moment.
What do I really play for? I can clear all the content in a better guild ASAP but then what? If I clear it slower I have more content to work with. If I clear it slower with people I like it is less stressful. In the end, I play to have fun and as along as I still like the people I am playing with I see no reason to change. Sure, it might be stressful sometimes, many times, but would moving to another guild that just goes in, kills everything quickly, and moves on be better for me? I don't think so. I don't so much cope as I accept the position I am in.
I doubt that helped any but it is all I have to offer. I do it because in the end, I think I would not enjoy myself as much elsewhere taking everything into account.
I laughed at "let someone else get the chance to go". I couldn't help it, it was just too funny. I can't take a raid night off even if I want too. That's what I mean by not being able to get 10. I had to pug 3 spots last night as it was. I'm having to pug 2 spots tonight. I might well turn up tonight and then have to pug a couple more because some of the accepted won't show. It's not that I don't want to raid. It's the responsibility in ensuring that the raids happen. I wasn't tempted to swap guilds for the progression, though that'd be nice, but to get away from the stress of being responsible for the raids happening.
DeleteEveryone else can just turn up and raid. Me, I lose hours before each raid trying to find pugs to come so I don't have to cancel the raid. I've had to cancel so many raids as it is that I've been told by one of my dependable people that "they expect that raids won't happen". I do my best, my absolute level best, but the server is low pop as it is. The people that want to raid already have raiding spots, I pick up pugs which are alts of raiders. Every single raid is a huge struggle just to get 10 people. Sometimes I wonder if my server has reached guild saturation in that the raiders are already spread out among the guilds, and that's why we're all struggling with rosters. Half the guilds on my server are constantly recruiting as it is, I had my best dps poached by another guild last week.
Anyway, I totally agree with what you said about the people. It's the few people in my guild that keep me still trying to make it work. Though I have to say it's a good job that I'm currently out of work, because if I had a job I wouldn't have the time to spend looking for pugs/recruits. We probably would have folded a long time ago in that case. Honestly, I don't know if it's blizz's out in the world policy or what. I fly around Pandaria/trade with my macro about "LF x for tonight's raid at x" you know the type. In cata I got a fair few /w. Now? Not a single one. I spent 4 hours once campaigning for a healer.
Sometimes I get interest now for my macro, I tell them our guild progress and get a thanks, but no thanks in response. However, my guild progress isn't that bad, and it's born of the roster trouble and the lack of raids, not that we've reached a brick wall and are incapable of raiding higher. Besides none of the guilds on my server have cleared hc Terrace yet, only one has started it. Only the top 6 guilds have any hc HoF. The next 6, so down to 12'th on the server are the ones with hc MSV. After that none of the other guilds have reached Terrace yet. The 13th guild on the server is 6/6MSV, 4/6HoF normal. We're 4/6MSV, 2/6HoF. In terms of HoF progression we're the same as the 16th guild on the server, the only reason why're not in the top 20 is the 4/6MSV. I'm 6/6MSV personally anyway. So you can see that the progress relative to the rest of the server isn't that bad, but still it's not enough.
Anyway I'm rambling, making a great big messy comment on your blog. I guess I'm just reaching the end of my rope a bit. Thank you very much for what you said. It re-affirms what I thought, that it's the people that matter. The 4 people in my guild that I care about. If only you could raid with 5, and yeah I did try to substitute challenge modes but it's not the same.
I have that problem with the weekend crew. Can't get enough to get it going. Weekday is fine. Have 4 healers all willing to rotate and three tanks all willing to rotate along with at least 7 damage dealers. So we are fine for that weekday run. Just wish we could run more time instead of only 2 hours. If we did more time we would do great I believe. Top 10 on a server where everyone above us raids at least 3 hours a night and 3 nights a week shows we have the ability for so much more as a team.
DeleteWe too had our bad time for roughly 2 months when all those regulars were on vacation or had other obligations, as happens in a guild with adults, and we had to use fill ins. All we ever did then was the first 4 in MV and it got repetitive but there are no other bosses you can carry sub par and learning players in. I think that is a problem with this raid patch, not enough learning bosses for a 16 boss tier. You need your top people to go 5 deep in MV or 3 deep on HoF. Even the easy first boss in HoF where you can get away with 40K DPS or even less, it is all about execution and movement which once again means you are not getting it down with new raiders. I hate that design. It makes it impossible to just raid when even the first boss becomes a learning experience all over again when you have new people in the group.
Only three guilds on my server have reached terrace on even normal. So I know what you mean.
In the end, what it comes down to is the normal modes are too hard for the majority of "raider" and those born in late cata or from the LFR. Like I mentioned above, you can't just bring someone in. And people want that, they want to join and get carried or have a group so good they can get further with them.
That is why I do not even try to pug. If I am going to pug I am going to get 4/6 MV or 2/6 HoF. You will not get past 5 and 3 if you do not have good players and I do not mean mildly good, I mean top of their game good because if you want to down them with a pug, that is what you need.
Ramble away, always love a good gripe fest. lol
Maybe I could transfer something over to your server to help you, but I think you are UK so that won't work. lol
Yeah I'm UK sadly, it would be quite an honour to raid with you otherwise. I have to agree with what you said about the raids and learning. I spent 2 hours last night wiping on Blade Lord because people couldn't stack right. We'd killed it the week before but with a different group. Only 4 people were the same, including myself. We had 3 pugs like I said, and we just couldn't kill him. Got to phase 2 a couple of times but nothing lower than 11%, and that was the best. Most of the time though we lost people stacking, and then ofc you lose more people each stack because of the damage dispersal. There was nothing I could do, I can't stack for people.
DeleteI was just talking with my friend and she mentioned the learning curve. With a settled team you can take bosses undergeared, you can mitigate mistakes because you can learn from them. With an ever-changing team and pugs you can't do that. I have no idea how/if we'll manage when 5.2 drops. Right now we at least have the benefit of gear on these raids. Walking into Throne, will be like walking into MSV in blues. I think 5.2 will make or break my guild. Either we'll manage to recruit, pull through and emerge a team, or we'll disband. By disband I don't mean typing those words, don't think I could, but the team will just disintegrate. I hope it doesn't because of those 4 people that I mentioned. However, right now I can't deny that it would almost be a relief.
Disband doesn't always need to be a dirty word, so to speak. My raid team disbanded once. We all went our separate ways and then magically came back together and it was like we never left each other.
DeleteIt helped that we kept the guild together and kept all out alts there. We just went out to raid with our mains in different guilds.
Sometimes that is what is needed. Many people forgot how good we do and how good we have it until they got a taste of the day in and day out of other raiding guilds. When all was said and done everyone just said, I want to come home.
I want achievment for top honor in each battleground. That should be worth some bragging rights at times. Never had a better time than being told i was too low level for Alterac and should leave then taking top honor a good 5 levels below the majority of the players. The level thing goes away next patch anyway.
ReplyDeleteThat is one of those achievements you can luck into. Even someone like myself that does not PvP could get it. That means I like it. lol
DeleteI do not even try to get achievements for PvP on the rare occasion I do them. To much involved in getting them and for some you need to be on the right class to do it.
Yeah you want to see who is OP in pvp just check the log every fight: when the same three classes reliably dominate the damage numbers by a 2-1 margin that might need tweaking. As for random: yeah is does happen but considering how stupid most cheevos are: you finished 5 quests! Anything you get just for playing is a joke - there needs to be SOME effort/skill involved.
DeleteDamage meters are not everything, not even by a long shot, in PvP, but you are right, it is the easy way to see what classes have the most potential when you see the same ones over and over again on top of the lists. Then it is not just who is playing them or but the class is better by design.
DeleteBeen a while, good to see you still blogging :)
ReplyDeleteUnrelated, but Monday is for random thoughts: a perhaps interesting idea regarding the CRZ bugbear: civil disobedience
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/6534004261
Nice post and makes sense.
DeleteShow blizzard what is so wrong about CRZ by turning all villages into wastelands. On PvE servers, if every NPC is dead all the time, there will be so many complaints blizzard will have no option but to respond and let the people that to no want to be on super servers go back to their small quiet servers.
I just wish the community was motivated enough to act on a grand scale, but it isn't. The community in this game is dead and it could never ban together on a scale needed to force change. Just not possible.
-Finally got a Sha touched weapon!!! YEAH!
ReplyDelete-Now I have no reason to do LFR anymore except for VP... lol
-Tried soloing BWL. The first boss is still annoying. I got tired of dying and had a guildie help me with it. Rest of the raid was a cake walk.
-Got two of the pets out of there as well, so I have 4 of them now.
-Did MC again. I've revered now so I can only get rep from bosses. No pet that run though.
-Ditto for AQ40. No pet drops. Only did the bosses that drop pets (and one that got in my way... lol)
-Wanted to test out my dps after upgrading my weapon to post logs on WoL. I hadn't posted in a while but I have an addon that turns on the CombatLog automatically.
-Well, my WoWCombatLog was too big (400MB...) and it would crash the WoL app.
-So I broke out Visual Studio and created an application to split the log.
-Select the log file and a minimum time gap in minutes to detect a splitting point.
-The program goes through the log and if the time gap is bigger than the threshold, it tells you the times and asks if you want to split the file.
-Didn't work at first because of a stupid error.
-Not always a good idea to code at 2AM after gaming all day.
-Fixed the bug in 5 minutes the next morning. Split my log into half a dozen parts and was able to load them all with the WoL app.
-I should post the application up somewhere along with the source code. Somebody else might find it useful.
-It's only a 29KB exe so it's tiny.
-I should go earn 200 more vp to cap, but don't feel like it. Been a long day.
-Ciao.
Congrats on the weapon, maybe it is my turn. I just dread having to decide between my MV normal or the LFR sha one.
DeleteFirst boss just takes a little learning. I was doing it solo before it was made possible to do solo. Funny part is, now that is it capable of being done solo it is harder, not easier than it was before.
When I used to do coding I noticed the best time to do it was when you first woke up in the morning. Seemed your mind was clearer and problem solving was better, at least for me.
I am sure someone will find it very useful.